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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cryptozoology | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptozoology | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:18:27.350647+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Expeditions === Cryptozoologists have often led unsuccessful expeditions to find evidence of cryptids. Bigfoot researcher René Dahinden led searches into caves to find evidence of sasquatch, as early sasquatch legends claimed they lived in rocky areas. Despite the failure of these searches, he spent years trying to find proof of bigfoot. Lensgrave Adam Christoffer Knuth led an expedition into Lake Tele in the Congo to find the Mokele-mbembe in 2018. While the expedition was a failure, they discovered a new species of green algae.
=== Young Earth creationism === A subset of cryptozoology promotes the pseudoscience of Young Earth creationism, rejecting conventional science in favor of a literal Biblical interpretation and promoting concepts such as "living dinosaurs". Science writer Sharon Hill observes that the Young Earth creationist segment of cryptozoology is "well-funded and able to conduct expeditions with a goal of finding a living dinosaur that they think would invalidate evolution". Anthropologist Jeb J. Card says that "[c]reationists have embraced cryptozoology and some cryptozoological expeditions are funded by and conducted by creationists hoping to disprove evolution." In a 2013 interview, paleontologist Donald Prothero notes an uptick in creationist cryptozoologists. He observes that "[p]eople who actively search for Loch Ness monsters or Mokele Mbembe do it entirely as creationist ministers. They think that if they found a dinosaur in the Congo it would overturn all of evolution. It wouldn't. It would just be a late-occurring dinosaur, but that's their mistaken notion of evolution." Citing a 2013 exhibit at the Petersburg, Kentucky-based Creation Museum, which claimed that dragons were once biological creatures who walked the earth alongside humanity and is broadly dedicated to Young Earth creationism, religious studies academic Justin Mullis notes that "[c]ryptozoology has a long and curious history with Young Earth Creationism, with this new exhibit being just one of the most recent examples". Academic Paul Thomas analyzes the influence and connections between cryptozoology in his 2020 study of the Creation Museum and the creationist theme park Ark Encounter. Thomas comments that, "while the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter are flirting with pseudoarchaeology, coquettishly whispering pseudoarchaeological rhetoric, they are each fully in bed with cryptozoology" and observes that "[y]oung-earth creationists and cryptozoologists make natural bed fellows. As with pseudoarchaeology, both young-earth creationists and cryptozoologists bristle at the rejection of mainstream secular science and lament a seeming conspiracy to prevent serious consideration of their claims."
=== Lack of critical media coverage === Media outlets have often uncritically disseminated information from cryptozoologist sources, including newspapers that repeat false claims made by cryptozoologists or television shows that feature cryptozoologists as monster hunters (such as the popular and purportedly nonfiction American television show MonsterQuest, which aired from 2007 to 2010). Media coverage of purported "cryptids" often fails to provide more likely explanations, further propagating claims made by cryptozoologists.
== Reception and pseudoscience == There is a broad consensus among academics that cryptozoology is a pseudoscience. The subculture is regularly criticized for reliance on anecdotal information and because in the course of investigating animals that most scientists believe are unlikely to have existed, cryptozoologists do not follow the scientific method. No academic course of study nor university degree program grants the status of cryptozoologist and the subculture is primarily the domain of individuals without training in the natural sciences. Anthropologist Jeb J. Card summarizes cryptozoology in a survey of pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology:
Cryptozoology purports to be the study of previously unidentified animal species. At first glance, this would seem to differ little from zoology. New species are discovered by field and museum zoologists every year. Cryptozoologists cite these discoveries as justification of their search but often minimize or omit the fact that the discoverers do not identify as cryptozoologists and are academically trained zoologists working in an ecological paradigm rather than organizing expeditions to seek out supposed examples of unusual and large creatures. Card notes that "cryptozoologists often show their disdain and even hatred for professional scientists, including those who enthusiastically participated in cryptozoology", which he traces back to Heuvelmans's early "rage against critics of cryptozoology". He finds parallels with cryptozoology and other pseudosciences, such as ghost hunting and ufology, and compares the approach of cryptozoologists to colonial big-game hunters, and to aspects of European imperialism. According to Card, "[m]ost cryptids are framed as the subject of indigenous legends typically collected in the heyday of comparative folklore, though such legends may be heavily modified or worse. Cryptozoology's complicated mix of sympathy, interest, and appropriation of indigenous culture (or non-indigenous construction of it) is also found in New Age circles and dubious "Indian burial grounds" and other legends [...] invoked in hauntings such as the "Amityville" hoax [...]". In a 2011 foreword for The American Biology Teacher, then National Association of Biology Teachers president Dan Ward uses cryptozoology as an example of "technological pseudoscience" that may confuse students about the scientific method. Ward says that "Cryptozoology [...] is not valid science or even science at all. It is monster hunting." Historian of science Brian Regal includes an entry for cryptozoology in his Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia (2009). Regal says that "as an intellectual endeavor, cryptozoology has been studied as much as cryptozoologists have sought hidden animals". In a 1992 issue of Folklore, folklorist Véronique Campion-Vincent says: