Anthropology and Cryptozoology
eBook - ePub

Anthropology and Cryptozoology

Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures

Samantha Hurn, Samantha Hurn

Share book
  1. 246 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Anthropology and Cryptozoology

Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures

Samantha Hurn, Samantha Hurn

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Cryptozoology is best understood as the study of animals which, in the eyes of Western science, are extinct, unclassified or unrecognised. In consequence, and in part because of its selective methods and lack of epistemological rigour, cryptozoology is often dismissed as a pseudo-science. However, there is a growing recognition that social science can benefit from engaging with it, for as as social scientists are very well aware, 'scientific' categorisation and explanation represents just one of a myriad of systems used by humans to enable them to classify and make sense of the world around them. In many cultural contexts, myth, folk classification and lived experience challenge the 'truth' expounded by scientists. With a reflexive, anthropological approach and drawing on rich empirical and ethnographic studies from around the world, this volume engages with the theoretical and methodological issues raised by reported sightings of unrecognised animals. Bringing into sharp focus the anthropological value and challenges for methodology posed by beliefs about unclassified creatures, Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring encounters with mysterious creatures will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and geographers working in the fields of research methods, anthrozoology, mythology and folklore and human-animal interaction.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Anthropology and Cryptozoology an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Anthropology and Cryptozoology by Samantha Hurn, Samantha Hurn in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Sozialwissenschaften & Anthropologie. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2016
ISBN
9781317180456

1 The place of cryptids in taxonomic debates

Stephanie S. Turner

Introduction

The term ‘cryptid’ is a relative newcomer to the English lexicon, coined as recently as 1983, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, to take the place of ‘sensational and often misleading terms like “monster”’. As a noun, ‘cryptid’ appears in popular science writing to refer to such ‘improbable animals’ (Museum Accepts Cryptic Collection 1999: 1079) as the coelacanth (thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago but found to exist), the Tasmanian tiger (now listed as extinct but still allegedly sighted), and the yeti (never definitively documented). Scientists writing to a scientific audience are more likely to use the adjective ‘cryptic’ than the noun ‘cryptid’, though they do so in a variety of strategically specific ways to cover much the same ground as cryptozoologists do when referring to cryptids. For example, scientists use ‘cryptic’ to refer to the camouflage coloration of some species, questionable hybrids, recently discovered species, undiscovered species suspected to have existed in the past, and a single species that has been found, through genetic technologies, to be multiple species.
Until recently, then, the term ‘cryptid’ has appeared mainly in that marginalized field mixing folklore and zoology known as cryptozoology. The so-called ‘father of cryptozoology’ (Coleman 2001: n.p.), Bernard Heuvelmans, used the term ‘cryptid’ to refer broadly to the many unknown and relict species that he was convinced still roamed the earth. A zoologist by training but quixotic by inclination, Heuvelmans focused his exhaustive research on large animals (like sea serpents) and hominoids (like the yeti), establishing a trend that has dominated cryptozoology ever since (Weidensaul 2002: 173). In this paper, the non-technical term ‘hominoid’ is