Cryptozoology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search
Part of a series on the
Paranormal
Main articles
Skepticism
Related
Parapsychology
vte
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that aims to prove the existence of
entities from the folklore record, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti,
the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, or the Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to
these entities as cryptids, a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not
follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by
mainstream science: it is neither a branch of zoology nor folklore studies. It was
originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T.
Sanderson.

Scholars have noted that the subculture rejected mainstream approaches from an
early date, and that adherents often express hostility to mainstream science.
Scholars have studied cryptozoologists and their influence (including the
pseudoscience's association with Young Earth creationism), noted parallels in
cryptozoology and other pseudosciences such as ghost hunting and ufology, and
highlighted uncritical media propagation of cryptozoologist claims.

Contents
1 Terminology, history, and approach
1.1 Young Earth creationism
1.2 Lack of critical media coverage
2 Reception and pseudoscience
3 Organizations
4 Museums and exhibitions
5 See also
6 Notes and citations
7 References
8 External links
Terminology, history, and approach
As a field, cryptozoology originates from the works of Bernard Heuvelmans, a
Belgian zoologist, and Ivan T. Sanderson, a Scottish zoologist. Notably, Heuvelmans
published On the Track of Unknown Animals (French Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées)
in 1955, a landmark work among cryptozoologists that was followed by numerous other
like works. Similarly, Sanderson published a series of books that assisted in
developing hallmarks of cryptozoology, including Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to
Life (1961).[1][2]

The term cryptozoology dates from 1959 or before – Heuvelmans attributes the
coinage of the term cryptozoology 'the study of hidden animals' (from Ancient
Greek: κρυπτός, kryptós "hidden, secret"; Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion "animal", and
λόγος, logos, i.e. "knowledge, study") to Sanderson.[1][3] Patterned after
cryptozoology, the term cryptid was coined in 1983 by cryptozoologist J. E. Wall in
the summer issue of the International Society of Cryptozoology newsletter.[4]
According to Wall "[It has been] suggested that new terms be coined to replace
sensational and often misleading terms like 'monster'. My suggestion is 'cryptid',
meaning a living thing having the quality of being hidden or unknown ... describing
those creatures which are (or may be) subjects of cryptozoological
investigation."[5] The Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun cryptid as "an
animal whose existence or survival to the present day is disputed or
unsubstantiated; any animal of interest to a cryptozoologist".[6] While used by
most cryptozoologists, the term cryptid is not used by academic zoologists.[7] In a
textbook aimed at undergraduates, academics Caleb W. Lack and Jacques Rousseau note
that the subculture's focus on what it deems to be "cryptids" is a pseudoscientic
extension of older belief in monsters and other similar entities from the folklore
record, yet with a "new, more scientific-sounding name: cryptids".[8]

While biologists regularly identify new species, cryptozoologists often focus on

creatures from the folklore record. Most famously, these include the Loch Ness
Monster, Bigfoot, the chupacabra, as well as other "imposing beasts that could be
labeled as monsters". In their search for these entities, cryptozoologists may
employ devices such as motion-sensitive cameras, night-vision equipment, and audio-
recording equipment. While there have been attempts to codify cryptozoological
approaches, unlike biologists, zoologists, botanists, and other academic
disciplines, however, "there are no accepted, uniform, or successful methods for
pursuing cryptids".[1] Some scholars have identified precursors to modern
cryptozoology in certain medieval approaches to the folklore record, and the
psychology behind the cryptozoology approach has been the subject of academic
study.[1]

Few cryptozoologists have a formal science education, and fewer still have a
science background directly relevant to cryptozoology. Adherents often misrepresent
the academic backgrounds of cryptozoologists. According to writer Daniel Loxton and
paleontologist Donald Prothero, "Cryptozoologists have often promoted 'Professor
Roy Mackal, PhD.' as one of their leading figures and one of the few with a
legitimate doctorate in biology. What is rarely mentioned, however, is that he had
no training that would qualify him to undertake competent research on exotic
animals. This raises the specter of 'credential mongering', by which an individual
or organization feints a person's graduate degree as proof of expertise, even
though his or her training is not specifically relevant to the field under
consideration." Besides Heuvalmans, Sanderson, and Mackal, other notable
cryptozoologists with academic backgrounds include Grover Krantz, Karl Shuker, and
Richard Greenwell.[9]

Historically, notable cryptozoologists have often identified instances featuring

"irrefutable evidence" (such as Sanderson and Krantz), only for the evidence to be
revealed as the product of a hoax. This may occur during a closer examination by
experts or upon confession of the hoaxer.[10]

Young Earth creationism

A subset of cryptozoology promotes the pseudoscience of Young Earth creationism,
rejecting conventional science in favor of a Biblical interpretation and promoting
concepts such as "living dinosaurs". Science writer Sharon A. Hill observes that
the Young Earth creationist segment of cryptozoology is "well-funded and able to
conduct expeditions with a goal of finding a living dinosaur that they think would
invalidate evolution."[11] Anthropologist Jeb J. Card says that "Creationists have
embraced cryptozoology and some cryptozoological expeditions are funded by and
conducted by creationists hoping to disprove evolution."[12] In a 2013 interview,
paleontologist Donald Prothero notes an uptick in creationist cryptozoologists. He
observes that "[p]eople who actively search for Loch Ness monsters or Mokele Mbembe
do it entirely as creationist ministers. They think that if they found a dinosaur
in the Congo it would overturn all of evolution. It wouldn't. It would just be a
late-occurring dinosaur, but that's their mistaken notion of evolution."[13]

Citing a 2013 exhibit at the Petersburg, Kentucky-based Creation Museum, which

claimed that dragons were once biological creatures who walked the earth alongside
humanity and is broadly dedicated to Young Earth creationism, religious studies
academic Justin Mullis notes that "Cryptozoology has a long and curious history
with Young Earth Creationism, with this new exhibit being just one of the most
recent examples".[14] Academic Paul Thomas analyzes the influence and connections
between cryptoozology in his 2020 study of the Creation Museum and the creationist
theme park Ark Encounter. Thomas comments that, "while the Creation Museum and the
Ark Encounter are flirting with pseudoarchaeology, coquettishly whispering
pseudoarchaeological rhetoric, they are each fully in bed with cryptozoology" and
observes that "Young-earth creationists and cryptozoologists make natural bed
fellows. As with pseudoarchaeology, both young-earth creationists and
cryptozoologists bristle at the rejection of mainstream secular science and lament
a seeming conspiracy to prevent serious consideration of their claims."[15]

Lack of critical media coverage

Media outlets have often uncritically disseminated information from cryptozoologist
sources, including newspapers that repeat false claims made by cryptozoologists or
television shows that feature cryptozoologists as monster hunters (such as the
popular and purportedly nonfiction American television show MonsterQuest, which
aired from 2007 to 2010). Media coverage of purported "cryptids" often fails to
provide more likely explanations, further propagating claims made by
cryptozoologists.[16]

Reception and pseudoscience

There is a broad consensus among academics that cryptozoology is a pseudoscience.
[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] The subculture is regularly criticized for reliance on
anecdotal information[24] and because in the course of investigating animals that
most scientists believe are unlikely to have existed, cryptozoologists do not
follow the scientific method.[25] No academic course of study nor university degree
program grants the status of cryptozoologist and the subculture is primarily the
domain of individuals without training in the natural sciences.[26][27][28]

Anthropologist Jeb J. Card summarizes cryptozoology in a survey of pseudoscience

and pseudoarchaeology:

Cryptozoology purports to be the study of previously unidentified animal species.

At first glance, this would seem to differ little from zoology. New species are
discovered by field and museum zoologists every year. Cryptozoologists cite these
discoveries as justification of their search but often minimize or omit the fact
that the discoverers do not identify as cryptozoologists and are academically
trained zoologists working in an ecological paradigm rather than organizing
expeditions to seek out supposed examples of unusual and large creatures.[29]
Card notes that "cryptozoologists often show their disdain and even hatred for
professional scientists, including those who enthusiastically participated in
cryptozoology", which he traces back to Heuvelmans's early "rage against critics of
cryptozoology". He finds parallels with cryptozoology and other pseudosciences,
such as ghost hunting and ufology, and compares the approach of cryptozoologists to
colonial big-game hunters, and to aspects of European imperialism. According to
Card, "Most cryptids are framed as the subject of indigenous legends typically
collected in the heyday of comparative folklore, though such legends may be heavily
modified or worse. Cryptozoology's complicated mix of sympathy, interest, and
appropriation of indigenous culture (or non-indigenous construction of it) is also
found in New Age circles and dubious "Indian burial grounds" and other
legends...invoked in hauntings such as the "Amityville" hoax ...".[30]

In a 2011 foreword for The American Biology Teacher, then National Association of
Biology Teachers president Dan Ward uses cryptozoology as an example of
"technological pseudoscience" that may confuse students about the scientific
method. Ward says that "Cryptozoology ... is not valid science or even science at
all. It is monster hunting."[31] Historian of science Brian Regal includes an entry
for cryptozoology in his Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia (2009). Regal says
that "as an intellectual endeavor, cryptozoology has been studied as much as
cryptozoologists have sought hidden animals".[32]
In a 1992 issue of Folklore, folklorist Véronique Campion-Vincent says:

Unexplained appearances of mystery animals are reported all over the world today.
Beliefs in the existence of fabulous and supernatural animals are ubiquitous and
timeless. In the continents discovered by Europe indigenous beliefs and tales have
strongly influenced the perceptions of the conquered confronted by a new natural
environment. In parallel with the growing importance of the scientific approach,
these traditional mythical tales have been endowed with sometimes highly artificial
precision and have given birth to contemporary legends solidly entrenched in their
territories. The belief self-perpetuates today through multiple observations
enhanced by the media and encouraged (largely with the aim of gain for touristic
promotion) by the local population, often genuinely convinced of the reality of
this profitable phenomenon."[33]
Campion-Vincent says that "four currents can be distinguished in the study of
mysterious animal appearances": "Forteans" ("compiler[s] of anomalies" such as via
publications like the Fortean Times), "occultists" (which she describes as related
to "Forteans"), "folklorists", and "cryptozoologists". Regarding cryptozoologists,
Campion-Vincent says that "this movement seems to deserve the appellation of
parascience, like parapsychology: the same corpus is reviewed; many scientists
participate, but for those who have an official status of university professor or
researcher, the participation is a private hobby".[33]

In her Encyclopedia of American Folklore, academic Linda Watts says that "folklore
concerning unreal animals or beings, sometimes called monsters, is a popular field
of inquiry" and describes cryptozoology as an example of "American narrative
traditions" that "feature many monsters".[34]

In his analysis of cryptozoology, folklorist Peter Dendle says that "cryptozoology

devotees consciously position themselves in defiance of mainstream science" and
that:

The psychological significance of cryptozoology in the modern world...serves to

channel guilt over the decimation of species and destruction of the natural
habitat; to recapture a sense of mysticism and danger in a world now perceived as
fully charted and over-explored; and to articulate resentment of and defiance
against a scientific community perceived as monopolising the pool of culturally
acceptable beliefs.[35]
In a paper published in 2013, Dendle refers to cryptozoologists as "contemporary
monster hunters" that "keep alive a sense of wonder in a world that has been very
thoroughly charted, mapped, and tracked, and that is largely available for close
scrutiny on Google Earth and satellite imaging" and that "on the whole the devotion
of substantial resources for this pursuit betrays a lack of awareness of the basis
for scholarly consensus (largely ignoring, for instance, evidence of evolutionary
biology and the fossil record)."[36]

According to historian Mike Dash, few scientists doubt there are thousands of
unknown animals, particularly invertebrates, awaiting discovery; however,
cryptozoologists are largely uninterested in researching and cataloging newly
discovered species of ants or beetles, instead focusing their efforts towards "more
elusive" creatures that have often defied decades of work aimed at confirming their
existence.[25]

Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1984) lists cryptozoology among examples of

human gullibility, along with creationism:

Humans are the most inventive, deceptive, and gullible of all animals. Only those
characteristics can explain the belief of some humans in creationism, in the
arrival of UFOs with extraterrestrial beings, or in some aspects of
cryptozoology. ...In several respects the discussion and practice of cryptozoology
sometimes, although not invariably, has demonstrated both deception and
gullibility. An example seems to merit the old Latin saying 'I believe because it
is incredible,' although Tertullian, its author, applied it in a way more
applicable to the present day creationists.[37]
Paleontologist Donald Prothero (2007) cites cryptozoology as an example of
pseudoscience and categorizes it, along with Holocaust denial and UFO abductions
claims, as aspects of American culture that are "clearly baloney".[38]

In Scientifical Americans: The Culture of Amateur Paranormal Researchers (2017),

Hill surveys the field and discusses aspects of the subculture, noting internal
attempts at creating more scientific approaches and the involvement of Young Earth
creationists and a prevalence of hoaxes. She concludes that many cryptozoologists
are "passionate and sincere in their belief that mystery animals exist. As such,
they give deference to every report of a sighting, often without critical
questioning. As with the ghost seekers, cryptozoologists are convinced that they
will be the ones to solve the mystery and make history. With the lure of mystery
and money undermining diligent and ethical research, the field of cryptozoology has
serious credibility problems."[39]

Organizations
There have been several organizations, of varying types, dedicated or related to
cryptozoology. These include:

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2018)
International Fortean Organization – a network of professional Fortean researchers
and writers based in the United States
International Society of Cryptozoology – an American organisation that existed from
1982 to 1998
Kosmopoisk – a Russian organisation whose interests include cryptozoology and
Ufology
Museums and exhibitions
The zoological and cryptozoological collection and archive of Bernard Heuvelmans is
held at the Musée Cantonal de Zoologie in Lausanne and consists of around "1,000
books, 25,000 files, 25,000 photographs, correspondence, and artifacts".[40]: 19 

In 2006, the Bates College Museum of Art held the "Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place
Scale" exhibition, which compared cryptozoological creatures with recently extinct
animals like the thylacine and extant taxa like the coelacanth, once thought long
extinct (living fossils). The following year, the American Museum of Natural
History put on a mixed exhibition of imaginary and extinct animals, including the
elephant bird Aepyornis maximus and the great ape Gigantopithecus blacki, under the
name "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids".[40]: 18–19