December 4, 2013 • 26 mins
Why do so many consider cryptozoology a "pseudoscience"? Have any of the mysterious animals known as cryptids ever been found? How many species exist on Earth today? The answer might surprise you. Tune in to learn more with Ben and Matt.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everybody,
Welcome back to stuff they don't want you to know.
The audio podcast on Ben Bolan and I'm met Frederick
(00:23):
and that today we are going to actually, you know
what a little segue at one yeah segway. All right, So, um,
you're familiar with Florida. I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Uh the state. Okay, so yes, I know I know
where you're talking about. Now, I'm just messing with you, man. Yeah,
So in Florida when I was a wee young type,
(00:47):
it's in the northern Florida swamps, the Panhandle swamps. And
I was on my camping trip and I swear, man,
I saw really free ish looking animal. It was right
around twilight, and uh, I was camped out. We could
(01:10):
see we could see through the through the trees, through
the canopy, something moving under the under the water, and
uh yeah, and so I assume something like, oh wow,
that's so cool. Maybe it's an alligator, you know, and
uh later come to find out as we were heading
(01:31):
back home one of the locals in the area told
me that that was not any normal alligator, but it
was actually a giant lizard of an unknown variety. Yeah,
it was, in other words, a crypted a cryptid, a
cryptid which brings us to cryptozoology. Now, let me go
(01:55):
ahead and just say that I think the old guy
who was telling us that was just messing with us
since we were kids. Sure, I don't think it was
an extraordinary animal, but were I a crypto zoologist, I
would probably go back and investigate that because cryptozoology is
(02:16):
the very, very controversial study of animals that are rumored
but not proven to exist. This is true, and that's
what we're talking about today. And so what like, what's
an example of a cryptid. Well, one of the best
cryptids that comes to mind, probably the most well known.
(02:36):
It has a lot of different names, but it's the
sasquatch slash YETI slash, Bigfoot slash abominable snowman flash. Yeah, yes,
that's right, And we covered this actually at a live show.
We didn't for some kids. The the quest for Bigfoot
has gone on for such a long time, and the
(02:58):
archetype of this hairy half man half animal thing dates
back into antiquity, into prehistory, the wild Man, the wild
Man of Bora Bora and all that stuff. Yeah. The
the thing is that Bigfoot, as we refer to it
on Facebook page, either doesn't exist or is the world's
reigning hide and Seek champion. Yes, because no one yet
(03:22):
has found uncontested, inarguable proof of Bigfoot. Now, there are
a lot of conjectures about why this hasn't happened, chief
of which is that maybe Bigfoot doesn't exist. Maybe it's
just a series of misidentifications. You know, people who have
never seen a bear before see a bear standing on
two ft um. Maybe maybe, or maybe this creature has
(03:46):
uh intelligence such that it's able to evade people, which
is very very I'm just gonna say improbable. Or my
favorite idea, yeah, that it's a multidimensional extraterrestrial. I was
wondering when you were going to mention that that's the
that's the documentary in Search of Bigfoot, right, Yeah, where
(04:07):
one of the where one of the hunters proposes that idea.
So when we talk about cryptozoology, the most popular cryptids,
which are these hidden animals quote unquote, are gonna be
creatures like Bigfoot. Yeah, or lockness, monster, sure, um or chupacapa. Ah,
that's a deep cut man, I hope, I said that, right,
(04:27):
Yeah you did um or. We're both mispronouncing it. But
so cryptozoology at heart comes from the Greek. It just
means hidden animals, literally, the study of hidden animals. Now,
we said that cryptozoology is uh controversial, but let's talk
about where it comes from. Because people can't quite agree
(04:50):
on where the name comes from, right, They attribute it
often to a zoologists named Oh, here we go, Bernard
hooval Owns, who also attributes it to someone else, and
that is a Scottish person named Ivan T. Sanderson. But
you know, regardless of where the term derives from, the
(05:13):
point is that this quest for hidden animals is often
not treated well or regarded kindly by a fringe, an
area of study that isn't necessarily uh legitimate in the
eyes of a lot of scientists, yeah, especially zoologists, mostly zoologists.
(05:34):
And so while we're doing this podcast, what we'll do
is we'll talk a little bit about different types of
cryptids that are alleged to exist, and we'll talk about
why cryptozoology has often been called a pseudoscience. And then
you know, what men. I think we should close with
some surprising stories of cryptozoology. Awesome, Let's let's do that.
(05:57):
Before we get into all of that, can I just
tell a quick little story as well? Do you have
a cryptozoology story. It's not necessarily a crypto zoology story.
It's just kind of the origin of why I'm interested
in these kind of things, and I think a lot
of people might actually relate to it and then cool. So,
as a young lad in middle school, I used to
watch X Files with my dad. It was my favorite
(06:18):
show ever, and it would freak me out and I
loved it. It really piqued my interest. One of the
episodes that really got me into cryptozoology, or at least
looking at longness, monster and big Foot in those kind
of things, was one called The Host. Now this is
season two, episode two, and you might remember it. It's
(06:38):
a creepy white monster that's half human half flukewarm flukeworm,
and it lived in the sewers and it would suck
on you and inject you with flukeworms. It was one
of the grossest things and creepiest things I've ever seen.