used to refer to the taxonomic superfamily Hominoidea, while ‘hominin’ is preferred over the less precise ‘hominid’ to refer to those specific hominoids in the tribe Hominini, which includes humans and their ancestors following their split from the great apes (Stein n.d.: 4). According to Heuvelmans, cryptids matter to humans in specific ways: they have traits that are ‘truly singular, unexpected, paradoxical, striking, emotionally upsetting, and thus capable of mythification’ (cited in Dendle 2006: 192). It did not matter to Heuvelmans that cryptid existence lacks objective proof; circumstantial and testimonial evidence of their reality is compelling enough to take their possible existence seriously (Heuvelmans 1958: 28–29). He thus viewed cryptids as ‘monsters’ only in the sense that their possible existence demonstrates something of value that has been lost from the natural world because of human actions that only human representation could confirm. Since their existence depends so much on human testimony and redemption seeking, the search for cryptids takes on a moral dimension in Heuvelmans’ writing. For example, at the conclusion of the study that launched the field, Heuvelmans writes,
Tomorrow we may know one of our other relatives: the abominable snowman [yeti], for instance, who is surely a shy and gentle great ape; or perhaps an even more human primate like the tiny agogwe or the elusive orang pendek. I hope with all my heart that when he is captured there will be no needless murder. Have pity on them all, for it is we who are the real monsters.
(1955: 518)
Heuvelmans’ perspective continues to influence the discourse among cryptozoologists and others on why cryptids matter. Second-generation cryptozoologist Loren Coleman’s characterization of cryptids, echoing that of Heuvelmans, underscores their importance to humans: they are ‘either unknown species of animals or those that are thought to be extinct but [that] may have survived into modern times and await rediscovery by scientists’ (Coleman 2003: n.p.). Known only indirectly, merely suspected to exist, or somehow surviving the vicissitudes of modernity, the distinct agency of these animals challenges humans who attempt to situate them in time and place. Significantly, Coleman suggests, any animal lacking a precise identification or classification could be considered a cryptid (Coleman 2003). Such an expanded meaning of the term would include many more nonhumans, and not all of them megafauna: disputed type specimens, hybrids and mutants, urban wildlife, and formerly domesticated animals gone feral. Taking Coleman’s suggestion one step further, one might also consider as cryptids such engineered microorganisms as oil-eating bacteria and synthetic genomes. Under this scheme, all sorts of anomalous nonhumans would matter that much more to humans in a variety of fields touching on human–animal studies or anthrozoology, presenting new opportunities to build knowledge across disciplines. Examining why and how cryptids matter illuminates the fundamental, compelling role of anomaly in both scientific and popular responses to the natural world, as well as the ways these responses inform each other. Destabilizing and disturbing, anomalies in the natural world provoke questions and drive quests. Anomalous animals function as points of negotiation over what counts as worthy knowledge in the life sciences, as their very ambiguity can help clarify the changing values and emerging problems in such projects as species cataloging and conservation efforts. Anomalous animals are also at the crux of the field of human–animal studies or anthrozoology, as our perception of their apparent monstrosity can illuminate some of the contradictions in our characterization of animal others (e.g. Fudge 2002). Putting cryptozoology into historical context and tracing its various manifestations in recent popular and professional discourse, I consider some of the ways that cryptid proliferation calls our attention to non-human agency.

