Cryptozoology

[Copperknickers II]

'What!' i hear you say, 'why are you putting a thread about cryptozoology in a science forum'. And i don't blame you, there are people out there who would believe in mermaids based on 'remains' that were actually monkeys sown onto fishes etc. But there are also some tremendous success stories, such as the gorilla, the giant squid, the sunfish, the list goes on for far longer than that.

So this thread is not about ghosts and fairies and ogres and witches, it is about mythical creatures that you think actually exist, maybe you have had an experience yourself? Discuss the topic thoroughly, and weigh up the matter carefully before coming to a conclusion if you can.

[Bokks]

hmmm, while it may be possible that something a lot like Nessy exists deep under the ocean, I find it hard to believe that a pod of such dinosaurs could exist in an enclosed Loche in Scotland without at least one full body washing ashore over the last 500 years of regional perpetual habitation.

Beyond that I doubt that there's any apatosaurus like (I would say brontosaurus but apparently they were never real) dinosaur living amongst the pygmies of Central Africa, and don't even get me started about Sasquatch. Something like the yeti, though, that may exist somewhere. It's hard to believe that of all the proto-human species that existed 300,000 years none at all exist to this day, there must be some neanderthal man kinda thing out there some where...

I was going to post a picture of some lanky teacher, but I thought that'd detract from the thread as a whole...
... kinda cliched, too.

[Copperknickers II]

Actually apatosaurus and brontosaurus are the same thing, just renamed.

Anyway, why is sasquatch so unbeleivable when yeti is such a possiblity? To take a critical view of things, the sasquatch has 2 of the worlds biggest countries to roam about undiscovered in, and a steady trickle of sightings every year, whilst yeti come from a people with a bit of a history of exxagerating or fabricating, plus they have been looked for in their native habitat (relatively small considering they should really stand out quite easily in the snow with their footprints) and have about sixty different varieties if you go to each tibetan temple that claims to have a yeti 'scalp' (aka goat fur hat in one famous case).

Maybe we'll get lucky, and a yeti will jump out with a hand full of snow to throw at the olympic torch on its way up everest.

[Bokks]

I thought the apatosaurus has a different head, and the bronto was the body of the apato with the wrong head on it.

Anyway, I overlooked the snow detail (you actually caught me on a real slip up of mine! Not many people can claim that!) but I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that a yeti would have an expanse of caves and sparsely populated habitat to hide in, whereas while a sasquatch would have a far larger area that area is inherently well populated. While there are a lot of sightings these are also done by people who have a history of exxagerating, generally the same people who claim to see Alien Craft UFOs after a long night of libations, if you know what I mean. There has never been a sasquatch that ran through New York City, despite the fact that NYC would be smack dab in the middel of its natural habitat, as well as dozens if not hundreds of other large American and Canadian cities. One could say that the sasquatch is "timid", but so are deer and they get stuck in NYC, Boston, Hartford, Philly and other cities all the time, wildlife knows no borders...
Now i seriously doubt that anyone has actually seen a yeti, at least while knowing what it was, and there are certainly no yeti scalps on a table somewhere, but I still think that the possibility for yetis to exists is more plausible.

There is one detail that I'll gve to the sasquatch. When tribes that make totem poles were discovered by white explorers and settlers, those American Indian tribes usually has a face on a totem that was down right simian. The thing is, though, that no monkeys of any kind are native to North America, making these peoples incapable of having ever seen a monkeys face, unless there are futher reaching chains of trade and contact than we ever knew, which is possible but not very plausible, or they did have contact with a simian creature, the sasquatch....

[MrMofo]

unscientific wiki post woot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus

[Da Skinna]

Can neither be proven nor unproven.

I watched this one special where they came up inconclusive on these tests they ran on animal hairs cuaght in special traps. They found two species they never knew exist, one an anteater or something, one a bird, and one case they could not find what exactly it was, the kind of hair, but knew it to be primate.

[Copperknickers II]

Actually it can be proven pretty easily, but it can never be disproven. Consider this:

A man wants to prove that all crows are black. He goes off and collects ten thousand crows, all of which are black. Another man says not all crows are black, just ten thousand of them are. So the first man goes and gets another 90,000 crows. The second man smiles, and produces just one small hatchling white crow. In an instant, every single effort of the first man is worthless, 100,000 cannot stand up to one.

A cryptozoologist's favourite story

[Bokks]

Actually it can be proven pretty easily, but it can never be disproven. Consider this:

A man wants to prove that all crows are black. He goes off and collects ten thousand crows, all of which are black. Another man says not all crows are black, just ten thousand of them are. So the first man goes and gets another 90,000 crows. The second man smiles, and produces just one small hatchling white crow. In an instant, every single effort of the first man is worthless, 100,000 cannot stand up to one.

A cryptozoologist's favourite story

You can say that again! That's the flaw with cryptozoology, though, which keeps it from being a science. Real sciences demand that the person who made a claim protect it by their own work and endeavors, that should you say something it is then your responcibility to prove it yourself. Cryptozoologists, and other pseudoscientific exploits, demand that what you say is right, and demands that everyone else prove that it isn't. technically speaking that story that you said was the scientists favorite story, since it has the person produce his own white crow, prove his own claim. The cryptozoologists version has the guys simply say that he has seen 100,000 black crows, and that it doesn't prove of the other billion crows out there one isn't white, or not black.
In that end, I have no prblem believing in sasquatch, or even in the Loch Ness Monster. I just want anyone who believes that they are real to prove it to me, to show it to me, before I start believing in it. Is that so hard to ask? I'm willing to say that not all crows are black, and I don't even want 100,000 or even 1,000,000 black crows to show anything, I just want that one that isn't.