I would go to the bathroom and imagine it inside
the toilet. I would walk by the sewers in my
(06:59):
neighborhood and just run past them, or I would not
take my eyes off of them, and it really just
got me into it. Yeah, that that, and that's one
of my favorite episodes to actually and what happens with
the host. I think the host comes from the creature
and the host is born out of a mutation because
of in exposure radiation exact and uh, that is still,
(07:23):
for my money, one of my favorite X Files monsters
um up there with Remember the guy who appeared to
be human but he was functionally immortal and he would
eat people's livers hide out for years. Oh man, X
Files didn't That was certainly off track. No, No, that's
(07:43):
that's a great point because I think it's important to
understand why someone would delve into a field like this
with um so much contempt that happens. For instance, if
you want to become a cryptozoologist, you are in tough
luck for for a lot of reasons, one of which
(08:04):
is that there's no formal, universally accredited cryptozoology degree or course,
so people claiming to be cryptozoologists are often self appointed,
which is always going to should always set off a
yellow flag whenever you I'm not gonna say a red flag,
but you guys know, whenever you hear somebody appoint themselves
(08:27):
the authority on something, it's almost orange, I would say
it is. It is almost orange. It's deep, it's deep orange.
But the the truth of the matter is that people
who dismiss cryptozoology don't dismiss it because of the idea
(08:47):
of hidden animals. As a matter of fact, we know
that there are millions of undiscovered species in the world,
and a lot of them are going to die before
humans ever cataloged them. Right, we'll find the bones, la, Yes,
we will find the bones later, if they're large enough
to have bones. However, the criticisms come mainly from this
(09:08):
idea that cryptozoologists are pseudo scientists practicing uh epic confirmation bias, right,
like the it's never acceptable that maybe the animal we're
looking for, maybe the locknut monster, simply doesn't exist. Um.
And it's really tough to get evidence of these kind
(09:28):
of things, at least evidence that we can look at
and say this is no questions xcrypted, because especially now
that that video editing technology is at the point where
it's at where you can pretty much fake almost anything
on video, and it's it's extremely difficult for someone to
(09:50):
to to convince me at least. And we're talking about cryptics.
We're not just talking about legendary creatures like unicorns, dragons
or manticors. Uh. And there's a multipart definition that you
and I found that we really like. Right, Yeah, this
this is kind of long. Uh. And here we go
extant and known living species which are unrecognized as living
(10:12):
in a particular area. Okay, so that would be an
animal that we already know, just in a different range,
so out of his comfort zone. Yes. So like we
we find persian leopards in Maine for some reason, that
would make them cryptids absolutely. And number two known in
living species whose form, color, and size is extraordinary for
(10:34):
the species. Think about giant anacondas or spotted lions, yeah right,
or the creatures that have island dwarfism, you know, tiny
elephants Homo flornzis kidding because that counts as a hominid. Absolutely.
And number three is a known species thought to be
extinct within historical times. And yes, the Ceila cant which
(10:59):
was considered extinct and prehistoric by Western experts. Of course,
the people who live in the Ceili Cants native range
were always used to this just tremendously ugly fish, and uh,
Western explorers found it again and it was rediscovered. It
is a cryptid success story, Yes it is. And number
(11:21):
four presumably extinct species not in fossil form, known only
from limited evidence feathers, skin, bones, or but without a
complete specimen. Okay, alright, so that's something where we can
attempt to put together clues, like trying to put together
puzzle without all the pieces. Exactly. I don't know that
(11:42):
I have a good example for that, though. Um. A
good example for that might be uh, dinosaurs that were
originally believed to be all the same species, but then
they found different species or subspecies. Excellent. Now number five
we've got new species. He's known by anecdotal evidence while
no organic evidence exists. Yes, and here is where this
(12:06):
one is important, because here's where we get the majority
of what people think of when they think of cryptos
right exactly. One of my favorites is the Mongolian blood worm.
Oh that sounds horrible. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty gross.
Uh So, the Mongolian blood worm apparently lives in the
deserts of Mongolia and possibly Central Asia, and that this creature,
(12:29):
anecdotally speaking, is a pretty rough customer. It has the
ability to either shock or poison people, and it can
be two ft long. It's red. Uh lives under the
sand or under the ground. And there was an expedition
to attempt to find this creature on some number of
(12:53):
years ago. Now that expedition, as far as I know,
was unsuccessful. That's my favorite. But of course this category anecdotal,
no hard evidence. This category is where we find pretty
much everything. Yeah, and a lot of my favorite ones,
like the thunderbird. What's the third the thunderbird is it's awesome.
There are a lot of Native American tales about this thing.
