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Journalist Hunts for Acid-spitting Mongolian Death Worm
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/s...013016,00.html
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Armed with explosives, two men are heading to Mongolia's Gobi Desert to find the fabled acid-spitting and lightning-throwing Mongolian death worm.
The worm has never been documented but some Mongolians are convinced it exists. They call it Allghoi Khorkhoi, or "intestine worm" because it resembles a cow's intestine and is about 1.5m long.
The worm apparently jumps out of the sand and kills people by spitting concentrated acid or shooting lightning from its rectum over long distances, NZPA reports.
New Zealand TV entertainment journalist David Farrier, who is organizing the expedition, and cameraman Christie Douglas, leave this week to spend two weeks in the Gobi, trying to verify the worm's existence and making a documentary about it.
Farrier said he had always been fascinated by cryptozoology, or the search for hidden creatures.
The expedition and documentary would take a serious look at the worm and what it was, Farrier told TV3.
He said he was interested in the death worm because it was one of the most outrageous creatures that were rumoured to exist.
However, it was also one of the mythical creatures that had a better chance of being real.
Rumours could inflate the reputation of things such as the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot, but sparsely populated Mongolia was not a place where rumours were going to propagate, Farrier said.
"If a Mongolian says they have seen a big worm-like creature out in the desert they haven't really got any reason to lie," he said.
A number of experts have dismissed the worm's existence, putting it down as a rumour, but Farrier was not put off.
"I think it won't be a worm, obviously a worm can't survive in a desert. I'd say it would be some sort of snake that's not meant to be there. It's very out of place and a bit new."
There been several unsuccessful expeditions searching for the worm, the last two in 2003 and 2005, which had used night vision goggles to look for the worm.
However, the New Zealand team planned to bring the worm to the surface with explosives, as it is said to be attracted to tremors.
Farrier put his chances of finding the worm at between 5 and 15 per cent.
"They are high for a ridiculous creature like the death worm but the area I am going to is a very specific place in the southern Gobi where all the sightings have been."
He only plans to capture the worm on film.
"I have no intention of grabbing it, capturing it, stuffing it, or anything like that. I just want to prove its existence and if I can get it on film, that's all I need to do."
