Traditional wisdom had long held that cave-dwelling organisms must necessarily be small and constrained to a very small geographical range; new discoveries have shown that this is not necessarily always the case. Geological surveys have found time and time again that cave systems are often much more extensive than initially thought, but they are often still criminally unexplored. In truth, cave ecosystems are much more complex. In a manner somewhat akin to the seafloor, the deep reaches of caves can appear relatively lifeless, but the appearance of a significant food source can trigger a swarm of life. However, it is important to remember that outside of fiction, despite the revolutionary new research, underground ecosystems are lacking in second suns or giant bioluminescent fungi. Even well underground, if larger organisms are present, they are also dependent on the outside world just as much as or more than they rely on lithotrophic or chemosynthetic food sources.
Apalone nidhuga, the Tennessee Cave Turtle
Tender nidhogg
(a subterranean serpent of Norse myth)
For whatever reason, plesiosaurs have become a favorite of cryptozoology enthusiasts, even when placing them in areas which make no sense, such as inland lakes. Sometimes it seems like long necked aquatic reptiles are said to live in every body of water. While such tales are generally fanciful, residents of the small town of Sweetwater, Tennessee have been able to build a tourism industry out of one superficially similar creature: the Tennessee cave turtle.
Sweetwater is adjacent to Craighead Caverns, a national landmark and the location of the world’s largest subterranean lake (2nd Edition Note: In 1986, Namibia’s Dragon Breath Cave was discovered and has been shown to be larger). The caverns have hosted a variety of organisms throughout their history, ranging from sheltering jaguars in the Pleistocene to trout introduced to the underground lake and fed by humans. The Lost Sea, the common name for the lake, extends through a multitude of caverns, some partially and some totally submerged. Within the cavern in which tourists can visit alone, the lake has a surface of over 4.5 acres. Though the “sea” was explored by divers somewhat in the 1970s, it has never been completely explored or mapped. It is known that the lake connects with surface water. Some of the aforementioned trout have been found outside of the cave system, though exact connections aren’t known. The apex predator of this system of underground aquifers and surface streams is the Tennessee cave turtle, also known by the unfortunate name Terrorpin.
The cave turtle is a member of Trionychidae, the soft-shelled turtles. Soft-shelled turtles lack scutes on their shells, though the cave turtle, like its close relative the spiny softshell turtle, has scale-like projections adorning it. Its ancestor, inhabiting the aboveground rivers, streams and lakes, slowly began to venture further and further within to the cabins, and thus developed some traits unique among soft shelled turtles. The most obvious is its exaggerated, elongated neck. Within the confined location of the caves, the turtles prey, including small fish and crayfish, can escape into crevices too small for the adult turtle to traverse. The neck to allow is simply used to reach into holes in search of prey, though, like most cave life, the turtles are also opportunistic scavengers. How the turtle finds said prey within the dark confines of the cave is not entirely understood and likely requires the combination of a variety of senses, including pressure and smell. It has also observed moving along rocky surfaces and inspecting crevices and holes found by touch with its head, likely in search of food. Navigating the caves also present a challenge. The turtle has been shown to have phenomenal spatial memory, which, coupled with its habit of swimming along walls rather than in open water, allow it to navigate the caves. The turtle also has an added protection against drowning within the caverns. Soft-shelled turtle already have a mechanism to extra oxygen from the water within their mouth cavity in a process known as pharyngeal breathing. This adaption has only been honed in the cave turtle, allowing it to navigate between pockets of breathable air. Despite its aquatic lifestyle, however, it is still able to move surprisingly quickly over land; the ability to traverse the changing terrestriality of the cave system have kept it from developing more flipper-like limbs The turtle has not lost its sight entirely and specimens will appear in surface especially during late spring and summer. Mating is thought to occur solely on the surface, where the turtles can inspect one another at least in part visually. As the caves present a temperate environment year-round, the turtles do not hibernate, and thus have comparatively less energy needs when active, though they can and will fall into states of torpor throughout the year.
While it is currently inconclusive whether soft-shelled turtles in general continue to grow with age, this has been observed in nidhuga. The average adult has a maximum observed body length of approximately 45 cm, with females typically being significantly larger than males. However, the cave turtle sexually matures quickly, meaning that the breeding population often consist of much smaller individuals which do not overly stress the food supply. The anomalous specimen known as “Bessie” was estimated to have a shell almost a meter in length at its last well documented siting, likely a result of both its advanced age and the availability of human-supplied food within its portion of the so-called Lost Sea.
