Cryptozoology: In Search the Buru

by Dr. Abner Mality
Here at the Wormwood Laboratories, we investigate many strange phenomena such as ghosts, flying saucers, spontaneous human combustion and other fun subjects. But the Good Doctor's particular speciality is cryptozoology. For you uneducated humanoids, that is the science that deals with unknown animals. Creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Chupacabra. But those are the more well-known varieties of the shadowy breed of undiscovered creatures known as cryptids. It's often more interesting and more fun to investigate the more obscure cryptids. Such a beast is the amazing buru.

No, this is not a cross between a kangaroo and a burro. Instead, it is a large lizard-like monster that inhabited the swamps of the Apa Tani valley, one of the world's most isolated and seldom-visited areas. Tragically, the buru may live no more for, as usual, thoughtless humanity seems to have hunted it to extinction. There are still a few scattered reports of live buru being seen in the remote Himalayan highlands but it seems likely that the last of these impressive creatures was driven to its doom only a couple of hundred years ago, if even that.

How the West learned of the buru makes for a fascinating story full of high adventure and scientific investigation. And making the story more compelling is the fact that the final chapter is yet to be written. Science has not yet acknowledged the buru as an actual species yet the reports of it are so detailed and matter-of-fact that only the most resolutely skeptical could fail to be impressed.

One man was responsible for our knowledge of the buru. He was Charles Stonor, an English explorer who made the first reports on the Apa Tani valley in 1948. To this day, Stonor is still the best source of information about this very isolated community, located in the Himalayan highlands of northeast India. His detailed accounts of the Apa Tani people, their land, legends and also the buru remain definitive.

When Stonor and his expedition ventured into the valley, they found a land untouched by time. The enterprising Apa Tani folk had created a primitive but thriving culture based on agriculture. They had their own language and religion and contact even with the natives of India was slight. While learning of the legends of the Apa Tani, Stonor heard a story that the valley was once inhabited by semi-aquatic lizards known as buru.

The buru could reach up to 15 feet in length. They roughly resembled a Komodo Dragon in shape but were obviously not the same creature. For one thing, they were not carnivorous nor were they usually considered dangerous. In all the years that the buru and the Apa Tani lived in the valley, only one man was killed by a buru: a hunter who had threatened a buru's young had been drowned after the mother struck him with her powerful tail.

The buru got their name from the sound of their bellowing call. They lived mostly in the swampy pools of the lower valley and during the cool season, they were rarely seen. They gave live birth in the water instead of laying eggs and they could further be identified by a row of frills or spikes going down their back. They also had what were described as plates along their head. Indeed, the description of the creatures was so detailed and devoid of the usual mythological overtones that Stonor immediately believed the Apa Tani were describing a real animal.

And where were the buru now, Stonor asked? The reply was that they had been driven to extinction as the Apa Tani population grew. The growing population in the isolated valley needed more food, so the swamps of the buru were drained for farmland. The beasts were gradually driven to a few pools and then killed. The Apa Tani did not consider the buru rare...they thought they lived everywhere. And so a magnificent species came to another ignoble end.

Stonor and his expedition returned to civilization, to report the wonders they had seen. Several years later, another expedition, led by Stonor and a man named James Mills, returned to the Apa Tani valley in quest of the buru. Mills spoke to one elderly tribesman named Tamar of Hung, who showed him several spots where the last of the creatures were killed.

Tamar's own father had seen a buru in his youth, making their extinction within the last hundred years. Mills also asked if buru were seen at all any more. Tamar replied that they were no longer found in the Apa Tani valley but a nearby, even more remote valley called the Rilo was said to harbor buru. Excited by this, Mills and his crew traveled to the Rilo,only to come up empty-handed. However,they came upon the Rilo during the season when the buru were said to hibernate in the mud.

There the story stands. No further expeditions have been sent to seek the buru, either live or dead. Stonor thought that the buru remains would be easy to find and would be well preserved. But no one ever followed up on it. So somewhere in the Himalayan highlands may be the remains of a remarkable creature, if not the living buru itself.

There seems little doubt to me that the buru were real. What a tragedy if they were all killed! They sounded like a truly impressive creature, a real life dragon. If they are all dead, we missed them by only a hundred years or so. Or perhaps they still stalk the swamplands of the Rilo.

The time is right to venture back to the Apa Tani valley. Who will lead the expedition? Who better than yours truly, Dr. Abner Mality? Or perhaps... you? This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights!

This article dedicated to the memory of Bernard Heuvelmans, father of cryptozoology.

Sources of information: "Searching for Hidden Animals" by Roy Mackal and "Mysteries of the Unexplained" by the Readers Digest Association.

To contact this writer, send your email to: drmality@wormwoodchronicles.com.