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Ed Cryptozoology and megafauna

Mr. Purple said:
Keep in mind, many species are "found" in museum and zoo collections- hardly the natural habitat of big foot hunters and their ilk.
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Ain't that the truth. A lifetime spent sorting through any one museum archives would be a lifetime well spent for any botonist, biologist, paleontologist,or geologist. That's how the Cambrian Explosion was discovered, for example--Walcott found the fossils, but no one did anything to them until two Ph.D. students said "Hey, that'd make a quick, easy project for us!" :D
 
There is, of course, a subset of 'footers who are convinced that bigfoot has been collected, but that its bones "are rolling around in a drawer at the Smithsonian."
 
The Shrike said:
There is, of course, a subset of 'footers who are convinced that bigfoot has been collected, but that its bones "are rolling around in a drawer at the Smithsonian."
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If bigfoot existed, I'd find that would be likely. 'footers should raise funds for a comprehensive cataloging effort of museums instead of silly expeditions to sit around campfires and tell ghost stories.
 
Miss_Kitt said:
It was only a few years ago that the four- to five- footlong *frugivorous* monitor lizard was found. I mean, how cool is THAT?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18741-meet-the-giant-fruiteating-monitor-lizard.html
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I think this is a particularly telling example:
But the local Agta and Ilongot people know it well: for them it is an important source of protein.
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It was only a few years ago that the lizard was identified and formally names by scientists, but people who lived in the area had been eating them long before that. Where are all the people eating bigfoots and Loch Ness monsters? People were happily eating whales even when it meant sailing days out to sea and throwing pointy sticks at the largest animals ever to exist. Why would the locals not be eating a large animal easily found on a nearby lake? The difference between cryptozoology and things like that lizard is that it's not just scientists who haven't found it yet, no-one has.
 
Dinwar said:
Ain't that the truth. A lifetime spent sorting through any one museum archives would be a lifetime well spent for any botonist, biologist, paleontologist,or geologist. That's how the Cambrian Explosion was discovered, for example--Walcott found the fossils, but no one did anything to them until two Ph.D. students said "Hey, that'd make a quick, easy project for us!" :D
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Not to mention (as is so often the case with reptiles) taxa being split into more and more species. The number of python species shot up within the last ten years based on re-classifying subspecies as species. To my knowledge, the Morelia amethystina complex was broken up in to a half dozen odd species. Blood pythons (Python brongersmai) were all one species a decade ago, and now they are represented by three different species. I bet monitor lizards (varanidae) are going to go through this as well.

In addition to the above mentioned lizard, I can remember several others being discovered over the last decade or so. V. melinus is one such example IIRC. Not a large frugivore, but a relatively big animal (~ 1-2 m in length).
 
Spindrift said:
If bigfoot existed, I'd find that would be likely. 'footers should raise funds for a comprehensive cataloging effort of museums instead of silly expeditions to sit around campfires and tell ghost stories.
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Hm...

Regular marketing doesn't work. No one cares about classifying huge numbers of boxes of fossils. Footers are obsessed, have copious amounts of free time, and want to be the ones to find the animal first--basically, except for the second point, just like paleontologists and anthropologists. Citizen science is becoming more and more popular (GalaxyZoo has how many zoos now?).

I see a marketing scheme. "Bigfoot believers! Do you want to find evidence of the elusive creature? There's SURE to be bones of it in the fossil collections of your local museum! For a mere $500 we'll train you to identify animal bones, then set you up for a volunteer position classifying collections material at one of our partner museums! You're SURE to find new species of all types, perhaps even the most majestic of all: Bigfoot!"

I'm a consultant. I have no shame. Exploiting people's delusions to advance the cause of science? Sounds like a freaking goldmine to me! :D
 
Dinwar said:
Hm...

Regular marketing doesn't work. No one cares about classifying huge numbers of boxes of fossils. Footers are obsessed, have copious amounts of free time, and want to be the ones to find the animal first--basically, except for the second point, just like paleontologists and anthropologists. Citizen science is becoming more and more popular (GalaxyZoo has how many zoos now?).

I see a marketing scheme. "Bigfoot believers! Do you want to find evidence of the elusive creature? There's SURE to be bones of it in the fossil collections of your local museum! For a mere $500 we'll train you to identify animal bones, then set you up for a volunteer position classifying collections material at one of our partner museums! You're SURE to find new species of all types, perhaps even the most majestic of all: Bigfoot!"

I'm a consultant. I have no shame. Exploiting people's delusions to advance the cause of science? Sounds like a freaking goldmine to me! :D
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There's also the added benefit that there is a very slight chance that a footer may just possibly actually learn, and even understand, something about science. Of course, he/she would then realise that they'd been wasting their life trying to find something that most children could have told them doesn't exist. Which could lead to them being quite angry with whoever got them involved with footers in the first place. But that's a chance we'll just have to take.
 
