How many cryptids have been discovered?

[Kahn]

I was having a hard time understanding your definition also. I really don't see how your definition could be applied by anyone but you.

Using keninsc's example, if I go to the monkey house at the National Zoo and look at the monkeys, I have no direct evidence until I reach in the cage and grab a handful of feces, then it's no longer a cryptid. Heck, Schrödinger's cat is more easily defined.

[keninsc]

Don't feel bad I don't get it either.

[aquatus1]

I was having a hard time understanding your definition also. I really don't see how your definition could be applied by anyone but you.

Like pretty much all definitions, it is applicable by the community that uses it. The individuals within the community are largely irrelevant. When we speak of an animal being known or unknown, we aren't talking about individual people having knowledge of that specific animal. We are talking about the animal's presence in the public knowledge bank.

Using keninsc's example, if I go to the monkey house at the National Zoo and look at the monkeys, I have no direct evidence until I reach in the cage and grab a handful of feces, then it's no longer a cryptid.

Why are you making this about yourself? There is no need for you to personally go gather feces (in my experience, the monkeys are more than willing to send it your way regardless) in order to establish the existence of monkeys. Other zoologists already did that for you. The monkey has been established as being real by dint of the objective evidence supporting its existence. Ergo, the monkey is not a cryptid. If there is objective or circumstantial (not to be confused with anecdotal) evidence of an animal's existence, it isn't a cryptid. Cryptids are animals for which the only evidence of their existence is largely anecdotal.

Heck, Schrödinger's cat is more easily defined.

You really are over-thinking it. Any animal we have objective evidence of is not a cryptid. Any animal we only have anecdotal evidence of, can be a cryptid, depending on its place in the cultural lore.

[Kahn]

So what is Bigfoot then? We have some folks that claim to have gathered hairs and footprints. To those "researchers" Bigfoot is not a cryptid, but to say the head of biology at Cal. State they are.

[aquatus1]

Again, this isn't about individuals. It is about the scientific community as a whole (or, at least, the zoological portion of it). Zoology does not accept deductive reasoning in regards to the existence of an animal. If you don't have a body, you might as well not bother bringing it up. It won't accept an argument where you have hair that cannot be identified, ergo, Bigfoot. You have to be able to positively match it to Bigfoot hair, which you can't do without the body.

A giant primate in an area that has never had a history of giant primates. A giant animal that prefers stealth (defeating the evolutionary purpose of being a giant) and is inexplicably afraid of humans. An animal that has the sole distinction among every other animal known in the country to never have been struck and killed by a car. This is a creature that is "hidden". Normal laws of detection do not apply to it. There are no traces of either migratory or territorial behaviour. We don't even know what it is, herbivore, carnivore, insectivore, because there is no gap in the ecology's food cycle that would require a 400 pound primate, let alone a breeding population of one. At least we know for a fact it isn't an omnivore, because Bigfoot also has the dubious honor of being the only animal that hasn't been spotted regularly raiding our garbage sites.

Virtually all the evidence for Bigfoot is anecdotal. There aren't even any specific native legends about it (the creature we know as Sasquatch was the chimeric offspring of dozens of native wildman stories ranging from supernatural ghosts that take away naughty children, to short, hairy, greedy primitive forest dwellers, all collected and mixed together by a Canadian newspaper editor). At least if the locals had been aware of such an animal and were able to guide us to it, we would be able to say the locals had detected it, but we don't even have that. Bigfoot definitely falls into the cryptid category.

[Kahn]

My friend you are still trying to traverse a slippery slope.

The the line: "It is about the scientific community as a whole (or, at least, the zoological portion of it). Zoology does not accept deductive reasoning in regards to the existence of an animal."

So what parts do we count? Do we eliminate forensic biologists (since they would count an unidentified hair as evidence that it is not an established animal)? What about Cryptozoologists? How far towards the fringe do we draw the dividing line?

"Bigfoot also has the dubious honor of being the only animal that hasn't been spotted regularly raiding our garbage sites."

O' really: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sbs/older_Louisiana.htm

My point is that a "rule of thumb" must be easily decipherable by everyone.

[aquatus1]

My friend you are still trying to traverse a slippery slope.

...

Sliding towards what?

The the line: "It is about the scientific community as a whole (or, at least, the zoological portion of it). Zoology does not accept deductive reasoning in regards to the existence of an animal."

So what parts do we count? Do we eliminate forensic biologists (since they would count an unidentified hair as evidence that it is not an established animal)? What about Cryptozoologists? How far towards the fringe do we draw the dividing line?

Well, for starters, you will not find any forensic biologists claiming that unidentified hair is evidence of a non-established animal. Unidentified hair is precisely that: Unidentified. No biologist is going to claim that they examined each of a given region's hundreds of fur bearing species and can definitively eliminate all of them as suspects. Additionally, even if they did, what then? You are still no closer to connecting that hair to Bigfoot. For all we know, there's yet another unknown furry animal out there leaving it's hair stuck all over the place. Again, zoology does not accept deductive reasoning regarding the existence of an animal. You have to have Specimen One, you have to have the animal the forensic experts will pluck a sample hair from to compare the two.

As for cryptozoology, there is no such career. Either you are a zoologist who, on his spare time, likes to hobby around with the subject, or you are being paid to provide filler for a TV show. There is no one, however, who will pay you or authorize a research grant to you, if you call yourself a cryptozoologist.

