Tuba (mythology)
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The tuba (tööm ahr) is a cryptid that is best described as part mountain goat and part snail, which is purported to come from within the caves in and around the area of the Khangay Mountains and the Altai Mountains to the west of Mongolia. It plays a significant part in Mongolian mythology, and is said to bring good fortune to anyone who comes across one, provided they do not harm it.[1] The actual existence of the tuba has been largely rejected by the scientific community.
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[edit] Characteristics
[edit] Physical Characteristics
In traditional folklore, tubae can supposedly grow up to two metres in length, but most sightings have placed the figure just shy of a metre. They reside at ground level, but are excellent climbers, owing to their powerful feet and mandible-like horns, often resting on walls and ceilings that predators cannot reach. Mucus is very important to tubae as it helps them move around, and contains fibres which prevent the tuba from sliding down vertical surfaces. Mucus also provides further protection from predators and helps retain moisture.
They are also thought to be both deaf (though they appear to have ears) and dichromatic and thus, by human standards, colour blind. There have been some claims that tubae may be able to perceive colour, though only to a limited extent in comparison to human beings.
[edit] Behaviour
Generally, tubae move like earthworms by alternating body contractions with stretching, at a proverbially low speed. However, a tuba can reach significantly higher speeds by using its powerful foot to launch itself several inches into the air - especially when excited. They are also able use slime cords to lower themselves to the ground.
Tubae are celebrated for their playful and affectionate natures (and there have even been reported cases of tuba domestication), but are allegedly vicious, though somewhat ineffectual, if provoked. They live in "herds" of between five and ten members, and sleep in immediate proximity to one another, hanging from cave roofs.
[edit] Diet
The tuba's diet is said to consist entirely of mould, though very little of it is needed to sustain the tuba's energy. In extremely rare cases, often due to extreme hunger, tubae have been known to hunt and kill small invertebrates, usually worms, slugs or snails, in an attempt to absorb nutrition from their carcasses. One long song, sung by the Altai people to the north-west of Mongolia, tells of a herd of tubae who are placed under a spell by an evil shaman, and in turn kill and eat their young. However, tubae are not normally a predatory species.
[edit] Reproduction
There appears to be no clear sex distinction amongst tubae, and it is claimed that they reproduce asexually. During asexual reproduction, a new bud grows out of the parent tuba when the condition is right, then, after the bud reaches a near adult size, it separates from the parent tuba. In this respect, tuba reproduction is somewhat similar to that of yeast.
[edit] Similarity to goats
Though visually very similar to goats, tuba behaviour is fundamentally quite different. Goats are primarily browsers like deer, eating branches and twigs, and tend to be quite territorial, whilst tubae roam underground caves in search of mould, which is believed to be their only food source, and often tend to be very receptive and friendly towards intruders. Like goats, though, they have horns that continue to grow throughout their lifetime, as opposed to antlers that fall off once a year. Also like goats, both male and female tubae grow horns, and both sexes can have beards. Goats and tubae have the same horizontal slit pupil in their eyeballs.
[edit] Etymology
As appearances of the tuba date far back beyond written history, little is known about the origins of the name. It has been theorised that the tuba and the name of the Tuvan people may share the same etymological root.[2] [3] It is also worth noting that the Japanese word for saliva or sputum is tsuba.[4]
[edit] History
The tuba seemingly dates back to the Paleolithic era, as cave paintings found in the Khout Tsenker region feature creatures closely matching its description, and are considered to be among the earliest works of art discovered in Mongolia.
Tubae feature in many Mongolian folk songs - known as long-songs, or Tuul - often appearing during times of struggle in a narrative in order to help the protagonist along their way. A tuba's horn, when powdered, is seen as an elixir of life, and is often sought after by hunters. In some versions of the legend, the tuba is immortal.
The Maastricht Hours, a fourteenth century prayer book originating from the Netherlands and now kept in the British Library, features, amongst other illustrations, a depiction of a goat with the head of a snail.[5] This could be an indication that stories of the tuba had spread far beyond their point of origin in the mountains of East Asia, most likely during the rapid expansion of the Mongol Empire during the 13th century.
The earliest recorded mention of the tuba in Western literature is by Welsh explorer and social anthropologist Realth Chalmers, who briefly described the animal in his 1807 journal, written during his expedition across Western Mongolia[6]. Chalmers describes the creature in Welsh, a translation of his description reads as follows: A small kid, which as far as I can tell is devoid of any limbs, save two large horns which in some stories are much sought-after by hunters. Chalmers goes on to hypothesise that the creature represents a metaphor for opportunity or luck, although locals are apparently adamant that such a creature actually exists - not an unusual part of many folklore tales.
Buzkashi is a game played across Mongolia and Central Asia, in which two opposing teams on horseback compete to move a legless goat over their rival's goal line. It is claimed that the game was originally played with tuba corpses, when tubae numbers were much higher before they were nearly wiped out by hunters.
Recently, the Mongolian government commissioned the Social-Economical Research Center in the Bayan-Olgee province of Mongolia to assess the importance and prevalence of the tuba legend in modern Mongol culture.[7]
[edit] Analyses
A group of researchers in association with the University of Oxford are currently conducting a survey amongst numerous leading biologists, cryptozoologists and other experts. So far, their findings have varied significantly from one interviewee to the next.
When asked his thoughts on the tuba, prolific cryptozoological author Loren Coleman has claimed that the creature could be related in some way to the Mongolian Death Worm, and that he thought it could indeed be found if searched for. In contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, fringe theorist paranormal investigator Jon-Erik Beckjord, infamous for his belief in far-fetched theories, has shown skepticism toward the tuba, claiming that rumours of its actual existence beyond the mythological realm are "news to me".
[edit] Classification
Because of the seemingly impossible contradiction between the tuba's physical characteristics, and conventional science's inability to categorise the creature, there is speculation that it might belong to an entirely new phylum, and indeed some even question whether the tuba would even belong to the animal kingdom, as it shares certain distinct characteristics with fungi. This also brings up the interesting question of whether or not the tuba can be accurately described as a cryptid.
[edit] Evidence
There have been a number of formal scientific studies of the tuba, most of them in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the 1920s Russian biologist Professor Tsyben Zhamtsarano accumulated a substantial amount of research on the creature. However, after the rise of Stalin in the 1930s, Professor Zhamtsarano's work was lost, and he was imprisoned for studying Mongolian folklore.[8]
In recent years there have been several reported sightings of tubae in tabloid newspapers. The actual likelihood of the existence of such a creature, possessing distinct characteristics from two separate phyla, would seem negligible. However, several expeditions with the aim to prove (or disprove) the existence of the tuba have been made, although no conclusive evidence has ever been found. Indeed - one of the leading arguments as to why no satisfactory evidence has ever been found is that, assuming the tuba's physiological makeup more closely resembles that of a soft-bodied mollusc than a mammal, its body would decompose in a mere matter of days after death.[9]
It has also been claimed that even if tubae do not exist now, there is a chance that they may have existed in the past, and become extinct, and again, following the assumptions above, fossilisation or other forms of preservation of tubae remains would be unlikely. Even if the tuba were to have a shell, it would be the only part of the creature preserved, and most likely mistaken for that of a large snail.
[edit] Explanations
The argument most commonly put forward to explain sightings of the tuba is that people are merely seeing normal mountain goats, perhaps sitting down - goats draw their legs beneath them when sitting, rendering them partially invisible - and, their imaginations fuelled by rumours and ancient folk tales, believe they are seeing a tuba. Another point put forward is that those people who actively seek out the tuba are more likely to "want" to see it, and their observations will therefore lack subjectivity. Smithsonian primatologist John Napier, most famous for his studies into the Bigfoot phenomenon, has pointed out that however accurate and sincere witnesses might seem, "eyewitness reports must be treated with considerable caution ... Although we don't always know what we see, we tend to see what we know".[10]
A slightly more unusual explanation is that tubae are goats that have been mutilated, causing them to crawl on their bellies at a slow pace, and leave a trail of blood, which might be mistaken as mucus, behind. It has even been suggested that these mutilations are carried out by Almas - another Mongolian cryptid, though the fact that this model requires one cryptid to exist in order to disprove another gives the argument little credibility.