“Bessie,” as she is now known, was allegedly first sighted in 1897. As told by many a Lost Sea tour guide, a local boy by the name of Edward Framingham, suffering from an acute form of dyspepsia that at times drove him frantic, ran off into the woods in the evening and fell into a portion of the cavern. The following day, the boy’s doctor, James McLennegan, found Edward’s corpse at the bottom of a hole leading within to the caverns. Upon it, a bizarre, pale-brown long-necked reptile was feeding. This turtle, typically identified with Bessie, skittered away before McLennegan could descend to the cave floor. A local legend actually suggests that Framingham’s spirit lives on within Bessie, noting the alleged association of the caves with Cherokee religious practices. According to legend, his mother would even hear her son’s moans echoing from beneath the earth.
Though the Craighead Caverns had been known by the local populous forever; they were used as a saltpeter source during the civil war, the Lost Sea was discovered in 1905 by a child named Ben Sands. At the time heavy rainfall floods, have risen the water level of the so-called Lost Sea, possibly allowing aquatic organisms to disperse to areas they might not have otherwise been able to reach. It is commonly suggested that it was this flood that allowed the turtle which would become Bessie into the specific cavern that it is now associated with, though the water level varies significantly throughout the year. Whenever the entrance happened, it is generally assumed that Bessie eventually grew too large to leave the main cavern. As the Lost Sea became a tourist attraction, it was also stocked with trout. Over the course of the next few decades, tourists began to report sighting of some sort of reptilian creature within the main cavern. It was not associated with the poorly known and much smaller Tennessee Cave Turtle. This seeming cryptid became a much bigger draw than the cave itself, spawning boat tours of the cavern and the like.
Though Bessie’s sightings had not yet been confirmed, in 1977, Dr.’s Dan Turner and Susan Patterson claimed to have found cave drawings within Craigshead Caverns depicting humans fighting with a plesiosaur-like creature, but allegedly a subsequent earthquake closed off the passage to that part of the cave system. Notably, Turner and Patterson were colleagues of notable young-earth creationist and cryptozoologist Richard Kalkin, who was known for professing that prehistoric creatures, which he would indiscriminately refer to as dinosaurs, still survived in isolated corners of the globe. These claims were certainly not unusual for him and there is no reason to credit them.
However, the supposed cave paintings played a major role in captivating the local populous. At the time, Bessie was seen as a maleficent figure, and local legends tied it to relatively concurrent disappearances. A suspect for an armed robbery ended up in a gunfight on the shore of a local lake. The robber was shot and wounded, but continued firing, and the Sheriff ducked behind a tree to reload. However, the suspect had disappeared when he looked out again. It was assumed that the robber attempted to swim to safety and drowned in the lake, but some suggest he was attacked by the so-called monster. Within a week, a second death occurred on the lake. Arnie Chabot and Mitch Kowalski, co-owners of a boat rental service, were boating in the lake when there ship unexpectedly hit something and sank, causing Arnie to drown. Cryptozoologists argue that experienced boaters wouldn’t have run aground and Bessie must have also attacked the boat. Others have noted that the two men were having conflict over business affairs prior to the incident. Mitch was never charged with any crime.
This spotlight focused upon the legend of Bessie managed to attract the attention of two serious scientists: paleontologist Takashi Ashizawa and zoologist Shohei Muku. Along with officially describing the Tsubara Bat within the cave, a long snouted within the tribe Vampyrini (Note that this tribe does not include true vampire bats), they captured the first photos of Bessie, identifying it as the largest known specimen of Tennessee Cave Turtle.
Bessie is in many ways a typical member of the species, only standing out in size and age. Her tremendous size also leant her apparent health problems; Bessie seemed incapable of lifting her neck move than a few inches of the ground when on land. While Bessie is assumed to be old based on size and other physical characteristics, there is no compelling evidence to believe that the turtle witnessed by McLennegan is the same individual. Though Bessie sightings have always been rare, Bessie has not been seen at all in recent years. It is possible, even likely, that this magnificent turtle is dead.
Where exactly the Bessie name is derived from is unclear. Obviously, it is likely in reference to the Scottish urban legend of Nessie. However, locals repeat the story that in actuality, Bessie was named after a cow owned by a local farmer. Supposedly, the old widowed farmer only owned a single dairy cow that was also going on in age. It was a harsh winter, and the bovine Bessie eventually died on the shore of a lake. The farmer, who had been dependent on the cow’s milk, was distraught when he found the cow dead and a strange creature eating from her corpse, which he chased away. However, when he returned to the lake shore the next day, he found trout from the cave laid out on the beach, which he took home and cooked. Every morning he would find new fish on the beach. He eventually discovered that the monster was bring him food from within the cave. He did not see it again after the winter had ended, but he decided to name it in remembrance of his cow.
With only a brief reflection, it becomes very obvious that this story is merely that and was created after the term came into use. One of the only benefits that tall-tales such as that one provide is its painting of the Tenessee Cave Turtle as not a monster. Though the turtle could theoretically separate adults humans from their hands or feet in one bite, there have been no recorded attacks. The so-called “Terrorpin of Tennessee” is merely a critically endangered species that deserves our help.
Sweetwater is adjacent to Craighead Caverns, a national landmark and the location of the world’s largest subterranean lake (2nd Edition Note: In 1986, Namibia’s Dragon Breath Cave was discovered and has been shown to be larger). The caverns have hosted a variety of organisms throughout their history, ranging from sheltering jaguars in the Pleistocene to trout introduced to the underground lake and fed by humans. The Lost Sea, the common name for the lake, extends through a multitude of caverns, some partially and some totally submerged. Within the cavern in which tourists can visit alone, the lake has a surface of over 4.5 acres. Though the “sea” was explored by divers somewhat in the 1970s, it has never been completely explored or mapped. It is known that the lake connects with surface water. Some of the aforementioned trout have been found outside of the cave system, though exact connections aren’t known. The apex predator of this system of underground aquifers and surface streams is the Tennessee cave turtle, also known by the unfortunate name Terrorpin.
The cave turtle is a member of Trionychidae, the soft-shelled turtles. Soft-shelled turtles lack scutes on their shells, though the cave turtle, like its close relative the spiny softshell turtle, has scale-like projections adorning it. Its ancestor, inhabiting the aboveground rivers, streams and lakes, slowly began to venture further and further within to the cabins, and thus developed some traits unique among soft shelled turtles. The most obvious is its exaggerated, elongated neck. Within the confined location of the caves, the turtles prey, including small fish and crayfish, can escape into crevices too small for the adult turtle to traverse. The neck to allow is simply used to reach into holes in search of prey, though, like most cave life, the turtles are also opportunistic scavengers. How the turtle finds said prey within the dark confines of the cave is not entirely understood and likely requires the combination of a variety of senses, including pressure and smell. It has also observed moving along rocky surfaces and inspecting crevices and holes found by touch with its head, likely in search of food. Navigating the caves also present a challenge. The turtle has been shown to have phenomenal spatial memory, which, coupled with its habit of swimming along walls rather than in open water, allow it to navigate the caves. The turtle also has an added protection against drowning within the caverns. Soft-shelled turtle already have a mechanism to extra oxygen from the water within their mouth cavity in a process known as pharyngeal breathing. This adaption has only been honed in the cave turtle, allowing it to navigate between pockets of breathable air. Despite its aquatic lifestyle, however, it is still able to move surprisingly quickly over land; the ability to traverse the changing terrestriality of the cave system have kept it from developing more flipper-like limbs The turtle has not lost its sight entirely and specimens will appear in surface especially during late spring and summer. Mating is thought to occur solely on the surface, where the turtles can inspect one another at least in part visually. As the caves present a temperate environment year-round, the turtles do not hibernate, and thus have comparatively less energy needs when active, though they can and will fall into states of torpor throughout the year.
While it is currently inconclusive whether soft-shelled turtles in general continue to grow with age, this has been observed in nidhuga. The average adult has a maximum observed body length of approximately 45 cm, with females typically being significantly larger than males. However, the cave turtle sexually matures quickly, meaning that the breeding population often consist of much smaller individuals which do not overly stress the food supply. The anomalous specimen known as “Bessie” was estimated to have a shell almost a meter in length at its last well documented siting, likely a result of both its advanced age and the availability of human-supplied food within its portion of the so-called Lost Sea.
“Bessie,” as she is now known, was allegedly first sighted in 1897. As told by many a Lost Sea tour guide, a local boy by the name of Edward Framingham, suffering from an acute form of dyspepsia that at times drove him frantic, ran off into the woods in the evening and fell into a portion of the cavern. The following day, the boy’s doctor, James McLennegan, found Edward’s corpse at the bottom of a hole leading within to the caverns. Upon it, a bizarre, pale-brown long-necked reptile was feeding. This turtle, typically identified with Bessie, skittered away before McLennegan could descend to the cave floor. A local legend actually suggests that Framingham’s spirit lives on within Bessie, noting the alleged association of the caves with Cherokee religious practices. According to legend, his mother would even hear her son’s moans echoing from beneath the earth.
