BROADCASTS.com

b"THE KICKSTARTER IS LIVE AND I'M SO EXCITED!\\n\\nThe Kickstarter campaign is HERE! If you're not sure how Kickstarter works, that's what we talk about at the beginning of this episode. I then go over the different rewards available and finally we have a very short chapter from the audiobook.\\n\\nKickstarter FAQ\\n\\nI talk about the Kickstarter for way too long, so if you don't care you can jump ahead to 9:56 to listen to the actual chapter. Also, I am definitely going to re-record that chapter for the actual audiobook because I recorded it before I made adjustments to my mic.\\n\\nOne of the pictures of a ningen you'll find online. It's art, not a photograph:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to a special bonus episode of Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\nThe Kickstarter funded successfully so there\\u2019s no need to have a ten-minute explanation of the Kickstarter tiers. I\\u2019ve cut all that out so anyone who wants to listen to this little bonus episode about the Ningen can do so without fast-forwarding a lot first. This is one of the new chapters from the book Beyond Bigfoot & Nessie: Lesser-Known Mystery Animals from Around the World, although I will be re-recording it for the audiobook version now that I\\u2019ve learned a little more about making the audio sound good.\\nThe Ningen\\nThe seas around Antarctica are cold and stormy. To humans it seems unhospitable, a deadly ocean surrounding an icy landmass. But the Antarctic Ocean is home to many animals, from orcas and penguins to blue whales and colossal squid, not to mention the migratory birds, cold-adapted fish, and many small animals that live in the depths. New animals are constantly being discovered, but it\\u2019s also not very well explored.\\nStories from Japanese whalers who visit the area supposedly tell of a strange creature called the ningen, which is occasionally seen in the freezing ocean. It\\u2019s usually white and can be the size of a big person or the size of a baleen whale. It\\u2019s long and relatively slender, and while details vary, it\\u2019s generally said to have a human-like face, or at least large eyes and a slit-like mouth. It also has arms instead of flippers and either a whale-like tail or human-like legs.\\nThese stories don\\u2019t come from long ago, though. The first post about the ningen appeared in 2002 in a Japanese forum thread about giant fish. Interest in the topic died down within a few months, until 2007 when the ningen was the subject of both a manga and a magazine article.\\nThe ningen didn\\u2019t start appearing in English language sites until 2010. While it\\u2019s never been as well-known as many so-called cryptids, it has been the subject of short stories and books, creepy art, a J-pop song, and lots of speculation.\\nThe question, of course, is whether the ningen is a real animal or a hoax. The initial post was made by an anonymous woman who claimed to be repeating something an unnamed whaler friend told her he\\u2019d experienced, and her friend also said that the Japanese government was baffled, and that the government was engaged in a cover-up so no one else would learn about the mystery animal. This has all the hallmarks of a modern urban legend. I don\\u2019t think the ningen is a real animal.\\nJust for fun, though, if it was a real animal, what might it be? The beluga whale is the first thing I thought of, since it\\u2019s white, grows around 18 feet long, or 5.5 meters, and has a small rounded head with features that look sort of human-like. But the beluga whale only lives in the Arctic, not the Antarctic. That\\u2019s the opposite side of the world.\\nOf the whales that do live around the Antarctic for at least part of the year, none are white all over and most are dark gray or black. Very rarely, though, a whale is born with albinism, which means its skin lacks pigment. As a result, it looks white or very pale gray. An albino humpback whale called Migaloo has been spotted off the coast of Australia repeatedly since 1991, for instance.\\nAn albinistic bowhead or right whale living in ..."