Ed Cryptozoology and megafauna

Moon-Spinner said:
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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They also want to be thought of as scientists without having to bother with any real science.
 
Spindrift said:
Originally Posted by Moon-Spinner
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).
...
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They also want to be thought of as scientists without having to bother with any real science.
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The bolded quote sums it up, I think.
 
If things like this and these and these and these and these bore someone, that's a pretty good sign that I don't need to have anything to do with them. Bigfoot is boring--it's a big ape. So what? There are lots of apes. There are things much weirder in the world. Much, much weirder. Gratuitous even weirder stuff.

Those last two were quite disturbing to me. Not that there's anything graphic or disgusting about them--it's more like, my toaster just asked me to pass the salt. Things just shouldn't do what those last two links show them doing.
 
Dinwar said:
If things like this and these and these and these and these bore someone, that's a pretty good sign that I don't need to have anything to do with them. Bigfoot is boring--it's a big ape. So what? There are lots of apes. There are things much weirder in the world. Much, much weirder. Gratuitous even weirder stuff.

Those last two were quite disturbing to me. Not that there's anything graphic or disgusting about them--it's more like, my toaster just asked me to pass the salt. Things just shouldn't do what those last two links show them doing.
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The video of the crawling Crinoid was really cool. Now if it would grow to 50 feet long and attack a coastal town, then it might interest a cryptozoologist - LOL
 
Google for Arthropleura and despair...

And if you want a "WTF" moment, google for Sharovipteryx mirabilis images...
 
Dinwar said:
If things like this and these and these and these and these bore someone, that's a pretty good sign that I don't need to have anything to do with them.
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I think the problem isn't that any specific thing you can point at is necessarily boring, it's rather what Spindrift said - they want to be scientists without doing science. This is far from unique to zoology. Most non-scientists have a very romanticised, Hollywood-type view of how science works. It's all shouting "Eureka" amid amazing discoveries, explosions and suspiciously attractive girls who you can tell are nerdy because they're wearing designer glasses. But actual science is mostly just routine and desk work, and when some people see that they want nothing to do with it. They want giant monsters right now, not a 9-5 desk job for the rest of their life that may or may not turn up giant monsters every now and then.

Obviously I don't think they're right to consider it boring. We don't get many giant monsters turning up here, which is fortunate since I'm a particle physicist and not a biologist, but even the routine work is interesting enough that I have yet to get bored and quit my job. But it's at least understandable that people who have been fed a diet of Hollywood and front page sensationalism feel rather let down when they are shown how actual science works.
 
Cuddles said:
They want giant monsters right now, not a 9-5 desk job for the rest of their life that may or may not turn up giant monsters every now and then.
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Cryptozoology is really just a baroque form of literature. It isn't a science and it really isn't an endeavor of society. It is almost entirely composed of people reading and writing. These people are very much compelled by reading anecdotes of encounters with strange creatures and by the same token they also write these stories. Actually going out to try to find the creatures is often besides the point.

It has no legitimacy as some "other branch" of zoology.

Having worked in the Bigfoot Trenches of JREF now, I'd say that they don't strike me as a lot of people who want to be scientists. What they really want is a good campfire story and maybe one day to catch a glimpse of an Ohio giant ape. Are Bigfooters not Cryptozoologists?
 
Further, CZ has no working mechanisms to correct itself for accuracy or exclude anything that is bogus. It thrives on unfalsifiabilities instead of fleeing from them.

The Albert Ostman story of being abducted by a family of Bigfoots is a decent piece of fiction. But it remains in Bigfootery as largely a mystery and a story that virtually everyone knows. His story is available for retelling and you will be encouraged to "decide for yourself" if it was true or not.

The Ostman story must be part of cryptozoology, right?
 
Cryptozoology is not science in any way, shape or form. It is built on hypotheses that cannot be falsified, anecdotes that cannot be verified and evidence that is invariably misidentified or outright hoax. If it were left in the world of entertainment, it would be fine. But it isn't. We have a media that seems determined to pretend to take it seriously. We have 'experts' who demand to be treated with the same respect and accorded the same gravitas as scientists who have devoted their lives to the study, and advancement, of their field.

As woo goes, it is perhaps less harmful than alt-med or psychics/mediums, but that doesn't stop it from being exploitative. The gullible and naive are still being fleeced. Amongst the worst culprits are the TV channels that happily give airtime to fraudsters. And they ARE fraudsters.

Cryptozoology and it's practitioners have contributed absolutely nothing to the sum of human knowledge. They have instead made money by selling books full of nonsense to people who really should know better.

I suppose I can say that at least it's victims aren't the desperate or the bereaved, but that's about the best that can be said of this particular brand of woo.
 
Jerrymander said:
One of the things I noticed about cryptozoology is that the creatures they are trying to find are all large vertebrates. Giving that the majority of undiscovered species are insects, you'll think they'd be interested in them too. I brought this up on the bigfoot forums and was told that new species of bugs or rodents aren't interesting.

So what do you all think?
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Cryptozoologists seem to want man like creatures to exist. Either big hominids like bigfoot or not so big humanoids in some remote jungle to be found. I guessa close second would be say a tasmanian wolf somehow still living or a big bird like the Moa or elephant bird was.