[Old_Rome]

Elephant thought EXTINCT since 18th century discovered.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...elephants.html

[The Super Pope]

I remember watching a programme where they took the first ever photograph of a giant squid. Who knows what lurks in our seas?

[MrMofo]

I remember watching a programme where they took the first ever photograph of a giant squid. Who knows what lurks in our seas?

sasquatch

[Da Skinna]

El Chupacabra makes for interesting discussion.

[Anachronist]

There's your proof right there gentlemen!

[Richard]

El Chupacabra makes for interesting discussion.

Sweeeet, was that manbearpig?

[Da Skinna]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SmHmnfgON4A

[Chiron202]

The issue for alot of these animals (cryptoZOOlogy) is their reported size. New little guys are discovered all the time. New large plants are discovered all the time, albeit slightly less frequently. But with Yeti's or Sasquatches, given their reported environment, their reported size, and our ability to readily explore it (as opposed to deep ocean research). It is rediculuously unlikely that they exist.

Sometimes we have issues determining weather a species of large animal is actually extinct or merely (severely) endangered. But the consensus is, that when a large animal gets to that point, there are almost certainly not enough members left to maintain the population (they have to find eachother), and even if their is an incredibly small mating population, their rate of inbreeding will be so severe (because their can never be that many at any given time as we would find them) that the population would be bound to fail. SO if sasquatch or yeti lived as a population of just 10 really hard to find individuals for millenia, the genetic consequences of inbreeding would have killed them off a long long time ago.

(This is the reasoning behind moving animals to the extinct list, because people will object that there might be some left, but in the vast majority of cases that species is already boned even if there are a handful left.)

Oh another reason besides inbreeding, so much genetic diversity has been lost because of the severe population bottleneck, that it radically limits the survivability of the surviving population... (i.e. every Yeti left might have a bad case of a Yeti genetic disease like hemophilia. Because the event that originally decimated the population was randomly selective towards that trait and that's how the dice afterwards were rolled...)

[Bokks]

I just have to say that Chiron202 made an excellent point right there!

Now, the problem with the Chupacabra is that there are so many varying reports that detail what he looks like. They range from being a goat to being humanoid to looking like an alien to looking like a rabid, deformed centaur or something. I'm fairly sure that El Cupacabra is the least real of all species on the list, I find the prospect of running into a unicorn more likely.

Again, though, just send a breathing, or clearly real dead, specimen to Washington DC--or to my house--and I'll believe you. (I'd prefer that you bound it or something, should it be sent alive to my house...)

[Copperknickers II]

Nice post, Chiron, but remember these habitats are not quite as 'readily explorable' and contained as you suggest. The pacific forest in north wetern north america (the reported home of Bigfoot) is a huge, impenetrable place, which is relatively unexplored. Imo, there is a huge possibility that there could be a large, smart animal population living in their without a huge degree of our knowledge.

[Bokks]

Nice post, Chiron, but remember these habitats are not quite as 'readily explorable' and contained as you suggest. The pacific forest in north wetern north america (the reported home of Bigfoot) is a huge, impenetrable place, which is relatively unexplored. Imo, there is a huge possibility that there could be a large, smart animal population living in their without a huge degree of our knowledge.

I wouldn't really describe the sasquatch wilderness as unexplored. certainly sparsley/not populated but people have probably visited about 90% of that area. There are no real wild areas left in North America. Sasquatch living in Canada is more likely, but drunk Americans report most of the sightings, and of the Canadians that do it's also the perpetually drunk who tend to sleep in dumpsters when their girlfriends throw them out of the house. (and there is a surprisingly high number of individuals who do this... Canadian dumpsters must smell like roses!)

[Chiron202]

Nice post, Chiron, but remember these habitats are not quite as 'readily explorable' and contained as you suggest. The pacific forest in north wetern north america (the reported home of Bigfoot) is a huge, impenetrable place, which is relatively unexplored. Imo, there is a huge possibility that there could be a large, smart animal population living in their without a huge degree of our knowledge.

The size of a man? (Reportedly bigger!) Just to reinforce my point, and becaues I'm a curious dork with time, I did some searches of some research databases my college library has access to for "species" discover" and "pacific northwest" assuming that pacific northwest is a common enough phrase for refferring to that biome. I got a few crickets, a fly, and some other random little guys, but nothing terribly interesting. (Except for some lichens, which is only interesting because the new species are hybrids from species we already knew about.) Half the hits were somehow not even from the pacific northwest. But the point is, there are serious people out there doing this kind of work, looking for much smaller things, and no bigfoot.

Another point I should mention, is that even an intelligent being leaves evidence of its existence (esp a man sized one, I can't stress that enough). What are these bigfeet (the correct plural?) doing with carcasses? Are they hunting with tools? What about excrement? Evidence of fire (we'ed be able to find recently used primitive tools in all these cases, and more than we could chaulk up to Indian populations (whose tools would be more advanced anyway) or die hard survival enthusiasts.) Even if we cant get a live one we should have a dead one, and even if no dead one, we should have some poop, or something like that.

Right now, the overwhelming evidence is: no bigfoot. The very biology of their existence would be the single most remarkable thing in the history of ecology, and probably violate everything we do generally understand about ecological population dynamics.