Cryptozoology

So I'm heading in the corrected direction of 'Cryptozoology' - the science of unproved creatures. Here is some great info to get started.

The words "yeti" and "abominable snowman" are applied to several types of hairy humanoids similar to North America's Bigfoot, but these creatures are distinct from Bigfoot because they are reported from a different continent altogether. The Himalaya Mountains of Tibet and Nepal are the homeland of these legendary creatures. The two terms "yeti" and "abominable snowman" are sometimes applied to creatures from other remote areas of Asia as well. Cryptozoologists and other serious researchers prefer the term "yeti" over "abominable snowman" because "yeti" sounds more scientific and because it is not based on a mistranslation of a native word, as "abominable snowman" is.

The most picky cryptozoologists refer to each individual type of yeti by its own native name, dzu-teh for the biggest, hulking giants who sometimes walk on all fours and seem half bear, half ape, meh-teh for the "classic" yeti that stands about six feet tall and has a pointed top of the head, and teh-lma for the three-foot-tall frog-eating yeti that makes its home in steamy jungle valleys between mountains (sometimes thought to be a juvenile yeti by researchers).

The teh-lma is the most human-like of the yetis and is thought to be a race of primitive humans by some researchers, compared to the proto-pygmies. It is also the most ignored of the yetis. Very little research has been focused on it recently, although several decades ago, when it was lumped in with the meh-teh more often than not, this little yeti was more in the spotlight. The dzu-teh is thought by many researchers to be a bear. It has claws and carnivorous habits, in addition to its bear-like appearance. However, many cryptozoologists think that, if it is a bear, it must be a new species of bear, because the descriptions don't sound like any known species.

The meh-teh is the subject of the most research, and is the only variety of yeti that most people hear about these days. Whenever you've read about the yeti before, it is likely you were reading about the meh-teh, the classic yeti that sounds most similar to Bigfoot. It looks something like a cross between a gorilla and a man. It could not easily be mistaken for a bear. Even though it has long, shaggy hair, it is actually supposed to be a valley-dweller, like all other varieties of yeti. The snow-capped peaks don't contain enough food for such a creature to live there, but it is said the meh-teh often has to go through high mountain passes to travel from one valley to another, where it becomes highly visible to human observers and sightings are most likely to take place. In its forested, remote valleys, it is supposed to be nearly impossible to locate, living in a remote territory much like the panda, which eluded researchers for sixty years after its discovery.

Even though the yeti (at least the meh-teh) is one of the best documented of the hairy humanoids, it is also one of the most disputed. Native folklore has heavily obscured whatever real animal may lie behind the mythology. According to legend, the yeti is a spiritual being, not an animal. It is sometimes worshipped, attributed with many supernatural powers, and is said to interbreed with humans.

In addition, some legends say that there is no actual breeding population of yetis. Instead, each yeti is actually the transmogrified quasi-solid ghost of a dead human. Other mythology states that the yetis are actually demons that have been assigned to guard mountains, so that humans do not ascend to the peaks and disturb the gods who live there. If this is true, then the yetis have failed miserably in their task to keep people from climbing Mt. Everest.

With western observers involved, the picture can get clouded too. The yeti has been shown to be confused with actual humans, bears and even suggestive-looking rocks on some occasions.

Pygmy Elephant

The pgymy elephant is just what it sounds like: a very small elephant. Known to natives of the Congo as the red elephant, adults stand no more than six and a half feet tall at the shoulder, and many are smaller. There have been adult males less than five feet high. Newborns are the size of dogs. They have a reddish skin that is hairier than normal elephants.

Since they have been held in captivity, there is no doubt that these animals exist. The only question is whether they qualify as a new species, a new subspecies, or only as mutants within a known species (the African Forest Elephant). Most zoologists argue for the latter, but cryptozoologists hold out for formal recognition as a new species or subspecies.

There are a number of pieces of evidence to uphold the idea of a new subspecies or species. In the few observations of these animals in the wild, they are seen in family groups of just pygmy elephants, not mixed with larger elephants like they should be if they were something like midgets are among humans. In addition, they seem to have adaptations to a more aquatic lifestyle and they are found in a unique habitat, dense swamps, that are shunned by other types of elephant. These characteristics, if they prove true in later studies, should allow pygmy elephants to qualify as a new subspecies at the very least. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be interest and funding for further studies.

In addition to the pgymy African elephant, there are also reports of pygmy Asian elephants from the dense jungles of India and from certain islands in or near Indonesia. These claims of other possible types of pygmy elephant have been even less investigated by mainstream scientists than the claims of African pygmy elephants.

The possibility of a new species of elephant is not as outlandish as it sounds at first. After many years of familiarity with the African elephant, scientists decided that the African Forest Elephant was not a subspecies, as had been supposed for years, but was a separate species, with nearly as wide a gap between it and other African elephants (the African Bush Elephant) as the gap between African elephants and Asian elephants.

Also, this has happened before in zoology. Bonobos (pygmy chimps) used to be considered as just a subspecies of chimps, but now they are considered a unique species of their own. These lessons teach us that a new species can be declared many years after mainstream science has accepted that the animals in question truly exist, if what was considered to be just one species is found to be two or more.

Gorilla

According to African folklore, the pongo was a wild man of the jungles. Looking like a cross between a human and a monkey, he was a violent creature with magical powers. He relished the taste of human flesh, often raiding villages in order to carry away captives for purposes of cannibalism or rape. Sometimes the pongo was a shapeshifter. Female pongos would turn into beautiful women to get close to male victims, then change back to their true forms when it was too late for the men to escape. Pongos and humans could mate and produce hybrid children who looked human, but who had violent, cannibalistic urges from their pongo side.