Akri said:
It's probably in part because they don't know enough to find the actual discoveries interesting. The less flashy something is, the more in-depth knowledge you need to appreciate it. Cryptozoologists don't have the background needed to find actual discoveries interesting.

And like Dinwar said, this is true of all of us (I certainly find dinosaurs more interesting than mollusks, because dinos are big and flashy and look good when made out of felt, while mollusks are small and all look the same to me). But it's a bit problematic when you're focus is biology-related, but you lack the knowledge to be interested in the non-flashy stuff.
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You know, I'm a long way from being an expert on mollusks, but I don't think a squid looks very much like a clam.
 
That sounds great Dinwar. I'd charge a bit more however. The museums could use the money and frankly the amount that people value something is often based on how much they paid for it. Set up some sort of "pay per day" system and you might even be able to tap into the sunk cost fallacy!
 
azzthom said:
There's also the added benefit that there is a very slight chance that a footer may just possibly actually learn, and even understand, something about science. Of course, he/she would then realise that they'd been wasting their life trying to find something that most children could have told them doesn't exist. Which could lead to them being quite angry with whoever got them involved with footers in the first place. But that's a chance we'll just have to take.
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Hopefully by then they'll be so captivated by fossils that they'll be too distracted to do too much murdering. Though there IS a long and proud tradition amongst rock and fossil hunters of taking someone out into the middle of nowhere to have....ahem....chat.
 
Weak Kitten said:
That sounds great Dinwar. I'd charge a bit more however. The museums could use the money and frankly the amount that people value something is often based on how much they paid for it. Set up some sort of "pay per day" system and you might even be able to tap into the sunk cost fallacy!
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YES!!!! They're already throwing money away on books about fiction--this would hook 'em for life!
 
Jerrymander said:
One of the things I noticed about cryptozoology is that the creatures they are trying to find are all large vertebrates. ...

So what do you all think?
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Cryptozoology is basically a fantasy pastime. Very very little involves trying to find any creature - even large ones. The vast majority is reading and conversing and looking at pictures and drawings. A person could spend a lifetime as a "cryptozoologist" without ever leaving a Manhattan apartment.

This subject is about ideas and how those ideas entertain and satisfy some people.


It's easy to understand why the "little and mundane creatures" do not compel the cryptofans.

1. They do not capture imagination before they are discovered, because for the most part they are unknown and/or unimagined before scientific confirmation.

2. They do not capture imagination and intense interest after they are confirmed because there is nothing particularly captivating about the creature as compared to other similar creatures.

3. It's difficult to captivate profound intrigue and awe in other people when you tell them about the creature.
 
Dinwar said:
Hm...

Regular marketing doesn't work. No one cares about classifying huge numbers of boxes of fossils. Footers are obsessed, have copious amounts of free time, and want to be the ones to find the animal first--basically, except for the second point, just like paleontologists and anthropologists. Citizen science is becoming more and more popular (GalaxyZoo has how many zoos now?).

I see a marketing scheme. "Bigfoot believers! Do you want to find evidence of the elusive creature? There's SURE to be bones of it in the fossil collections of your local museum! For a mere $500 we'll train you to identify animal bones, then set you up for a volunteer position classifying collections material at one of our partner museums! You're SURE to find new species of all types, perhaps even the most majestic of all: Bigfoot!"

I'm a consultant. I have no shame. Exploiting people's delusions to advance the cause of science? Sounds like a freaking goldmine to me! :D
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I like this idea.

Dinwar said:
Hopefully by then they'll be so captivated by fossils that they'll be too distracted to do too much murdering. Though there IS a long and proud tradition amongst rock and fossil hunters of taking someone out into the middle of nowhere to have....ahem....chat.
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Bring back the Bone Wars!!
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Everybody already knows that there are lots of different species of small critters, and that small things can more easily go unnoticed. So there's little expectation of already knowing about all of them. Megafauna seem more like they should already be familiar. If I'm walking around in the woods and I see a bug, snail, or caterpillar I don't recognize, I just think "Hey, I don't think I've seen one of those before", but it's nothing special because I don't expect to recognize every bug, snail, or caterpillar out there. If I'm walking around in the woods and I see something the size of a deer that isn't shaped like a deer, I'll be significantly more surprised and confused because I'm already pretty sure nothing like that is supposed to be there.
 
I think most, if not all, self-proclaimed cryptozoologists are hoping to be the one to prove the existence of some mythological creature. Real zoology is a bore, when compared to the "Monsters" that everybody says don't exist (except in Monster movies).

The only way they would find a new specie of insect interesting is if the insect was gigantic in size, shot fire and was terrorizing a village somewhere (basically, something that would make a good monster movie).
 
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