Hi Alex
I bought your book over the weekend and loved it! Very amusing tales of human gullibility, ignorance and intelligence.
I thought you might be interested in a tale that did the rounds in my youth. No doubt there are similar stories out there. I attended many camps, and a popular story to keep the kids in their beds at night was the threat of the 'drop bears'.
According to camp leaders (and I confess to perpetuating this in later years!), there lurked in Australian gum trees fierce koala bear type creatures called drop bears. They slept during the day, and only came out at night to feed. You could tell if there was a drop bear in a tree by upturning your face and spitting up into the tree. If there was a drop bear, it would spit back (think about it...). They were also said to be attracted to Vegemite, the staple Aussie condiment, which the kids then started to avoid at breakfast. To ward off an attack by drop bears, campers were advised to put toothpaste behind their ears. I am sure there were a few parents who wondered why they had to wash toothpaste out of pillowcases.
I am pretty sure there were more tall tales associated with this mysterious creature, but I can't remember more at present.
I have also attached a picture you might be interested in, similar to the photo on your Jackalope page. I work at quarantine, and occasionally these unusual creatures make their way into Australia in the luggage of tourists with a penchance for unusual souvenirs.
Keep up the great work!

Re: Drop Bears in Australia
In my experience, the drop bear story is related to girl guide and boy scout camps. I have not heard about the spitting idea to tell if there is a bear in the tree, but i was informed that they lived in eucalyptus trees and had very long arms and sharp claws (I always pictured them a bit loke a small sloth) and they would drop from the tree, land on your shoulders and rip out and eat your neck.

is that a drop bear it is like cant be

About the Australian Drop Bear, hah! That's funny! Cause if you lye down on your back and spit, the only spit you'll be getting in return is your's! :+P That's funny! Who ever thought of that? And if so, when?

Apparently this story also works on foreign army groups. My father's army team managed to get some other group to sleep on top of their 4WD during the entire time they were out bush in Australia. The other story that goes with the drop-bears is the trip-snakes - you're walking along a track, and the snake will pull itsef across the track (coiling its tail/body around something on each side) and then, when you fall over, bite you so it can eat you.

TO Mr.alex,
i enjoyed looking at your web page but i do not believe in drop bears

That sounds like an urban legend around here, the "Johnson Monster"

The drop bear is just another term for the Yowie, which many people in Australia believe exists. The story of the Yowie has been retold in Aboriginal communities for generations.

The only way to get rid of a Drop Bear is to run around in a circle 3 times very quickly. This disorients the Drop Bear and it falls to the ground paralized. Otherwise, if you have a Trip-Snake handy it will sufice as it is the Drop Bears only natural preditor. This story is not just told to guides, scouts and foreign armies, but to all backpacking tourists upon arrival on a tour in Australia.
And if you happen to see a Trip-Snake lying crippled on a bush track, give its shoulders a gentle rub, it normally just has a pinched nerve and will slither away quickly once it recovers.

my friend got attacked by a drop bear a year ago

There is no such thing as a Drop Bear or a Trip Snake. Although I would stand under a tree because a snake or spider could fall on you and many of the snakes and spiders in Australia are poisonous. Some of them are very aggressive and there I think the Tiger snake would even chase after you to bite you, more than once. That could be fatal.

The complement to the drop-bear is the upstone: bushwalkers must watch out from above and below when walking Down Under.

As a boyscout member of the 2nd Parramatta troop, I was introduced to the horrors of Drop Bears by the senior scouts and in turn, passed the same horror stories onto the kids below me as I advanced in rank. Drop Bears were described as a subspecies of Koala Bear (a marsupial) with two very long incisor teeth, that would wait on a branch for someone to pause underneath. It would then fall from the tree, driving the large teeth into the spinal chord at the base of the neck. This would paralyse the victim and allow the creature to eat. May of the smarter kids (including myself) were wise enough not to heed the stories of Drop Bears.

But there was another creature that lived in the Australian bush that likewise frightened younger Scouts: "Ombilie-Gombilies". According to the senior scouts, an Ombilie-Gombilie was a small non-descript creature known to attack enmasse and gnaw off any protruding toes and fingers that slipped from a tent or sleeping bag at night. One scout was found screaming and running around the forest covered with blood one night and when I backtracked his footsteps, it seems he had tripped over a fresh deer carcass and has landed in the chest cavity which had been opened by foxed or wild dogs. Of course, all the other kids thought the Obilie-Gombilie stories were true after that and refused to believe my explaination.

