Have you ever wondered why the yeti and Bigfoot rumors continue to stay around? So did I until I spent over a year researching the field of Crypto zoology which is the study of animals which fall outs ide of contemporary zoological catalogs. This is the first article of many to come, in later articles I will go into detail on different well known specimens and others that haven’t cracked pop culture yet.
Why do humans love to believe things are real, is it our fascination with the unknown or our fear of not knowing something in the world around us? Crypto zoologists study what is often referred to as cryptids which was coined in 1983 by john Hall. This field is often given little to no attention by the scientific community because of the fact that crypto zoologists study animals that aren’t scientifically proved. Most of the time there isn’t a single photo to go along with these accounts just stories from local natives or eyewitnesses.
Most experts on the matter consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes. Although occasionally of the crypto accounts aren’t left as stories. The Mountain gorilla was once thought of to be local folklore of native African peoples living among the mountainous region of Africa until it was physically discovered in 1902. This is a rare case where a previous cryptid was found to be a living breathing animal in the eyes of zoologists. Other examples include the coelacanth, the okapi and the giant squid.
It may be just our human instinct to question our surroundings but is there truth to these tales or have some previously thought extinct animals made their way back from the evolutionary graveyard. We fear what we don’t know and what we can’t understand and for many these animals or legends pose a challenge for our human instinct. We cannot allow our thoughts and opinions to shroud our judgment. When we allow our minds to freely think we obtain a greater amount of enlightenment.
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