Yowiehunters Forum

Picked up the gear today.. 28 × 6 hour audio files and two pictures/video of myself. Interestingly located to the side of the tree the camera was on and just behind the cameras field of view was a clump of longish black hair sitting unsnagged on a fallen tree. A few of the hairs are to be looked at by someone skilled at that sort of thing.

Nice find Dave. It will be interesting to see what it turns out to be.

TrevorPeters wrote:Nice find Dave. It will be interesting to see what it turns out to be.

Thanks Trevor, It was a strange thing to find especially when I worked out it wasn't snagged. Could be some black, long haired known animal but at this stage I can't think of what it could be.. yes it will be interesting.

Awesome!! Thank you

Thanks AgeV..

The recorder managed to capture two recordings that I feel are too close (1 hour) to each other to be a coincidence. The first is what sounds like 3 subjects running past the recorder followed an hour later by the sound of tree/branch snapping that continues for 1 and a half minutes. Both recordings and the video of the hair as I found it are on this video..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUz74MBgIY0

Right at this moment , guessing that the hairs are around 60 mm long and without a diameter , scale pattern or cross section there are a number of candidates .
Feral goat , Sheep , Rusa Deer , Feral pig , Feral cat , Donkey , Horse , Man , Wallaroo , Greater glider , Brushtail possum , Koala .
The recording is fascinating , I've heard something similar once but it didn't seem to be bipedal .
The measurements in the chart below are facts . Having said that , running subjects can weigh twice as much as walking subjects .

Great recordings. I am just wondering though, to me the running sounds seem to be fast but light footed, my own recordings are heavy and slower, even when they are running. I havnt kept up with your investigations--do you think if its not a common animal or human that the running noises could be the little ones--jundundees? Great work.
Cant wait to get the findings of the hair type.

Thanks Rusty.. so the subjects are short paced and light? At first I thought it was a mob of wallabys but the terrain didn't suggest a fluent 'hopable' area.. just didnt fit.

Thanks Adventurer. The hairs as Rusty said could be from anything. Just how and where I collected them was odd. Maybe something will come from it, maybe not eh.

DaveR wrote:so the subjects are short paced and light?

Highly likely less than 73 kilo's but still much heavier impacts than anything that hops .

The hair samples aren't finished Dave , they could still be very interesting , impossible to tell without measuring , casts , a cross section and looking at them under a microscope .
The length on it's own leaves it open to other possibilities .

I've heard recordings of hopping wallabies and the like, a lot from Rusty's channel, and others. It didn't sound like that to me.
My first impressions were:

- Sounds like bipedal "things" running past.
- The footfalls have a distinct and repetitive "thunk" to them that reminded me of a human or human-like subject.
- Sounded like flat-footed or heel-dominant running, hence the distinct stomp or thunk sound, whereas we tend to run toe first.
- The shortness of the strides also made me want to immediately think human or small child stomping along.

After listening to the 5 running subjects section of the recording a half a dozen times I am even more convinced that the subjects are light weight versions of what you seek Dave.
That could mean they are juveniles, however, we have nothing like a definite estimate of weight for the Junjadee. You may have captured a family group.
I am excited that there were five subjects in such a short time, as if they were on the move as a family group and leaving the area in single file right past the recorder.
I don't think I have ever heard that before.

Awesome stuff mate.

Thanks Trevor, great analysis. This helps me.

You're all doing such great work - I'm following this with great interest. I haven't got any headphones at the moment (new ones are in the mail as the old pair died last week), but those recordings are intriguing even sans headphones. It does sound like people (or something that moves like people) running, I agree.

Thanks Simon.

Yes to headphones. Sometimes I amplify recordings but not this time. I always find with amplification that the background ambient noise can be distracting from the subject in question
We'll have to wait and see about the hair but aussie post is winging its way at the moment.

IF ...... it was them running past , I'm now wondering , were they testing the gear , or as a group , was it a display of force or something similar , intimidation , fascinating what ever it is .

TrevorPeters wrote:in single file right past the recorder.

That's a very interesting observation Trevor !

When I first started feeding what I believed was one yowie , I hopped out of the car early one morning and I heard the normal stomping from the normal place , then to my complete surprise there was stomping coming from another direction and then another further away . The first thing I thought was military defensive positioning .

I know it's a huge leap but was this a military type tactic ?

Rusty2 wrote:IF ...... it was them running past , I'm now wondering , were they testing the gear , or as a group , was it a display of force or something similar , intimidation , fascinating what ever it is .

It sounds to me like 5 people moving swiftly past,or in the vacinity of the recorder. Just my initial thoughts but a person couldnt be so footsure on that branch and fallen tree littered landscape I don't think. I know I certainly couldn't. I carefully placed every step so as to avoid tripping over. If it was in the dark, even with a torch, it would be a task. Whatever those five subjects were they certainly knew how to move through the bush.

