I have to agree with the estimable Staff that cryptozoology, as a field, ranks right up there with UFO-ology. However, to state that “any legitimate scientist would immediately reject searches for yetis, etc., as total nonsense” is a bit of a broad statement. Aren’t scientists supposed to look at things dispassionately? I really, really doubt that any yetis are there to be found . . . but I seem to remember that mountain gorillas were thought to be mythical also until around the beginning of the 20th century when some were located by Caucasian explorers. (Feel free to correct me/amplify on the gorilla thing - I am dredging this factoid out of the sludge I call my memory.) I simply find it a bothersome notion that scientists worthy of the name would “immediately reject” these searches.
Hi! A link to the Staff Report is appreciated, so we can all get on the same page (so to speak).
It’s What’s up with cryptozoologists, the guys who investigate mythical beasts?
The okapi was only discovered in the early part of this century.
So: A serious person reports the possible existence of a strange animal.
http://www.pibburns.com/cryptost/okapi.htm
A serious scientist decides to go and look for it.
http://www.greatepicbooks.com/epics/june97.html
http://www.cmnh.org/fun/dinosaur-archive/1998Aug/msg00030.html
And yes, there’s a discrepancy in the dates of the actual discovery, as posted by various people on the Web.
This site says “early 1900’s”.
http://www.123spot.com/AnimalDirectory/okapi.htm
But that’s not the point. The point is that scientists, although they may generally speaking be interested in pursuing the truth, have limited time and resources. They can’t go off pursuing every possible lead to a new animal, they have to pick and choose.
So a respected explorer/scientist/naturalist reported the possible existence of a new animal, and another respected explorer/scientist/naturalist went off to look for it, and almost immediately found physical proof.
The reason why “any legitimate scientist would immediately reject searches for yetis, etc., as total nonsense” is because so far, there have been no respected explorers/scientists/naturalists who have reported their possible existence, and backed it up with physical proof. Also, people have been living in the habitats of things like Sasquatch and yetis and the Florida Skunk Ape for thousands of years, but there’s never been any physical proof of these creatures’ existence. The Wambutti who lived in the habitat of the okapi knew all about it. “Oh, yeah, those,” they might have said to Stanley, when he overheard them talking about hunting an “atti”. And they would have been able to show him skins or skulls, and he would have known that they were different from anything previously discovered, and he would have passed the information on.
A chain of evidence like this is lacking for Sasquatch, yetis, and the Florida skunk ape. So, serious scientists, who don’t have time to waste, reject out of hand the idea of going to look for them.
I think that Doug (as well as many others) are a little hasty in referring to all cryptozoologists as illegitimate scientists. There is a functioning (though less well-known) branch of cryptozoology that is totally valid, respected and needed by the larger scientific community.
Just as Doug mentioned in his article, cryptozoologists are involved in the study of hidden animals. This includes the highly legitimate activity of searching for supposedly extinct organisms that may still exist hidden somewhere in the wild. No, I do not mean they go looking for dinosaurs or giant man/apes. (People that do go looking for dinosaurs ((pterosaurs in Texas, plesiosaurs in Scotland, brontosaurs in Africa)) or giant man/apes are the folks that give cryptozoologists their poor reputations.)
I’m talking about recently extinct animals such as the thylacine. Also known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmaninan Wolf, the last verified sighting of a thylacine was in 1936 when Benjamin (the last known living thylacine) died in captivity. Since then though, there have been several thylacine sightings in the wild. Does this mean that perhaps the animal is not extinct? That it is somehow hiding successfully in the wilds of Tasmania? Here is where cryptozoologists step in.
(Personal Note: I wouldn’t blame the poor thing if it is hiding, it is extinct due to over-hunting.)
Cryptozoologists look for traces of the hidden animal: scat, trails, kills, nests, bones or other physical remains, a quick but elusive glimpse, etc. Why cryptozoologists? Often they are the only people that care or have the inclination to check. (Zoologists have their hands full with the animals they know exist!) Why is this research important? If proof of thylacines living in Tasmania is found then land can be set aside for their preservation, comprehensive laws can be set to further protect them, their survival in the face of terrible adversity can be studied and understood, perhaps they can be successfully bred and reintroduced into the ecosystem, etc.