(13:15):
It's a giant bird. And let's see according to Mark A. Hall,
who is an investigator self appointed investigator of the thunderbird
and uh so, the best average he has is a
wingspan of fifteen to twenty feet and a height of
four to eight feet. And there's this great tail. It's again,
(13:36):
it's kind of just an anecdotal tail of these kids
in nineteen seventy seven in Lawndale, Illinois, where there's three
kids playing in the backyard. Two giant birds come by
and one of them tries to pick up one of
the kids, and it allegedly carries him at about a
height of two feet off the ground for thirty yards.
But again, it's kind of just a story that people
(14:00):
talk about and there's not a lot of evidence there. See,
this is where I want to go on a little
bit of a soapbox. All right, So, Matt, we know
that specie that they are undiscovered species, right, We've admitted
that that's out in the open, that badger is out
of the bag, But we haven't mentioned that species are
(14:20):
being discovered every day at an unprecedented rate, which is true, right, Yeah,
it's absolutely true. And so what we have to do
is attribute this to a couple of factors. One, human
beings are encroaching and formally wild habitats. Now I'm not
I'm not taking any sort of preachy stance on this.
That's just the fact that is occurring. And so it's
(14:43):
more likely than ever before that we will find things
like that huge enclave of mountain gorillas or where they
lowland guerrillas. Yeah, so it's much more likely that we'll
find these animals and uh, it's much less likely that
they will evade detect action. However, it's also important for
us to note that if we're if we're talking about
(15:07):
finding new undiscovered animals, it's not automatically impossible. It's not
automatically some sort of thing that should be dismissed. Cryptozoology,
I think gets a bit of a bad name, because again,
there's not really a hierarchy in place for people to
have to earn their way up or earn their expertise. Now,
(15:30):
I'm also not saying anything bad about the people who
are self appointed or self taught cryptozoologists, but I do
think that it does a disservice to humanity as a whole.
If we pretend that the search for new forms of
life is somehow inherently dumb, it's it's clearly not. There
have been so many actual species discovered, like the Komodo
(15:55):
dragon until nine may as well have been a unicorn.
It was discovered, and it's turns out that, yeah, a
lot of the stuff people say about it is true.
It is cannibalistic, it will eat you, it's monstrous, and
we know that about the Seela. Can't we know that?
We know that the world is full of undiscovered animals.
(16:16):
We know that the world is full of places where
human beings have not yet tread, the vast majority of
those being underwater. But what I think we will find
as human populations expand is that we're going to continue
discovering more and more species that were formally anecdotal, formilia legendary.
(16:39):
Can we talk about our dinosaur episode, Yeah, Living Dinosaurs.
That's one of the first ones, probably the first ten
or even less that we produced, and that one looks
at actually number seven, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot
the list On this list, Number seven is a new
species known only to indigenous or ever original people's were
(17:01):
discovered entirely by excident, and the first part of that
is the most important the indigenous peoples. So let's go
back to mokley bimbi uh. It's essentially a dinosaur, yeah,
and alleged dinosaur that lives. I don't know exactly where.
I'm not recalling them in the wilds of western Africa.
(17:25):
Apparently in the in a forest that few people have
ventured into. It's also alternately known as like the Wrongo Wrongo.
I think I'm mispronouncing some of this, and I do apologize,
but here's the idea. A quadruped large reptile that, based
on the description, looks like a dinosaur. The locals swear
(17:49):
it's there. The locals are not impressed by it. They
they have said that perhaps, uh, that these creatures are
increasingly rare these days. UM, when we were doing a
presentation on cryptozoology, we had the good luck to meet, um,
a very interesting guy who was an animal handler, and
(18:10):
he helped us out with a spot nosed gwen in
named Gwen. It's a kind of small monkey. And um
we also got to talking about cryptids and he fully
believes that there could be a large undiscovered reptile in
that part of Africa. Now he was careful not to
say a dinosaur exactly, but this, UM, this was an
(18:33):
exciting thing for us to look at because that area
of the world has not been um exhaustively explored by scientists.
It's just really expensive to venture out to that part
of the world. And we see this again and again
with cryptozoology attempts at expeditions. Right, No, no one's going
to or no academic source is going to fund a
(18:57):
cryptozoological expedition. They might fund and anthropological expedition where you say, Okay,
a bunch of these people believe in the Ghetti. So
let's go to this himalayan Um area and see why
these people believe in the yetty and what they say
about it and what it means about their social group.
(19:19):
You know what I'm realizing ben zoology needs most most
of all and retiring older billionaire via Let's think about
Indiana Jones. Yeah, someone who just goes out and explores
and has billions of dollars to spend. That's what we need.