As for Yowies (an Aussie version of Bigfoot), I was present when a Park Ranger came by to ask us one night if we'd seen anything since he was investigating a legitimate sighting by elderly campers upriver. Of course, two scouts had been running about with one atop the other's shoulders and a ground-sheet over them so it was hard to take the report seriously. Until we discovered giant footprints and a forensic team had been taking moulds of them a week before we arrived.

Nowdays I'm one of the premier visual effects artist for the film industry and get to design and make my own mosters every week.

who is dumb enough to
1. lie under a tree in australia
2. spit up into the air and not realise that gravity is against you and ur spit will fall back onto your face.........is anyone dumb enough to try it out???

I'm from NZ and as these damn aussies just LOVE teasing us new zealanders, my friend started talking to me about drop bears one day. the fool thing is, after a few minutes i was seriously saying 'no come on emma, honestly, drop bears arent real ... are they?'

I'm an Aussie, I've been a girl guide, a girl guide leader and I've bushwalked all over the place, but I've never heard about drop bears before. I feel deprived! I really could have used that to scare my charges and fellow guides on camps. The hilarity of the entire thing is that no one stops to think hard about the method of finding one! And we don't even have bears here. (If it's meant to be a cousin of the koala, I'm sorry to say the koala isn't part of the bear family either.)

The version of drop bear I heard about is:
When a koala (-bear) up in the tree dies, it naturally falls out of the tree onto the ground. So one has to look out so as not to get hit on the head by a dead koala.
This version is usually believed by all non-Aussies. Try it out!

My best friend was fooled by that one... but then again she also thought a shark was living in my pond. SO I wouldn't use her as a example!

Drop bears don't exist, to my knowledge, but they're plausible (except for the spitting thing). Koalas can become very fierce if severely provoked, and ancient Australia was home to many carnivorous marsupials. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine an arboreal, carnivorous relative of the koala that hunts by dropping out of trees onto its prey.

Smileys

Drop bears actually refers to the Marsupial Lion-Thylacoleo carnifex, which dropped down onto its prey killing it by the sheer weight of the beast.

I learnt about drop bears from Mum a coupla years back - pretty coolish, she sounded very serious about it, and I am pretty darn good at keeping a straight face too so I told all my friends when we went out to Reinke Scrub about drop bears - they were more than a little freaked :D I'm trying my hand at being a novelist and one of my stories has a mentioning of drop bears worked into it. It's pretty good, but anyways. Anyways, yeah. When I talk to friends over the net who are coming over to Australia for one reason or another I make sure to warn them of drop bears, and bunyips/yowies, and all the rest. Just so as to make them feel comforted XD

Drop bears may not be real, but if the Marsupial Lion (Thylacoleo carnifex), turns out to have survived into the present day and not be extinct after-all, then you have a real life equivalent.

Another possibility of course is the Yowie or the Junjardee. The Yowie is a big hairy fella, kind of like the Sasquatch oe Wendigo. The Junjardee is a little hairy fella, kind of like the Sumatran Orang Pendek or Flores Ebu Gogo. They both have one thing in common, they like bunya nuts and thus tend to climb trees. You see a young Yowie or a Junjardee drop out of a Bunya pine and you'd think you'd seen a drop bear. With over 10,000 sightings through out Australia of these cryptids over the past 200 years, there's a good chance they exist.

Folcrom

Drop Bears are definately not Yowies, they are the evil cousin of the Koala Bear, only with very long and sharp claws and fangs. The main purpose of the Drop Bear is to scare tourists, foreigners, city slickers and small children on camps.

after perusing your site and wetting myself laughing at some of the hoaxes ... and correcting the mortgage buster one ... IT HAPPENED 1980 kingston qld. was one of our neighbours and we lived on top of the old gold mine. then i came across drop bears ... omg i had almost forgotten . I was 18 ..had lived in australia for 10 years and had never heard of them until the day a gang of us decided to go camping in the BUNYA mountains . this of course is the home of the drop bear as i was told . The shape of a koala .. the size and weight of a wombat (extremely hardy solid animals, will write off your car suspension if you run over one ) huge teeth and claws . they hide in trees and drop on unsuspecting passers by .. fanging and eating and tearing etc. hmmm wouldnt have been too bad except some of us were travelling on motorbikes. my so called friends kept this story going for 3 solid months until finally someone told me . needless to say i did not then believe in trip snakes ... i had never heard the lie under a tree and spit to find them ... although ... we do have family flying in from new zealand over the next few days .... MWAHAHAHAHA

Drop Bears are incredibly real! My brother was in the sugarloaf mountains about hour out from melbourne, and he heard moaning as dropbears are heard to do in their sleep. He looked up and saw a huge black lump of fur and claws attached to the tree. Tourists...Im tellin ya! Make sure you're protected by Aeroguard and a comment before said that they are attracted to vegemite...not true! They are definitely repelled by it! The Australian Government has been covering this up to keep the tourism... but i warn you...Australian DropBears are nothing to laugh at. Look at all the websites devoted to dropbears...and we know that everything on the net is true.

