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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 (4,372 Views)
CeratosaurusKing
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I was actually planning to mention that the mapiungari as a giant ground sloth could be plausible however it probably went extinct.

Speaking of extinct creatures thought to be real what are you're guys thoughts on the partridge creek beast?
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Yiqi15
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A hoax. Definitely a hoax. Its impossible for a massive (non-avian) theropod to go undetected and not leave any traces, photos, or even fossils.
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Carlos
Feb 14 2018, 01:57 PM
lamna
Feb 14 2018, 01:39 PM
Not a big fan of extinct animals inspiring mythological ones but the poukai seems more plausible than most, after all the Māori only arrived in New Zealand around 1300 AD and Haast eagles died out around 1400 AD.

Less than 400 year separate the Haast eagle and the Māori contacting Europeans.

Pouakai might actually just be derived from the sounds local shorebirds make, so maybe not even that.
Are you referring to this paper, which argues that the "hakawai" is a snipe?

I find it hard to believe that cultures which coexisted with extinct animals wouldn't mention them in myth. Surely folk memory would preserve something.
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Scrublord
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Yeah. You're thinking of the Hokioi. Different thing.
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Tartarus
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Feb 14 2018, 09:05 AM
Oregon even includes the world's second best site for Holocene fossils (After La Brea in California) Fossil Lake.
From what I've heard, La Brea is a Pleistocene site. And the wikipedia article you gave on Fossil Lake talks about it having Pleistocene fossils.

Scrublord
 
or whether the inhabitants of Sumatra actually met Homo floresensis.
If you're referring to the orang-pendek that is far more likely an undiscovered orangutan species than anything remotely to do with Homo floresiensis. The H. floresiensis angle seems to be due to confusion with another, different Sumatran cryptid called the orang-kardil, who are described as far more-human like than the very un-human-like orang-pendek. For the orang-kardil, a H. floresiensis explanation could work, though these are far less frequently reported cryptids than the orang-pendek and may have already gone extinct for all we know.

CeratosaurusKing
 
Speaking of extinct creatures thought to be real what are you're guys thoughts on the partridge creek beast?
It is an interesting report as it seems to refer to fuzz and implied endothermy in a dinosaur back in a time when dinosaurs were still thought of as ectothermic lizard-like things. That said, the report is almost certainly just a newspaper hoax. That absolutely no one else other than the small band of people mentioned in the old newspaper article ever mentioned seeing anything even remotely similar in that region or anywhere near it casts great doubt on the validity of the case.
Edited by Tartarus, Feb 14 2018, 06:42 PM.
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GlarnBoudin
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Actually.... there are stories of something kind of similar in the folklore of Native Americans, but the particular tribe is quite some distance away.

The pach-an-a-ho' is apparently a beast that looks very similar to 'Diatryma' - obviously it's not a gastornithid, but it could potentially be some folk memory of a heavily built Brontornis-like terror bird that lived in the area.
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CeratosaurusKing
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Yiqi15
Feb 14 2018, 05:41 PM
A hoax. Definitely a hoax. Its impossible for a massive (non-avian) theropod to go undetected and not leave any traces, photos, or even fossils.
Actaully I pretty sure the party of men who saw the beast seen footprints of it in the snow, at least i think.
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Flisch
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Niedfaru
Feb 12 2018, 11:21 PM
We should be very wary of saying "we know everything already". We clearly don't.

That statistic you hear about how we know more about the moon than the ocean: I always thought it was BS, but listening to an oceanographer explain why it's not was fascinating. Basically, we have explored the surface 50m of the oceans with scuba gear and (some of) the sea floors with subs. The surface range is now extending thanks to new scuba gear that lets you go down to 100m. But that still leaves a huge gap in the middle. That there could be large interesting and unknown species in the seas that are currently unknown is far from impossible. Yeah, fishing nets and sonar and all that make it harder and harder, but still not impossible.

And despite the fact that we know so little of the ocean we still know of colossal squids etc. Some food for thought.

Niedfaru
Feb 12 2018, 11:21 PM
In 2016, a 24ft specimen of a new species of beaked whale washed up in Alaska, for example.

I'm sorry, but "another species of beaked whale" does not even come close to any of the controversial cryptids. This is comparing apples to oranges.

Tartarus
Feb 9 2018, 07:40 PM
Surviving thylacines- since the official extinction date of 1936 there have been literally thousands of sightings of living thylacines. And at least some of the sightings have been by zoologists and experienced park rangers, which makes it kinda hard to justify either the "they're all crazy" or "they're all just seeing dogs" views.

I would argue that such an insane number of "sightings" without a single definite piece of evidence is a huge strike against the whole idea of it still being around.

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.

The Platypus was never a cryptid. Infact, as soon as it was encountered by the europeans, a pelt was sent back home, where the scientists considered it a hoax. It was basically the antithesis of a cryptid.
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The whole "shy, wary, sapient bigfoot" idea is ridiculous. It assumes that the entire race would have a single hivemind that goes against revealing themselves to humans. In reality, individuals have their own thoughts. That not a single bigfoot, even a pariah, has revealed itself to humanity is a huge red flag.
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Tartarus
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GlarnBoudin
Feb 14 2018, 09:06 PM
Actually.... there are stories of something kind of similar in the folklore of Native Americans, but the particular tribe is quite some distance away.
Interesting. Where can I learn more about this?

Flisch
 
I'm sorry, but "another species of beaked whale" does not even come close to any of the controversial cryptids. This is comparing apples to oranges.
Considering that there is an entire category of cryptids that are essentially just what appear to be undiscovered species and varieties of cetaceans, claiming a newly discovered species of beaked whale is nothing like a cryptid is completely and utterly false. Yes, you said its not like "controversial" cryptids but that is such a subjective term that it is essentially meaningless to use in an argument. Cryptids come in a vast variety from the "spectacular" ones like Bigfoot and Nessies to small "unspectacular" ones like surviving pink-headed ducks and ivory-billed woodpeckers". Claiming only a few arbitrarily selected cryptids are the only ones that count is an argument that simply will not work.
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GlarnBoudin
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Feb 15 2018, 04:47 PM
The whole "shy, wary, sapient bigfoot" idea is ridiculous. It assumes that the entire race would have a single hivemind that goes against revealing themselves to humans. In reality, individuals have their own thoughts. That not a single bigfoot, even a pariah, has revealed itself to humanity is a huge red flag.
We might have seen them already, actually - I wouldn't be surprised if most Bigfoot sightings were from that sort of individual, or teen Sasquatches deciding to go fuck with humans.
Alternatively, it could be that they were devastated by diseases brought in from the Old World, much like Native Americans were. If humans and apes can get each other's diseases, why wouldn't the same apply for what is presumably a hominid?

As an additional note, there's actually been a lot of talk about linking Bigfoot with what are known as the Missing 411 cases, a rash of disappearances with the people in question vanishing without a trace in woodlands areas with only their clothes being found, folded and cleaned like nothing ever happened.
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Rodlox
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Feb 15 2018, 04:47 PM
The whole "shy, wary, sapient bigfoot" idea is ridiculous. It assumes that the entire race would have a single hivemind that goes against revealing themselves to humans. In reality, individuals have their own thoughts. That not a single bigfoot, even a pariah, has revealed itself to humanity is a huge red flag.
except that, according to eyewitness statements, some of the bigfoots do make contact - walk up to windows and look in on people, throw rocks at their human neighbors, walk around cars that have people in them.

and then those eyewitness statements are dismissed because nobody in those situations thought "okay, gotta kill one of those things on the other side of my car (and hope the others don't either take the body or kill me or both) ."
Edited by Rodlox, Feb 16 2018, 03:55 AM.
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GlarnBoudin
Feb 15 2018, 09:18 PM
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Feb 15 2018, 04:47 PM
The whole "shy, wary, sapient bigfoot" idea is ridiculous. It assumes that the entire race would have a single hivemind that goes against revealing themselves to humans. In reality, individuals have their own thoughts. That not a single bigfoot, even a pariah, has revealed itself to humanity is a huge red flag.
We might have seen them already, actually - I wouldn't be surprised if most Bigfoot sightings were from that sort of individual, or teen Sasquatches deciding to go fuck with humans.
Alternatively, it could be that they were devastated by diseases brought in from the Old World, much like Native Americans were. If humans and apes can get each other's diseases, why wouldn't the same apply for what is presumably a hominid?
even chimps and gorillas can catch and die from human diseases - its one of the obstacles faced in conservation
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Tartarus
Feb 15 2018, 06:43 PM
Flisch
 
I'm sorry, but "another species of beaked whale" does not even come close to any of the controversial cryptids. This is comparing apples to oranges.
Considering that there is an entire category of cryptids that are essentially just what appear to be undiscovered species and varieties of cetaceans, claiming a newly discovered species of beaked whale is nothing like a cryptid is completely and utterly false. Yes, you said its not like "controversial" cryptids but that is such a subjective term that it is essentially meaningless to use in an argument. Cryptids come in a vast variety from the "spectacular" ones like Bigfoot and Nessies to small "unspectacular" ones like surviving pink-headed ducks and ivory-billed woodpeckers". Claiming only a few arbitrarily selected cryptids are the only ones that count is an argument that simply will not work.
The part I quoted was in response to talking about how Bigfoot is unlikely due to not having been encountered yet. Bigfoot does not compare to ivory-billed woodpeckers and pink-headed ducks.

Context is everything.




Also, "controversial" may be a gradient, but it's far from meaningless.
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This video was shot in 1967...Also there is no known costume or special effects studio at the time that had the capability to make anything remotely like it in its realism and all attempts to replicate it since have failed.

I'm not sure about that, for that year Planet of the apes was in the making, and even though the ape costumes were not 100% equal to a true ape, the way they did it made it pretty convincing, so it would not be so distant or improbable at the time to create a convincing costume. (Although I think I could be wrong about it too, the ape costumes just covers head, arms and hands)

And about my opinion in the Patterson-Gimlin film, I tend to be quite skeptical about its veracity to not believe it, there are so many points that make me suspect that it was a hoax, from the convenience that Patterson roamed california and holywood for several years prior to the meeting, and the convenience that he was thinking of making a Pseudodocumentary about hunting bigfoot.

There is also something that I have not trusted much of the opinions of experts on special effects who do not believe that it is a man in a suit, that are only opinions without checking it physically, I have not seen or I have not found something or somebody that tried to corroborate these opinions by replicating the event, i.e. all with a suit or with the probable techniques of special effects for the time, with different people with different proportions, all with the supposed height that the bigfoot had, and using same kind of camera.
It has never been done like that, right? it would be quite expensive I guess.
As much as I have found it has been an attempt of comparison of movement by computer and an amateur video of someone trying to compare some costumes with the original film picture on youtube

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Alternatively, it could be that they were devastated by diseases brought in from the Old World, much like Native Americans were. If humans and apes can get each other's diseases, why wouldn't the same apply for what is presumably a hominid?

That would be reasonable, however, although again, if there were populations there should be remnants, it seems totally strange that a whole population of apes had no record whatsoever specially in regions that remains could be able to survive.

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As an additional note, there's actually been a lot of talk about linking Bigfoot with what are known as the Missing 411 cases, a rash of disappearances with the people in question vanishing without a trace in woodlands areas with only their clothes being found, folded and cleaned like nothing ever happened.

You know, we need a bit of source of that, it feels like we're just telling anecdotes and that's where we will lose the "real" part of this conversations for not checking the accuracy of cases.
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