International Cryptozoology Museum Conference, Night 1
January 4, 2016
I like cryptozoologists. Even though I don’t use the term for myself
anymore (too much TV baggage), I like the people I meet in the business. I like their stubborn optimism, their
enthusiasm, and their determination. Except for the hoaxers, they’re a great
bunch to hang out with. I critique the
field a lot for its collective habit of endorsing particular “crypids” before
the evidence justifies it, but science needs amatuers (which most cryptozoology researchers are), even in 2016, and it needs optimists, even wild-eyed ones.
So here I am at the inaugural ICM Conference in St.
Augustine, FL. Loren Coleman, founder of
the ICM in Portland, Maine, ably seconded by his effervescent wife Jenny, has
gathered some of the most active people in the field. He hoped for 100+ attendees to create one of
the leading conferences on the subject, but it’s the first year, and maybe half
that have gathered. What they lack in numbers, though, they make up for in
energy, and the white-bearded Coleman is as enthusiastic as they come.
I wish I could describe all of Night 1, but I spent
the opening social on the road after a two-hour delay in Atlanta to fix a fuel
pump in the airplane and re-top the tanks. This was annoying but ok with us
passengers: a retired Navy pilot sitting next to me commented that the only
time a plane can have too much fuel is when it’s on fire.
So what I missed was the awarding of the Golden Yeti,
a rather intimidating-looking statuette that went to the Cryptozoologist of the
Year. The awardee was Jeremy Efroymson, a film-maker, attorney, writer, and
philanthropist who I honestly hadn’t heard of, but he’s been important: as
Loren wrote, “Jeremy is bestowed this honor for his quiet but steady support of
serious cryptozoological pursuits. Jeremy and the Efroymson Family Foundation
have awarded grants and funds since at least, 2012, to such grantees as the
Virtual Footprints Archive at Idaho State University, the Ohio Bigfoot
Conference, and the International Cryptozoology Museum.” Cryptozoology doesn’t exactly top the list
for National Science Foundation grants, so the field is fortunate to have
Jeremy.
The Golden Yeti
I did make it to the presentation on the Florida Skunk Ape,
a subject of interest since I grew up down the coast from here in Vero
Beach. I heard only rumors of sightings
as a kid, but I knew what it was, or was supposed to be.
(Quick aside: I was volunteering on a political
campaign in 1976 when a newspaper from the town of St. Cloud headlined a
"900-lb Hairy Creature Stalking Reedy Creek Area." I pinned it to the
wall with the note that we now knew where our opponent was campaigning. It was
funny at the time.)
Tonight’s presenter was Rob Robinson. I’ve used the word “enthusiastic” a lot, but
I had to use it again here. He was an
infectious speaker, weaving a great story with bits of humor like the time he
was scared out of his wits by a large nocturnal animal that turned out to be a
cow. He debunked some recent photo and video hoaxes but showed some images no
one present had seen before. (Still too distant, too dark, etc., although a
video of a dark figure gliding easily through a swampy spot where you'd think a human would
normally walk with great difficulty was interesting despite the poor quality of
the image.) When I asked him the
standard question – why isn’t there better evidence, when we have roadkills and
photos of the extremely rare Florida panther – he replied he thinks the
evidence is mounting, even if mostly fuzzy “blobsqatch" imagery and
footprints so far – as people become more aware. He thinks a small population
of smart primates very wary of humans could hide in Florida wilderness a long
time. Despite my skepticism on all things squatch-related, I can’t really say
that’s impossible, although there's still the huge problem of how a large
primate got to North America, when, and from where. His belief Florida supports two anomalous
primates, Bigfoot and the smaller (and smellier) Skunk Ape, is even harder to
accept, but his belief there is SOMETHING going on is intriguing.
On the subject of another cryptid, or near-cryptid,
Rob commented on my mention of the Florida panther by reporting he and his wife
watched a black Florida panther walk right in front of their car in daylight.
There aren’t supposed to be black (melanistic) panthers in Florida, but there
aren’t supposed to be any in Maine, either, and my dad is pretty certain about
the one he saw 60 years ago. Biologist Jeff Corwin described his own Florida
panther sighting thus: “It was darker than the panthers I'd seen in photos,
more charcoal than sage.” So I’ve never ruled out black, or at least dark,
panthers, although Florida wildlife authorities blew Rob off when he said
“black.”
