Monster Quest, You're No In Search Of

I knew In Search Of. In Search Of was a friend of mine. But Monster Quest, you're no In Search Of.

Maybe it was the fact that Mr Spock was the In Search Of host and lent a modicum of gravitas to the cryptozoology, UFOs, vampires, Stonehenge energy, and other woo. Maybe it was the groovy, synth-styled musical intro. Maybe it's because I had a little touch of the Fox Mulder as a teen and truly wanted to believe in lake monsters. Whatever the reasons, I was glued to the TV through the 70's whenever I was lucky enough to catch an episode, particularly if they were in search of Bigfoot or Nessie.


But last night while channel surfing, I came across Monster Quest on The Hitler Nostradamus Area 51 History Channel. I rubbed my hands in anticipation of some good-old In Search Of style entertainment. But alas, apparently Bigfoot is so 1975. Nope, today's cryptozooids are a shadow of their former selves. Case in point the farkatke "monster" from last night's episode: Rods.

According to the current cryptozoology canon, rods are mysterious, elongated flying creatures that have been captured on video around the world. The always reliable Fox News even captured a rod soaring over Baghdad. And lest us ocean fans feel left out, fear not. Aquatic rods have been spotted as well. Anywhere from 12 cm to 50 meters in length and sporting multiple sets of wings, these amazing creatures are apparently invisible to the naked eye, yet appear to dart across in plain view when recorded on video. Explanations have ranged from new species of insect, UFOs, "fourth dimension" visitors, and even flying evolutionary relatives from the Cambrian fauna.

But don't just take my word for it. Here's the first several minutes from the Monster Quest episode on rods:


Manuel and I both kept looking back and forth at each other in disbelief. Really? These are the best monsters the producers can come up with? Rods? We felt like someone slipped us crazy pills as we listened to all the explanations of 4th dimensions and living insect fossils. What was perhaps more amazing than the rods themselves were the seemingly earnest and enthusiastic rod "true believers". I don't know whether people suffer from a lack of imagination or labor under an excess of it, but the principle of Occam's Razor was not part of anyone's vocabulary on the Monster Quest documentary.

At least to Manuel and I, two drowsy couch potatoes, these things sure looked like bugs caught in the strobe effect of a video. And guess what? They were. Video, particularly digital video, produces characteristic stroboscopic artifacts when imaging rapidly flying animals, especially insects, but also including birds. The fast passage before the camera of an insect flapping its wings has been shown directly to produce rod-like effects, due to motion blur, especially if the camera is shooting with relatively long exposure times.

And Monster Quest arrived at the same conclusion. Rods are tricks of light, motion blur, artifacts of video photography. No UFOs. No 4th dimension. No flying Cambrian stragglers. But they arrived at this conclusion in the last 3-4 minutes of the episode. As Manuel said, "It took them 30 minutes to reveal this?" Yes it did. And to think, we could have watched a rerun of Project Runway.