Good stuff Dave! Great suggestions there with the military formation and show of numbers. Unfortunately i cant help but picture them all running along in a zig zag motion after that ladies sighting.

Yowie bait wrote:Good stuff Dave! Great suggestions there with the military formation and show of numbers. Unfortunately i cant help but picture them all running along in a zig zag motion after that ladies sighting.

Thanks Yowie Bait.. Thats the thing with recordings . We'll never ever really know

I don't know if they're zigzagging Yowiebait but they are .....ALL .... running past the right hand side of the audio recorder .

Maybe it's a conga line ?

New headphones arrived today, and that running sound is even more interesting when I listen to it through them. If it's not what we think it is, then it's definitely people running...but what they'd be doing out there at that hour, running around, is anyone's guess (and would be a mystery in itself in my opinion).

The tree snapping is, I would think, a territorial display of some kind - chimpanzees and gorillas do the same thing. The running could be a way of scaring off any potential interlopers - as I've speculated (not that I'm an expert), these creatures could be well aware of us due to any scent(s) we leave behind and would know when human beings had recently been in the area. Maybe the running is their way of scaring the bejeezus out of anyone who could still be in the area, while checking to make completely sure nobody is.

Thanks Rusty.. That analysis is outstanding.

Thanks Simon.. I've learned a few things from Rusty's audio magic and have the benefit of knowing the scene which is always difficult to describe. It appears to me the subjects were travelling up from the cameras location or down toward it if they were traveling on the right side of the recorder. At some point, I suspect they have been to the rear of the camera IF.. that hair sample is similar to others collected on the eastern seaboard.

I got some good advice the other day.. proving the hair sample is something not matching anything on an australian hair id program doesn't prove the existence of the yowie, nor does the multiple subject walkby audio. I think they may be inter-related but all I can do is present what I get and leave it up to folk to make up their own minds and I totally agree with you it was a 'display' of some sort or another. The terrain was difficult to pick through when walking. It really was look to place each footstep. I defy cross country champions with torches to run through that. Im amazed knowing where I was.

Great work DaveR...sounds bipedal to me.

Rusty2 wrote:I don't know if they're zigzagging Yowiebait but they are .....ALL .... running past the right hand side of the audio recorder .

Maybe it's a conga line ?

A celebration or ritual of sorts perhaps? To purge the area of the evil audio recorder.

Could be the junjudee or juvi yowies if its the hairymen. I wonder which would weigh more? Junjudee sound bulky by reports but theres those that have reported the skinny little ones.

DaveR wrote:Thanks Rusty.. That analysis is outstanding.

Thanks Simon.. I've learned a few things from Rusty's audio magic and have the benefit of knowing the scene which is always difficult to describe. It appears to me the subjects were travelling up from the cameras location or down toward it if they were traveling on the right side of the recorder. At some point, I suspect they have been to the rear of the camera IF.. that hair sample is similar to others collected on the eastern seaboard.

I got some good advice the other day.. proving the hair sample is something not matching anything on an australian hair id program doesn't prove the existence of the yowie, nor does the multiple subject walkby audio. I think they may be inter-related but all I can do is present what I get and leave it up to folk to make up their own minds and I totally agree with you it was a 'display' of some sort or another. The terrain was difficult to pick through when walking. It really was look to place each footstep. I defy cross country champions with torches to run through that. Im amazed knowing where I was.

Doubt then it would be people running around out there at night and especially a group of little kids.

Thanks Lozza62..

I agree Yowie Bait.

The preliminary results are back on the suspected hair sample from one of the two people with hair identification experience I sent some to.. Castes are being made tonight that will shed more information in coming days...

Here's the pictures .
Cross section seems to be oval .
Medula seems to be fragmented or absent , difficulty seeing , need a better microscope .
Hair profile , wavy .
No scale yet till the glue dries .
40 microns in width .
Hair tip burred .
No match with the hair ID program.

Good news so far Dave !

It amazes my still , the amount of information that you can collect from a single hair .
http://www.microlabgallery.com/hair.aspx

The hairs have proven to be nylon. I have no idea how they got to the location but they are very good fakes to the eye and to some identification procecesses.

From the analyzer:

The pigmentation looks like a hair in the first 5 images but the last four are the scale cast but show no scales, which all hairs have. Sadly, it's a synthetic fibre of some sort. Not the first one I have examined and I am sure it won't be the last. I did the scale cast twice to be sure.

Bugger , where the hell did they come from , a jacket or shirt ?

Apart from the casts how did you know they were nylon , burning ?

It would appear that yowie hair doesn't grow on tree's , sorry to hear the bad news Dave , I was disappointed to hear this , anyhoo , try again .

Thats even weirder than finding a yowie hair. What would synthetic fibre be doing out there on a log in that remote location?!