There was an interesting documentary showing after
that meeting, but I had work to do for my day job and had to beg off. But I
enjoyed Night 1, as brief as it was, and look forward to Day 2, including my
own talk on bears.
It’s all off to a howling good start.
International Cryptozoology Museum Conference
Day 2
January 5, 2016
Today was the full day of presentations here at the
ICM conference. Not to throw in a plug, but the Casa Monica is a great old
hotel, updated with all the amenities, and Loren Coleman of the ICM did a great
job in picking the hotel and getting everyone an affordable rate at the height
of tourist season.
I’d forgotten how touristy Florida was: the tackiness
is so assertive that a kind of grandeur creeps into it. It’s different from the tackiness you see in
most tourist spots, though: in Florida, it’s an affectionate kind of tacky,
where everyone, locals and visitors, is in on the joke and no one takes it too
seriously. This is the first European
city in the Americas, and there’s a lot of real history showing its face amid
the T-shirt shops.
Anyway, today was all about presentations. I am a
skeptic of most cryptozoolgical claims: it would take more than we have now to
make me believe in huge unknown American primates or Mongolian death
worms. But the level of science in the
presentations was frankly higher than I’d expected, and I came away
understanding much better WHY the convinced people are convinced. People who are sure cryptozoology has nothing
to offer science should spend more time with these folks. At the very least, their work tells us more
about folklore, beliefs, and the way we view nature. At the most, it may yet
point the way to some major discoveries. (By the way, these are in the order I
wrote them up, not exactly the order they were presented in.)
My presentation on bears was very well received. I
pointed out mysteries that still exist with bears (the reported giant black
variety of the Kamchatka brown bear) while arguing that other questions, such
as the identity of the odd grizzly known as MacFarlane’s bear, can be put to
rest. Bears offer many lessons for cryptozoologists, from the ways they are
tracked and studied to the attitudes of officialdom toward inconvenient
reports. (I reported on a good witness who told me first-hand about seeing a Colorado grizzly bear, which is supposed to be extinct, and the state wildlife people dismissed it order to - seriously, someone told him this - avoid the huge hassle of closing off the area while they investigated.) I gave the presentation to
Loren and will share it with anyone who asks.
French cryptozoologist Michael Raynal couldn’t attend
in person or by Skype link, so Loren Coleman did his presentation on the giant
octopus of St. Augustine. It was a fascinating presentation, with a lot of old
news clippings and photos, with Dr. Paul LeBlond (see below), a Canadian
oceanographer, helping out by translating some verbiage from the French. The
carcass that came ashore in 1896, was, very probably, a sperm whale’s
blubber/skin/connective tissue, but as long as we’re not absolutely certain,
some mystery – and some fun – remains. (Or I hope it does: personally I write
this off now as a whale. As usual, I hope I'm wrong.) Terry Cullen, a
herpetological genetics expert in attendance, suggested the newest tests should
be done on the bits of tissue that still remain as samples. Loren made the
interesting point that the tourist mecca of St. Augustine has somehow missed
making any financial hay out of this event: indeed, local shops hold nothing
about it at all. (I checked across the street at the Lightner museum of local history: the gift shop staff, at least, had never heard of it.)
