• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

jerrywayne

Graduate Poster
jerrywayne
Joined
Oct 25, 2010
Messages
1,083
Cryptozoology, unlike zoology, depends primarily on eyewitness accounts. Some cryptozoology enthusiasts understand that eyewitness testimonies are not definitive because of the potential problems inherent in such accounts. Other advocates accept, at least provisionally, sightings, and others accept a body of eyewitness stories as surely valid.

I would like to examine various aspects of particular cryptid or unknown animal sightings to make a general argument that skeptics are rightfully doubting of eyewitness testimonies when it comes to the extraordinary claims of undocumented, unknown or out-of-place large animals.

My first example relates to the alleged lake "monster" said to live in British Columbia's Lake Okanagan and nick-named "Ogopogo."

In 1989, Ken Chaplin and his father and daughter thought they saw Ogopogo entering an inlet area on the lake. Chaplin said he was between 75ft to 100ft away from the creature. He "saw [the creature's] features very clearly" and it was "snake or lizard like" with "no fur or hair;" his sister saw a long snake-like body over 15ft long.

Sounds like Chaplin and family had a typical Ogopogo sighting. He had no question as to what he saw. Unfortunately for Ogopogo lore, Chaplin not only saw the creature, he video recorded it too--twice. What he recorded was obviously not an anomalous lake serpent/monster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyb-hpDh-7M&feature=relmfu

Even after his recording was shown to represent a common animal, he and his sister refused to accept the mundane verdict.

Enter the local Ogopogo "expert," Arlene Gaal, to also deny that Chaplin recorded a common animal and to state he filmed a "miniature" Ogopogo.

This is a straightforward demonstration that people don't always see what they believe they are seeing, and that cryptozoological "experts" can be blind to the obvious.
 
Last edited:
That video is so depressing that it is hard to watch after the picture of the beaver is shown next to the "cryptid." How did this guy get on TV?

I guess "We say a mysterious creature in the lake" is better than "I am an idiot/con artist who likes to videotape beavers."
 
"I've asked myself thousands of times, is there a possibility that I could be mistaken, and I just can't see where I could be."

Well, I wonder how much credibility you gain among the credulous when you make this statement? It seems to be the closest thing to peer review for a crypto-zoologist.

The thing I am annoyed by is the constant insistence that it had no hair. Anyone who would make that statement with such certainty has obviously never seen an otter, a beaver, or a harbor seal in the water and then out of the water. All of those creatures have a thick coat of fur, yet in the water they are as smooth as a fish.
 
It seems to be a common problem everywhere. Here in the Champlain Valley we have our own famous lake monster, Champ. People have been seeing Champ since before Champlain came, but of course nobody has gotten a good picture, though oceanographers have covered much of the lake by side scan sonar.

If you do a search for "Mansi Photo" you'll find the best ever picture of Champ. What you may not realize when looking at it is that what is usually shown is an enhanced drastic crop of a picture taken with an Instamatic camera by someone who was not sure enough at the time of what she saw to take more than one picture.

There's an interesting analysis HERE. When I first saw the picture, after having sailed for some time on the lake, I immediately assumed it was a cormorant. At a certain scale on a bright day, the small choppy waves of the lake act as "dazzle camouflage" and change the apparent boundaries of common objects, and swimming cormorants look much like this at times. They appear, disappear, and shape shift as you watch. The experts are more inclined to think it's a log. Either way, we eagerly and hopefully await a proper picture of Champ. What fun it would be to be proven wrong.
 
StankApe said:
you really wanna have some fun with it, type in bigfoot on youtube......
Click to expand...

I'd rather type "I'm a con artist who likes to videotape beavers" in. :D

There are a few issues with eye-witness accounts. First and foremost, our memories play tricks on us. That's obvious. Less obvious, though, is the second issue: Most people don't actually have a very good foundation in biology. I've known people who've thought cows were deer, or that goats were male sheep, for example. They can't identify common domesticated organisms. How well do you think they'd identify something no one had ever seen before? And if you're not familiar with things like, say, bear behavior, how can you be sure that it's NOT a bear you're seeing? I couldn't tell you how a bear walks when it walks upright, and I'm sure that most people can't either. I do know what large fish look like when they skim the surface of the water, but get three or four together and it starts to look a lot like a sea monster. Put these people into an environment they're not intimately familiar with (even people who spent a lot of time in the woods get surprised on a very regular basis) and the odds of them misinterpreting a perfectly normal bit of ecology skyrockets.

Third, most people don't know how to look. A friend of my sister's once posted a photo on Facebook saying it was some sort of mythical monster (the goat-eating one with the name that's impossible to spell, I think). At first glance, yeah, it's a bit freaky. Night-vision, grainy, etc. My brother-in-law and I spent some time carefully analyzing the photo, though, and even a brief analysis showed it to be flawed. The limbs were all kinds of messed up, the thing had the weirdest head shape I've ever seen--and you could faintly see the number on the football uniform he was wearing. Because my brother-in-law and I have some training in anatomy (paleontology requiers at least a little) we were able to see specific flaws in the photo. People who's knowledge of anatomy is limited to Scrubs episodes can't, and don't know what to look for.
 
