Is cryptozoology considered a legitimate field of study, or is it just a bunch of crackpots? Or maybe something in-between, like a legitimate field that draws more than it’s fair share of crackpots? On one hand, there certainly are many species in the world that are still unknown to science. OTOH, the only time I hear of anyone describing themselves as a “cryptozoologist”, they’re chasing Nessie or chupacabras or some such.
The test to apply to any field of study is this: does it lead to independently-testable predictions? There are four possible responses:[ul][li]It does not lead to predictions. If so, it’s opinion.[]It leads to predictions, but they are not testable. If so, it’s religion.[]It leads to predictions, they are independently-testable, they have been tested, and they are wrong. It’s science, and its hypothesis is provisionally wrong. Time to refine the old hypothesis, do more observations and get the errors out, or come up with a new hypothesis.It leads to predictions, they are independently-testable, they have been tested, and they are right. It’s science, and its hypothesis is provisionally correct. The rest of science will bloody well have to adapt. [/ul]Now, “legit”? This is usually applied by cranky skeptics to fields that are trying to portray themselves as verified science, but don’t actually have the test data to back themselves up. In other words, they are religions, or at least faiths about the universe that can’t be proved. If so, fine, but IMHO it’s a kind of intellectual fraud to pretend to be a science when you aren’t.[/li]
So, has cryptozoology led to verification of any interesting predictions?
IMO, in between. It’s a discipline attempting to be passably rigorous in what it does, but what it does is not strictly biological science.
Somewhere around GQ, in one of the dozen or so ivory-billed woodpecker discussions we’ve had, Colibri documents what is required for a consensus opinion, and what further is expected by the real hard-liners, as proof that the IBW survived and is an extant species.
For the actual cryptozoologist, as opposed to Joe Credulous, the standard for credence is set much lower, and variable. The evidence can include folk-tales, oddball reports, questionable spoors, etc. None of this is taken completely at face value, but asserted as evidence toward the hypothetical cryptozoon’s existence, weighted as one might expect.
Bernard Heuvelmans’ On the Track of Unknown Animals is a fairly good example of how the effort is pursued: the folk tales are noted, examined with some skepticism but arrayed as potential evidence. The claimed physical evidence is examined, not with the strong proof requirements of the orthodox zoologist, but with one’s skepticism meter set to “medium,” so to speak. Possible explanations not involving an unknown species are examined but not necessarily subscribed to.
The findings can range from the true nutball (chupacabra, “three toes”) to the near-proof (surviving thylacines). Doing cryptozoology honestly calls for keeping an open mind, but not too open. The Nandi Bear is probably an excellent example. One discounts the native legend that it eats only the brain of its victims. But the description fits well with (a) a surviving giant hyena, (b) an aberrant bear in an area that bears are not known to have ever occupied, or (c) a surviving chalicothere. In particular, the idea that it eats leaves as a part of its diet and has giant claws (mentioned in other accounts) points to the otherwise-improbable option (c). And of course there is the possibility that it is (d) it’s a local boogeyman-monster, made up as a scary story.
Cryptozoology, as it is usually understood, is not regarded as a legitimate field of study. Almost by definition it entails the search for creatures that are not merely “unknown,” but for which there is fairly strong evidence that they do not, or could not, exist.
Plenty of scientists discover previously unknown species every year. This is not cryptozoology as it it usually understood, but just normal zoology. Some of these animals have been fairly large, such as the sao la, or Vu Quang ox, discovered in 1992 in Vietnam. But their discoverers wouldn’t regard themselves as cryptozoologists.
Scientists searching for animals thought to be recently extinct, such as thylacine or Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, would not be considered by most to be cryptobiologists. Those searching for Bigfoot, lake monsters, and surviving giant ground sloths probably would be.
“Near-proof”? Last I heard, there was just a small bunch of interesting but ultimately inconclusive eye-witness reports of thylacine-looking creatures. Have there been any developments lately that move this particular example out of the vague realms of cryptozoology? I hope so, but have never heard of any.
The thylacine hunt is treated seriously by many serious biologist. The hunt for Big Foot is generally not considered seriously. Therefore, both crypto zoologist and fully accredited zoologist are seeking evidence of a surviving population. Discoveries of creatures like the Okapi were made via interviewing locals about strange creatures and asking to be led to the populations. Some zoologists are following up the weak and scattered reports about thylacines.
Jim
Searching for evidence of surviving Ivory Billed Woodpeckers or Thylacines doesn’t make you a cryptozoologist, it makes you a zoologist. There is no such field as “cryptozoology”. As Colibri says, regular zoologists discover new species every day.
Amateur, non-PhDs can still make important discoveries in biology, paleontology, or even astronomy. So it isn’t that cryptozoologists aren’t part of the secret club of academia. If you go down to Brazil and poke around for a couple of months you’re practically guaranteed to find a couple new species of insects, whether you’re a PhD biologist or not.