Dr. LeBlond, a physicist and oceanographer whose
curiosity drew him into the “Caddy” business some years ago, opened by
describing two recurrent “sea monster” motifs of First Nations people in the
British Columbia and adjoining areas. What’s come to be called “Caddy” is also
well known locally, and LeBlond has amassed a large collection of sightings
which he believes make the two most important criteria: 1) Clearly an animal,
and 2) not a KNOWN animal. Plotting these by length from 10 feet (noting that
10-footers could be seals), to 100-footers (mistaken whales?) yields a cluster
at 40-59 feet. He notes that sighting
areas do not stay static over time: that is, you can have a run of sightings in
one area, then a gap of several years before that area produces another
sighting. On the complex issue of the Nash video of numerous animals which
appear to be harassing a pod of belugas, he notes the animals turned back when
they neared a fishing boat’s nets, and, while features like flippers were never
seen, the front ends seemed to have a profile something like a Boeing 747 with
its bulbous nose section. At one point, in a video segment which is either lost
or taped over, LeBlond and cryptozoologist John Kirk (viewing it separately) saw
a head, a bit like a seal’s but more oval in horizontal cross-section when
seen from the front and with a narrower neck, pop up and look toward the
camera. I discussed with him afterward the question of how sure he was that a
drawing of this, circulated widely in the cryptozoological community and in his
latest book, was accurate. He was cautious about it: it matched what he
remembered, but with he and Kirk contributing what they thought the tape showed
at a considerable distance to an artist, the final drawing is “about five steps
removed” from what the actual animal looks like, and there is some margin for
error.
Archaeologist/anthropologist Kathy Strain gave a very
thought-provoking presentation about the prevalence of Sasquatch-type creatures
in Native American lore. I knew there
were a lot of legends, stories, and, supposedly, history about such creatures,
but I had no idea how ubiquitous it was. “Hairy Man” type creatures exist in
art, basketry, songs, dances, totem poles, and oral histories, much of it
pre-Columbian. While there are many
variations, a common and amusing one was that females carried baskets and swept
up bad children to take them away to eat, while males, often half-human (the
females were claimed to prefer human men to their own kind), sort of blundered
around eating mostly nuts and shellfish.
Strain showed old films of dances, showed pictographs of Hairy Man
people weeping (because humans were afraid of them), and played back a haunting
song from one tribe that only women were allowed to sing (it asked the Hairy
Man to come take away the spirits of the dead at a funeral.) Since many Western stories are about real
animals endowed with fanciful characteristics, she argues, these kinds of
beliefs don’t mean the animals are not real. When I asked how a non-expert
could differentiate between spiritual and physical creatures in Native American
tales, she explained that a creature could be either or both, just as
Christians and others believe we are both body and spirit/soul. The art object
she showed that stuck with me was a centuries-old Haida mask decorated with
horsehair that looks so much like an ape that she is stumped to suggest what
else it could be, and I had the same reaction. While many cultures can tell
visitors what they want to hear, either to please them or to pull their legs,
Strain believes the unbroken continuity of countless tribes’ beliefs across
ages indicate that recent additions don’t detract from the essential point that
those who lived here before Columbus widely believed such creatures were real,
and many believe they are here still. (Native Americans believe that, however
their own ancestors arrived in North America, the hairy ones were already here
just as all the other animals were.) None of this adds up to hard evidence of
existence, but collectively it's a bit challenging to just dismiss as myth.
Bigfoot-hunter Cliff Barackman gave a very good
tutorial on footprints, focusing mostly on mystery primates but with other
examples. He stressed that a footprint is not an image of the foot: it is an
image of the damage the foot did to the ground, which may be quite
different. Indeed, two footprints made
in succession by the same animal can look different, and footprints' origin can
be disguised by various forces: for example, overlapping bear tracks can look
surprisingly human. A common trait in
fake sasquatch feet is the lack of flexibility: Barackman argues the real
primate he believes exists has very flexible feet (some experts say there is a
mid-tarsal break, essentially an extra joint, but Cliff doesn’t go that far).
He dismisses three- and four-toed impressions as hoaxes. He argues several sets of “real” tracks have
very clear dermal ridges, although he did not really address how wide the
variation is in what are deemed by various researchers to be authentic
five-toed sasquatch tracks. On the
rarity of apparent juvenile impressions, he and others at the conference have
noted that genuine juvenile footprints might be taken for bare human feet. Whatever one thinks of sasquatch, he imparted
a great deal of useful information, especially for us suburban folk trying to
understand technical discussions over footprints.
He has collected some 50
impressions of Sumatra’s mystery ape, the orang-pendek and, while he believes
this is a real animal, doesn’t believe it’s related to the diminutive fossil humans
known as the Flores Island “hobbits” –
the widely separated big toe is distinctly ape-like.