Another function of the cryptozoologist is to study the appearnce of known animals in places where they don’t normally appear. Kangaroos and wallabys have been sighted all over the midwest United States. How did they get here? Did they escape from zoos or circuses? Who cares!? The point is that if there are kangaroos or wallabys living in the midwest United States, somehow they are surviving and reproducing in a completely alien environment. Obviously they’re behavior is adapting. Now that’s interesting! And it’s legitimate. Not to harp on the thylacines - but there are also sightings of thylacines on the mainland of Australia which is a vastly different environment from Tasmania. The same species surviving in two seperate environments are a seperate (but similar) species all together? A legitimate scientific question and one that the cryptozoologist aims to answer.
So to sum up. Cryptozoologists are not all Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster chasers. Some are legitimate scientists with legitimate questions and goals.
If you are interested…here is a link to a terrific thylacine site.
http://livingplanet.virtualave.net/thylacine/thylacine.htm
The man that runs the site is really great and I think that if you visit his very cool and extensive site (which includes an old but awesome film of an actual thylacine in a zoo) you’ll understand why people are interested in finding one of these magnificent marsupials alive.
Cryptozoologists like to talk up “their” successes, like the coelocanth found in the 1930s and the Vu Quang Ox found in Vietnam in 1992. But those were identified by real zoologists, not cryptozoologists. I wonder if any cryptozoologist has ever predicted one of these real discoveries. The ones they have predicted (Loch Ness monster, sasquatch, yeti) haven’t panned out (yet).
Maybe the closest they have come is the giant squid (Architeuthis dux). Reputable zoologists predict the largest of them weigh no more than about a ton, quite a bit smaller than what the cryptozoologists have predicted. This compares to 35 tons for the sperm whales that prey on them.
Just for the record, I don’t think I’ve ever read of a cryptozoologist “taking credit” for the coelocanth(sp?)/okapi, etc. They merely cite its discovery as evidence that the proactive search for unknown/out of place/presumed extinct, yet perhaps living, animals has its merits.
Also, they often cite the mainstream acceptance of the gorilla, or “pongo,” as the natives called it, in 1901 as proof that large animals have remained hidden for long periods of time, known only to the natives of the area but pooh-poohed by science.
Without getting too into this subject…again (I don’t want to be known at this board as “The Bigfoot Apologist”), the following quote from Duck Duck Goose is a bit misleading:
“Also, people have been living in the habitats of things like Sasquatch and yetis and the Florida Skunk Ape for thousands of years, but there’s never been any physical proof of these creatures’ existence.”
Native American mythology is rife with references to the sasquatch, and during very little of the relatively scant period of time Europeans have populated North America did “Americans” have the mobility or scientific knowledge to even know what to do with “physical proof” of such a creature (although they have been reported as “wild men,” etc. since the late 1800s.)
I will also point out that not too very long ago, the Giant Squid was thought to be in a class with the sea-serpent. The Calif Sea-otter was thought to be extinct.
There certainly could very well be some large undiscovered species. There is not good scientific reason why not- in fact, as long as we are talking about just smaller animals- they are “discovering” perhaps dozens of them per day. There are several good scientific objections to UFOs, however- which is why Cryptozoologists should not be classed with them. True, some species, such as “nessie” are very unlikely from a scientific point of view. But as felix pointed out- many would not be terribly shocked if an extant tasmanian tiger was found.
I will point out there has been civilization in Indochina far longer than in the Pacific NW, but they just found the Vu quang Ox less than a decade ago. I personally doubt Yeti & bigfoot, but I do have my hopes for the “nandi-bear” and the tasmanian tiger. Stranger things have happened- and will again.
Um, got a cite for this? A Google check of “Native American Sasquatch” brings up nothing but book lists that happen to include books about Native Americans and books about Sasquatch.
