Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Mongolian Death Worm

The Mongolian Death Worm lives in Mongolia, obviously, and is so named because it spits lethal concoctions of poison and/or electricity on whatever it pleases. The creature has never been officially documented, but many locals, down the years, have claimed to have seen it.

A Mongolian website has this to say about the super-slug: "The Alghoi Khorkhoi" (literally, intestinal worm) is a mythical animal known by Mongolians since a long time but not indexed by science for the reason that no specimen could yet be captured or studied. It is described as a big wormlike creature of approximately 80 cm length living in very remote sand areas of the Gobi desert.

The creature is referred to as a "terrible" animal, able to kill in an unexplained way any man who touches it (by poison, static electricity?). The first report on this animal came from the famous paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews who was asked to capture it by the Prime Minister of Mongolia in 1922. The local belief of the existence of Alghoi Khorkhoi is very widespread and it is assumed that this unknown animal, worm or reptile could still remain unknown by science because of its great discretion and its hostile desert habitat. According to locals, the Death Worm chiefly burrows through the sand, but comes to the surface after it rains, or when a particular flower (the Goyo plant) is in bloom.