’Tis the season for all things spooky ― and apparently, some keepers at the Bristol Zoo Project (run by the Bristol Zoological Society) have come across some suitably eerie footage.
A still image from night vision cameras that monitor the Zoo’s Bear Wood habitat “has us just a little stumped,” the Project’s Facebook Post reads.
The image comes from camera traps used by Bristol Zoological Society’s conservation team “to survey and monitor species of all sizes that inhabit Bear Wood’s 7.5 acres of ancient woodland.”
In a press release, Rosie Sims, Public Engagement Manager at Bristol Zoo Project, said: “The sighting of this mythical-like creature is a mystery to us here at Bristol Zoo Project.”
“Scotland has the Loch Ness monster and Cornwall has the Beast of Bodmin Moor – have we discovered a similar mythical here in Bristol perhaps?”
HuffPost UK asked the British Zoological Society whether they had a nickname for the animal, to which a spokesperson replied: “We haven’t actually got an in-house nickname for it yet, at the moment we are just referring to it as a ‘mysterious creature.’”
People had *thoughts* online
The Facebook post shared by the Bristol Zoo Project compared the night-time image to a daytime snap of a very, very similar-looking Muntjac deer.
Reddit member u/shellac, who’s part of the r/bristol subreddit, wrote into the forum to say: “It’s a Muntjac deer. I’m not an expert and even I can see that.”
The zoo’s press release says, “After reviewing the images they say the creature appears to have four legs and is like nothing [the conservation team] have spotted before.”
But a Facebook user wrote, “I realise this is a single frame, but what you call ‘wings’ looks a lot like the back of the deer’s head as it has turned to look over its back. I would expect more blurring if it were a single frame.”
Still, others have different thoughts: one Facebook user commented, “It’s obviously an infant Unicorn Pegasus,” while another said: “It is a twin birth gone awry.
“One twin did not develop separately. This sometimes happens in cattle and extra legs or two heads appear on one calf.”
It coincides with the zoo’s (genuinely exciting-sounding) Halloween trail
“The sightings come just before the launch of the zoo’s ‘Howl-oween: Myths and Legends trail’, which will give visitors the opportunity to see giraffes, lemurs, cheetah, wolves and wolverines, as well as potentially spot the mythical creature,” the press release reads.
“It will also include myth-busting talks, an interactive animal artefact experience in the Lodge of Legends, as well as the chance for visitors to create their own mythical creature in the Cauldron of Creation.”
The Bristol Zoological Society aim to tackle the genuinely scary issue of animal endangerment, sharing that “78% of the animals we care for are both threatened and part of targeted conservation programmes.”
“Our aim is for this to rise to 90% of species by 2035.”