I asked him about one of the most puzzling footprints
of all time, the “yeti” track photographed in the snows of Everest by Shipton
and Ward, and he felt this was not related to sasquatch-type creatures or the
orang-pendek: if it was a genuine print, it belonged to some other species.
Biologist and TV host Pat Spain of the series Beast Hunters stood up, and I'm glad he
was late in the day because following his act would have been impossible.
Funny, personable, and persuasive, he explained how a biologist who started by
studying shellfish (he once submitted a paper on stresses in oysters subtitled "Sprat Pain by Pat Spain") ended up
chasing cryptids all over the world. Along the way, he discovered that watching
a Westerner use the latrine is entertainment in a remote Cameroon village and
that young female orangutans are capable of molesting a human male in the most
intimate, uncomfortable, and embarrassing ways possible.
He felt at least two animals, “living dinosaur” mokele-mbembe
and the poisonous Mongolian death worm, were cultural constructs, and explained
what purpose each legend served in its respective culture. He also noted that
with mokele-mbembe, the common tactic of showing locals pictures of different
animals has been gamed by local entrepreneurs: people looked to the guides for
nods on whether they should say a certain animal lived in their area.
Spain didn't see an orang-pendek but is convinced they
exist. The local people he worked with in Sumatra not only seemed truthful but
a bit awed by the animal's humanlike locomotion: while it may be a type of
gibbon, it walks bipedally by nature, without the usual gibbon arm-balancing.
He emphasized the people he talked to knew every detail of the lives of
gibbons, orangutans, and other local primates.
Most memorably, he reported a conversation with Dr. Mike Morwood, the
discoverer of the 18,000-year-old Flores "hobbits," who told Spain he
had hard evidence, which he planned to publish, showing that species was alive
into the 1920s! The evidence was apparently lost or misplaced with the scientist's
premature death of cancer in 2013, although it may lie somewhere in his
archives awaiting rediscovery. Someone really needs to push this hard and find
out what he had.
Likewise, the certainty of a tribe Spain befriended in
the Amazon (by going through an incredibly painful ritual involving wearing gloves
filled with huge stinging ants) about the mapinguari made him feel some kind of
surviving ground sloth was a distinct possibility. He also thinks some form of large sea
creature exists within the data for the British Columbian sea serpent known as
Cadborosaurus, or “Caddy.” He doesn't
know what it is, but the number of sincere witnesses he talked to, given the
fact that "every marine scientist believes there are some large animals
left undiscovered," makes him fairly certain something is afoot.
Spain argued hard that cryptozoology and
"mainstream" biology are mutually supporting: his work on Caddy
included looking at the oarfish as a candidate and funded the first-ever CAT
scan of an oarfish, producing a trove of data on that very strange creature.
I asked Spain about the use of cryptozoology in
science education, something I've proposed a panel on for the June 2016 Denver
ComiCon. He thinks it's very valuable and described how he's gotten young
people to learn about the woods by suggesting they look for Bigfoot and along
the way studying animal tracking, ecology, and the food chain. Loren Coleman
asked him if mokele-mbembe might be, not a reptile, but a semi-aquatic rhino:
Spain is certain, though, that the area he examined houses nothing exceptional.
(The geology of the area, he noted, also ruled out any underground or
underwater caves. He did add that he did not go to one other site with monster
reports, Lake Tele: it's unreachable due to ongoing conflicts.) I wanted to
talk with him about my idea for a marine life documentary series, but he had to
run: all I could do was give him a card.
We ended up at a theater watching Revenge of the Creature, the slightly inferior but still impressive
sequel to The Creature from the Black
Lagoon. The Lagoon films remain surprisingly effective and affecting: the
creature's loneliness and his torment at being shocked by scientists studying
his learning capability come through well, and the suits remain superb even on
close examination. Seriously, we had it on a big screen and I looked hard at
the suits: I spotted a small rip on the leg in one scene, but that was it. What
craftsmen those old makeup guys were.
And so ended a
very, very interesting day.
ICM Speakers: Kathy Strain, Rob Robinson, me, Pat
Spain, Paul LeBlond, Loren Coleman, Jerome Hamlin, uncertain(?), Lyle Blackburn.
Lyle Blackburn, Pat Spain
ICM Conference, final day
Day 3
January 6
Today included two presentations followed by a tour of
Marineland and the approximate area where the 1896 “giant octopus” beached. I wasn’t able to make the afternoon
activities, but the morning had plenty to offer.
First off was an important bit of business. Loren
Coleman announced the kickoff of the International Cryptozoology Society, with
an online peer-reviewed journal and regular conferences. I asked him to describe how the ICS would be
different from existing organizations – what new value would it bring? He
answered that, while the ICS mission statement is still being written, its
intent was to carry on the work of the International Society for Cryptozoology,
which tried hard to put scientific principles to work in cryptozoology back in
the 1980s. The ICS will be headed by Dr.
LeBlond as the first President, while an advisory panel including several PhD’s
is being set up but is not yet announced (Coleman added that the scientific
world won’t listen to you unless you have several PhD’s around, and he has a
point.) Loren and the ICM Deputy Director, Jeff Meuse, will do the day-to-day
work of running the ICS. The first conference is planned for Portland, Maine,
site of the new/expanded museum, in 2017.
Loren described the ICS as being strictly scientific
and said that “true believers and debunkers” were not welcome. I understand what
he’s aiming for, but this statement brings up some challenges that will have to
be worked out. Does “true believers”
count all the people who think sasquatch is an apparition or assign it psychic
abilities? (There’s no way to avoid framing questions in terms of sasquatch,
despite the large number of potential cryptids all over the world: Bigfoot is
the predominant topic in most of cryptozoology these days, and the one that
attracts significant money from the TV world.) Even more difficult, what
qualifies as a “debunker”? I assume it
encompasses those who think the whole field is a pseudoscience, but those
people usually make some points worth considering if cryptozoology is to shed
the “pseudoscience” label. Does it include
people who think the field has some value but are heavily critical of its
methods and findings? How does one differentiate between reasonable and
unreasonable degrees of skepticism? It is logically possible to be irrational about a negative view as a positive one, but the terminology is getting boggy/ The word "believer" doesn't have much of a role in science anyway, does it?
If it were me trying to sort this out,, I’d invite everyone in, excluding only those people who might be there exclusively to mock others. On the other end,of the specturm I would allow anyone who was not disruptive to join but make it clear that there will be no
publications or leading roles for anyone who thinks the solutions are to be
found in the paranormal. As a Christian, I believe by definition that the
material universe is not all that exists, but cryptozoology is trying to
establish itself as a science and needs to leave all matters outside the
material to the parapsychologists. I
think Loren is sincere in his desire to create a reputable organization, and
I'll provide my input in as a member and see what Loren and LeBlond and other
leaders work out as guidelines.
OK, presentations:
Jerome Hamlin, one of the world’s leading coelacanth
experts and founder of the Dinofish.com site, reported on his adventures in
search of new populations. He began by chronicling the known history, returning
to this topic later to describe the numerous failed attempts to make some kind
of tank that would keep the deep-dwelling fish alive after a catch. While the lungfishes and not the coelacanths are
the fish in our direct line of ancestry, the coelacanth remains a much sought
after scientific prize. Particularly sought are juvenile examples: Hamlin
mentioned only one he knew of, and ichthyologists don’t know where the fish
grow up.
The original discovery off East London, South Africa,
has been followed by new populations as far north as Kenya and Tanzania and as
far east as Indonesia. Following an
email alleging the fish was known in the Solomon Islands, Hamlin made four
trips to islands in the Solomons, other nearby chains, and Papua New Guinea to
the south and west. One aspect of this
with lessons for all of cryptozoology is how carefully he tried to avoid cuing
people to tell him what they thought he wanted to hear. He classed the
responses he got into three groups:
1. Trying to please him
2. Truthful but inaccurate
3. Both accurate and true.
The results were less than he’d hoped for. One some
islands, no one had ever seen a similar fish: one islander got his hopes up but
brought him specimens of a kind of jack, although the fit wasn’t very close.
The stories Hamlin heard of caught coelacanths seemed straightforward, but
didn’t lead to any new populations. Fishermen who had seen one, or heard of
one, all emphasized this was a very rare fish, and no one had caught one in the
last couple of years: many catches were distant memories. If truthful, these men were probably
referring to stray individuals, as no one knew of a good place to catch them
regularly. One man did tell him the fish was blue in life but turned brown in
death, a fact Hamlin had avoided mentioning, so he was encouraged to think
there were at least occasional catches. After his expeditions, a Japanese team
did discover a new population off Biak, an island just north of Papua.
I asked whether
his visits to fishing villages and surveys of fish markets had led to any new
species of fish, but he said no: the fish being brought in and/or sold looked
pretty run of the mill.
Lyle Blackburn made the day’s Bigfoot presentation.
Lyle, a Texan, has spent many months in neighboring Arkansas researching the
Fouke monster, famous due to the 1972 film The
Legend of Boggy Creek (most of the events in the original film were
reported as true, although the funny scene of a guy minding his business on the
toilet and having a giant furry hand reach in through the window was invented.)
Lyle emphasized the area was still almost as undeveloped as it had been in
1972, and that sighting records stretched from 1908 to 2015.
I pointed out that a common critique of
cryptozoologists (hammered at repeatedly in Loxton and Prothero's influential book Abominable
Science) is that they already have their solution in mind and consciously or
unconsciously cue witnesses to tell them things that fit the preconceived
narrative. I asked how he tried to avoid
this. Lyle’s response was that he went after the story thinking of himself as
an investigative journalist who wants to solve the mystery, saying “I’m not out
to prove Bigfoot,” although he certainly believes the creature exists. He lets
the witnesses tell their story without interrupting before he starts
questioning. He always asks whether the subject could have been a person in
costume (and is usually told the witness thinks not.)
Closing thoughts
First and foremost, the Conference was valuable: I
learned a lot. I didn’t change my mind on any major cryptid, but as I said
yesterday, I have a much better understanding of the people who endorse those
North American primates and other creatures and why they endorse them. I will join the new ICS and wish it the best
of luck.
The Conference could have added someone from the
Florida wildlife departments to talk about local creatures and activities of
interest, such as the Florida panther, the known and suspected colonies of
escaped monkeys (and reportedly apes), and the persistent reports that other
out of place mammals, like the jaguarondi, may have become established. This
should be standard practice wherever future conferences are held: take
advantage of the local wildlife and the expertise available to discuss it, such
as getting someone from Maine in to talk about what they think happened to the
state's panthers and why they think recent reports are erroneous. While I know Loren tried to get quite a few
people who could not make it, the meeting also could have used a speaker or two
more skeptical of the major cryptids.
I would have like an anthropologist to review the
ideas about possible ancestors and routes of travel for sasquatch ancestors’
arrival in North America, a topic none of the sasquatch-related speakers
addressed. This was the conference’s most significant omission, scientifically.
I should have pressed more on it, but the presenters were talking about what
they think IS, rather than how it came to be.
Late thought: Maybe the solution to finding cryptids is to not look for cryptids: to undertake field investigations with the idea that only known species exist. Then you look for evidence of any animal being present, then consider only the known species, and then only if you are completely stumped do you consider what kinds of animals might have caused the evidence. I know I'm the research guy, not the field investigator, but maybe some version of this approach would help bridge the cryptozoology-zoology gap.
Overall, though, I’d like to say again that this
meeting was valuable, and that people who think cryptozoology is a complete
waste of time should come to the next one and listen and discuss and debate:
we’d all be better off for that. From my experience with this crowd, such a
person would generate a lot of discussion but wouldn't have to fear being
ostracized or dunked in a river: certainly I didn't get anything but polite
argument when I expressed concerns about the science. I was impressed by the depth and breadth of
knowledge on display, even if I disagree about some of the conclusions. I had a great time. See ya’ll in Portland, I hope!
ADDED: After some lively discussions on FaceBook and email, I think "debunker" isn't an accurate word in this context. A "debunker' should be one who exposes a hoax or fraud: It's the right term, for example, if you're exposing one of the many Bigfoot hoaxes, but it's not accurate for someone who questions the validity of a proposed or actual field of inquiry. So I think that, in my own writing, I'm going to retire that word.
