Mystery Creature in Maryland

[Andrew D. Gable]

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/3545383/detail.html

Hmm. That picture where you can see its face, it doesn't look quite like a dog there... more like, actually, a hyena. And it looks like it's eating grass on the one picture. That's not very doglike behavior. I mean sure, my dog does it sometimes, but still.

 

[HolyUdder]

That is really wierd. Its facial features certainly look like a hyenas, but it lacks the body structure of one from the neck back. Not sure if a hyena could mate and produce mixed offspring. Anybody with a background in that kind of stuff have any ideas?

 

[Heretic Apostate]

What would a hyena mate with? Hyenas aren't related to dogs, no matter what they look like. So there's no hybridization going that way...

 

[Umbran]

Looks to me more like a normal dog with some nasty skin condition, mange, or the like.

 

[trancejeremy]

Probably a coydog. There's a lot of funny looking dogs, surely some that look like a hyena.

 

[Krieg]

There's a lot of funny looking dogs, surely some that look like a hyena.

That is pretty much what I was thinking. To me it just looks like someone took a mutt, shaved it's backsides & set it loose. It wouldn't surprise me if it was just a stray from the next neighborhood over.

 

[Desdichado]

That is really wierd. Its facial features certainly look like a hyenas, but it lacks the body structure of one from the neck back. Not sure if a hyena could mate and produce mixed offspring. Anybody with a background in that kind of stuff have any ideas?

Yeah, but the current paucity of hyenas is not a good indicator of what things used to be like. Only a few thousand years ago, there were still lots of different hyenas, including many so-called "hunting hyenas" that were built more like dogs.

I don't know what this thing is; some better video would certainly help. It's got a longish neck with a mane on it, which is a more hyena-like feature than doglike as well, and the tail doesn't look very doglike either. But the idea of some kind of interglacial hyena variant surviving in Maryland, of all places, undiscovered for this long, is a bit much to swallow. I suspect it's some kind of very odd feral dog or dog/coyote hybrid, as Umbran suggested.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I should've put this in my first post, but didn't.

Speaking from a cryptozoology standpoint, this thing reminds me of the devil monkey/nalusa falaya/Wampus cat, at least physically. That's a bipedal, hopping, carnivorous thing supposedly native to the South, especially Virginia and Tennessee. The same thing might account for some other more-or-less Southern cryptozoology, as well (a carnivorous "kangaroo" seen in Tennessee in the 1930s, some Bigfoot possibly, maybe the bipedal cat seen in southern Illinois back in the 1960s), and supposedly some of the sightings of "kangaroos" in the US. This thing's got a lot of the physical appearance down, but apparently not so much the temperament (doesn't bother animals and walks quadrupedally, not bipedally).

 

[William Ronald]

I tend to lean towards a feral dog, or some sort of coyote/dog or wolf/dog hybrid. I would like some better video, or a live captured animal.

 

[Alynnalizza]

I'm thinking a wolf-dog breed that is A. Malnurished and B. with Mange. (Reports have it mingling with the other pets and not acting to bad around it). Very dog like behaviour.

just my 2 cents.