I have seen a drop bear. True story. We were canoeing once and heard a scrambling in a large redgum tree on the bank. As I looked across I saw abig male koala lose its grip on a branch and drop to the ground like a rock.

The stupid creature looked a bit groggy after the experience and only took a few seconds to come to.

But I can tell you.... you wouldn't have wanted the fat little bastard to land on your head!

hi there im aussie born and bred and was always told of drop bears whenever we went up bush,we were always only told that they were dead koala, or the fact that koalas eating too many gum leaves actually become quite drigged and can lose their grip. we used to tell tourists that snakes chase you here (scaryily its true)
and that red back spiders use heat seeking sensors to find you at night to bite you in your sleep.(i dont know how many sleepless nights he had) and he also asked what our equivelant of a cowboy was and we told him it was a phwar (it took him a while to realise we were crapping him(so i admitted that was the sound an aussie girl made when she saw a tight bunned cowboy).
we have so many yukky bitey creatures here that its easy to toy with people.
when i visited my uncle in the mountains here he told me of the mountain people that livet here that were hairy all over and had been seen hiding in peoples wood piles(i nearly shat meself)as he had a gleaming woodpile and i was a knowing 28 year old.

I have been living in America for a year now and was suprised when my Husband (an American) mentioned Drop Bears and how the story is told to tourists entering Australia.
I was born and raised in Australia and was first told about Drop Bears during a Grade 2 sleepover.
Infact we were taken out into the school yard after dark with flash lights to search for the elussive little monsters. It was definately a fun, if somewhat terrifying experience at the time.
Even if Drop Bears are a hoax it is a great nodd to our love of a good lark. What other country would use a National pest (Cane Toads) as a way to improve their golf swing or offroad vechicle manuvering capabilities.

Being from Australia and a tourist guide. I only see it fit to tell a good yarn about the infamous drop bears and trip snakes. Of course its all nonsence, but those dam tourist kids are to dam irisitible not to tell, with all the spitting and the mums getting angry at them for making there close dirty. One hope the drop bears stay in are culture forever, cose it kicks so much ass.

PS: what is the "johnson monster" ?

we are doing a project on drop bears at school does anyone have any information about them that atleast 5 people can back you up on? please i need help

You know, I'm really amazed about the coverage that the Drop Bear and Stick Snake get here, but has no-one heard of the Hoop Snake?

It's a cross of the Tiger, Little Fierce and introduced Boomslang.

It achieved its fame by being able to grab it's tail in its mouth and by rapidly undulating its body at such a fast rate that it becomes horizontal and is able to propel itself along the ground like a wheel.

Thereby allowing to chase down normally faster prey.

Once close enough, it then contracts its body and with lightning like reflexes can propel it's body at its prey like an arrow, burying its fangs deeply and disabling its prey near on instantaneoulsy, which it can then ingest at its leisure.

For shame that this deadly creature has been neglected....

Senutyenool, the hoop snake is covered here. You needed to click to the next page of the list.

Senutyenoool,the hoop snake is covered.Sadly sveral animals aren't.One example is the splintercat.This cat resembles a domestic cat with a large head and gliding membrane.It is dangerous to approach as it is very feroucious thought to be due to a constant headache.This is caused by it's feeding habits.It glides into trees with such force that it knocks anything on the tree off.This dislodges bee hives that thesplintercat then eats.Therefore it could be used as a much better way to check for drop bears.Another animal is the goofang.This fish swims backward and has backward fins.Go to a website fantastic zoology to find a picture.The strange roperite deserves a mention.It looks like a pony with a trunk. IT USES THE TRUNK TO SNARE RABBITS.

There are quite afew I missed out.These include the snapalope.Thiscreature,about the height of a pig,looks like a stick figure of a deer with yellow and red skin.They live in supermarkets and small stores.They eat soda.There are several ways of catching snapalopes.For more info on hunting snapalopes,just put snapalope through google and select the S.H.A.A. homepage.