We need a batman for cryptozoology. Yeah, we needed Brandson. Yeah,
(19:41):
we need Bill Gates because I think then man, we
find them all you think so that uh they're the
new Pokemon. But uh, let's see there there are other
creatures that have been discovered. You know, I guess we've
done an okay, look at cryptozoology one oh one? Right,
all right, so I don't really have anything to add
(20:03):
before we get to the best part of this story,
which we teased earlier. Cryptids that were actually discovered. Um,
we mentioned the cela, can't we did? What's what's another one? Well,
how about the giant squid or the colossal squid? Oh? Yes, now,
we'll all we surely all remember the stories of sea
(20:25):
serpents and leviathans, things that were big enough to eat
a ship. And uh, we knew we, being the human species,
done you and I particularly met we as a species
knew that it was possible for a squid to grow
or cephalopod like that, to grow um to an unknown size.
(20:46):
But it had always been kind of a legend, at
least until it was discovered, uh, photographed alive in two
thousand four. And also there have been physical samples of
these creatures found, going back to your earlier point about photoshop.
And then let's see, there was also what was the
(21:07):
name of that monkey that has no nose? That's a
freaky thing. All right, Well that's fine because we've also,
let's noted the commotive dragon. Uh, there's something that was
described as the devil bird, and the devil bird turned
out to be the spot bellied eagle owl. And so,
(21:29):
as you know, the names get a little bit less fantastical,
um once they're actually discovered. Um. Then there was something
called the copy copy, which was discovered in nineteen o one. Now,
of course, we we have to also say when these
things are discovered quote unquote, it's a hard finger quotes
(21:50):
they're discovered. Uh. Usually the locals have known about these
for years and years and years, and it's just the
first person who historically is from the west who sees
it gets counted as discovery of the discoverer. And um oh,
giant cats also are huge. People believe that they're giant
(22:11):
cats that roam. How big are we talking lions size? Maybe? Uh,
there are quite a few reports of giant cats in
the United Kingdom and in some places like in the
Middle East, Central Asia. There when they're isolated reports of
these cats. It's interesting because you know, once upon a
(22:32):
time that was the natural range of some large feelines.
But we don't at this point have solid proof of those.
What we do have, however, are a couple of interesting
things here. We know that a these creatures, creatures that
were once thought legendary, have been discovered. Right. We know
that we know that be zoology itself and anthropology are
(22:55):
legitimate sciences. Um. We know that c it's inordinately expensive
to travel to these remote hinter lands and spend months
scouring for some animal that may or may not exist.
It may just be like um, like a snipe hunt.
You know, it's a dangerous proposition. I think it might
take an eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne. As you said, Man,
(23:18):
I'm telling you we need that man. And uh, if
you guys, if you guys want to know more information
about any of this stuff, we we did a Cryptic
week not too long ago. Go back on our YouTube
page and watch all of those if you want there.
They're pretty great. It will really get the imagination going. Yes,
and I wanted to, you know, always want to end
with us asking each other some questions. Matt, do you
(23:42):
think that any of them, any of the cryptids that
are talked about nowadays, do you think there's a case
to be said for any of them actually existing. Oh
that's a tough one for me. I I want to
believe nice, but I I don't think that I can
right now. The biggest one I would say, if I
(24:05):
had to make a complete conjecture, I would say a
large reptile that we maybe haven't really seen in a
in a jungle where indigenous people. If I would, I
could believe that more than probably anything else. Yeah. You know,
as a kid, I loved the idea of the Lockness monster,
But it never really made sense to me. Um, you know,
(24:27):
there's there's a neat exercise that you can do with
with conjecture for for the living space of an animal,
Like if you if you think about how much an
animal would weigh, what kind of food it would eat,
how much of that food it would need then, and
then where that food grows and what the distribution of
that food is, then you can kind of find a range.
(24:48):
But um, the idea of the Lockness Monster as a
pleas asaur different from a dinosaur, I promise, Uh, the
the idea there just didn't stack up. And it was
kind of a sad dave for me growing up to
admit that I don't think that there's any proof that
the Lockness Monster is anything but a hoax. It's like
Santa Claus. I'm not that Santa Claus doesn't exist. My
(25:10):
new night spoiler alert, My new Santa Claus in this
conversation is the Mongolian blood worm. I really wanted to uh,
I really want it to be real. Really, it's so
just nightmarish. Yeah, but we could learn so many amazing
things from a creature like that. I don't I don't
want to have one as a pet. I just want
(25:30):
I want the uh, the experience of figuring out what
it is and how it works. That would be a
great supervillain pet. That is a great supervillain pet. Yeah,
forget cats. Yeah, that's what we have, stroking Mongolian blood worm.
All right, So that's it for us. We hope you
guys have enjoyed our episode on cryptozoology. Again, this is
just sort of an introduction and we would like to
(25:53):
return to this maybe in the future on specific cryptids.
What do you think, man, absolutely there, we can dig
deep into some of this stuff. Yeah, so let us
know what you think. Please check us out on the
internets and tell us what kind of cryptods you think
are a completely made up, be completely legit um and
(26:15):
where can they find us? Men? You can find us
on Twitter We're at conspiracy Stuff. On Facebook, we're also
conspiracy Stuff. Or you can send us a good old
fashioned email at conspiracy at Discovery dot com and we
just might read it on the air. From more on
this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com
(26:38):
slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on
Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everybody,
Welcome back to stuff they don't want you to know.
The audio podcast on Ben Bolan and I'm met Frederick
(00:23):
and that today we are going to actually, you know
what a little segue at one yeah segway. All right, So, um,
you're familiar with Florida. I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Uh the state. Okay, so yes, I know I know
where you're talking about. Now, I'm just messing with you, man. Yeah,
So in Florida when I was a wee young type,
(00:47):
it's in the northern Florida swamps, the Panhandle swamps. And
I was on my camping trip and I swear, man,
I saw really free ish looking animal. It was right
around twilight, and uh, I was camped out. We could
(01:10):
see we could see through the through the trees, through
the canopy, something moving under the under the water, and
uh yeah, and so I assume something like, oh wow,
that's so cool. Maybe it's an alligator, you know, and
uh later come to find out as we were heading
(01:31):
back home one of the locals in the area told
me that that was not any normal alligator, but it
was actually a giant lizard of an unknown variety. Yeah,
it was, in other words, a crypted a cryptid, a
cryptid which brings us to cryptozoology. Now, let me go
(01:55):
ahead and just say that I think the old guy
who was telling us that was just messing with us
since we were kids. Sure, I don't think it was
an extraordinary animal, but were I a crypto zoologist, I
would probably go back and investigate that because cryptozoology is
(02:16):
the very, very controversial study of animals that are rumored
but not proven to exist. This is true, and that's
what we're talking about today. And so what like, what's
an example of a cryptid. Well, one of the best
cryptids that comes to mind, probably the most well known.
(02:36):
It has a lot of different names, but it's the
sasquatch slash YETI slash, Bigfoot slash abominable snowman flash. Yeah, yes,
that's right, And we covered this actually at a live show.
We didn't for some kids. The the quest for Bigfoot
has gone on for such a long time, and the
(02:58):
archetype of this hairy half man half animal thing dates
back into antiquity, into prehistory, the wild Man, the wild
Man of Bora Bora and all that stuff. Yeah. The
the thing is that Bigfoot, as we refer to it
on Facebook page, either doesn't exist or is the world's
reigning hide and Seek champion. Yes, because no one yet
(03:22):
has found uncontested, inarguable proof of Bigfoot. Now, there are
a lot of conjectures about why this hasn't happened, chief
of which is that maybe Bigfoot doesn't exist. Maybe it's
just a series of misidentifications. You know, people who have
never seen a bear before see a bear standing on
two ft um. Maybe maybe, or maybe this creature has
(03:46):
uh intelligence such that it's able to evade people, which
is very very I'm just gonna say improbable. Or my
favorite idea, yeah, that it's a multidimensional extraterrestrial. I was
wondering when you were going to mention that that's the
that's the documentary in Search of Bigfoot, right, Yeah, where
(04:07):
one of the where one of the hunters proposes that idea.
So when we talk about cryptozoology, the most popular cryptids,
which are these hidden animals quote unquote, are gonna be
creatures like Bigfoot. Yeah, or lockness, monster, sure, um or chupacapa. Ah,
that's a deep cut man, I hope, I said that, right,
(04:27):
Yeah you did um or. We're both mispronouncing it. But
so cryptozoology at heart comes from the Greek. It just
means hidden animals, literally, the study of hidden animals. Now,
we said that cryptozoology is uh controversial, but let's talk
about where it comes from. Because people can't quite agree
(04:50):
on where the name comes from, right, They attribute it
often to a zoologists named Oh, here we go, Bernard
hooval Owns, who also attributes it to someone else, and
that is a Scottish person named Ivan T. Sanderson. But
you know, regardless of where the term derives from, the
(05:13):
point is that this quest for hidden animals is often
not treated well or regarded kindly by a fringe, an
area of study that isn't necessarily uh legitimate in the
eyes of a lot of scientists, yeah, especially zoologists, mostly zoologists.
(05:34):
And so while we're doing this podcast, what we'll do
is we'll talk a little bit about different types of
cryptids that are alleged to exist, and we'll talk about
why cryptozoology has often been called a pseudoscience. And then
you know, what men. I think we should close with
some surprising stories of cryptozoology. Awesome, Let's let's do that.
(05:57):
Before we get into all of that, can I just
tell a quick little story as well? Do you have
a cryptozoology story. It's not necessarily a crypto zoology story.
It's just kind of the origin of why I'm interested
in these kind of things, and I think a lot
of people might actually relate to it and then cool. So,
as a young lad in middle school, I used to
watch X Files with my dad. It was my favorite
(06:18):
show ever, and it would freak me out and I
loved it. It really piqued my interest. One of the
episodes that really got me into cryptozoology, or at least
looking at longness, monster and big Foot in those kind
of things, was one called The Host. Now this is
season two, episode two, and you might remember it. It's
(06:38):
a creepy white monster that's half human half flukewarm flukeworm,
and it lived in the sewers and it would suck
on you and inject you with flukeworms. It was one
of the grossest things and creepiest things I've ever seen.
