Yet another hairless cryptid?

I woke this morning to a Twitter discussion about the new photos of an alleged Yeti.  The Telegraph, the UK news outlet, was reporting the finding.  They were swamped with traffic so I had to google around and find another less trafficked site to get the photo.  Boy was I disappointed.

This is not the giant man-shaped hairy monster of the Himalayas.  It doesn’t look like an animal capable of walking on two legs.  In short, it appears to be  some kind of hairless quadruped mammal.

Seriously? This is supposed to be a Yeti?

To figure out what it was, I did a search on “Chinese Mammals ” and then started scanning the image files.

The first set of images that came back included this helpful picture:

Viverridae - includes the civet-cat.

I’m not a biologist, and pesky old Mr. Evolution makes it tricky to identify a specific mammal when the creature is hairless, since hair coloration is one of the ways we identify animals.  But even though I’m not an expert, I see enough similarity to strongly suggest that the thing in the cage is likely a mange afflicted animal from the family Viverridae.   I posted that conclusion to Twitter.

As cryptid enthusiasts from the states wake up, I expect they’ll endorse the same conclusion.  Loren Coleman at cryptomundo already came to the same finding.

I am normally very polite about how people interpret the things they find in the world.  However, this “news story” isn’t the work of cryptozoologists – it is the work of cryptidiots.