I just want conversation on this topic
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https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-cryptids-do-you-believe-are-most-likely-to-exist/46888
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-if-cryptids-are-just-naturalists/55603
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/cryptid-sightings-on-inat/16652
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Two of those are locked, @lj_l .
I love cryptids! I sure don’t believe in them, but they’re fun to think about. If you want my opinion, Mothman is just a large moth, like this one that attacked me one late summer night. It was close to midnight, and I was in a forest, the only light being my flashlight, which was gradually getting dimmer. Suddenly, a whirlwind of wings emerged from the shadows, eyes aglow. Oh no, I thought, what am I going to do without a camera? The monster flew at me, circled a couple of times around me, then disappeared. About a week later, I was out mothing, and the Mothman returned. It landed on a wall, and was joined by a second one. I photographed them and returned home. The rest is history.
Anyway, all this to say, I think many could be frightened by this sort of happening, enough to believe it was a dangerous monster for the record books
I think cryptid sightings are some mix of hoaxes, legends, known species observed under poor observing conditions, abnormal individuals of known species (bears with injured front legs can learn to walk on their back legs sasquach style, for example) and sometimes unknown species
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There have actually been many “cryptids” throughout history that have been proven to be actual animals.
Probably the most famous is the giant squid (aka, the Kraken). It wasn’t until the 1900s, I believe, that people realised that they were not really sea monsters.
The okapi was also once considered to be a cryptid until scientists were able to catch one.
Other former cryptids were oarfish, platypus, and some whales.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there were still some species of animals roaming around that people have mistook for monsters.
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@ProtogenmodelTGg09 are you an iNaturalist user? I don’t see your username or email address in the iNaturalist database.
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Which whales? Also what about the Coelacanth
Some have suggested that Leviathan, in the Hebrew Scriptures, is a distorted description of a baleen whale.
One of the most interesting cryptid stories to my mind is Henry Hudson’s sighting of a mermaid. Nowadays, mermaids are usually explained away as Sirenians; but Hudson was not in the range of any known Sirenian. His logbook entry for June 15, 1608 describes a mermaid sighted near Norway or possibly Greenland:
“By that time shee was come close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly on the men a little after, a sea came and overturned her from the navill upward, her backe and breasts were, like a woman’s, as they say that saw her. Her body as big as one of us, her skin very white and long haire hanging downe behinde, of colour blacke. In her going down they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposse, and speckled like a macrell.”
The matter-of-fact tone of the entry is noteworthy in itself.
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The description of breasts and hair sound very unlike any known sea creature, to the point that I have to assume it was either made up or they did not see it clearly and their brains filled in the blanks as a woman
I beleive that some beaked whales have been mistaken for monsters in the past.
Also, I don’t know if the coelacanth really counts as a cryptid. It was already described by scientists by its fossils before its rediscovery.
I was wondering about beaked whales. And now that you say that I think you are right, it wasn’t an unknown creature, just not known to be extant
So he is reporting what other people told him, not a first-hand observation.
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They sure seem like sea monsters to me, despite being real
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