Pongo reports were understandably met with much skepticism in the scientific community. The pongo had so many supernatural characteristics and behaviors not typical of a biological animal that it just didn't seem like it would ever turn out to be real. These aspects of the pongo from folklore squarely place it within the "big hairy monster" or "hairy biped" category of anomalous cousins of Bigfoot.

The entire world was surprised when, in 1847, the pongo (now known as the gorilla) was officially declared to exist. Of course, it didn't have any of the weird characteristics assigned to it by folklore. The real gorilla is a vegetarian, not a predator. It doesn't capture humans, it doesn't eat humans, and it can't reproduce with humans. Its official discovery hasn't stopped the flow of legends that claim otherwise, but now science can clearly separate the gorilla of myth and the real animal. Still, the animal's outlandish mythical features were acknowledged in its very name: "gorilla" is derived from the Arabic word for "ghoul."

The story of the pongo's official discovery teaches us that any cryptid, however fantastic it seems, might be real. Supernatural or fantastical characteristics are no reason to disqualify a cryptid from further investigation. In fact, European folklore from little more than a hundred years ago assigns many supernatural abilities and odd behaviors to real animals such as wolves, eagles and mice. We now know that these superstitious ideas are false, even though the animals themselves are indisputably real.

Okapi

The okapi is an animal that looks like a cross between a giraffe and a zebra. It was reported from Africa by native folklore, but even the export of okapi skins did not persuade the doubters. People thought that the okapi just sounded too much like an animal that had been made up. It was obviously a mythical mixture of a zebra and a giraffe, a kin to the griffin, centaur, and other legendary creatures made by pasting together the parts of various real animals. The odd skins, with striping on the legs and solid blocks of brown or white elsewhere, were probably faked in some way.

The okapi may have remained an animal that was known to outsiders only through folklore, except for the efforts of Sir Harry Johnston. He believed native informants and sent skins and skulls to scientists until he was able to weaken skepticism and gain research money for the cause. Capture of live animals finally destroyed the last of the skepticism and the okapi was declared a real animal. When cryptozoology emerged as a science, the okapi was often held up as a symbol of cryptozoology, especially as used in the logo of the International Society of Cryptozoology. Until the discovery of the Vu Quang Ox, the okapi was the last significant new large mammal to be accepted by science.

Despite its discovery, we know little about okapis today, except what we have learned from the few animals kept in zoos. The animal is rare and nearly impossible to observe in the wild. The Uganda okapis are now thought to be extinct. The last remaining okapis live in the Congo, restricted to a narrow band of dense rainforest cloaking mountains above 1500 feet, but below 3000 feet.

Nessie

The Loch Ness monster, also known by the nickname Nessie, is probably the creature that most often leaps to mind when ordinary people think about cryptozoology: the study of animals that may or may not exist. Nessie is virtually a symbol of cryptozoology. This creature has probably been the object of more sustained media attention than any other individual type of cryptid, with the possible exception of Bigfoot.

What is the Loch Ness monster? If it exists, it is probably not one animal, but a bunch of animals of the same species. This idea is supported by sightings of multiple "monsters" at the same time, and by simple ecology. If Nessie is an animal, it had to have a mother, and at one point there had to have been a viable breeding population of the species. Only a few people think Nessie is a single animal, such as a sea serpent that somehow became trapped in Loch Ness. The typical Nessie does roughly resemble the average sea serpent, but it lives in the biggest freshwater lake in Scotland instead of the ocean.

Witnesses tend to describe an animal with sleek, rubbery blackish-gray skin, about twenty feet long. Nessie usually has the serpentine body that is typical for sea serpents and lake monsters, furnished with humps along its length, and one or more sets of paddles (or sometimes, stumpy legs). Nessie's head is often described as roughly horse-shaped, it may have a straggly mane running down its neck, and some witnesses report small horns, especially those who see the Loch Ness monster from close up. Sometimes, witnesses report a smaller, rounded, turtle-like head. This head is the one that seems to appear in most of the famous Nessie photos.

The idea of horns may sound ridiculous, but they would make sense if the Loch Ness monster is actually a zeuglodon, a weird primitive whale, because the zeuglodons were only a few steps removed from the mesonychids, ungulate predators, and ungulates often have horns.

The first serious wave of Nessie sightings came in the 1930s and they have continued ever since. Before the wave of sightings that started today's fad, there were older legends of water dragons and kelpies in Loch Ness (a kelpie is a magical aquatic horse that is often thought to be a shapeshifter). However, these older legends were much more variable in how they described the appearance of Nessie, so most researchers do not rely on them much, simply noting that they exist as being a reason to suppose that the Loch Ness Monster is much more than a recent fad.

Moon Bear

The moon bear is a recognized species of bear that is native to Asia, also known as the Asiatic black bear. Scientists think that the moon bear is only distantly related to the American black bear (which is itself a close relative of the grizzly bear).

The Golden Moon Bear is something else. It might be a mere color phase of the regular moon bear, it might be a subspecies, or it might be a new species of bear altogether. The evidence gathered so far is not yet conclusive.

In the past, scientists were often fooled by color phases into declaring a new species or subspecies. Later, they would often discover animals of both color phases in the same litter, or they would find that color phases in that animal weren't tied to geographical regions.

In order to qualify as a different subspecies, the animals of a certain type need to both look different from the main species and have a distinct population living in an area or habitat that does not wholly overlap the range of the rest of the species. The Siberian Tiger is a good example of a subspecies. It looks different from other tigers, it is much bigger than them and better adapted to the cold. Along the southern part of its range it once blended gradually into the general population of Chinese tigers, yet even in those times it certainly had lands and a habitat type all to itself.

Oh! What to believe?!