[edit] Tubae in popular culture
- In 1979, Czechoslovakian animator Zdenek Miler created a short film, The Cricket And A Tuba, which documented an unlikely friendship between two creatures trying to find their way home after escaping from an overturned circus train. Parts of the film were censored by the Czechoslovak government as 'potentially subversive' - it was seen to undermine socialist values.[11]
- In 1991, the Caerphilly Players Amateur Drama Society staged an original production entitled My Tuba And Other Family Members, a satire on the slow demise of the traditional family unit in the Welsh valleys.
- A common site at the annual Burning Man festival is the Mobile Mollusk - A large papier maché-clad vehicle shaped like a cycloptic tuba, that is ridden in much the same way as is described in the ancient folk tales.
- Mountain Goat Snail Ale, a popular traditional Australian ale, is so named because its frothy yellow head is said to resemble the mucus of a tuba.
- Australian television soap opera Neighbours featured the tuba in a 1996 episode in which amateur tubist Harold Bishop responds to a newspaper advert seeking people who "wish to discover more about the secrets of the tuba". Believing the advert to be referring to the musical instrument, Bishop attends a meeting at the Lassiters Hotel, and slowly comes to the realisation that he is being drafted into an expedition to Mongolia.
- Russian art theorist Wassily Kandinsky was keenly interested in tales of the tuba, and sometimes referred to it and its powers in his writings.[12]
[edit] Trivia
- Students at the Mongolian State Circus School often practice a move called the Tuba, in which the contortionist lies on their stomach with their hands folded forward next to their head, and their legs lifted up and over the body with the feet resting next to the hands. The shape of the resulting position resembles that of a tuba.
- Herbal medicines purported to contain powdered tubae horns, are sometimes found on sale in Chinese medicine shops, as a method of slowing the ageing process and promoting longevity. These are almost certainly false, most likely made of crushed cow bone or a similar substance.
- There are several parallels between the tuba and the astrological sign of Capricorn. In many descriptions and illustrations, Capricorn is portrated as a goat with missing legs and the lower half of a mucus secreting creature - in this case a fish. These similarities are most likely a coincidence.
[edit] See also
- Mongolian Death Worm
- Almas (cryptozoology)
- Culture of Mongolia
- Cryptozoology
- List of cryptids
- List of mythical creatures
- List of legendary creatures
- List of fictional species
- Snails in folklore
- Chimera (mythology)
- Cryptic (zoology)
[edit] References
- ^ My World Guide - Mongolia
- ^ The Tuvin language
- ^ Ethnology of the Altai region
- ^ Japanese tsuba
- ^ The Maastricht Hours at the British Library
- ^ Chalmers, R: "Dyddiadur / Journals 1805 - 1810".
- ^ Menggu zu wenwu yu kaogu yanjiu/Research on Mongolian culture and archeology, 1999. ISBN 7-80644-336-3
- ^ D. B Ulymzhiev: TSyben Zhamtsarano: Nauchnaia, prosvetitel§skaia i obshchestvenno-politicheskaia deiatel§nost§ v Mongolii, 1911-1931 gg. ISBN 5-85213-279-9
- ^ J Gerlach and AC van Bruggen: A first record of a terrestrial mollusc without a radula, 1998. J. Moll. Stud. 64; 249-250.
- ^ Napier, John Russell: Bigfoot: The Sasquatch and Yeti in Myth and Reality, 1973, E.P. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-06658-6
- ^ The Cricket And A Tuba at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Jelena Hahl-Koch: Kandinsky, 1994. ISBN 0-8478-1404-1
- ^ Commander F. W. Lipscombe: The British Submarine, 1975.
