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Unidentified animal photographed in North Carolina

Everyone's got an opinion on photo of mysterious creature

6-10-04

By Mark Brumley, Staff Writer
News & Record

ASHEBORO -- Bill Kurdian is not alone.

Although he might be beginning to wish he were.

Since he shared his story and photograph last week of an unidentified fox-like creature he's seen sporadically since early winter in the backyard of his eastern Randolph County home, seven other people in Randolph, Guilford and Rockingham counties have come forward, claiming identical sightings.

Kurdian snapped his photo May 20 using a motion-sensing camera.

Lorraine Smith, a mammals curator at the N.C. Zoo in Asheboro, said she believes Kurdian's creature is a common grey fox that has lost much of its fur, possibly due to a heavy parasite infestation.

But not everyone is convinced.

"This thing has gotten real interesting," Kurdian said Wednesday.

"I've gotten calls from Washington, California and everywhere."

He's even been contacted by "Proof Positive," a new version of the old "Unsolved Mysteries" TV show, about possibly doing a segment.

The animal in Kurdian's photo looked so strange that some people asked if the photo had been altered.

They wondered if someone had electronically spliced a fox, a cat and deer together.

Kurdian said the only thing he's done to the original picture is had it enlarged so people could get a better look at the animal.

"The picture you see is exactly like it came off the camera," Kurdian said. "It has not been doctored. It's not a hoax."

Kurdian's photo has given birth to a foxy phenomenon that hasn't stayed caged in the Piedmont Triad area: It has grown legs and wandered North Carolina, the U.S. and the world via the Internet.

Between June 3, when the story first appeared on the News & Record's Web site, and Tuesday, the last day that figures were available, the story received 49,749 page views, or "hits."

Six people who read the story online sent e-mail to the News & Record and said they had seen similar creatures in Wilmington, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, New York and Oregon.

The frontrunner in the "Guess the Mystery Animal" game sparked by Kurdian's photo is the maned wolf, which is native to South America.

Coming in a close second is the jackal. There are three species, all native to Africa.
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http://www.news-record.com/news/local/rand/creature_061004_hp.htm
 
I fiddled with it in photoshop a bit... I don't think it looks obviously photoshopped, except the shadow. There seems to be a double shadow- a thin line around the body, including the tail's shadow... and a fainter one, which impossibly shows up against the black behind the animal.

So I take back that the shadows looked good :D
 
The black outline could be where the image has been 'burnt' due to high contrast between different light levels. This wouldn't be suprising with the type of camera that was probably (i.e. not an expensive piece of imaging kit). You can see a similar effect in old footage from early video cameras.
 
I've had the opportunity to see a couple hundred photos take with inexpensive motion detecting game cameras (they cost well under $100 and can be found in just about any sporting goods store). This pic is typical of what you get.
 
Is the green square shape in my high-contrast version possibly a hedge? Then the shadow appearing over the "black" would make more sense, because it would actually be against an object (the hedge).
 
I'm currently downloading adobe photoshop on this computer, so I've only taken a preliminary look.

Compare the two hind legs. The left looks like the calf of the leg is very, very long with no joint. As well, it looks like the creator attempted to blend the extended leg into the grass somewhat; yet the grass is short in all other locations. This would probably be caused because the picture caught the deer in mid stride, which would clearly reveal the hoof. So the creator deleted it, and used the air brush to extend the leg down to the ground. The bottom of the leg also looks like it was airbrushed.

And the shadows look highly unusual to me. They seem to look like they're coming from different light sources, and some of them seem to be painted on. Compare the shadow from the tail, which seems to be coming from a lightsource to the left of the camera; then compare the other shadows. The main shadow appears to be coming from a flash on the camera.

The shadow on the front left leg should extend to the bottom of the leg, or gradually fade into the leg; yet it just ends in mid air.
 
hedgewizard said:
I've had the opportunity to see a couple hundred photos take with inexpensive motion detecting game cameras (they cost well under 0 and can be found in just about any sporting goods store). This pic is typical of what you get.
Click to expand...

I agree Hedgewizard.

IMO the picture has not been tampered with.
 
I agree that there is a hedge on the left but the shadow still looks too consistant with that on the wall. Surely the hedge and the wall are not exactly at the same depth?
 
I don't think the shadows look like they're coming from seperate directions... I just don't understand why the tail's shadow seems darker than the body's. But I don't see any obvious signs of photoshopping the leg has defiently not been lengthened.

If it was photoshopped, what were the original elements? It wouldn't make sense to photoshop the entire body of the animal into a new setting- that is pretty hard to do. They're probably photoshop a new head. So I doubt the body was spliced into the background. The legs all look perfectly normal to me; the grass looks pretty overgrown, I think the feet could really be standing in the grass.
Also, the shadow of the tail and rear end look perfect; it's defiently not a case of creating a shadow. That COULD be the case with the head, but not with the whole body.

The back legs looked funny but I think the left one is actually lifted up, midstep.

I dunno, if the hedge in the back is flush with the building, I don't see any signs of fakeage. I'm not photoshop wizard but I have done some, and I know what's within the bounds of probability.

And its obviously a flash, which causes a weird effect with shadows, making them appear continuous over various terrain; since you're looking at them from almost exactly the angle they're coming from. Get what I'm saying?

I dunno, the more I study it, the more I'm buying its real.

I dunno.
 
Some photo shop "experts" (they cited credentials, no way to verify) at cryptzoology.com said that it is inconclusive whether it was chopped (some signs of editing, but not as many as you'd think, and possible explanations other than editting). Others seemed to think they saw masking on the head, and stuff other places.

An alternative theory is that it is a red fox just recovering from a bad case of the mange. Would make sense because red fox are common in that area.
 
Ath said:
An alternative theory is that it is a red fox just recovering from a bad case of the mange. Would make sense because red fox are common in that area.
Click to expand...

The creature in the photo doesn't seem to have the same proportions as a red fox.
 
Looks like one of these without most of its fur (the markings on the nose and neck are identical).

As for photoshopping... I doubt it. If this is a digital fake it is very, very good indeed. It would have taken ages, cloning from a number of different photos to obtain the subtle variation in shade, which is exactly what you'd expect in a genuine photo. There's not one pixel that would make me suspect it of being fake.
 
it's quite hard to judge an animal's body shape with fur, versus without.
 
Whatever the animal is, I couldn't hazard a guess but I'd say it had a litter somewhere, it seems to have enlarged teats.
 
If the image upload worked I'd post an image of the damned thing with no fur, but seeing as it doesn't, I won't. It wasn't very interesting anyway...
 
Deperado, the zoo people agree with you. A grey fox with hairloss. Considering how some people are (anyone recall the dog that trimmed to resemble a lion), it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it belongs to someone who shaved it.
 
Or maybe some sick cult that involves depilatory action on local wildlife? :eek!!!!:
 
or maybe a low-tech hoax, where instead of photoshopping it, the hoaxer just got a grey fox and shaved it?
 
Well, the tail does look rather feline...



.No, no coat, I'm on my way out....
 
Man, I'm glad we don't get yobs like that on this board!

(as for the NJ pic, if you click on the enlargement, it looks to me like a brown cat [Abyssinian? I'm shit with cat breeds] with a squirrel or large rodent in its maw)
 
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