There was a strange goat like creature discovered in Vietnam some years ago but the woo woo crowd didn'tseem to be that excited by a familiar looking creature. As I recall it was a goat living like a deer or whatever.

I actually wish they would find a species of primate or whatever but the world is shrinking and unknown creatures are few and far between.
 
Moon-Spinner said:
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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Actually, it made a good BAD monster movie. "Dragon Wasps" -- it was bad bad bad. Had a great time laughing at it with my kid...
 
Cuddles said:
We don't get many giant monsters turning up here, which is fortunate since I'm a particle physicist and not a biologist, but even the routine work is interesting enough that I have yet to get bored and quit my job.
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Now, see, there's your problem. You need to turn up the intensity on the particle accelerator and make sure to hav an abundant supply of lizards, snakes, turtles, or whatever else you want to form the basis of your giant monster. These go into the target chamber.

You'll get your giant monsters in no time!

:D
 
Cainkane1 said:
Cryptozoologists seem to want man like creatures to exist. Either big hominids like bigfoot or not so big humanoids in some remote jungle to be found. I guessa close second would be say a tasmanian wolf somehow still living or a big bird like the Moa or elephant bird was.

There was a strange goat like creature discovered in Vietnam some years ago but the woo woo crowd didn'tseem to be that excited by a familiar looking creature. As I recall it was a goat living like a deer or whatever.

I actually wish they would find a species of primate or whatever but the world is shrinking and unknown creatures are few and far between.
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There have been a number of new primates found recently.......

Slow loris

Two Amazonian monkeys

Myanmar snub-nosed monkey

So, whether cryptozoologists want to find them or not is irrelevant. There are new primate species being discovered fairly regularly recently.

Mike
 
From Wikipedia on cryptozoology...

Before 1912, the komodo dragon was thought to be a mythological creature, and was called the giant monitor.
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What does "was thought" mean? Did all the people in the world think it was a myth? Was there a worldwide poll taken? Or does it only take a couple people saying that and you can then go ahead and apply it in a way that suggests everybody?

If you go to the source for the wiki blurb you get this without any reference...

The Komodo dragon was considered a mythological creature by the western world right, up until 1912. In 1910, after hearing about these 'land crocodiles', Lieutenant van Steyn van Hensbroek of the Dutch colonial administration in Indonesia, went in search of the Komodo.
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Who represents "the western world" and how were they polled on their belief in this lizard?

Did the question go like this... "There are rumors of a large reptile or crocodile species living on an island. Do you think this could be true?" And to that people universally answered "no it must be a myth"? Surely people must have understood that "new creatures" were being found and described and presented. Did everyone really say "No!" ???

And if they did (or did not) then how does a society actually go about monitoring its own state of mind and blanket opinion, so to speak?

There is a way of writing where you can make implications that an entire society is woo, or deluded, or perfectly brilliant or whatever. For example, imagine a historian writing in the year 2096; that author could say that "As late as 2013 the Western World still believed that Bigfoot was a real creature." He is writing about us. But it sure doesn't feel accurate without explaining what is actually going on right now with Bigfoot belief in "the Western World".
 
William Parcher said:
What does "was thought" mean?
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Thank you for illustrating something that has always bugged me about cryptozoology. The entire enterprise is based on the notion that there's intellectual entrenchment among the "scientific community" regarding specific creatures that are described by witnesses but mutually agreed upon at the annual ivory tower conference to be incapable of existing. Where would we be without those brave visionaries who thumb their noses at the establishment in their pursuit of truth!

Of course, these notions are, like everything in cryptozoology, utter poppycock.
 
Cainkane1 said:
There was a strange goat like creature discovered in Vietnam some years ago but the woo woo crowd didn'tseem to be that excited by a familiar looking creature. As I recall it was a goat living like a deer or whatever.
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The Saola, discovered in 1992.

Or, one of the three species of Muntjac discovered in Vietnam during the 1990's: the Leaf Muntjac, the Truong Son Muntjac, or the Giant Muntjac.

All undiscovered until recently, largely because decades of warfare had prevented scientists from accessing the area. Once the wars ended the species were found relatively quickly, despite the inaccessibility of the area and the lack of education among the residents.

So, if only we can end the decades of warfare that have plagued Oregon, we ought to be able to positively ID Bigfoot in short order.
 
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The Shrike said:
Thank you for illustrating something that has always bugged me about cryptozoology. The entire enterprise is based on the notion that there's intellectual entrenchment among the "scientific community" regarding specific creatures that are described by witnesses but mutually agreed upon at the annual ivory tower conference to be incapable of existing. Where would we be without those brave visionaries who thumb their noses at the establishment in their pursuit of truth!

Of course, these notions are, like everything in cryptozoology, utter poppycock.
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Agreed, but the citations are not saying that scientists are the "hard-headed bad guys who think wrong". They are saying that about all of society.

The proclamation is that prior to 1912 the western world believed that the big lizard on Komodo was a myth.

Again I ask that this notion be applied to Bigfoot right now and see the results. We know that in 2013 we have both believers and denialists in the western world. Zoom ahead 101 years - it's now 2114. An author could write..

1) Back in 2013, the western world believed that Bigfoot did not exist.

2) Back in 2013, the western world believed that Bigfoot did exist.

See how either could be accepted and how both are accurate, so to speak?
 
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