Posted by Joel Rosenthal on May 04, 2016 at 13:07:17
Though best known for his prowess as a bird murderer and illustrator, John James Audubon evidently had a sense of humor, or a vivid imagination, or both, and actually invented a number of fish, mammals and birds--all of which exisited only in his imagination. In the present era where people continue to search for apocryphal or extinct creatures(Bigfoot, Nessie, yetis ,skunk apes and a certain North American woodpecker), it is worth a few minutes' time to read of Audubon's elaborate efforts to perpetrate a scientific hoax upon a naturalist colleague, apparently in retaliation for that colleague's breaking of Audubon's favorite Cremonese violin(a Strad? ouch!)-ostensibly in the interests of science. A summary of the Archives of Natural History article is here http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/may/03/john-james-audubon-and-the-natural-history-of-a-hoax but the 14 page article itself, complete with more illustrations and references, fully fleshes out the whole business and is an even more enlightening read http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/anh.2016.0349 To paraphrase Claude Rains in Casablanca, I'm shocked, shocked that there's fraud and chicanery among naturalists!