Talk:Devil's Footprints

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on February 8, 2008, February 8, 2009, February 8, 2013, February 8, 2017, February 9, 2021, February 9, 2022, and February 9, 2023.

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Kangaroos Can Swim

The section about the escaped kangaroo ends with a rhetorical question about how they could have gotten across the Exe Estuary. It seems to suggest that this would be impossible. Obviously the writer knows little about kangaroo, since they are quite good swimmers. That section needs to be corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.226.142 (talk) 16:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How many miles can they swim in freezing water?95.141.18.140 (talk) 10:32, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

added recent (night of march 12th, 2009) event in Devon from the Sun. Sorry if i formated the insertion/reference wrongly.

Couldn't it have been.. a goat?

Presumably the point is that no animal could have walked 100 miles in one night and gone through drainpipes etc. unless it was... a devil... Downstage right (talk) 22:08, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another point to take into consideration is that some tracks were said to have been found on the top of buildings. A goat may be a possible explanation if it was referring to bungalows, but at the time of the insident in most of that area you'd be talking about cottages with 2 floors. Personally I always thought that the roof top prints were mainly just 'guessed' to have been there at the time under the assumption that the tracks were following an unbroken line, who in their right mind is going to get out a ladder to check for footprints on their roof in the middle of the snow when they are afraid that the devil might have come to visit? That would be original research and assumption though.--Shearluck (talk) 12:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about that. Get far enough away and you could see what's on the roof. You could just see the whole village milling around such a sight at the time. Plenty of people must have seen it. There must have been something out of the ordinary. To say some of the tracks were left my common foot footed animals. Surely people had seen horse prints in the snow before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.184.176.165 (talk) 02:40, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Horses don't have cloven hooves. In fact, they are prime example of an animal that doesn't have cloven hooves.Eregli bob (talk) 08:50, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although the article mentions "cloven" hooves, the illustration is that of a typical horseshoe. If the illustration isn't accurate, it doesn't belong here. If it IS accurate, "cloven hooves" is a poor description. Possibly the "cloven" aspect was conflated with the moniker "Devil's footprints," as cloven hooves are associated with depictions of The Devil. Jororo05 (talk) 18:09, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously the sources don't support that the hoof marks were actually cloven. I have copyeditied accordingly. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:33, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The dragonfly clasper of the males fits with the shape of the Devil's Footprints. It's at the end of it's tail and is used to grasp the female before mating. If the male giant dragonfly is low on energy in cold weather, then it could hop on it's tail as opposed to walking on it's legs to save energy. Strange but true? 2.123.46.82 (talk) 04:04, 4 October 2013 (UTC) Alan Lowey[reply]

Since the giant dragonfly are natives of Australia I am sure it (he) would have been very tired and may have had to hop around! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.144.40.153 (talk) 22:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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I did not read in detail enough to understand how irrelevant my post may be... anyway, and as I happened to read about barchans today: any chance that the traces derived from a local meteorological phenomenon? Gfombell (talk) 17:54, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have in my possession a copy of R.T.Gould's "Oddities" (Geoffrey Bles; 1928), which contains an account of the Devil's Footprints, which may act as a substantiation to this article. However, as I have been many-times criticised for my additions to W~pedia, I am loathe myself to interfere. -- Simon Cursitor (talk) 09:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]