By which I mean a reputable cite–a reference to Sasquatch in Native American folklore that was collected by a reputable anthropologist with no pro-Bigfoot axe to grind. I’m familiar with the kind of “cites” produced by cryptozoologists who go around asking modern day Northwest Pacific Indians leading questions like, “Hey, have you ever heard your granddad talk about a ‘Sasquatch’?”
The Northwest Pacific coast Indians had contact with the white man as far back as the 18th century, what with Russian fur traders and George Vancouver and all. So the challenge would be to find references to Sasquatch in anthropological collections of folklore that were collected before the late 19th century, when the white man suddenly got so interested in collecting fables and stories of Native Americans. I think it’s pretty well established that by that time their folklore had already become so “contaminated” by the white man’s stories, that it is difficult for folklorists to tell what the original folklore might have been.
By “Americans” I assume you mean “Native Americans”? I would assume that at some point during the last 400 years, some white man would have been sitting around shooting the breeze with some Indian friends, and his Indian friends would have been talking about a “sasquatch”, or whatever the equivalent in their language would have been, and he would have asked, “Hey, what’s a sasquatch?” And they would have replied, like the Wambutti, “Oh, yeah, those,” and they would have been able to show him some bones or skins of really huge humanoids.
The Indians, even the ones who were agriculturists, were hunters. Saying that they could have lived in their various ecosystems and not have hunted and killed (and presumably eaten) Sasquatches, and thus come into possession of bones and skins, is not sensible. What, are you going to postulate that they viewed Sasquatches as some sort of mystical creature, and wouldn’t have dared to hunt them? The Indians viewed bears and buffalo as mystical creatures, but that didn’t stop them from hunting and eating them, bears especially.
In Mayan mythology, monkeys were the remnants of God’s first attempt at making people, the Wood People. But that didn’t stop them from hunting and eating them.
http://www.stevensonpress.com/Maya/monkey.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/C005446/text_version/English/maya.html
Or by “Americans” do you mean “colonists”? Are you suggesting that as soon as people came across the ocean, they left all their scientific curiousity behind? Of course not. The New World was just that–new, and fascinating. If the early colonists HAD come across bones or skins of Sasquatches, they would certainly have been interested, and eventually some of those bones or skins would have found their way to the desks of serious scientists.
The New World had many animals unfamiliar to Europeans. Raccoons, grizzly bears, skunks, turkeys. But over the years, skins and bones of these new animals were collected, and the knowledge of these entered the scientific community. So where are all the Sasquatch skins?
Wanna do some Crypto-research? There is a fascinating, well-illustrated book called “The Natural History of the Unnatural World,” by Levy, available on Amazon, that purports to be selected files “from the Archives of the Cryptozoological Society of London.” Told with a British tongue in cheek, it catalogs every crypto animal I have ever heard of, including the Latin names(!) of each. I reccomend it to anyone, whether “believer” or not.
Here is a link to a fun and well researched article by a Native American Sasquatch enthusiast:
http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~bz050/HomePage.bfna.html
A little off the subject but in reference to Musicat’s post…at the Cloisters (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted entirely to medieval art) they had a special exhibit a few years ago (or maybe it’s part of their permanent collection and I never noticed it again) of medieval Bestiaries. As I remember, the majority of them were French, but I think there were some German and Danish texts as well. These things were great! Bestiaries were basically collections (like an encyclopedia) of every animal that was known to exist or was thought to exist. Therefore, these things included all these fantastic creatures from classic literature, animals from local folklore like unicorns and basilisks, plus huge inaccuracies like claiming that 200 men could stand on an elephant’s back. Apparently, these things were immensely popular in their time and may even be responsible for many modern misconceptions about certain animals. If your local museum ever has an exhibit of these things go check them out, they’re a ball!
I’m going to look for that “Natural History of the Unnatural World” at the library. Sounds like fun.
“So to sum up. Cryptozoologists are not all Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster chasers. Some are legitimate scientists with legitimate questions and goals.”
The point is simple: if they are legitimate scientists with legitimate questions and goals, they DO NOT go around calling themselves cryptozoologists. There is no such thing as a degree in cryptozoology, so you only get to BE one if you CALL yourself one. I’ve discovered over 200 previously-unknown species of animals, even named new genera, and spend every field trip searching for animals that might be extinct, but I would never call myself a cryptozoologist. Someone hunting for a thylacine is a borderline case, as well, since there IS ample evidence that thylacines existed until not too long ago. Someone searching for a Dodo or Passenger Pigeon or Steller’s Sea Cow would be a little harder to accept, and “Bigfoot” is completely without credibility. It doesn’t cross into cryptozoology, by definition, until it depends on belief with no evidence.
Felix Penfold wrote:
A little off the subject but in reference to Musicat’s post…at the Cloisters (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted entirely to medieval art) they had a special exhibit a few years ago (or maybe it’s part of their permanent collection and I never noticed it again) of medieval Bestiaries. As I remember, the majority of them were French, but I think there were some German and Danish texts as well. These things were great! Bestiaries were basically collections (like an encyclopedia) of every animal that was known to exist or was thought to exist. Therefore, these things included all these fantastic creatures from classic literature, animals from local folklore like unicorns and basilisks, plus huge inaccuracies like claiming that 200 men could stand on an elephant’s back. Apparently, these things were immensely popular in their time and may even be responsible for many modern misconceptions about certain animals. If your local museum ever has an exhibit of these things go check them out, they’re a ball!
I reply:
If you’re interested in bestiaries, then by all means run out and get T.H. White’s book “The Bestiary”. This is the samr T.H. White that wrote “The Sword in the Stone”, “The Once and Future King”, and “The Book of Merlin”, among others. It’s his translation of a medieval bestiary, heavily footnoted. White had a great love of medieval civilization, so he never ridicules. Quoting Thomas Browne, he agrees: “Let us cover the nakedness of our fathers with a cloak of favorable interpretation.” The big surprise is that many of the “fabulous” beasts may have actually existed! Read the entry on the two headed amphisbaena, or the phoenix. Even the bizarre activities alleged of existing beasts may be an only slightly garbled or misinterpreted real behavior (as with bears “licking their young into shape”), I think the book is still in print by Dover.
Interesting discussion. Here’s a rule of thumb to use when looking into non-orthodox viewpoints: If a belief or viewpoint seems to be uninformed or go against solid evidence, then that’s all fine. But if it strikes you as “silly” or “absurd,” then your reasoning is based on emotions, not logic.
I’m nat saying that I believe that Bigfoot or Nessie exist (although I keep an open mind about it), but consider what would happen if a Sasquatch was found and it was proved that they exist. Zoologists everywhere would be humiliated; all of their statements against the existance of the creature over the years would be proven false, and they would look like fools. That’s a pretty powerful emotional reason to see any evidence in the most skeptical light possible.
Um, sorry, Felix, thanks for the link, but that’s not what I meant. As a matter of fact, you gave me exactly the sort of thing I specified I did NOT consider acceptable.
I said:
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Your link concerns
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So she’s a Bigfoot enthusiast to begin with, and she goes around to reservations specifically asking the medicine men about Sasquatch? Um, I’m sorry, but IMO the only way she could be any MORE biased would be if she also ran a Bigfoot Museum on the side.
Sorry. 
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
– David Hume, ca. 1748
Okay…so she’s unreliable because she’s a member of the Western Bigfoot Society? Did it ever occur to you that she joined the society because she was interested in the subject? Is the input of anyone even remotely connected to one of these non-profit, haphazardly organized societies automatically out the window simply because he or she congregates with others who share a similar interest? We’ve already discussed how science doesn’t have time to investigate what they’ve already decided doesn’t exist, so, in the paraphrased words of one, “the bigfoot enthusiasts should go out and do it themselves.” Okay. Well, it seems some of them are doing just that. But what use is it when the knee-jerk reaction is going to be this kind of ridicule and claims of bias? And how is "“Hey, have you ever heard your granddad talk about a ‘Sasquatch’?” a “leading question?” How else to bring up the subject?