The line of mainstream acceptance in zoology is pretty clear, far clearer than in many other scientific fields. If all you have are anecdotal stories, you are probably dealing with a cryptid.

"Bigfoot also has the dubious honor of being the only animal that hasn't been spotted regularly raiding our garbage sites."

O' really: http://www.bigfooten...r_Louisiana.htm

My point is that a "rule of thumb" must be easily decipherable by everyone.

You seem to be going out of your way to make it difficult for yourself. What about the above link doesn't scream "Anecdotal" to you? Why did you choose to ignore the key word "regularly", which is a behavioural trait, which is what allows people to do things such as set up cameras and get the shots they can sell to National Geographic, like they do with all other animals?

Look, I get that in the finest spirit of academic discussion everyone here is looking for all the cracks and crevices in my proposal, but come on, some common sense is required. If we are talking about cryptid animals, and one of the defining traits I talk about is that these are animals have no detectable impact on their environment or objective evidence of their existence, it is a little silly to start talking about monkeys in a zoo. If the argument is that deductive evidence isn't sufficient to establish the existence of a creature, there is little purpose to asking whether forensic biologists making a deductive conclusion that some creature exists should be admissible evidence for the existence of a specific creature. Again, we can't say "I don't know, ergo, Bigfoot".

When all is said and done, people talk about cryptids in one of two ways:

The first is a series of fantastical animals composed almost entirely of anecdotal evidence, for which any sort of objective existence is currently unavailable. This means that not only is there no direct objective evidence of its existence, there isn't even any indirect evidence of its existence. The environment neither supports nor reflects the existence of the cryptid (hence my "saltshaker" analogy). Additionally, these creatures are often gifted with abilities and behaviours that are simply not reflected in any other animal in the world.

The second is a type of creature recognized as having existed or currently existing, however not in the environment or time they are reported to be living in. What makes these cryptids is the lack of current evidence of their existence. Their role in the environment is that of an unexpected guest, not as an established species. They tend to be one-shots. Examples would be alligators in the New York sewers, or the big cats in rural England. There are the occasional reports of wild kangaroo in North America. Basically, these fall into the "Out-of-Place" cryptid category (call it subset A of the second group). It baffles the mind that it is there, but ultimately, it isn't all that amazing that it is there. Humans are particularly good at taking animals out of there environment and losing them once they get back to their own homes.

The more mysterious of these second group animals (subset B, I suppose) are the animal that are "Out-of-time". Animals that are not supposed to be here chronologically speaking. Most of these are ones previously thought to be extinct. The Thylacine is a creature thought to have gone extinct several decades ago, yet there are still the occasional sightings. Camels in Nevada were supposed to have died off decades ago. I'm not sure if Big Cats were formerly inhabitants of rural England, but if they were, they would also fall into this category (at least, the species with the history would. The others would still be subset A cryptids).

Now, second category cryptids do still follow the same rules as all cryptids in general in reference to their existence. Evidence for them is still largely anecdotal. The standards, however, are a bit lower, because these animals don't have to show proof of their existence in terms of zoological classification. We have already accepted that big cats, kangaroos, and camels, as animals, do exist. The evidence for these animals, therefore, can include some circumstantial evidence as long as it can be directly tied to the animal in question. Large Cat tracks, for instance, can be directly linked to large cats, even though no large cats are known to exist in the region.

The key thing about cryptids though, has always been about the body. Once we have a body, or parts thereof, we are no longer talking about cryptids. If we didn't learn about the animal until we had an actual body, it was never a cryptid (for instance, the gorilla), or the Saola.

For an animal to be a cryptid:

• There is no physical, objective, evidence of its existence.
  
• The bulk of common knowledge of the animal is largely through anecdotal tales.
  
• There are no ecological indicators of its existence.
  
• Category I cryptids display behaviour not in keeping or directly contradictory to that of other similar animals.
  
• Its current existence in the location or time is not accepted within the mainstream zoological community as reasonable.
  

There might be more, but it is 4 in the morning over here, so I am not entirely lucid right now. By all means, please continue asking questions if you are looking for clarification.

Edited October 31, 2013 by aquatus1

[Midyin]

Weren't Anacondas and Camel Spiders considered Cryptids at one point?

[Guest Nathan DiYorio]

Only in the capacity that they were (and still are) wildly embellished by story-tellers.

[aquatus1]

Not...to my knowledge...

The stories of giant anacondas tend to resemble "the one that got away" fish stories more than not. The are, basically, simply larger versions of an already large creature. Same with camel spiders.

[keninsc]

Not...to my knowledge...

The stories of giant anacondas tend to resemble "the one that got away" fish stories more than not. The are, basically, simply larger versions of an already large creature. Same with camel spiders.

Well, you know what they say, ".....even Jesus had a fish story."

[Squatchthulhu]

What about Homo Floresiensis wasn't that considered a cryptid. I mean yeah it's a fossil record but it there have been reports in that area for years about a short hominid for years and this proves that they did exist.

Also the

Dingiso/Bondegezou from Indonesia was only confined in like 1994 by photograph and in 2004 it was filmed by the BBC in the documentary South Pacific.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Squatchthulhu

[TopToffee]

They recently discovered a frog I see