I would go to the bathroom and imagine it inside
the toilet. I would walk by the sewers in my
(06:59):
neighborhood and just run past them, or I would not
take my eyes off of them, and it really just
got me into it. Yeah, that that, and that's one
of my favorite episodes to actually and what happens with
the host. I think the host comes from the creature
and the host is born out of a mutation because
of in exposure radiation exact and uh, that is still,
(07:23):
for my money, one of my favorite X Files monsters
um up there with Remember the guy who appeared to
be human but he was functionally immortal and he would
eat people's livers hide out for years. Oh man, X
Files didn't That was certainly off track. No, No, that's
(07:43):
that's a great point because I think it's important to
understand why someone would delve into a field like this
with um so much contempt that happens. For instance, if
you want to become a cryptozoologist, you are in tough
luck for for a lot of reasons, one of which
(08:04):
is that there's no formal, universally accredited cryptozoology degree or course,
so people claiming to be cryptozoologists are often self appointed,
which is always going to should always set off a
yellow flag whenever you I'm not gonna say a red flag,
but you guys know, whenever you hear somebody appoint themselves
(08:27):
the authority on something, it's almost orange, I would say
it is. It is almost orange. It's deep, it's deep orange.
But the the truth of the matter is that people
who dismiss cryptozoology don't dismiss it because of the idea
(08:47):
of hidden animals. As a matter of fact, we know
that there are millions of undiscovered species in the world,
and a lot of them are going to die before
humans ever cataloged them. Right, we'll find the bones, la, Yes,
we will find the bones later, if they're large enough
to have bones. However, the criticisms come mainly from this
(09:08):
idea that cryptozoologists are pseudo scientists practicing uh epic confirmation bias, right,
like the it's never acceptable that maybe the animal we're
looking for, maybe the locknut monster, simply doesn't exist. Um.
And it's really tough to get evidence of these kind
(09:28):
of things, at least evidence that we can look at
and say this is no questions xcrypted, because especially now
that that video editing technology is at the point where
it's at where you can pretty much fake almost anything
on video, and it's it's extremely difficult for someone to
(09:50):
to to convince me at least. And we're talking about cryptics.
We're not just talking about legendary creatures like unicorns, dragons
or manticors. Uh. And there's a multipart definition that you
and I found that we really like. Right, Yeah, this
this is kind of long. Uh. And here we go
extant and known living species which are unrecognized as living
(10:12):
in a particular area. Okay, so that would be an
animal that we already know, just in a different range,
so out of his comfort zone. Yes. So like we
we find persian leopards in Maine for some reason, that
would make them cryptids absolutely. And number two known in
living species whose form, color, and size is extraordinary for
(10:34):
the species. Think about giant anacondas or spotted lions, yeah right,
or the creatures that have island dwarfism, you know, tiny
elephants Homo flornzis kidding because that counts as a hominid. Absolutely.
And number three is a known species thought to be
extinct within historical times. And yes, the Ceila cant which
(10:59):
was considered extinct and prehistoric by Western experts. Of course,
the people who live in the Ceili Cants native range
were always used to this just tremendously ugly fish, and uh,
Western explorers found it again and it was rediscovered. It
is a cryptid success story, Yes it is. And number
(11:21):
four presumably extinct species not in fossil form, known only
from limited evidence feathers, skin, bones, or but without a
complete specimen. Okay, alright, so that's something where we can
attempt to put together clues, like trying to put together
puzzle without all the pieces. Exactly. I don't know that
(11:42):
I have a good example for that, though. Um. A
good example for that might be uh, dinosaurs that were
originally believed to be all the same species, but then
they found different species or subspecies. Excellent. Now number five
we've got new species. He's known by anecdotal evidence while
no organic evidence exists. Yes, and here is where this
(12:06):
one is important, because here's where we get the majority
of what people think of when they think of cryptos
right exactly. One of my favorites is the Mongolian blood worm.
Oh that sounds horrible. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty gross.
Uh So, the Mongolian blood worm apparently lives in the
deserts of Mongolia and possibly Central Asia, and that this creature,
(12:29):
anecdotally speaking, is a pretty rough customer. It has the
ability to either shock or poison people, and it can
be two ft long. It's red. Uh lives under the
sand or under the ground. And there was an expedition
to attempt to find this creature on some number of
(12:53):
years ago. Now that expedition, as far as I know,
was unsuccessful. That's my favorite. But of course this category anecdotal,
no hard evidence. This category is where we find pretty
much everything. Yeah, and a lot of my favorite ones,
like the thunderbird. What's the third the thunderbird is it's awesome.
There are a lot of Native American tales about this thing.
