Cryptozoology relies, far more than anyone would like, on eyewitness reports are the starting point of a search or the discussion of a new “cryptid.” We all agree human perception is fallible in countless ways. We can also agree there is not much science (except maybe psychology) can do with a report like the Enfield Monster of 1973: “It had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights” (witness Henry McDaniel).
When it comes to plausible animals, though, dismissing
eyewitness testimony as useless is taking one step too far. Eyewitness descriptions are, and have always
been, important to the ways zoologists are led to new animals. Think
about the ways in which a new animal CAN be discovered by science. They are 1)
discovery of body parts (bones, trophies, rugs,
etc.); 2) scientific surveys where scientists are in the field cataloging everything
in a targeted area; and 3) eyewitness accounts (either fresh or traditional)
that alert scientists or explorers to the possibility of an animal and inspire
expeditions to find it. Most of the late Dr. Alan Rabinowitz's mammal
discoveries, for example, came from asking local hunters about their animals.
Sometimes they could show him a trophy: other times, they described an animal
they had seen and told him, or guided him, to where it could be found. Ditto Marcus van Roosmalen’s discoveries of
new South American monkeys. One was literally handed to him, but most came from
following up reports.
Such sightings serve as a starting point for investigators:
they are not "proof" of a creature, but they can prompt us to ask
interesting questions which we can then approach with the modern tools of
science. The sightings of the chevron-marked beaked whale once called Mesoplodon Species A are a good example, as
they led to an identification (which initially seemed weak to me, but I was
wrong) as the adult form of the pygmy beaked whale Mesoplodon peruvianus.
Cryptozoology, properly understood, is the application of zoology,
scientifically and objectively, to the discovery of new animals: the
distinction is that cryptozoology opens the aperture a bit to open files on
cases which are not quite as well attested as those leading to, say, the
finding of the Vu Quang ox and company
What is the eyewitness report never leads to anything
substantial? At some point, it becomes more of a historically interesting
artifact than a clue to a living creature, but where is that point?
Let's say it's 1908, and you read the report made by naturalists Nicoll and Meade-Waldo on the yacht Valhalla. It was published in the Royal Society's Proceedings and is certainly intriguing. But. Do you close the file if twenty years pass without the animal being found? Probably not - the sea is a big place. Fifty years? 100 years? Well, depressingly, it's entirely logical to close the file and accept that a mundane explanation such as offered by Adrian Shrine or Darren Naish must have been correct even if you don’t like the fit 100 percent. I held out on this one a long time before finally deciding it's not going to reward further study.
In other words, how long does it take for absence of evidence to become evidence of absence? Maybe there should be a 50-year standard (the old IUCN rule for when to count a species extinct), but the cahow or Bermuda petrel was rediscovered for certain only after 300 years of presumed extinction. Some of it depends on whether the habitat can be searched: small lakes in the UK were thoroughly searched (and dynamited) and the hypothesis that there were creatures in those lakes was properly falsified. It would take enormous and unavailable resources to falsify the hypothesis "There is an unclassified North American ape” by direct search, but you can do it in theory. But as to the lack of followup evidence being considered falsification, you inevitably end up in the world of opinion. My opinion is that countless searches have falsified the Loch Ness monster, but not everyone agrees.
It’s not true that “My opinion is as good as anyone’s.” But
it’s also true that every researcher needs to use their own judgment –
hopefully skeptically (in the proper sense of that word) – when evaluating
witness reports. Witnesses can be right, they can be wrong, or somewhere in the
middle. But I do hold they can indeed give science the starting point in
discovery of a new animal. Thus, they have at least some value for properly
scientific cryptozoology. Keep looking!
Matt Bille is a writer and historian living in Colorado Springs. His most recent novel, Death by Legend, is a gripping tale of horrors loose in modern-day Los Angeles. The next, the scientific thriller Apex Predator, will be out from Blackstone in February. See www.mattbilleauthor.com
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