Im continuing my list.These critters deserve a mention.The hugag (no I havent mispelt hodag)Is large and moose like.It has no joints in its legs and browses with its huge mobile upper lip.It will travel most of the day and leans on trees to sleep.The snow wasset has no legs.This should not be seen as a handecap.They hibernate in summer when there fur turns green and it disguises itself as a bush.In winter they adopt a hunting method similar to the hot-headed naked ice borer,tunneling through snow to catch prey.Later in winter they sit and wait,lunging out of the snow with its head and pulling animals as large as moose under the snow to eat. Im suprised the argopelter isnt here,it should be.This wiry american ape is best known for throwing branches at lumberjacks with there whip-like arm.reports of these attacks vary,ranging from always deadly to just a frequent annoyance.In addition to the splinter cat there are two other cats I wish to add.First the cactus cat.This cat has thorn like hair, a branched tail and blades on there arms.They use these to cut open cactus to drink the sap.This however, gets the cat drunk,making a easier target.If they get to drunk they are dangerous.Next creature on the agenda is the silver cat.This highly dangerous american feline has a knob and three spikes on its tail.It stuns prey by hitting them withs knob then kills them with spikes.ANYONE WHO KNOWS TALL-CREATURES NOT MENTIONED IN THE GALLERY PLEASE COME FORWARD!!!

Sorry for not finishing my list.From Chile comes the alicanto.This bird eats gold and silver as a food.The weight of it's food keep it grounded.They are followed frequently by miners who follow it to find gold and silver.The Gumberoo is bear like but has no fur.It is a ravenous beast that can eat a horse in one sitting and still be hungry.Its hide,like that of the rubberado repel bullets,stones and any attack except fire, which causes them to explode.Pinnacle grouse have one wing and fly in circles, around hills.Goofus birds fly backwards and nest upside down.Teakettlers walk backwards and are known for their cry which sounds like a boiling kettle.Luferland has three joints in legs and can walk in any direction.It has a deadly bite but it can only bite once a year so if a Luferland bites someone you are safe.Well I will be back with more.

These are all american and are very dangerous.Snoligosters are aquatic with no fins save a spike on its back.They use three bony plates on theyre tail,spun like a propeller as propulsion.It impales people on the spike and eats them.Slide rock bolters are huge and look like fish with claws on theyre tail.They live on mountains and slide down to eat tourists.Whirling whimpus stand on paths and spin till invisible but produce a droning sound which seems to come from overhead.Anyone not recognizing the sound usually walks within strike distace and are kill instantly.

Drop bears are real man. Oh yeah.

Drop Bear Haiku

Rustling leaves - wind? birds?
Fear not the eucalyptus
But what hides within

Attacked by drop bear
Why'd I sleep b'neath Euclptus!
Oh I'm such a fool

walking round a tree
look up see something oh poo
drop arrr dead

Did I see something?
Up there in the trees branches?
I wil not sleep there

spit high and spit low
Koala doeppelganger
waits up there for you!

eucalyptus tree
I hear growls from within
Koala? Or worse?

do dropbears really exist?

I googled drop bears and now I'm scared They seem so scarey! I'm glad I don't live in Australia. I hate the internet-I always find something that'll scare me-and I don't scare easily. I don't get scared of things I know exist-only of things I find out about. Strange. Anyways, in all my years of life I've never encountered such an animal and hopefully, I never will.

Believe they don't exist at your own peril.

Haha, before I moved to Australia everyone warned me to beware of drop-bears... except they didn't say that koalas and dropbears were different animals, they just said that koalas will drop on top of you if you walk past and eukalyptus tree and scratch out your eyes. It took me a few months to find out that koalas are as harmless as they look;)

Drop Bears love "warning" all the tourists about it, especially the yanks, they'll believe anything! Never heard the spitting thing though...
Excellent work!

i saw the drop bear once outside of my rv it was moving around i call my friend he told to not get out of my rv i locked the doors i left my tv on and i close the window curtens i tried to sleep i woke up at 2:00 pm i went outside my chairs and tables where destroy

Hey i dont know if drop bears are true or not coz i dont rilli belive it at all !!!!!!!!!

hi do drop bears realy exisit or are they just a myth, ledgend or even a fable.

