The founder of Albatwitch Zoological Survey was an active duty, field medic corpsman with the United States Marine Corps’, “G”olf Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, and a former ready reservist with the United States Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two, Detachment 304. Currently, he is a retired, senior citizen who has two undergraduate degrees in sciences. Although he has never been a professional scientist, as an avocation during retirement he anonymously analyzes and solves mysteries of science ignored by professional scientists because of cultural and/or political reasons, enjoying the research adventure and the intellectual satisfaction associated with adding to the body of public knowledge for the common good.
While hunting Eastern Coyotes (Canis latrans × Canis lupus lycaon) in a remote, riparian bog located in a Pennsylvania Game Land, the founder was twice confounded by the sighting of a bipedal, female mammal that he could not identify despite extensive knowledge of the forest ecosystem. The Albatwitch Zoological Survey is an attempt to apply the scientific method with public input and assistance of consulting science professionals to the field survey, behavioral study, genomic analysis, taxonomic classification and preservation of the animal currently known in the Susquehanna River Valley, Pennsylvania, USA as the “Albatwitch.” All pertinent information and data collected will be published on this website, however, detailed, geographic locational information will NOT be published in the interest of preservation of the Albatwitch (Pan chlca sp. nov.) and Albatwitch habitat.