Last year when a couple of Georgia men claimed to possess a Bigfoot body on ice, a surprising number of news outlets covered the story. CNN and CBS, National Geographic and Scientific American interviewed Bigfoot “experts,” such as members of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization — experts more likely found on “Monsterquests”, a TV show that covers werewolves and vampires. Plenty of readers expressed their outrage on comment boards. “Were you recently purchased by the National Enquirer?” wrote one reader to Scientific American. Another wrote, “This is far beneath what I expect to read about in SciAm.”
Of course, it isdoubtful the reporters believed the story, even before Sasquatch researchers pointed out that the body lacked muscle tone and that its hair samples burned like plastic. (It turned out to be a sloppy hoax involving a gorilla suit.) Sasquatch, of all legendary creatures, has become a cliché of the absurd, and with good reason. The idea of a 7-foot-tall unknown primate skulking around the ever-shrinking wilds of the United States sounds as far-fetched as a
farmer being abducted by aliens in the cornfields of Kansas.
But science journalists entertain the Bigfoot story (even with a wink) because discovering a new and shockingly strange animal in the farthest reaches of the wilderness remains possible. Today, amid the drumbeat of bad news of species being driven to extinction, scientists are discovering more new species — both curious and commonplace — than in any time in history. As recently as November, excited anthropologists found a pygmy tarsier in Indonesia, a spooky gremlinlike primate, the size of a mouse, not seen since 1921.
That means some of the most respected scientists in the world cannot help having an open mind when it comes to the zoological unknown. And a few fringe scientists, known as cryptozoologists, are actively in pursuit of beasts of lore on the outside chance that they may not be figments of our imagination.
Technically, cryptozoology is the study and search for bizarre or legendary creatures, known as cryptids. There are the classics: the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabra, the Yeti. But there are many that are not as well known and not as unbelievable, like the Buru, a slinky 10-foot-long reptile that the Apatani, a tribal group in India, claim to have seen, or the Orang pendek, an upright gibbonlike creature said to stroll like a human in the forests of Sumatra.
The hunt for cryptids isn’t just quixotic. It’s motivated by the same ambitions that have led to key zoological discoveries. You might even say cryptid hunters keep warm that place in science whereanything is possible. And it’s from that place where some of the most astounding advances in the sciences are derived.
At the turn of the 20th century, for instance, the Mountain Gorilla and theplatypus were thought to be legend or hoax. Pearl fishermen of Indonesia told tales of enormous prehistoric-like creatures on a remote island; the stories turned out to be real and the animals were named Komodo dragons. (An animal, even today, has not been “discovered” until a bonafide scientist says so, no matter how many locals claim its existence.)
More recently, new animals are turning up at a rapid pace. “In the last 25 years, the number of species known to share the world with us has grown by 25 percent,” says Bruce Patterson, a curator of mammals
at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “This is a remarkable level of discovery, and a remarkable statement of our current ignorance about the other forms of life we share the planet with.”
Most of these animals are much smaller than a Loch Ness Monster; most are plankton, insects, small fish and amphibians. But a few new mammals are discovered every year. While rats and bats are the most common finds, some big surprises have turned up.
“The third largest land mammal in South America, the Chacoan peccary [which looks like a furry boar], was thought to be extinct for tens of thousands of years until it was discovered in 1972,” says Patterson. In 1992, the Saola, a 200-pound deerlike bovine(cow family!), was discovered in Vietnam. “It’s a beautiful little thing,” says Patterson of the Saola. “Maybe 1,100 of them known to exist in the world.”
A few years ago, he adds, “I think the most remarkable new mammal discovered was the Laotian rodent.” The Laotian rock rat, a squirrel-size, bushy-tailed rodent with a football-shaped head, was discovered in 1998. “It was found to belong to a family of animal that was thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago. It is the only living representative of an otherwise extinct family.”
Animals like the rock rat — once thought to have been extinct — are known to biologists as Lazarus species, and are quarry for both cryptozoologists and run-of-the-mill zoologists. Most people are familiar with the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a large and colorful bird thought to have been lost forever that may or may not have been found in 2004 alive and flapping in the swamps of Arkansas. (This now-legendary species comes complete with its own controversial video footage, rather like the famous Patterson-Gimlin Footage of a trudging Bigfoot.) In 1938, the coelacanth, a large fish that tends to dwell in deep-water caves, was found to be alive and flourishing. Ichthyologists had assumed it died out around 65 million years ago.
A find like the ivory-billed woodpecker or the coelacanth propels its discoverer to the top of his or her field, so the search for the oddest of creatures can be a long shot worth pursuing. Ian Harrison, a freshwater fish expert at Conservation International, has been hunting his own mini Loch Ness Monster, a hideous-looking fish called Rhizosomicthys totae, fondly known as the fat catfish.
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Tags: bigfoot, Bigfoot Field Researchers, Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, Cryptids, cryptozoology, Gorilla Suit, Legendary Creatures, sasquatch