The Ri -- The Little Mermaid That Wasn't

The 1982 inaugural issue of CRYPTOZOOLOGY, the journal of the now defunct International Society of Cryptozoology, ran an article titled "The Ri --Unidentified Aquatic Animals of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea." This article alone almost sank the Society's reputation.

The article was written by Roy Wagner, head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia. Here is the article's abstract:

An aquatic creature roughly resembling the traditional "mermaid," and sometimes identified with it, is reportedly known through a variety of encounters with natives of Central New Ireland. The ri, as they are called, are frequently sighted by fishermen, occasionally netted or found dead on beaches, and sometimes eaten. Males, females, and juveniles are reported, subsisting on fish in the shallow seas around the Bismarck and Solomon archipelagos. It is unlikely that the animals are dugongs or porpoises, both of which are known to, and readily identified, by the natives.

Wagner, doing anthropological fieldwork in New Ireland, heard reports of an aquatic animal "described as an air-breathing mammal, with the trunk, genitalia, arms, and head of a human being, and legless lower trunk terminating in a pair of lateral fins, or flippers." The article's evidence for the existence of the ri is exclusively made up of eyewitness accounts of the living and dead cryptid. Wagner stated that his eyewitnesses were credible and "whatever the ri may be, they are certainly not dugongs. While the dugong is comparatively rare on the coasts of Central New Ireland, the Barok [native peoples] know it as bo narasi ('pig of the ocean"), and perfectly capable of identifying it."

Like many popular cryptozoologists, Wagner plays down the implausibility of the thing he wishes to consider or believe in. He admits: "From an anatomical and evolutionary perspective, the physical descriptions of the ri also pose problems, but a discussion of these is beyond the scope of this article." The "scope" of the article, then, is to create a cryptid based on eyewitness accounts and ignore the hard issues that might mitigate and compromise the sighting stories.

Mainstream science has long maintained that mermaid sightings of centuries past, while part of various cultures, probably originated in dugong sightings.
I always wondered how this idea arose. Certainly the dugong doesn't look human.

Wagner and the Society went back to New Ireland to find conclusive evidence of the ri. Funny. They found that the ri were indeed dugongs. This embarrassment was unfortunate publicity for the Society.

Where did the locals get the idea of dugongs as half-human and half-fish? Perhaps cultural contamination or mimicry: Wagner uncomprehensibly notes: "There is a tendency for natives to identify ri with the depiction of mermaids they have seen on matchbox covers or fish cans...."
 
Last edited:
Hello, I'm a new member and this is my first post.


Ever notice how cyptozoologists don't discover new species? They claim to want to discover new species but focus on celebrity monsters.
 
Jerrymander said:
Hello, I'm a new member and this is my first post.


Ever notice how cyptozoologists don't discover new species? They claim to want to discover new species but focus on celebrity monsters.
Click to expand...

You're right, and they all seem pretty weak on their zoology too.

And welcome to the forum!
 
Hey, compare real life (biology) with role-playing games (cryptozoology)...

Its publishing a paper about a new species of bug after years of hard work in the field, in the lab and in the library Vs. claiming there's a huge monster at your backyard while doing some "research" and posting through the internet.
 
man I wish there was a huge monster in my backyard! That would be pretty cool! I could be on the picture box and meet Oprah!
 
You know the drill. Just claim there is one. Sound sincere (whatever that means) and follow the sighting script/pattern trend of the season. Footprints, shaky blurry pictures of blobs and promisses about DNA assays are optional. Fame among cryptozoology circles is at your hands!
 
lol, I already have fame among many of them (or from their perspective Infamy) I was called the most hated skeptic in footery on the Bigfoot Evidence Blog!!!

Though I suspect that's hyperbole


My post had a point though (aside from picking fun at footers) most of us skeptics LOVE the idea of all this neat monster stuff. Many of us fell into it when we were kids by reading books written by many of the "golden age of footery" people. But we got older, learned about stuff like the scientific method, burden of proof and evidence and we started to see that none of these cryptids passed muster. But, If proven wrong tomorrow, I bet nobody would be happier than us to eat the crow!
 
The PGF is a really cool hoax IMHO. If you've ever read my blog then you'd know I enjoyed the film and think it was pulled off in a huge way. I'm not endorsing their actions (hoax for profit) but if it had to happen for someone, a dude that was dying from a disease (that did succumb to it a few years later) at least got to have a blast in some ways before he went you know? I see it all in that light, and his friends and family (many of whom were used in some fashion as well) helped him achieve that.

Someone needs to pull off a better bigfoot one soon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom