Places with cryptozoological phenomena

Cryptozoology is a very exciting pseudoscience – a discipline that stands between true science and folklore.

It deals with legendary animals that seem to exist but their existence has not been proved.

Stories that never have an ending

The most interesting aspect of this discipline is the following: often it seems that just one more step – a final proof or one more expedition is needed and the elusive cryptid (undiscovered animal) will be discovered, it will receive its Latin name and will be added to the long list of known species. Nope… just like in a good TV drama the story goes on and on and becomes more and more interesting with every next turn because cryptid just can not be “discovered”.

There is no need to belittle cryptozoology – it is a pastime of many outstanding personalities including many of the best biologists. Numerous expeditions have been organized to remote parts of Earth and have brought home many interesting scientific discoveries. Members of expeditions sometimes manage to get some proof of the existence of cryptids, but, alas, this is not a common science but cryptozoology: the proof is lost on the way home. Such are the rules of this “genre”.

Criteria

This category includes places where on a regular basis can be observed cryptozoological phenomena.

Wondermondo does not include all legends and stories related to cryptozoology. Here are included only these cases which are:

• Linked to a certain place. Here are not included these cryptids which are reported in different places of larger regions – e.g. giant anacondas of South America or the fearsome j’ba fofi (1.5 m large spider) of Central Africa. In fact, Wondermondo tries to keep the 500 km² rule and avoids to include landmarks which take larger area than this.
• Repeating over a longer time. Cryptozoology has many cases when some weird beasts are seen only once or few times over a short time period. Such cases are not included here – Wondermondo describes more or less permanent phenomena. There are rather many cryptids which are well known for many centuries.
• Recent. It seems, cryptids sometimes die too. There are cases when weird animals were seen on a regular basis in the past but are not reported for many decades. Such cases are not included here.

Most popular cryptids

There are two kinds of cryptids that are reported all over the world and are a lot more popular than any others. These are a) lake monsters and b) hominids.

Lake monsters

The unofficial queen of cryptozoology is Nessie – Loch Ness Monster. If foreigners would be asked to list the top five things associated with Scotland, Nessie most likely would be on this list. But there are hundreds of lakes (as well as rivers, sinkholes, and sea bays) around the world with similar stories about dragon-like or serpent-like monsters. Lake monsters are known for centuries in such diverse countries as China, Japan, Tanzania, Congo, Canada, and other countries.

Lake monsters for the most part are enormous, much larger than any known freshwater fish and reptiles. It is tempting to assume that these cryptids have descended from dinosaurs but almost everyone understands that this is nonsense – such enormous animals can not survive more than 60 million years and finally live in comparatively small water bodies without being discovered. It is also tempting to explain all encounters with casual, boring explanations – floating logs, groups of common fish, fraud, wishful thinking, etc. But this does not help as well – there are many cases when reputable people or even large groups of people have clearly observed large, unusual animals in these lakes.

Hominids

It is known that in parallel to modern humans there were living several more species or subspecies of humans which went extinct not that long ago. The dwarf Homo floresiensis lived on Flores Island (Indonesia) some 17,000 years ago – in a time when modern humans created magnificent rock art in Australia and elsewhere in the world.

This leaves a minor possibility that somewhere still is living a group of these “alternate” humans. Who knows – maybe the popular legends about small forest spirits and gnomes tell about another human species (see the story about dwarf people of Kakamora Caves)?

Many stories tell about another kind of elusive human-like beings – enormous, hairy primates who live in mountains, large forests, and sometimes – even near cities in every continent of the world (of course, except Antarctica). For example, thousands of countryside people in Meghalaya or Chitral have no doubts that these beings exist. Cryptozoologists speculate that these could be surviving giant apes, such as Gigantopithecus, which, according to more common science is extinct for some 100 thousand years. This 3 m tall giant lived in China and India.

Other cryptids

Other kinds of cryptids are less popular but not less exciting. What about flying reptiles that are reported on Umboi Island (Papua New Guinea)? Or possible subspecies of a mammoth in Nepal? Maybe there exist giant squids that hide in the mysterious blue holes near Andros (Bahamas)?

World (and human mind…) is exciting!