I find this article very interesting considering i have been attacked by a dropbear myself. While exploring Australia i found myself smoking what we Americans call a "dubie" under a eucalyptus tree. i had heard about the spitting rumor so feeling devious i decided to try it out. i spit into the tree and for the first few seconds got no response until the dropbear returned the favor on my forehead. all of the sudden a dropbear shaped like a tree branch jumped down from his nest and clawed me in the face. it seemed to have shape-shifted from its original appearance. the beast knocked the "dubie" out of my mouth angering me beyond measure. to make a long story short, i pulled out my switchblade and slashed his throat. as i slashed, his claws impaired my vision but i somehow got away. i would like to use my experience as a tool to protect others from my ordeal in the future. good luck to all who venture to Australia and remember....... beware of the deadly dropbear.

Drop bears ARE indeed well and truly alive in Southern Queensland.I own a property about 250km north of Brisbane. It is mainly forest and on a quite steep side of a mountain. In the 20 years I've lived here I don;t think I've covered the entire property.
A few years ago I had some German backpacker friends visit and stay for a few days.
One of them, Anna, decided to go for a morning walk, by herself!
(This is not adviseable, especially in early summer mornings as there are many wild dogs out hunting at that time of the morning).

The rest of us were sitting out on the back deck after just waking up when we we heard a loud scream.
We rushed into the forest (about 30 metres away) and found Anna with severe cuts to the side of her head and neck.

Once the rescue service had evacuated her by helicopter we found a baby Drop Bear dead at the foot of the tree where Anna was found.
We suspect that she had wandered into the mother Drop Bear's territory and was trying to defend her already-dead baby from Anna (seen as a predator).

Luckily Anna survived okay, but she ended up with stiches across the left side of her neck and to the side of the head.

Since then we have seen a couple of the bears in the trees, and make sure we stay out of their way at night and early mornings.

If anyone's ever read Marvel's "Nextwave: Agents of Hate", the bad guys in that use Drop Bears as a weapon (they throw them out of an airplane on the heroes).

I'm trying to think of what one would say if an evil koala bear dropped onto them from a tree. "WTF?" comes to mind...

Oh yeah, and I heard one theory on the creation of the drop bear myth: That parents used it to keep their kids from playing under trees and getting hurt from falling branches. Making idiots of tourists is also a use for it though I guess.

http://www.geocities.com/muirnin/Dropbear.jpg

Look at this picture and be afraid for your life. It's of a drop bear. (I promise to God it's not a stupid picture with something flashing up on the camera and scaring the crap out of you..seriously, I hate those.)

I hate the internet.I always find something that will scare me-and i don't scare easily.

hurray i got it!i was looking for this.now i can take a deep breath.wow wow wow what a site!
thanks for sharing a tremendous information with me.good job.
keep it up.

The first real experience I had with drop bears was at a youth camp. They were all over the place! We could hear them on the roof (during mating season they get extra excited and drop down whenever they hear a noise). There was one guy who had a near miss - if the drop bear doesn't get you right away, run, they chase after you.
I love Australia

For the record, koalas aren't bears, they are related to wombats. Oh, and have any of you guys heard of stinging trees? Their leaves are covered in tiny hairs and if you touch them, the stinging can last for months. Down Under we also have blue ringed octopuses, spiders the size of a pea that can kill you as well as emus that sneak up behind you and steal your food and dingos that attack in packs.

Welcome tourists, our whole ecosystem is out to get you.

Yes, Drop bears are carnivorous, tree-dwelling marsupials found in Australia. They preferred dwelling in eucalyptus trees or gum trees.

Some claim that it is entirely derived from Aboriginal folklore and supposed 'fossil evidence'. Others claim that the source of this reputedly farcical animal can be traced to real-estate agent Larry Kingship.

Jeez...I am in Melbourne Australia, you guys. Drop bears are a myth used to wind up tourists. I have never seen one and I spent four years in the bush.

i love drop bears there adorabal i would love to go there agian

Hi , to be honest with you , you dont need to be in Australia to be attacked by the drop-bear.They also live in some forested areas in Scotland and to be reasonable putting a stick on your head will actually be very helpful and may stop an attack as a drop-bear thought he would be lucky and pounce on a deer and when he bit into him he was got a huge fright as he was solid and the sticks seem to them as antlers.Thanks M.... Unknown :D

It's true. I've seen 'em drop right out of the sky and onto people around the circular quay area. I don't believe what he says about vegemite being a deterrent, these guys love it! Especially on bread.

I'm agree with ignorance in brisbane but, it's all so pretty. I never comment on those blogs, even when the content is great

look drop bears are not real they are just koalas that look like bears at night cause thats wen they perposibly feed

Are drop bears real? They are mentioned in the 2nd tomorrow when they war began book.

it wouldnt be koalas it couldnt be! koalas are cute and cuddly! we see them all the time at my school! so there!