Is there a possibility of certain undiscovered large mammals like Orang Pendek still existing?
I've heard of a giant stick bug that gives you brain damage in long term :lt-dbyf-dubois: :kitsuragi-depress:
I feel like there's 3 broad and very distinct things that get called cryptids: normal animals that generally don't live in a place being reported as living in that place (like there are places in the southeast US where mountain lions "don't live" but they actually do), animals that indigenous people say exist but which haven't been formally documented and/or are misidentification of known species (this may also overlap with the first category, if isolated examples of something are spreading out of its known habitat) and/or may already be extinct, and straight up urban legends about magical monsters that started because some guy saw a weird thing while out driving at night once.
I've even seen that first category expanded to "people say this known species that gets pretty big can be somewhat larger than has been documented so far," with regards to things like squid and wildcats, even boars which are known to get absolutely massive.
So with that in mind, the first category is probably true pretty often, even if it's not true for long (as the animal dies in an unfamiliar habitat or moves on), the second category has regularly turned out to be true or at least solvable, and the third category is bunk.
Right I think a good most of the time if indigenous people say something is there, it's there. Whether it's a misidentification or not.
i mean also a lot of 'weird' looking animals just have disabilities or deformities. like theres one where its essentially a wolf walking on its hind legs and that can happen with any dog that loses the ability to use its front legs. its just unusual for such animals to live very long
two and three also combine big time, a lot of purported "animals" indigenous people believe in are sketchily documented and very very very very often wholly spirits and the like in their stories. You see this a lot with Sasquatch
Like, it's a possibility, but not a very likely one
It's especially funny considering that nearly everyone has a hi-def camera in their pocket that also functions as a phone, we should have some actual proof these things are out there, at least a photo that doesn't look like someone smeared a Klondike bar on the lens
But nope, don't even get that
Why would we need photographic evidence when the racist old wheelchair lady at the motel/karaoke bar combination i'm staying at can just tell me they exist? Her husband is searching for them right now!
Some modern nonwestern cryptids were the result of western “adventurers” and “explorers” going to non white countries (usually colonies) and convincing themselves everything is so exotic and strange to the point that modern Africans came into contact with dinosaurs lol
Chikens are dinosaurs but there is a time where peopel coudl have met elephant birds tho
Disco elysium makes it so every time I hear cryptid I think it's phasmid and I'm disappointed that I'm not looking at a novel stick insect species.
If there’s one kind of animal humanity has a solid track of its large mammals. If serious evidence of a new large mammal was discovered it would be front page news worldwide.
I don’t believe in any cryptids that can’t be explained by “animal a bit outside of it’s normal habitat” or “animal we thought was extinct wasn’t quite yet”
And with half the planet’s population having a high definition digital camera on them at all times and ever decreasing areas of wild land youd need fairly concrete evidence of anything at all
I think "subspecies or unique animal of a well understood family" are also cryptids that are explainable. Like the billy Ape hypothesis seems to be wrong, but it very well could have been correct until that point. Stuff like that I buy
Especially if they're carnivorous, you need enough undisturbed space to explain not just the existence of the cryptid, but their whole cascade in the food web. And probably in the fossil record too.
It's possible to imagine one individual creature existing, but it would have to be part of a population, and that population would have a restricted range and carrying capacity. Take the okapi for instance, it's about human-sized, herbivorous, and rather shy, and doesn't live outside one region. Humans still were very aware of it since the classical period, even if it took Europeans until the late 19th century to document one.
Love them so much, but I don't believe in them anymore. it was a super fun phase as a kid though
maybe a few hundred years ago, or even <100 years ago, some of these cryptids existed, but with mass extinction (from climate change + just humans destroying habitats or murdering animals) which has killed off a lot KNOWN animals, there must be plenty of unknown animals that are extinct
Imagine a cult of ousted geneticists armed with gene editing technology creating monsters and releasing them into the world. That would be a dope book.
It's alright. Nothing amazing, but perfectly readable. Ok to good I guess.
And she says she doesn't write sci fi, the fuck is wrong with her lol
Big land ape/giant lizard style cryptids probably not but that would be sick as shit and i pray to god and satan that I'm wrong. If you think there aren't still some unknown large deep sea critters though then get real friend we have a lot of water on this fricked earth.
Environmental DNA sampling makes the burden of evidence much harder for any cryptid claim. Scientists sampled the water around Loch Vale and ran the DNA found against genomic profiles. Everything that could be identified was. If there was an anomaly the size of Nessie, it'd have shown up. While that's harder to do with land cryptids like Bigfoot unless you're sampling lakes it might drink from or bathe in, it's the hard physical evidence that I'd need to see for any of them. That's my same standard for anything alien. The Drake Equation sets my standard of expectation and I'm agnostic about any kind of existing interaction until there's hard physical evidence. The only time I've accepted video evidence is with the Nimitz/Roosevelt sightings where it was some of the best optics with some of the most highly trained observers confirming it over multiple kinds of imaging.
probably not. I also think that there may be a case of El Dorado about the hunt for them for example when they found red furred bears in the himalyas and then continue to look for yeti. finding a similar animal in the area explains the myth and continuing to hunt for them after that basically guarantees that whatever you find won't ever be close enough to stop looking
Not on land, plenty of small animals and deep-sea horrors though.
