The Mongolian Death Worm

This would have been a comment on a recent post by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology on the behaviour of amphisbaenians, but the commenting system they have at Scientific American these days means that any comment on a post more than a couple of days old will never be seen by anyone. As such, I'm posting it up here:

PhilJTerry's comment in response to Darren's post: "As I love introducing cryptozoology into the conversation wherever possible - are Amphisbaenians a likely influence for the Mongolian Death Worm? Can they live in desert environments?"

Image from National Geographic.

For those not already aware, the "Mongolian death worm" or "olgoi-khorkhoi" is a supposedly incredibly dangerous animal found in the deserts of Mongolia. It's first mention in Western literature came in Roy Chapman Andrew's (1926) On the Trail of Ancient Man. Andrews heard about the animal in a meeting with Mongolian officials:

Then the Premier asked that, if it were possible, I should capture for the Mongolian government a specimen of the allergorhai-horhai. I doubt whether any of my scientific readers can identify this animal. I could, because I had heard of it often. None of those present ever had seen the creature, but they all firmly believed in its existence and described it minutely. It is shaped like a sausage about two feet long, has no head nor legs and is so poisonous that merely to touch it means instant death. It lives in the most desolate parts of the Gobi Desert, whither we were going. To the Mongols it seems to be what the dragon is to the Chinese. The Premier said that, although he had never seen it himself, he knew a man who had and had lived to tell the tale. Then a Cabinet Minister stated that "the cousin of his late wife's sister" had also seen it. I promised to produce the allergorhai-horhai if we chanced to cross its path, and explained how it could be seized by means of long steel collecting forceps; moreover, I could wear dark glasses, so that the disastrous effects of even looking at so poisonous a creature would be neutralized. The meeting adjourned with the best of feeling; for we had a common interest in capturing the allergorhai-horhai.

Since then, there have been a number of expeditions have been conducted in search of the Premier's "allergorhai-horhai"; all have come up fruitless. Various opinions have been expressed as to what the stories may have been based on, with the most popular suggestions being some sort of reptile (Darren says in his response to the above comment on the original post that he "could buy that the stories are based on exaggerated tales of erycine boas or something"). For my part, I suspect that the question of the 'original identity' of the Mongolian death worm may be a futile one. When I first heard Andrews' account, I was not reminded of an amphisbaenian or a boa; I was immediately put in mind of a drop bear.

I feel almost certain that Andrews was being told a local tall tale, a popular joke at the expense of visiting travellers. The nature of Andrews' response to the officials suggests that he was in on the joke and more than happy to play his part in communicating it. Admittedly, other accounts of the Mongolian death worm have been recorded at more recent dates. And in the same way, I've never seen a drop bear myself, but I can assure you that my cousin did once and got the fright of his life. Be careful. They're out there.