Dale Cozort's Cryptozoology Page
(Bigfoot and the like)

What is Cryptozoology?

Cryptozoology is the search for animals that haven't been acknowledged by western science yet. That search throws science and pseudoscience together in an uneasy co-existence. I try to plant myself in the science camp. But where is the boundary line? I mention Bigfoot in the title because it's something most people have heard of. I doubt very much that Bigfoot exists. I'd put it, along with the Loch Ness Monster, in the pseudo-science category. I would genuinely love to be proven wrong in both cases. The science part of Cryptozoology mainly involves animals that, if they really exist, would be of interest to almost no one outside the scientific community. The headline grabbers like Bigfoot and Loch Ness monster are headline grabbers because they're not likely to be real.

The real action in Cryptozoology is in smaller, more obscure animals. There are still a lot of them to be discovered. In July 1995, a biologist took a two week trip to the Columbian Andes and came back with six new species of small mammals. An article in the September 13, 1996 issue of the prestigious journal SCIENCE says that there are currently a little over 4600 species of mammals known to western science. The article estimated that number will jump by at least 15% when all of the new mammals that have been found in the last decade are officially named and described. The article quotes Lawrence R. Heaney, an evolutionary biogeographer at Chicago's Field Museum as saying that he thinks the number of mammal species will eventually reach 8000. Heaney says, "The tropics are still so poorly known, even for mammals that just about anywhere you go, you'll find something new." Heaney himself recently found 11 species of small mammals in the Philippines.

Most of the new animals will be small--rats, bats and shrews. A few of them will be big. Several large new animals in the cow/goat/deer tribe have turned up lately in Vietnam. A monitor lizard almost as big as a Komodo Dragon has been seen by reputable and trained observers on the island of Sulawesi, but not captured yet. New species of monkeys still turn up in Brazil at the rate of about one per year.

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Cryptozoology--Hard Evidence

In a few cases, there is apparently hard evidence of a cryptozoology-type animal's existence, but the animal is still in limbo. If anyone has word of what happened in these cases, I'd like to hear about it. I'm especially interested in:

• The onza--supposedly an unknown species of North American big cat, mountain lion-sized but not a mountain lion. One was shot and the carcass brought back for scientific investigation several years ago--at least 5 years ago. I've been told by several reliable people that DNA testing didn't find major differences between the carcass and an ordinary mountain lion. Can anyone out there explain what happened?
• Possible new species of African Apes. On page 186 of his book on Abominable Snowmen, Ivan T. Sanderson says, "...in 1955 a professional American animal-collector brought back parts of a preserved specimen of a small kind of ape from the Gabun (West Africa) that is now lodged in the museum in Zurich, Switzerland. He also had photographs of the animal when alive, and it was certainly the oddest looking creature; like a tiny orang-utan with a high-domed forehead and quite unchimplike face, clothed in black hair, but having no thumbs! The collector insisted that the local natives know these animals well; that they are not chimps, they are completely arboreal, travel in parties of about 40, and never come to the ground. This specimen has been tentatively put down as an extremely abnormal baby chimp but it has a complete set of adult teeth." Sanderson also mentions that skins and skulls of what may be a pygmy species of Gorilla have been collected. I would think that modern DNA testing could settle the question of what those things really are. Has anyone done that?

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What's New

(Last Update-January 7, 2002)

January 7, 2002:

I've gone a long time between updates--over 3 years.  I started the cryptozoology part of my site at a time when I wasn't aware of a lot of good cryptozoology information of the web.  That changed, and it got to the point where frankly I felt that I was re-inventing the wheel.  A lot of other people were covering the same ground and doing a better job of it than I was.  I still feel that way.  I gave the page a cosmetic facelift and updated the links, but that's about all this time.  I'll try to keep the links current, and I'll do an update once in a while if I feel that I can contribute something out of the ordinary, but I won't be updating this page on a regular basis.

Sept 10, 1998:

I hope you enjoy the new look of the page. The only significant recent news I've come across hasn't happened yet. Supposedly, later this month a reporter is going to air a segment proving that the famous Bigfoot video footage is a fake. That's an easy and attention-grabbing claim. We'll see if it also happens to be true.

March 12, 1998:

Just one quick news flash: Discover Magazine's current issue has a long, rather skeptical article on Champ, Lake Champlain's answer to the Loch Ness Monster. The article does let both skeptics and believers have a voice, and it is well written. I haven't looked into Lake Monsters deeply enough to know if the dominant theory in the article--that Champ sightings are mostly due to an odd type of wave that exists in both Lake Champlain and Loch Ness--is valid. I'd be interested in hearing what people who have looked into this more closely think.

Feb 25, 1998:

• Added More Crypto News--Wallabies + Orang Pendeks Lost And Found, New Crypto Journal
• Added More Paleontology News--Loys' South American "Ape" looks more Likely
• Added An Essay: Exploring The Boundaries Of Cryptozoology. What Is It? What Isn't It?

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Have I missed anything?

I'm sure there are other good cryptozoology sources out there. If you know of any I'd love to list them. I'd also love to talk to others out there who try to keep up with this stuff. Click to e-mail me. DaleCoz@aol.com