(13:15):
It's a giant bird. And let's see according to Mark A. Hall,
who is an investigator self appointed investigator of the thunderbird
and uh so, the best average he has is a
wingspan of fifteen to twenty feet and a height of
four to eight feet. And there's this great tail. It's again,
(13:36):
it's kind of just an anecdotal tail of these kids
in nineteen seventy seven in Lawndale, Illinois, where there's three
kids playing in the backyard. Two giant birds come by
and one of them tries to pick up one of
the kids, and it allegedly carries him at about a
height of two feet off the ground for thirty yards.
But again, it's kind of just a story that people
(14:00):
talk about and there's not a lot of evidence there. See,
this is where I want to go on a little
bit of a soapbox. All right, So, Matt, we know
that specie that they are undiscovered species, right, We've admitted
that that's out in the open, that badger is out
of the bag, But we haven't mentioned that species are
(14:20):
being discovered every day at an unprecedented rate, which is true, right, Yeah,
it's absolutely true. And so what we have to do
is attribute this to a couple of factors. One, human
beings are encroaching and formally wild habitats. Now I'm not
I'm not taking any sort of preachy stance on this.
That's just the fact that is occurring. And so it's
(14:43):
more likely than ever before that we will find things
like that huge enclave of mountain gorillas or where they
lowland guerrillas. Yeah, so it's much more likely that we'll
find these animals and uh, it's much less likely that
they will evade detect action. However, it's also important for
us to note that if we're if we're talking about
(15:07):
finding new undiscovered animals, it's not automatically impossible. It's not
automatically some sort of thing that should be dismissed. Cryptozoology,
I think gets a bit of a bad name, because again,
there's not really a hierarchy in place for people to
have to earn their way up or earn their expertise. Now,
(15:30):
I'm also not saying anything bad about the people who
are self appointed or self taught cryptozoologists, but I do
think that it does a disservice to humanity as a whole.
If we pretend that the search for new forms of
life is somehow inherently dumb, it's it's clearly not. There
have been so many actual species discovered, like the Komodo
(15:55):
dragon until nine may as well have been a unicorn.
It was discovered, and it's turns out that, yeah, a
lot of the stuff people say about it is true.
It is cannibalistic, it will eat you, it's monstrous, and
we know that about the Seela. Can't we know that?
We know that the world is full of undiscovered animals.
(16:16):
We know that the world is full of places where
human beings have not yet tread, the vast majority of
those being underwater. But what I think we will find
as human populations expand is that we're going to continue
discovering more and more species that were formally anecdotal, formilia legendary.
(16:39):
Can we talk about our dinosaur episode, Yeah, Living Dinosaurs.
That's one of the first ones, probably the first ten
or even less that we produced, and that one looks
at actually number seven, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot
the list On this list, Number seven is a new
species known only to indigenous or ever original people's were
(17:01):
discovered entirely by excident, and the first part of that
is the most important the indigenous peoples. So let's go
back to mokley bimbi uh. It's essentially a dinosaur, yeah,
and alleged dinosaur that lives. I don't know exactly where.
I'm not recalling them in the wilds of western Africa.
(17:25):
Apparently in the in a forest that few people have
ventured into. It's also alternately known as like the Wrongo Wrongo.
I think I'm mispronouncing some of this, and I do apologize,
but here's the idea. A quadruped large reptile that, based
on the description, looks like a dinosaur. The locals swear
(17:49):
it's there. The locals are not impressed by it. They
they have said that perhaps, uh, that these creatures are
increasingly rare these days. UM, when we were doing a
presentation on cryptozoology, we had the good luck to meet, um,
a very interesting guy who was an animal handler, and
(18:10):
he helped us out with a spot nosed gwen in
named Gwen. It's a kind of small monkey. And um
we also got to talking about cryptids and he fully
believes that there could be a large undiscovered reptile in
that part of Africa. Now he was careful not to
say a dinosaur exactly, but this, UM, this was an
(18:33):
exciting thing for us to look at because that area
of the world has not been um exhaustively explored by scientists.
It's just really expensive to venture out to that part
of the world. And we see this again and again
with cryptozoology attempts at expeditions. Right, No, no one's going
to or no academic source is going to fund a
(18:57):
cryptozoological expedition. They might fund and anthropological expedition where you say, Okay,
a bunch of these people believe in the Ghetti. So
let's go to this himalayan Um area and see why
these people believe in the yetty and what they say
about it and what it means about their social group.
(19:19):
You know what I'm realizing ben zoology needs most most
of all and retiring older billionaire via Let's think about
Indiana Jones. Yeah, someone who just goes out and explores
and has billions of dollars to spend. That's what we need.
We need a batman for cryptozoology. Yeah, we needed Brandson. Yeah,
(19:41):
we need Bill Gates because I think then man, we
find them all you think so that uh they're the
new Pokemon. But uh, let's see there there are other
creatures that have been discovered. You know, I guess we've
done an okay, look at cryptozoology one oh one? Right,
all right, so I don't really have anything to add
(20:03):
before we get to the best part of this story,
which we teased earlier. Cryptids that were actually discovered. Um,
we mentioned the cela, can't we did? What's what's another one? Well,
how about the giant squid or the colossal squid? Oh? Yes, now,
we'll all we surely all remember the stories of sea
(20:25):
serpents and leviathans, things that were big enough to eat
a ship. And uh, we knew we, being the human species,
done you and I particularly met we as a species
knew that it was possible for a squid to grow
or cephalopod like that, to grow um to an unknown size.