Recording the cryptid moment

Why did the neologism ‘cryptid’ seem necessary to cryptozoologists in 1983? What was contributing to the sense that anomalous animals merited an investigative category of their own? A number of developments in establishment science were taking place at this time that lent credibility to the question of cryptid existence. One development in the early 1980s that crystallized the field was the formation of the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC) in 1982, whose mission was ‘to promote scientific inquiry, education and communication among people interested in animals of unexpected form or size, or unexpected occurrence in time or space’ (Wilford 1982: n.p.). Held at the National Museum of Natural History under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, the society’s formation and requisite journal, Cryptozoology, were high profile enough to command the attention of the likes of the American Philosophical Society. The attention was far from flattering, however. The eminent paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson put it bluntly: ‘The pursuit of supposed mammals lacking objective evidence is not a science in an acceptable usage of that word’ (1984: 1).
Yet evidently the formation of the ISC was tapping into a strong anti-establishment sentiment, as during that same year another group of academic free thinkers with equally respectable credentials organized in an attempt to shirk dogma in the sciences. The mission of this group, the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE), was to consider ‘topics which are for various reasons ignored or studied inadequately within mainstream science’ (Society for Scientific Exploration 2008: n.p.), thus reflecting a perception among some scientists that the scientific enterprise could be investigating a greater variety of phenomena than it was at this time. Mentioning the formation of the ISC as a ‘symptom’ of late twentieth-century science’s failure to investigate natural phenomena (e.g., the Loch Ness Monster) that matter to lay people, SSE member Henry H. Bauer (2002a; 2002b) railed against what he saw as the increasing hegemony of establishment science throughout the twentieth century. Science, he claimed, had moved away from the Mertonian norms of ‘disinterested skepticism’ in the production of ‘universally valid knowledge as a public good’ (Bauer 2004: 645), gradually becoming scientistic, bureaucratic, commercial, and downright fraudulent (Bauer 2004: 644). At the same time, a populist strain of distrust of establishment science was well underway as the Cold War escalated and issues like environmental pollution, food safety, and the treatment of animals in laboratories, farms, and zoos was shaping a more cautionary view of the role of science in everyday life.
Magnifying this distrust of establishment science is the awareness among cryptozoologists that ‘when a knowledge domain that has potential for contributions to science is created by amateurs, it will eventually combine with and then be taken over by professionals, with the result that amateur leadership is displaced’ (Regal 2009: 83. See also Dendle 2006). In turn come a loss of motivation for needed volunteers and a lack of appreciation for local knowledge. Nevertheless, a vernacular science around ‘things that matter’ to lay people – for example annual bird counts and county extension projects – was flourishing.
Throughout the twentieth century, dramatic cryptid discoveries and tantalizing bits of evidence had been capturing the public’s attention. These ran the gamut from mythical to unexpected beasts, including a ‘dragon’, specifically the giant lizard known as the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis); and a survivor from 80 million years ago, the ‘living fossil’ fish otherwise known as the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) (Weinberg 2000: 28). The public’s first encounters with the Komodo dragon following naturalist W. Douglas Burden’s 1926 expedition to find the fabled creature must have made a considerable impression, as Burden had worked hard to craft a compelling – if not entirely naturalistic – visual narrative using carefully edited documentary film footage of his trek (Mitman 1993). Including a diorama of twelve Komodo taxidermies at the American Museum of Natural History and two live Komodo dragons on exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, all captured by Burden, Burden brought a verifiable cryptid into the public eye as never before. The public’s first exposure to the coelacanth some 13 years later, though not as crafted, was equally dramatic. Instead of a ‘dragon’, this time a scientist had discovered what amounted to a ‘living dinosaur’ (Hamlin 2009a; 2009b) in the waters near the Comoros Islands, east of South Africa. Here, the compelling narrative drew on the evolutionary possibility that the ancient fish was evidence of a ‘missing link’ – a surviving member of a group of fishes, thought to be the ancestors of all land-dwelling creatures, ‘whose fins appeared to sprout from the end of fleshy, limb-like lobes, almost like toeless legs’ (Weinberg 2000: 24). Framed thus by newspapers all over the world, which were sure to include the only available photograph of the strange taxidermy, the coelacanth finding touched off an enormous public interest. With no additional sightings for more than a decade following the 1938 finding, the coelacanth tale became the kind of lost-and-found story often associated with cryptids, complete with ‘wanted’ posters offering a reward for anyone able to capture the alleged creature, dead or alive, and a successful expedition to find a second specimen in 1952. By 2009, there were nearly 175 coelacanth taxidermies on display around the world (Weinberg 2000: 205).