Though the Craighead Caverns had been known by the local populous forever; they were used as a saltpeter source during the civil war, the Lost Sea was discovered in 1905 by a child named Ben Sands. At the time heavy rainfall floods, have risen the water level of the so-called Lost Sea, possibly allowing aquatic organisms to disperse to areas they might not have otherwise been able to reach. It is commonly suggested that it was this flood that allowed the turtle which would become Bessie into the specific cavern that it is now associated with, though the water level varies significantly throughout the year. Whenever the entrance happened, it is generally assumed that Bessie eventually grew too large to leave the main cavern. As the Lost Sea became a tourist attraction, it was also stocked with trout. Over the course of the next few decades, tourists began to report sighting of some sort of reptilian creature within the main cavern. It was not associated with the poorly known and much smaller Tennessee Cave Turtle. This seeming cryptid became a much bigger draw than the cave itself, spawning boat tours of the cavern and the like.
Though Bessie’s sightings had not yet been confirmed, in 1977, Dr.’s Dan Turner and Susan Patterson claimed to have found cave drawings within Craigshead Caverns depicting humans fighting with a plesiosaur-like creature, but allegedly a subsequent earthquake closed off the passage to that part of the cave system. Notably, Turner and Patterson were colleagues of notable young-earth creationist and cryptozoologist Richard Kalkin, who was known for professing that prehistoric creatures, which he would indiscriminately refer to as dinosaurs, still survived in isolated corners of the globe. These claims were certainly not unusual for him and there is no reason to credit them.
However, the supposed cave paintings played a major role in captivating the local populous. At the time, Bessie was seen as a maleficent figure, and local legends tied it to relatively concurrent disappearances. A suspect for an armed robbery ended up in a gunfight on the shore of a local lake. The robber was shot and wounded, but continued firing, and the Sheriff ducked behind a tree to reload. However, the suspect had disappeared when he looked out again. It was assumed that the robber attempted to swim to safety and drowned in the lake, but some suggest he was attacked by the so-called monster. Within a week, a second death occurred on the lake. Arnie Chabot and Mitch Kowalski, co-owners of a boat rental service, were boating in the lake when there ship unexpectedly hit something and sank, causing Arnie to drown. Cryptozoologists argue that experienced boaters wouldn’t have run aground and Bessie must have also attacked the boat. Others have noted that the two men were having conflict over business affairs prior to the incident. Mitch was never charged with any crime.
This spotlight focused upon the legend of Bessie managed to attract the attention of two serious scientists: paleontologist Takashi Ashizawa and zoologist Shohei Muku. Along with officially describing the Tsubara Bat within the cave, a long snouted within the tribe Vampyrini (Note that this tribe does not include true vampire bats), they captured the first photos of Bessie, identifying it as the largest known specimen of Tennessee Cave Turtle.
Bessie is in many ways a typical member of the species, only standing out in size and age. Her tremendous size also leant her apparent health problems; Bessie seemed incapable of lifting her neck move than a few inches of the ground when on land. While Bessie is assumed to be old based on size and other physical characteristics, there is no compelling evidence to believe that the turtle witnessed by McLennegan is the same individual. Though Bessie sightings have always been rare, Bessie has not been seen at all in recent years. It is possible, even likely, that this magnificent turtle is dead.
Where exactly the Bessie name is derived from is unclear. Obviously, it is likely in reference to the Scottish urban legend of Nessie. However, locals repeat the story that in actuality, Bessie was named after a cow owned by a local farmer. Supposedly, the old widowed farmer only owned a single dairy cow that was also going on in age. It was a harsh winter, and the bovine Bessie eventually died on the shore of a lake. The farmer, who had been dependent on the cow’s milk, was distraught when he found the cow dead and a strange creature eating from her corpse, which he chased away. However, when he returned to the lake shore the next day, he found trout from the cave laid out on the beach, which he took home and cooked. Every morning he would find new fish on the beach. He eventually discovered that the monster was bring him food from within the cave. He did not see it again after the winter had ended, but he decided to name it in remembrance of his cow.
With only a brief reflection, it becomes very obvious that this story is merely that and was created after the term came into use. One of the only benefits that tall-tales such as that one provide is its painting of the Tenessee Cave Turtle as not a monster. Though the turtle could theoretically separate adults humans from their hands or feet in one bite, there have been no recorded attacks. The so-called “Terrorpin of Tennessee” is merely a critically endangered species that deserves our help.
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