What makes cryptozoologists crackpots is searching for a particular species where we have very good reason to believe that such a species cannot exist, and absolutely no good reason to believe it does, other than fokelore. And sure, folklore was useful in discovering the okapi and the gorilla. But it’s 2007. You’re not going to find a human-sized bipedal nocturnal primate living in the Pacific Northwest. Not gonna happen. There’s folklore accounts of such a creature existing? Sure, but there’s also folklore accounts of thunderbirds, sisuitl, ten-legged polar bears, and humans turning into seals. That people have been telling such stories for hundreds of years is interesting but it doesn’t mean that there must really be ten-legged polar bears.
Just because the ancient Greeks wrote about the Pegasus, Chimera, Sphinx, Hydra, or Harpy doesn’t mean those animals actually existed. The only one that really did was the esquilax…an animal with the head of a rabbit and the body of a rabbit. On the other hand, the Greeks wrote frequently about lions, and it turns out that lions really did live in Europe in ancient times, despite being extinct now.
So anyway. We have very good reason to believe that a creature like Bigfoot does not live in the Pacific Northwest. If you want to show that such a creature does exist, you’re going to have to provide a specimen, like the guys who discovered the Vietnamese wild cow. “Eyewitness testimony” is pretty much worth the paper it’s printed on.
Just to clarify, I was not supporting the search for Big Foot with the Okapi and folklore; I was supporting the efforts to locate a living thylacine from occasional claims of sightings and claims of spore found.
On the other hand, not all cryptozoologists appear to be crackpots. Some are at least professionally trained. They attempt to resolve questions using scientific methods. Of course, these have failed to find anything significant, so I guess we can dismiss them. However, not all Nessie hunters appear to be crackpots. Some are Scientist using the best tools they can afford to search the Loch. In their studies they have pretty much removed the possibility of Nessie existing. I know some of these men would be described as cryptozoologists. They move on to other strange stories and myths. So I think it is closer to what **Polycarp ** said above.
Jim
Just out of interest, tell me what you think the definition of *cryptozoology * actually is. Are you perhaps under the impression that it is all about hunting for Yetis ?
Just for the record, consider the cryptozoology section in the latest Fortean Times who ought to know what the word actually means. Items in the current column include :
-
Re-examining the kouprey (a recently extinct species of ox) and questioning whether it ever really existed as a distinct species, or if it was just a banteng gone feral.
-
Discovery of a specimen of dolphin with an extra pair of flippers.
-
Confirmation of a new species of parrot, following years of unconfirmed sightings.
-
The establishment of a whole new phylum in order to classify a particular species which is its only known member.
This is what cryptozoology is all about. Sometimes it involves hunting for an animal whose existence is highly dubious, but it’s more often a parrot or a beetle than the Yeti. Mostly it’s about questioning established wisdom, things that have been wrongly classified for years, and so on.
Do you think this is a legitimate field of study?
Not to be overly snarky, but I think this is zoology.
Zoology is the study of animals, whereas cryptozoology is the study of animals “whose existence has not been substantiated,” (according to the American Heritage Dictionary, anyway) and, as, Colibri says, mainly of animals whose existence all but a few people have given up on. You could probably call people searching for thylacines or four-finned dolphins cryptozoologists, but the term almost always applies to semi-legendary creatures like Nessie, Sasquatch, and so on. If it’s undertaken with the appropriate amount of skepticism, sure, it can be a science, but most people who approach such things rigorously would just consider themselves zoologists.
And as the Fortean Times now out also includes such articles as the “tale of…a teenage Hungarian medium…taken over by the personality of a middle-aged Spanish washerwoman” and “Patrick Harpur presents an alternative history of guardian angels,” one does wonder where their standards lie.
Except that it’s the examination of claims that are dubious, controversial or just plain weird. That’s where the crypto part comes from.
I’ve not seen those articles, and will reserve judgement until I have. I presume you are talking about issue #220, which I don’t have yet.
I’ll just say that in my experience FT mostly takes a sceptical approach to this type of story. I’ve never seen them report this sort of thing as being true.
From Merriam-Webster:
It seems to be that Merriam-Webster is under the impression that it is about hunting for Yetis and Sasquatches as well. The operative word here of course is “legendary”; otherwise I would be engaged in cryptozoology everytime I go out birding.
I would say by the articles they include that they are using a definition of cryptozoology different from that used by Merriam Webster.
This is ordinary zoology.
This is ordinary zoology.
This is ordinary zoology.
This is ordinary zoology.
Nonsense. If you define cryptozoology that way then I’m a cryptozoologist, and so are most of my colleagues. I’ve helped discover new species; I’ve looked for possible new species based on what I was told by local Indian guides; and I’ve looked for species thought to be locally extinct. I certainly don’t consider myself to be a cryptobiologist, nor would most people consider me to be one.
If you consider cryptozoology to be equivalent to much of zoology in general, as you seem to, then yes. But if you accept the dictionary definition, then most of cryptozoology is not legitimate.
I think that in trying to clarify I may have obfuscated.
