Irkuiem

Irkuiem Photograph Illustration Photograph of an alleged irkuiem taken by Alexander Talavly. A Russian illustration of the irkuiem. Category Giant bear Proposed scientific names Other names Caterpillar bear, god bear, irkuyem, irquiem, kainyn-kutkho Country reported Russia First reported 1987 Prominent investigators • Rodion Sivolobov • Nikolaj K. Vereshchagin

The irkuiem (Иркуйем; Koryak or Chukot: "trousers pulled down") or kainyn-kutkho (кайнын-кутх; Koryak or Chukot: "'god bear'") is a cryptid bear reported from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Although initial descriptions of its enormous size and unusual limb proportions led to the theory that it could be a short-faced bear, more recent revelations have suggested it is a unique form of brown bear (Ursus arctos).

Description

Although Kamchatka brown bears are some of the largest in the world, the irkuiem is reputed to be even larger (and rarer), growing up to 4'5'' at the withers and weighing as much as one-and-a-half tons. However, Rodion Sivolobov later wrote that the irkuiem's "gigantic proportions" were picked up and exaggerated by journalists, and that he later determined that the irkuiem is "hardly larger than an ordinary bear". It is distinguished from other bears by snowy white or "almost grey" fur, a relatively small head, short hind legs with a bulge of fat (sometimes described as buttocks) hanging down between them, sometimes a sagging stomach, and a bizarre gait compared to that of a caterpillar, "throwing down its forepaws and heaving the back ones up to meet them". Due to its unusual locomotion, it is slow and a poor runner, meaning it cannot easily escape from hunters. According to the Russian newspaper Pravda, its body is long and narrow.

It is reputed to be dangerous and extremely ferocious. Kamchatkan reindeer herders claimed in 1989 that the irkuiem is capable of crossing the Chukchi Sea to Alaska by riding ice floes. The reindeer herders have a great fear of the irkuiem, which sometimes decimates their herds, and say that the best thing to do when confronted by one is to flee.

Physical evidence

Photographs

Photograph of an alleged irkuiem running.

A 2017 paper by Evgeniy Kashkarov includes two photographs of alleged irkuiems, one of which was taken by Sivolobov's assistant Alexander Talavly.

Specimens

In 1987, hunter Rodion Sivolobov succeeded in acquiring an irkuiem skin after ten years of investigating the cryptid. The skin was white and belonged to a very large animal, resembling an oversized polar bear pelt, but the local reindeer herders insisted it belonged to the irkuiem. Sivolobov sent hair samples and photographs of the pelt to several Moscow and St Petersburg zoologists, but was told that he would need dental and cranial samples for them to identify its species. Valerii Orlov believed that the photograph showed the skin of a brown bear. The pelt was later exhibited at the St. Petersburg Museum.

Although Sivolobov had indeed acquired an alleged irkuiem skull, collected by his assistant Alexander Talavly from a village on the Vetrovaya River (a tributary of the Vyvenka), he could not retrieve it after 1991.

Sightings

Rodion Sivolobov collected a number of eyewitness accounts throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and learned that reindeer hunters had allegedly killed specimens in 1968, 1976, 1980, and 1982. Accounts of sightings and killings were also collected by geologist and writer Yuri Sergeyevich Salin, and hydrogeologist Igor Kurenkov.

Theories

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is white-furred and larger than a brown bear.

The short-faced bear Arctodus simus is known for its size and limb proportion, but is not recorded from Asia.

The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) is thought to have been a slow and clumsy animal.

In Russia, some of Sivolobov's claims have been criticised, and it was alleged that reindeer herders and hunters showed no knowledge of the irkuiem when questioned by others. Sivolobov, however, points out that the earliest report of the irkuiem came from a hydrogeologist, Igor Kurenkov, and that geologist Yuri Sergeyevich Salin also received a large number of accounts from reindeer herders ("not a single reindeer herder with whom I spoke doubted the existence of a bear unknown to science").

Valerii Orlov, who believed that Sivolobov's pelt was that of an ordinary brown bear (Ursus arctos), suggested that the irkuiem was a stray polar bear (Ursus maritimus), or possibly even a native Kamchatkan polar bear population. Stray polar bears have sometimes been reported from the Gulf of Korfa, and Sivolobov describes a 1984 sighting in which a polar bear was shot near Tilichiki. Other mistaken identity suggestions include pizzly bears (hybrids of brown and polar bears), or Alaska Peninsula brown bears which have floated across to Kamchatka on ice floes. Sivolobov himself also mentions the possibility that the irkuiem is a teratological freak.

Russian zoologist Nikolai K. Vereshchagin famously suggested that the irkuiem could be a surviving relative of the giant short-faced bear, Arctodus simus, which is currently only known from Pleistocene fossils in North America. Vereshchagin wrote regarding the irkuiem:

“

I personally do not in any way exclude the possibility that there is an eighth species of bear in the world today. The theory that it could be a close relative of an extinct Ice Age bear does not seem so far-fetched either.

”

Although Arctodus was a long-limbed bear, Dale A. Drinnon suggests that its comparatively longer forelimbs could lead to the description of short hind limbs. Karl Shuker, on the other hand, speculates that Arctodus might have evolved shorter legs to better compete with brown bears, while maintaining its greater body size.

Although no tremarctine bear remains are known from Russia, Arctodus, known from Alaska, might have crossed the Bering Land Bridge into Siberia, though there is currently no fossil evidence of this. Calgary University zoologist Valerius Geist suggested that the presence of Arctodus on the American side of the land bridge could have impeded human migration into the New World. Consequently, Shuker asks whether Arctodus could have migrated across the land bridge into Asia, surviving there while dying out in America. Dale A. Drinnon, noting the belief that the irkuiem can cross the sea on ice floes, argues that such a migration would not be necessary, as the irkuiem may not be a native of Kamchatka.

In light of his more recent discoveries regarding the irkuiem's alleged size, Sivolobov himself wrote in 2014 that the irkuiem may be on the "evolutionary branch of" the Eurasian cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). Citing Vereshchagin's studies of cave bears, he points out that, like the irkuiem, the cave bear was not an active predator, but a slow and clumsy animal, and that it had a tibia 10% shorter than that of the brown bear. Regarding its diet, Sibolov thinks that the irkuiem's heavy gut suggests it is a actually a herbivore. Sivolobov speculates that "the modified remnants of the relict [cave] bear population have visually disappeared among thousands of modern brown bears, but have not yet been genetically dissolved".

However, the fact that "the differences between the skull of an irkuyem and a brown bear are too small," and the then lack of cave bear fossils from east of the Urals (excepting the New Siberian Islands), leads Sivolobov to suggest that it is more likely that the irkuiem is a new kind of brown bear which resembles a cave bear in appearance and behaviour through convergent evolution. Later, a 2017 paper by Evgeniy Kashkarov named Sivolobov as the discoverer of the irkuiem, "a relict Pleistocene bear," and featured two alleged photographs of the irkuiem.

In popular culture

• A Russian documentary film about the wildlife of Kamchatka produced by Kievnauchfilm in 1988 was entitled Where Did the Irkuiem Go? (Куда ушел иркуйем?), and included the debate regarding the irkuiem in its plot.