<< And how is "“Hey, have you ever heard your granddad talk about a ‘Sasquatch’?” a “leading question?” How else to bring up the subject? >>
Hey, when I was little, my dad told me bedtime stories about when he was in the Army, on Mars, fighting the six-legged creatures with his sword. (Much, much later, I found that he had lifted liberally from E. R. Burroughs.) I, of course, passed those same bedtime stories on to my kids – how their grandpa was in the Army on Mars.
Just because something is folklore, passed down from generation to generation, doesn’t mean it’s TRUE.
Any researcher knows better than to ask a question phrased like that. (You also never ask, “What do you call a paper bag?” or “How do you pronounce ‘either’?”)
On the other hand, US/Canadian Amerinds aren’t exactly uncontaminated aboriginals, these days. I doubt there’s a single adult in traditional Bigfoot territory who hasn’t encountered the creature in the White media, so the best a researcher can hope to do is say, “Hey, you know all that stuff about Sasquatch, right? Did you, growing up, ever hear about it, like, before whites got ahold of it?” In another generation or so, even that won’t be possible.
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Okay, John Kennedy gave you the short version–here’s the Duck Duck Goose version. 
Here’s what I was getting at, RD.
This is how folklore is reliably gathered. An ethnologist or anthropologist or folklorist sits down with a group of native people. He (or she) either speaks their language, or has a reliable interpreter standing by. He (or she) asks them, “Tell me about your gods. Tell me about your beliefs. Tell me some of your stories.” And the native people tell him (or her) what their gods are, what their beliefs are, and some of their stories.
Notice the kind of question that was asked. It was carefully neutral–“tell me stories”. It was not “tell me stories about Sasquatch”. It was NOT a leading question. A “leading” question is a term from court procedures. A lawyer is not allowed to ask “leading” questions of a witness. If he does, the other side’s lawyer leaps to his feet and says, “Your Honor, I object! Counsel is leading the witness!” This happens on Perry Mason all the time.
A leading question is where the lawyer puts words into the witness’s mouth. Instead of asking, neutrally, “What did Harvey say then?” he might ask, “Did Harvey then tell you that he’d killed his wife?”, and this is what brings the other lawyer to his feet. He’s not allowed to prompt the witness by giving the witness too many cues as to what kind of answer is expected.
Now, when an ethnologist or anthropologist or folklorist sits down with a group of native people and asks, “Tell me about Sasquatch,” that’s giving them too many cues as to what kind of answer is expected. To other ethnologists and anthropologists and folklorists, the data gathered, the stories that are thereby obtained, are considered scientifically suspect. The words “contaminated” and “tainted” are sometimes used. They say, “Well, you can’t be sure that those were really the original age-old folk tales, because they were prompted. The person who told you the story was just trying to please you by telling you what he thought you wanted to hear.”
There is also the problem of cross-cultural contamination, especially noticeable with the Bigfoot stories. First, some chronology.
White men started exploring the Pacific Northwest way back in the 18th century. The Russians, the Spanish, the French, the British, and the Americans all had ships coming and going. This was why Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore–he wanted to nail down America’s claim to all that potential valuable territory.
During most of the 19th century, the only interest that white men had in the Pacific Northwest was purely mercantile. They wanted furs, lumber, gold, fish, land. They weren’t interested in the stories of the native people they were displacing. However, by the end of the 19th century, the Pacific Northwest was “civilized” enough that there were people who were interested in the stories of the native people who were rapidly disappearing. This wasn’t just a Pacific Northwest thing–all over the U.S. white folks were starting to get interested in collecting folklore from Native American cultures.
However, there was one big problem. All over the U.S., the Native American cultures had been in close contact with the white culture, sometimes for a couple hundred years, and so their folklore was “contaminated” with European folklore. The people who were trying to collect “authentic” folklore were finding to their dismay that frequently the stories they were being offered as “authentic” and “ancient” were actually just European fairy tales and Bible stories, filtered through Indian sensibilities.
The example that sticks in my mind, and this is just off the top of my head, is the experience with the Mandan Indians of North Dakota in the early 19th century. People like George Catlin went out there and talked to people and said, neutrally, “Tell me your stories,” and were elated to find that evidently these “noble savages untouched by European culture” ALSO had a myth that the world had been destroyed in a great flood, and that only one family had been saved, who had then repopulated the world. “Wow!” they said. “This is fantastic! This must prove something!” and they used this to prove all sorts of things, most memorably that the Mandan Indians are supposedly the descendents of a Welsh expedition that supposedly came to America in the 13th century.
Well, what they didn’t understand was that these “noble savages untouched by European culture” had actually been in contact with European culture for about 150 years before George Catlin sat down and painted their pictures. It’s the French and British fur traders and trappers who are to blame.
http://www.whiteoak.org/learning/timeline.htm
In 1600, the French started trading for furs on the east coast of North America. But they didn’t stop there, they kept spreading west, always looking for more furs. By 1618 they had reached Lake Superior. By the 1630s the tribes who lived in Wisconsin were regularly trading furs to the French.
The Indians already had vast trade networks that covered virtually the entire North American continent. The French were merely exploiting these when they started trading for furs. The Indians weren’t doing anything new–the white men wanted beaver, and were willing to pay for it.
Now, other things besides trade goods travel back and forth on trade networks, things like jokes, and songs, and gossip, and stories. From 1600 to 1840, Native Americans had plenty of opportunity to hear European stories.
There were others besides the French. The Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered in 1670.
http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/about/the-bay.html
Saskatchewan is directly north of where the Mandan Indians lived. They had plenty of opportunity to hear European stories for about 150 years before George Catlin sat down and painted their pictures.
And there was Alexander McKenzie, in British Columbia.
http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/about/the-bay.html
Now, back to Bigfoot. John Jacob Astor opened up his trading post in Astor, Oregon, in 1810. It was a busy place. He collected furs from the entire back country. He made a big pile of money.
http://www.ttsd.k12.or.us/schools/cft/html/ftvan/nw_fur_comp.html
He did so well that the Hudson’s Bay Company, jealous, finally opened up a branch office.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/www/history/homeroom/1840.htm
Settlers soon followed. Ever hear of the Oregon Trail? That’s where it went–to the Pacific Northwest, in the 1840s and 1850s.
So, by the time white people began to collect Indian folklore in the 1890s, what with John Jacob Astor and the Hudson’s Bay Company and Alexander McKenzie, not to mention the flood of settlers from Back East, the Pacific Northwest Indians had had plenty of opportunity to hear European stories, and to have their folklore filtered through the European sensibilities of the white man’s church, and the white man’s school for their children.
So, the cite I was asking for was the kind of a cite where somebody in the early part of the 19th century sat down with Pacific Northwest Indians and said, neutrally, “Tell me some of your stories,” and the Indians, unprompted, told him a story that had something to do with a big humanoid that lived in the woods.
I actually don’t think there is any such a cite available. It’s my understanding that, like I said, by the time anybody tried to write down Pacific Northwest Indian folklore, it had already become so contaminated that serious ethnologists take the Bigfoot portion of it with a grain of salt.
And, like I said, any Bigfoot story that is gathered by someone who is specifically looking for Bigfoot stories is scientifically suspect. Serious anthropologists never ask leading questions.
Nowadays, after we’ve had the Bigfoot legend around for so long, it’s not very likely that you could find any medicine man anywhere who has never already heard of it, either on TV or at the movies, or from hearing people talk about it. That’s what’s called a “contaminated” source. When you sit down and ask him, “Tell me about Sasquatch”, chances are excellent that he’s just going to repeat what “everybody knows”, i.e. “what he’s seen on TV”. And even if you said, “Tell me about big hominids who live in the woods,” he’s going to say, “Oh, you mean Sasquatch,” and again, he’ll just tell you what he thinks you want to hear.