Most of “herbal medicine” is crackpottery – but cf. curare and digitalis. Most of “homeopathy” is likewise quackery – but inoculations are precisely homeopathic in their function. There are many chiropractors who do not echo, and some who practice effective medicine.
There are more loons practicing cryptozoology than there are in order Gaviiformes. Which should not obscure the fact that there is a semi-legitimate discipline by that name.
When Colibri was following up native folk tales in pursuit of new species of bird, he was practicing cryptozoology – good cryptozoology. The distinction is that CZ pursues unreliable leads in pursuit of evidence suggestive of species unknown to science, or believed to be extinct. A cryptozoologist is someone who makes a living from amassing and following up such leads, and of course writing about his work, as a standard practice; a “phanerozoologist” (to coin a term for a normal practicioner of zoology in order to draw the distinction) will generally study what’s of interest in an area, pursuing CZ leads only occasionally.
Just as the popular press seems to have a terrible time distinguishing between solar system and galaxy, between dinosaur and extinct reptile generally, etc., the typical cryptozoological writing is abysmally unscientific, drawing no distinction between what Uncle Fred saw the second week of deer camp when if a Sasquatch had walked into camp, he would have offered it a beer, and the scholarly work of someone like Colibri. But there are a few men who specifically try to seek out the oddities and the unexplained, setting their standard for evidence lower than is accepted in “phanerozoology,” for the purpose of evaluating claims about “unknown animals.” Their work is as much anthropological in nature as zoological – what legends and folk-tales of odd animals does this people preserve? What if anything is the natural evidence supporting them? Done properly, such work complements the higher-standard scholarship of “real” zoologists by preserving such accounts and by applying Sturgeon’s Law and weeding out the crap.
Of course, every field has its share of nuts, and cryptozoology has more than its share, but like Poly said, when it is at its best cryptozoology is a cross-disciplinary investigation into possibilities. In The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times Adrienne Mayor uses history, archaeology, and paleontology to argue that stories of the griffon were based on Protoceratops fossils weathered out of the exposed bedrock of the Gobi. A traveller would not want to stick around until a live one showed up and would be happy to make up some stories to fill the long hours around the campfire.
Is it classic zoology? Not really but it does answer the question, “Were griffons real?” with a resounding, “Sorta.”
I have a bit of an interest in cryptozoology. The hunt for “legendary” animals is the most famous branch, but there are others. Much of cryptozoology invoves investigating reports of animals that are supposed to be extinct, but which are still reported occasionally. The Tasmanian tiger is a perfect example. It’s supposed to be extinct, but stories of people seeing them still turn up. If you reported seeing a passenger pigeon, and someone came out to check into your report, that would be cryptozoology.
Another branch of cryptozoology involves investigating animals that are known to exist, but are being reported in a place where that animal shouldn’t be found. Britain’s “alien big cats” are probably the most famous example of this.
No they aren’t.
This drives me crazy. Homeopaths believe that if a material that causes a symptom is diluted sufficiently it will counteract those symptoms. How diluted should it be? So diluted that no molecules of the original substance remains. Homeopathic treatments are distilled water. Homeopathy is quackery of the second-worst sort, in that at least distilled water won’t hurt you, unlike some quack treatments.
Homeopathy has absolutely no similarity to vaccination. None.
To clarify, on occasions when I have used information from my local guides, it was because they described to me a bird that didn’t match the description of anything previously known from that area. This has happened to me a couple of times in eastern Panama in poorly-explored remote mountains where unknown endemic species with very small ranges could still exist. Whether those birds exist and still remain to be found, or whether the guides’ descriptions were just bad, remains to be seen. However, I would not exactly call this relying on “legendary” information, and so I wouldn’t count it as cryptozoology.
For something like the sao la, I think it’s debatable whether to consider that cryptozoology or not. The animal wasn’t exactly “legendary,” since no outsider had any idea it existed until just before it was found, and the locals just regarded it as an ordinary member of the fauna. However, it was very surprising to find such a large mammal in such a relatively well known area as Vietnam. Because many zoologists would have considered the possibility of such a find as very unlikely, by that token it could have been considered to be cryptozoological.
The thing is that no real practicing zoologist builds a career on this sort of thing; it’s just too rare to actually find something. So no legitimate zoologist is likely to refer to him or herself as a cryptozoologist; instead they are a mammalogist/ornithologist/ichthyologist who happened to make a lucky find. As I said above, the discoverers of the sao la would not have considered themselves to be cryptozoologists.
Those who bill themselves as cryptozoologists virtually never find what they are looking for. Therefore the “field” of cryptozoology can’t be considered to be a legitimate one, even though an occasional find might be cryptozoological in some sense.
And Colibri once again hits the nail on the head.
You can’t build a career out of discovering charismatic new species. You have to get lucky. So anyone who bills themselves as a professional new species discoverer is going to face a lot of disappointment in their career.
Unless you work on tiny beetles, nematodes, or fungi. But few of these are found on the basis of local legends. 
Wait a minute here, care to explain this?