What is Cryptozoology?

Looking for those mythical things that ply the imagination and maybe your reality
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Roger
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What is Cryptozoology?

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The word was coined by Ivan T. Sanderson, a noted biologist and television personality, who had a strong interest in the paranormal.

Cryptozoology is also one of those fields that borders on the edge of incredulity, and is often treated as a pseudo-science by an entrenched academia, and being regularly rejected by main stream scientists as being any kind of science, since the claim is crpytozoology does not follow the scientific method. In fact, most people involved with crytozoology are referred to as "monster hunters". The actual term, crypto-zoology is a reference to "the study of hidden animals".

However, the fossil discovery of Homo floresiensis, in 2003 on the island of Flores, has made it more difficult to dismiss the more mundane claims of cryptozoologists, and the mythos surrounding these claims.

As paleontologist Henry Gee, a senior editor at the journal Nature, put it,
The discovery of Homo floresiensis makes it much more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures are founded on grains of truth.

The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as yetis are founded on grains of truth.

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/nature- ... tozoology/

What does this mean for cryptozoology, exactly?

The main undercurrent rejecting the whole of cryptozoology as anything more than a pipe dream still continues to apply. However, there is a sort of crossover than wasn't there before. Most especially, when it involves offshoots considered to be relatives of Homo sapiens.

For example,
Orang Pendek (Indonesian for "short person"), is the most common name given to a cryptid, or cryptozoological animal, that reportedly inhabits remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra. The animal has allegedly been seen and documented for at least one hundred years by forest tribes, local villagers, Dutch colonists and Western scientists and travellers. Consensus among witnesses is that the animal is a ground-dwelling, bipedal primate that is covered in short fur and stands between 80 and 150 cm (30 and 60 in) tall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orang_Pendek

In short (pardon the pun), cryptozoology is the ongoing discovery of creatures (cryptids) that main stream science has written off as fables, myths, legends and hoaxes.

The funny thing is, most marine scientist and other skeptics denied the existence of the Kraken, yet, over the last 20 years, as we explore Earth's oceans more extensively, multiple encounters of giant. and even colossal. squid have been reported, and a few have even been captured. These squid weigh anywhere from 1100 lbs to 4000 lbs, and can be over 43 feet in length. Although not quite the Kraken of lore, evidence is mounting that at some point in time, and perhaps existing even today, there lived a squid so large and so powerful that it killed a 45-foot prehistoric ichthyosaurs. This prehistoric squid was probably close to a hundred feet in length and weighed over 10,000 pounds.

The problem with finding fossilized remains of these prehistoric squid, or for that matter, more modern remains of such squid, is that because they're mostly soft tissue, any remnants quickly disappear through decay, or more likely, by other marine creatures feeding off the soft tissue. What is the hard bits, that are not so easily destroyed, like the horn, and claws, can be covered up and hidden by the shifting sea bottom before anyone can discover these evidence.

As with any worthwhile endeavor, cryptozoology serves a purpose, that is largely ignored by the far more respectable fields of the accepted science branches that nominally deal with exotic creatures, and that is finding evidence to prompt further research into these cryptids, at least until science comes along and steals the limelight. So, hunt on monster hunters with head held high, arms akimbo, and legs ready to run.


What reality are you from?
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