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Unusual game camera image


UM-Bot

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Posting this on behalf of the member csheff who has been having technical difficulties.

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A Game camera on County Road 55-A, Near the desert mountain town of Madrid New Mexico caught these photographs of what appears to be, somehow, a flying snake...looks to be a Corn or King Snake, coming down from the sky like a Javelin....an absolutely impossible event.  The Property Manager , a Mr. Clay Sheff,.....a local of the area for 20 years who is tasked with checking the game cameras weekly went out to the area and found NO evidence that anything had happened there, no dead snake, no living snake, nothing.  Just another strange little mystery.

first.jpg

2nd.jpg

3rd.jpg

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What are the 2 little white things at the front ...or back of it are the insects?

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@csheff or @UM-Bot, any chance of a source link? Or is this thread it? I wasn’t able to find anything by Googling the text.

Anyways, it’s just something passing in front of the trail camera looking as it does due to the exposure settings. Explained here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(optics)

Nothing strange or mysterious, probably not a rigid flying snake (lol), and it also explains why there was ‘NO evidence’.

Product manuals for Simmons trail cameras here: http://www.simmonsoptics.com/global/manuals.aspx

Hopefully this is not just another conscious attempt at deception, and rather a person who is not educated on the topic who can learn from this. 

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1 hour ago, Timonthy said:

@csheff or @UM-Bot, any chance of a source link? Or is this thread it? I wasn’t able to find anything by Googling the text.

There is no source link, this was submitted to the site via email.

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To me, that looks nothing like a snake. Like, not even a little bit. 

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1 hour ago, IBelieveWhatIWant said:

Looks like a leaf blowing past the camera.

The most I can say is that from the repeating pattern in the middle, it’s a smaller object rotating, wings flapping, or something along those lines. 

As with the majority of these things, it’s just too low quality to determine what it is, only that there’s no real reason to think it’s anything strange or mysterious. 

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A scanning error, commonly known as a "Rod", a multiple distortion of the image of a flying insect or bird.

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It's possible a giant bird of prey picked up a rattler and dropped it after being bit. It does kinda look like one, and it looks as if a snake would if dropped. 

 

Source; I had a homie drop my pet snake one time.

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18 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

A scanning error, commonly known as a "Rod", a multiple distortion of the image of a flying insect or bird.

I used to work for a company that did software for security cameras. Poor-quality digital cameras, especially IP cameras, can create these artifacts really easily and commonly. You don't notice them when playback is going at a decent framerate (15fps +) but anything slower and you start seeing all kinds of artifacting nonsense.

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Sadly (and as is quite common) no further investigation seems possible due to lack of info or even provenance...  The images appear to *not* be originals as they have no embedded 'exif' data.  That means we cannot check whether the object is actually genuine or added later, nor can we verify what the exposure settings (especially shutter speed) are.

Without that information, it is difficult to be sure whether the 'thing' was actually there, let alone accurately recorded.

Specifically - note the time stamp - if correct this was taken at 3am...  If so then that probably ain't the Sun, it's the moon and this image is a long time exposure of several seconds.. in which case a flying beetle could have caused that long streak as it flew by, as per the 'rods' explanation offered above.

Surely if a person was serious about this, they would:
- engage on the thread, and provide relevant information, eg location and direction of camera, whether time stamp is correct, explain why the odd intervals (are the images triggered by motion and does it then only take one shot?).. and
- seek out someone with a little computing knowledge and post the originals..

As it is, the owner might as well have just thrown something suitable in front of the camera...

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Actually this seems to be a rare image of the southwestern gliding rattlesnake (Crotalus zoomus) in its natural habitat. They're very elusive! :lol:

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@ChrLzs, in the link to the manuals in post#3, I did see that there were instructions to manually set the time/date, so it’s probably just not correct.

The manuals may include information on exposure and shutter speed etc. too, but I didn’t really look any further than the tech specs on the sites product pages as I don’t know enough about the technical side. 

I don’t know if we can work out which model trail camera it is either so we know which manual to work with, but the pdf’s are here if you feel like digging: http://www.simmonsoptics.com/global/manuals.aspx

And yes it’s annoying that @csheff hasn’t joined us. It would be helpful having access to the raw data and any additional captures. I don’t know if @Saru can email them and convince them to say hi? :rolleyes:

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Thanks Timonthy.  A few more footnotes..

I hadn't noticed how old the images are - 2012, six years ago?   seems a bit odd.

As you say, it seems not to have been 3am (see below) - and at that time from New Mexico, according to my calculations neither the moon or sun would have been anywhere above the horizon.  

This has also (ie in the last day or so) been reported to MUFON (?) apparently...  http://ufonewshub.com/alien-encounter-in-los-cerrillos-new-mexico-on-2012-06-25-150900-game-camera-photos-at-nm-ranch-showing-unexplained-event/

"Alien encounter"?  :D

I note that there, the time is claimed to be 3:09pm, not am..  Thus, daylight - and therefore the shutter speed is likely to have been reasonably fast, such that the 'flying rod' effect is a bit less likely, tho' not impossible.  I'd need to know a lot more about the camera and its settings, and if the owner is not engaging...

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@ChrLzs, that’s very telling! Alien encounter, how strange. 

Reported to MUFON and ‘pm’.

I wonder if the ‘pm’ suggests that the image is doctored and that the culprit has mimicked and overlayed a Simmons trail camera watermark? Who knows. 

Is the am to pm discrepancy enough to call it a blatant attempt at deception?

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1 hour ago, Timonthy said:

@ChrLzs, that’s very telling! Alien encounter, how strange. 

Reported to MUFON and ‘pm’.

I wonder if the ‘pm’ suggests that the image is doctored and that the culprit has mimicked and overlayed a Simmons trail camera watermark? Who knows. 

Is the am to pm discrepancy enough to call it a blatant attempt at deception?

Given I too have been known to set up a time and date device and initially miss the AM/PM indicator, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt... however as soon as I saw the first footage to wrongly show the time, I'd fix it.  If it was important, that is..

The alien title was probably created by that silly website, so probably no foul there either ... but reporting this to MUFON?  And not doing it at the time, but six years later?  hmm.

Me.. I think it's a stick wrapped in 'crime scene' (or 'fragile') tape thrown by a jokester, not necessarily the owner of the camera...  :) 

 

Edited by ChrLzs
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My question is why would a game camera be placed such that a significant portion of its foreground view is blocked by what appears to  be rocks. Then notice that half of the image is sky. That doesn't seem like a good way to get photos of game.

I did check out google maps and I think that the mountains are in fact near Madrid, NM.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 4/18/2018 at 7:35 AM, AstralHorus said:

It's possible a giant bird of prey picked up a rattler and dropped it after being bit. It does kinda look like one, and it looks as if a snake would if dropped. 

 

Source; I had a homie drop my pet snake one time.

It looks like its flying at an angle. Not sure if a bird could drop it at that angle

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On 4/17/2018 at 5:45 PM, DirtyDocMartens said:

To me, that looks nothing like a snake. Like, not even a little bit. 

 

It looks so ... unreal. I don't understand that image; could be seen better in video...

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It looks like a spear, cane or painted stick someone threw. Instead of a snake head, the end looks more like a carved knob.

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On 18/04/2018 at 3:20 AM, Hammerclaw said:

A scanning error, commonly known as a "Rod", a multiple distortion of the image of a flying insect or bird.

yep

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