(20:46):
But it had always been kind of a legend, at
least until it was discovered, uh, photographed alive in two
thousand four. And also there have been physical samples of
these creatures found, going back to your earlier point about photoshop.
And then let's see, there was also what was the
(21:07):
name of that monkey that has no nose? That's a
freaky thing. All right, Well that's fine because we've also,
let's noted the commotive dragon. Uh, there's something that was
described as the devil bird, and the devil bird turned
out to be the spot bellied eagle owl. And so,
(21:29):
as you know, the names get a little bit less fantastical,
um once they're actually discovered. Um. Then there was something
called the copy copy, which was discovered in nineteen o one. Now,
of course, we we have to also say when these
things are discovered quote unquote, it's a hard finger quotes
(21:50):
they're discovered. Uh. Usually the locals have known about these
for years and years and years, and it's just the
first person who historically is from the west who sees
it gets counted as discovery of the discoverer. And um oh,
giant cats also are huge. People believe that they're giant
(22:11):
cats that roam. How big are we talking lions size? Maybe? Uh,
there are quite a few reports of giant cats in
the United Kingdom and in some places like in the
Middle East, Central Asia. There when they're isolated reports of
these cats. It's interesting because you know, once upon a
(22:32):
time that was the natural range of some large feelines.
But we don't at this point have solid proof of those.
What we do have, however, are a couple of interesting
things here. We know that a these creatures, creatures that
were once thought legendary, have been discovered. Right. We know
that we know that be zoology itself and anthropology are
(22:55):
legitimate sciences. Um. We know that c it's inordinately expensive
to travel to these remote hinter lands and spend months
scouring for some animal that may or may not exist.
It may just be like um, like a snipe hunt.
You know, it's a dangerous proposition. I think it might
take an eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne. As you said, Man,
(23:18):
I'm telling you we need that man. And uh, if
you guys, if you guys want to know more information
about any of this stuff, we we did a Cryptic
week not too long ago. Go back on our YouTube
page and watch all of those if you want there.
They're pretty great. It will really get the imagination going. Yes,
and I wanted to, you know, always want to end
with us asking each other some questions. Matt, do you
(23:42):
think that any of them, any of the cryptids that
are talked about nowadays, do you think there's a case
to be said for any of them actually existing. Oh
that's a tough one for me. I I want to
believe nice, but I I don't think that I can
right now. The biggest one I would say, if I
(24:05):
had to make a complete conjecture, I would say a
large reptile that we maybe haven't really seen in a
in a jungle where indigenous people. If I would, I
could believe that more than probably anything else. Yeah. You know,
as a kid, I loved the idea of the Lockness monster,
But it never really made sense to me. Um, you know,
(24:27):
there's there's a neat exercise that you can do with
with conjecture for for the living space of an animal,
Like if you if you think about how much an
animal would weigh, what kind of food it would eat,
how much of that food it would need then, and
then where that food grows and what the distribution of
that food is, then you can kind of find a range.
(24:48):
But um, the idea of the Lockness Monster as a
pleas asaur different from a dinosaur, I promise, Uh, the
the idea there just didn't stack up. And it was
kind of a sad dave for me growing up to
admit that I don't think that there's any proof that
the Lockness Monster is anything but a hoax. It's like
Santa Claus. I'm not that Santa Claus doesn't exist. My
(25:10):
new night spoiler alert, My new Santa Claus in this
conversation is the Mongolian blood worm. I really wanted to uh,
I really want it to be real. Really, it's so
just nightmarish. Yeah, but we could learn so many amazing
things from a creature like that. I don't I don't
want to have one as a pet. I just want
(25:30):
I want the uh, the experience of figuring out what
it is and how it works. That would be a
great supervillain pet. That is a great supervillain pet. Yeah,
forget cats. Yeah, that's what we have, stroking Mongolian blood worm.
All right, So that's it for us. We hope you
guys have enjoyed our episode on cryptozoology. Again, this is
just sort of an introduction and we would like to
(25:53):
return to this maybe in the future on specific cryptids.
What do you think, man, absolutely there, we can dig
deep into some of this stuff. Yeah, so let us
know what you think. Please check us out on the
internets and tell us what kind of cryptods you think
are a completely made up, be completely legit um and
(26:15):
where can they find us? Men? You can find us
on Twitter We're at conspiracy Stuff. On Facebook, we're also
conspiracy Stuff. Or you can send us a good old
fashioned email at conspiracy at Discovery dot com and we
just might read it on the air. From more on
this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com
(26:38):
slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on
Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
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