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Is there any cryptids that could be real?; Which cryptids could be real?
Topic Started: Feb 8 2018, 08:16 PM (4,376 Views)
Dr Nitwhite
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LittleLazyLass
Feb 10 2018, 10:06 PM
Several animals we accept today like okapis, komodo dragons, platypuses, and gorilllas all fit the definition of cryptids before their existence was proven.
For the record, that's why I put in the "not recently" disclaimer, perhaps what I should have said was that no cryptids have been properly described since the term was invented and people started calling things cryptids, which would have been around the 50's at the earliest.

Rhinos and platypi where "cryptids", but you have to remember at the time there where wide swathes of territory scientists hadn't really covered that well. While many of these species seemed outlandish to those at home, people still expected new animals to live in places they hadn't been to before.
Edited by Dr Nitwhite, Feb 11 2018, 05:32 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Well, it's inevitable the pool of possible discoveries dried up by the time the fifties came around.
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Dr Nitwhite
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Feb 11 2018, 05:34 PM
Well, it's inevitable the pool of possible discoveries dried up by the time the fifties came around.
I mean, that's what I said?
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Tartarus
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IIGSY
Feb 11 2018, 12:35 PM
This may just be me being me, but I think this is interesting

https://scotchandchocolate.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/why-do-cryptozoologists-hate-arthropods/

And no, this was not written by me
That article was pretty cringeworthy. So basically, the author hasn't heard of many arthropod cryptids, therefore "cryptozoologists hate arthropods". Oddly enough, I have on a number of occasions seen arthropods talked about in cryptozoological works. Hell, apparently the cryptozoological researcher Jonathan Downes once even listed among his favourite cryptids surviving St Helena earwigs and surviving British large tortoiseshell butterflies: https://forteanzoology.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/big-three-jon-downes.html
Of course there are many in cryptozoology who don't focus that much on arthropods, but the same can be said for mainstream zoology as well yet I don't see this leading to "why do zoologists in general hate arthropods?" or anything silly like that.

Another really dumb thing in the article is listing the mongolian death worm as an annelid. In reality, the preferred explanation most cryptozoologists interested in the death worm have given is that it is some sort of reptile. The annelid explanation is very much a minority one. And the electrical shocks reported have been speculated to be more likely static shocks (from static electricity generated by scales rubbing against sand) rather than an actual electrical ability, rendering the whole "lightning-crapping" description in the article downright absurd.
Overall, the article looks like it was written by someone who did the bare minimum of research and just decided to blurt out some nonsense about cryptozoological anti-arthropod sentiment with pretty much no basis to it whatsoever.
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IIGSY
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Tartarus
Feb 11 2018, 07:06 PM
IIGSY
Feb 11 2018, 12:35 PM
This may just be me being me, but I think this is interesting

https://scotchandchocolate.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/why-do-cryptozoologists-hate-arthropods/

And no, this was not written by me
That article was pretty cringeworthy. So basically, the author hasn't heard of many arthropod cryptids, therefore "cryptozoologists hate arthropods". Oddly enough, I have on a number of occasions seen arthropods talked about in cryptozoological works. Hell, apparently the cryptozoological researcher Jonathan Downes once even listed among his favourite cryptids surviving St Helena earwigs and surviving British large tortoiseshell butterflies: https://forteanzoology.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/big-three-jon-downes.html
Of course there are many in cryptozoology who don't focus that much on arthropods, but the same can be said for mainstream zoology as well yet I don't see this leading to "why do zoologists in general hate arthropods?" or anything silly like that.

Another really dumb thing in the article is listing the mongolian death worm as an annelid. In reality, the preferred explanation most cryptozoologists interested in the death worm have given is that it is some sort of reptile. The annelid explanation is very much a minority one. And the electrical shocks reported have been speculated to be more likely static shocks (from static electricity generated by scales rubbing against sand) rather than an actual electrical ability, rendering the whole "lightning-crapping" description in the article downright absurd.
Overall, the article looks like it was written by someone who did the bare minimum of research and just decided to blurt out some nonsense about cryptozoological anti-arthropod sentiment with pretty much no basis to it whatsoever.
I know the article itself is stupid, but it presents some interesting cryptids like the con rit and surviving trilobites.
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did anyone see the Loch Ness episode of River Monsers? he went fishing in the loch and along the rivers and rivermouths...

and then he explored the possibility that Nessie was an idea imported by the Vikings (or those Viking-like people Nat. Geo. mentioned coming to Britain in the 400s AD) of something they had encountered before coming to Britain...and then he found what matched the reports of the Loch Ness Monster!
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LittleLazyLass
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Didn't that episode focus on the greenland shark?
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LittleLazyLass
Feb 11 2018, 10:36 PM
Didn't that episode focus on the greenland shark?
no, that focus was in the final season.
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lamna
Feb 11 2018, 04:05 PM
Loch Ness is connected to the sea by the River Ness, which meets the sea at Inverness, the biggest city in the Highlands. It's not massive, but it isn't a small place and it's been around for a long time.

I think they would have noticed a "Nessie run"

It seems like many, maybe even most cryptids depend on not really understanding the area they are supposed to live.
I dunno; if Nessie was a bizarre eel, or had a reproductive cycle similarly to an eel, it might be possible for them to go through. For example, nobody ever notices that there's an eel run through the Bronx River, but I've actually interned with projects to track baby eels and recovered them from traps.
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Personally I feel like when talking about cryptids people tend to have two very different mindset (of course there is variation as with all opinions, but generally people I meet fall into two camps); people who think of the more grounded side of the cryptid definition when they hear the word including things such as displaced animals, animals which are od but perfectly logical, or not-as-extinct-as-we-thought animals (Britains big cats, Komodo dragons, and Thylacines respectively) and the camp of people who think of mystical monsters when they hear the word cryptid (mothman, chubacabra, Jeresy Devil).

This discussion has so far been mostly talking about the first category in terms of "which cryptids are real" but I'd be interested in seeing how yall feel about the second "kind" of cryptid / how these would be in the real world.
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lamna
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You are describing a totally absurd animal. Think about it this hypothetical eel must have colonised Loch Ness after the more recent glaciation, so before that it it must have bred elsewhere before.

So the "Loch Ness Eel" would

1. Have an original spawning ground somewhere in southern Europe.
2. Be adaptable and capable of exploiting new habitats.

So why isn't it in its original home? Why isn't in in any of others much more productive rivers of Europe? Why live in a cold, acidic lake with no plant life when you could live in the Rhine or Seine or Meuse or Thames.

And why hasn't anyone noticed it? It's not a big river, it's nice and clear, its popular for angling and people have been living in Inverness for a very long time indeed. Our first historical record from the area is from 565 AD, that's from the time of Emperor Justinian. Inverness is a major strategic city for control of the highlands. It's not a massive place but it's not a backwater either.

If their were eels large enough to be called monsters, regularly swimming downstream this river, people would have noticed.

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Never said that they were fully-grown when they went down the river. I meant when they were large enough to fend for themselves - ergo, when they're just fairly large.

Furthermore, reports of giant eels *do* exist from across Britain - the idea is that these things use multiple lakes and lochs to breed, with Loch Ness being just one place.
Plus, Loch Ness' lack of life could make it a very useful nursery - such a bare ecosystem would mean that these hypothetical eels would be largely unchallenged, aside from by European and conger eels.

That said, I'd agree that it'd be more likely to see this creature in a different area - say, in fjords of Iceland.
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At that point it's hardly Nessie at all, is it? An eel whose larvae aren't that big (not big enough to be noticed regularly) and then go to the ocean before they get big isn't really Nessie at all.
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Feb 12 2018, 05:23 PM
Plus, Loch Ness' lack of life could make it a very useful nursery - such a bare ecosystem would mean that these hypothetical eels would be largely unchallenged, aside from by European and conger eels.
The problem with that is the Loch ness eels would cause the loch to be much more biodiverse with their presence. You'd have more predators like pikes and sturgeons preying on the eels, and the eels would get to feed on other smaller creatures. Look at wolves for instance; once you introduce them to Yellowstone, the whole park's ecosystem improves drastically.
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Cellphone cameras are so widely available now, even in the remotest corners of the Earth, that is becomes more and more suspicious every year that anything big is still out there and still managing to avoid being captured clearly at least once. Even the most elusive animals, those that spend their whole lives in the middle of nowhere - creatures that experts can go years in the field searching for and not see - occasionally come out and show themselves. They may be young, just inexperienced, very hungry or driven from their territory by others of their kind, and they show up where people can take photos of them.

In 2013, a snow leopard cub came out of the mountains and fell asleep on a herder's tent in Mongolia. This is an animal that even experts can pursue for years without ever finding. We know it exists, of course, but it is extremely elusive. But not this one.

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The giant panda is so elusive it wasn't even part of ancient Chinese myth, presumably because they didn't see them very much. But one ambled into a populated village and ate a goat in broad daylight in both 2011 and 2016.

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People live their whole lives in the woods of Canada, and may never see a lynx, so shy can they be. But then someone sees a whole family playing on the side of the road without any concern whatsoever.

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If bigfoot was real, or if there were still living thylacines, one of them would probably have slipped up and also be caught on camera in the past few years. It isn't the 1950's anymore where it was genuinely difficult to get out and photograph these animals. Today almost everyone has a high-power camera on them at all times and it takes one click to take a clear photograph or a video.

All it would take to prove the existence of these animals is a photo as clear as these. Instead, we get grainy mangy foxes bounding out of sight or ten second clips of a vague hairy shape shuffling in the trees, which cuts out as soon as the animal starts to move.
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