Surprisingly for many people, discoveries of large, previously unknown animals continue to occur. Since 1986, several new species of primate have turned up in Madagascar. In the past few years, in a single, mountainous region on the border between Vietnam and Laos, scientists have identified a new species of giant barking deer, a new kind of pig, and a 200-pound bovid, or cow-like animal, known as the pseudo oryx.

The seas, in particular, continue to reveal secret beasts, some of them quite sizeable. Marine biologists have identified three new species of beaked whale off Japan in 1958, off California in 1966, and off Peru in 1991, respectively. And in 1976, fishermen near Hawaii hauled up a 15-foot shark weighing just under a ton. Never before seen, this monster plankton-feeder has since been dubbed "megamouth."

We, as humans, possess a rather pretentious compulsion to catalogue and then exercise mastery over everything in the natural world. Here at MHC, we believe that man limits himself when he refuses to explore and accept the possibility that Homo sapiens are not an omnipotent species, and that there are distinct deficits in our knowledge of what truly exists. At least half of the world’s species remain yet uncharted by science, and in that undiscovered abyss lie possibilities far beyond the realm of our normal understanding.