It’s been joked about before, but I wanted to ask in good faith what would happen if someone were to earnestly put evidence they believed to be of a Cryptozoological creature? Using Bigfoot as an example, if a Bigfoot believer or researcher were to upload their evidence to the site, how should those…

Honestly, without a physical specimen or DNA sample that indicated the cryptid (e.g., Bigfoot) was actually something new to science, I’d mark the observation as Human under the assumption it was faked. If it was in fact a new species unknown to science, iNat would not have the taxonomy in place (y…

Hi Dylan, Your username checks out! This topic comes up on the forum from time to time, so there are already a number of thoughtful threads about cryptids. If you search the forum for “cryptid”, you can find many of these threads. Here’s one to get you started: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wha…

Despite my username, my most relevant cryptid observation so far is a very non-abominable snowman https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/336633248 I appreciate the response, I’m new to the forum part of iNaturalist.

I suppose our hypothetical bigfoot researcher would have to put together a project if he wanted to get any milage out of their data on iNaturalist. I’ll have to dive deeper into the forums to see how taxonomy on the site is updated when new species are found.

Cryptozoology and iNaturalist

General

cthawley February 3, 2026, 3:03am 6

Another relevant thread:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/cryptid-sightings-on-inat/16652

Topic		Replies	Views
Cryptid Sightings on iNat? General question	17	3788	September 28, 2020
Acceptable observations for Humans General	13	1431	November 30, 2023
Would a fake organism be marked "not wild" or "no evidence of organism"? General	17	524	December 24, 2025
Will iNaturalist allow upload of prehistoric species/fossils in the future? General	26	1788	November 3, 2021
Would there ever be a situation where an observation labeled as "Human" would be anything other than "Casual"? General	25	479	February 22, 2026

Cryptozoology and iNaturalist

Related topics