The Komodo dragon and the coelacanth are cryptids whose eventual capture, public display, and admission as legitimate subjects of study into the halls of establishment science diminished – but did not completely extinguish – their status as cryptids. The recent spate of unprovoked Komodo dragon attacks on humans, an unprecedented development in Komodo–human relations (Komodo Dragons Attacking Islanders 2009: n.p.), reifies the animal’s traits as a cryptid in the sense that this new behavior is unexpected and emotionally disturbing. Similarly, the 1997 finding of a coelacanth in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, thousands of miles from the original captures in 1938 and 1952, attenuated the coelacanth’s cryptid-like evasion of existing in a proper time and place. The ‘cryptidity’ of the Loch Ness Monster and the yeti, on the other hand, remains as unvarying as ever. In the decades leading up to the formation of the ICS, the public had become familiar with the numerous sightings of Nessie and Yeti; indeed, the serious efforts to investigate those sightings to some extent validated the field of cryptozoology (Regal 2009: 86–88). Heuvelmans’ massive and lavishly illustrated 1958 book, In the Wake of Sea-Serpents, documented the plausibility, to many scientists of the day, of the existence of water-dwelling cryptids (particularly large, dragon-like sea creatures) familiar in folk tales. Among the French, at least, the discovery of the coelacanth solidified this conviction (Heuvelmans 1958: 26; see also Bauer 2002a: 241). Long a staple of local lore, the mysterious animal living in Scotland’s largest body of water first received worldwide attention in 1933, when newswires picked up the story of a sighting reported in the Inverness Courier. The story triggered dozens of other people to write up their eyewitness testimonies and submit them to the Scottish papers, and later that year the first of a number of photographs of the alleged ‘monster’ were published. Soon the requisite investigation was launched (Weidensaul 2002: 154–155). Despite, or perhaps because of, inconclusive evidence of its existence, interest in Nessie remained strong. According to Coleman and Clark (1999: 140–142), the investigations made significant strides in the 1960s and 1970s, generating compelling – though again, inconclusive – evidence of some large, unidentifiable entity in the lake. Although Heuvelmans blamed the press for dampening scientific interest in the Loch Ness Monster (1955: 26), in fact, the media coverage triggered such a popular interest that the intrigue surrounding the cryptid, rather than the cryptid itself, became the focus (Bauer 2002b. See also Thomson 1991: 151).
Meanwhile, a similar, though more global, phenomenon was developing with regard to sightings of alleged hominoids of the ‘big hairy monster’ variety. The yeti, though known in various forms across Asia long before the twentieth century, became familiar in the West following the 1921 Mount Everest expedition of British explorer Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury. Howard-Bury’s description of what appeared to be large, human-like footprints in the Himalayan snow ignited the public imagination, which was further aroused by a journalist’s mistranslation of the Tibetan name for the creature that might have made the footprints (Sanderson 1961: 10–11; Coleman and Clark 1999: 23–24). The ‘abominable snowman’ thus entered the public lexicon ‘like the explosion of an atom bomb’ (Sanderson 1961: 11). According to cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson in his history of hominoid sightings between 1860 and 1960, ‘Nobody, and notably the press, could possibly pass up any such delicious term’ (Sanderson 1961: 11). Indeed, in Sanderson’s view, the abominable snowman account constituted ‘a sort of turning point in Western thinking’ (Sanderson 1961: 9) about the potential significance of ‘native knowledge’ (Sanderson 1961: 7), encouraging in the public consciousness a greater appreciation for the role of folk tales and the lore of amateur naturalists in adding to establishment knowledge of the natural world. At the same time, in North America, accounts of a similar creature known in Canada as ‘Sasquatch’ and in the United States as ‘Bigfoot’ began to thrive, and again the requisite searches for eyewitnesses and evidence were organized in the 1950s and 1960s. As is characteristic of the human response to cryptid manifestation, pinning a name on the unknown entity contributed to the process of its becoming a familiar yet still baffling thing, a phenomenon all the more uncanny when that thing so resembles another human being. According to Coleman and Clark, ‘[t]he naming of Bigfoot was a significant cultural event’ (1999: 40) as it enabled mass media consumers to organize unidentifiable sights, sounds, and traces under a single rubric, a humanoid being whose possible existence had long been discussed by people in many places throughout the world. In no time, more human-like beings entered the global cryptozoological discourse – the Latin American chupacabra and the Australian yowie, among many others that have been catalogued – and while all are improbable animals, each one is characterized, in folkloric fashion, by its illumination of the distinct concerns of the people who claim to have encountered it. Indeed, according to Lauren Derby in her cultural and historical analysis of the chupacabra legend, which originated in Puerto Rico, to the Puerto Ricans, this entity represented the majority ambivalence over ‘the predatory designs of the United States on Puerto Rico’ (2008: 300). Regarding the yowie leg...

Table of contents