Uncatchable Creatures

There is something that I have always wondered: Why is it that no one can catch cryptic animals. With so many sitings they must exist, but why can't anybody catch one. Bigfeet, Yetis, chupocabres,and lake monsters all seem to be uncatchable. What is the problem here?

People have tried to "catch" such creatures, but I can think of several explanations:

- some or all of the reports are hoaxes. Just because someone reports something, doesn't make it true. Your statement "with so many reports, it must be true" is a common error in logic. I hear the same argument about UFOs. We are about to get many reports of Santa Clause (think of all those malls), but he doesn't really exist, does he?

- The few that MIGHT be true are located either in very remote environments (Sasquatch) or conditions are unfavourable (Loch Ness Monster). Its possible you are a city lad and not very knowledgable about the great outdoors. Take it from me, if you were put down in the immensity of the Pacific North West, you would understand that finding ANYTHING, especially something rare, is worse than finding a needle in a haystack.
With the Loch Ness Monster example, the murkiness of the Loch and its size and depth make it difficult to sense anything. There have been a few attempts to locate Nessie, but all they have are tantalizing hints.

- even if you could track a creature down, you are operating in their environment. We can assume they don't want to be caught, or even observed (they never approach us, for example). They can easily avoid us blundering, noisy humans easily, for they can hear us a mile off, and can either clear out of the area or hide.

I get what you're saying, but plenty of other elusive creatures have been captured. Or is it just a matter of time?

What are you going to do once you have Sasquatch firmly in the grip of your "Chinese finger trap"? I think these cryptids must be awfully smart to keep evading our best efforts to " bag " them.

There have been alot of times when people said animals didnt exist and then someone cought one. For example: When European countries started occupying parts of Africa the natives told them that gorrilas were also living there. For a long time they thought the africans were just making it up. Then one day a German general found one and shot it. Its just matter of time befor a redneck with a shotgun shoots bigfoot.

New creatures are being discovered anywhere. Recently they had found the largest leech that only ate earthworms and that was terrestrial (unlike other leeches which are aquatic). The most ironic thing is that it was discovered in a park in NewYork.

i hope wenever catch any of them...well end up killing them or displaying it in a tiny holding pen whilst scientists in ject and probe it and also there will be a sudden urge for all the nutters to go out and hunt themselves a bigfoot,loch ness monster...etc

i like the mystery....the odd authentic sighting or photo is good!

regards.

This is a most logical question, with a very difficult answer. It's obvious that some creature don't exists or are based on living and known creature that the locals are supposed to be "familiar" with. For others it's simply a matter of time, but there are "human" issues with it. For example: you are a poacher walking in the jungle and all of a sudden come across an unknown creature. What will you have most likely ad hand? An high quality camera? A tranquilizer gun? Or an automatic rifle? And what will happen to the mysterious creature? Will you drag it to the nearest museum/university or will you try to sell it at the mearest market? You may not believe me, but some very interesting discoveries have been made in the local markets: for example the Indonesian coelacanth (Latimeria menandoensis) was discovered by an honeymooning marine biologist visiting a fish market for leisure. Also, an animal can be completely unknown: take for example the Beaked Whales. We know next to nothing about them and a couple of Mesoplodon species are know by isolated skulls found on some God-forsaken beach. Sometimes a biologist making field researches stumbles across a local tradition and tries to get to the bottom of it with good results. For example Professor Tim Flannery heard about a "forest man" in the jungles of Irian Jaya (Indonesian half of the New Guinea), covered in hair and welcoming travellers by whistling and putting his hands over his head. Since it is considered sacred by local tribes, he handed over local hunters a few inexpensive disposable cameras, telling them to photograph anything unusual and then to send the spent cameras to his office, in Australia. A few months later he was rewarded with a few photos of the Bondegezou (forest man), which he recognized as an unknown tree kangaroo. This allowed him to get furthr funding for an expedition to find out more about the animal. It turned out to be a very primitive tree kangaroo, which was adeptly christened Dendrolagus mbaiso (mbaiso meaning taboo in local language).

Interestingly enough, many cryptids have been "caught" but they always end up being dismissed by scientists. Granted these creatures are usually dead when found or killed when encountered, but specimens have been obtained.

I think there are several hurdles facing aquiring specimens and proving their existance.

a) They are obviously rare and elusive, locating them alone is an immense task. Most of these creatures are found in very remote locations, are very rare, and seek to evade man. Many known species have been thought to be extinct only to be rediscovered.

b) Some of these creatures are very large and powerful like the Sasquatch and Sea Serpents/Lake Monsters. A typical Sasquatch (Gigantopithecus) is estimated to be 7.5-10 feet in height and weigh 600-1100 pounds. Being that a Gorilla has the strength of 10 men, one of these is estimated to have the strength of 15-20 men.

Sea Serpents/Lake Monsters are usually estimated to be from 30-100+ feet in length, weighing from a few to many tons.

These creatures would be next to impossible to capture alive and very difficult to contain and transport.

c) Many creatures corpses have been obtained, however scientists continually refute the evidence. Look at the recent supposed Chupacabra corpses recently aquired. They do not match the description of any known animal, if you've seen the pictures in the newspapers or on T.V. you realize they should be studied, however scientists and "specialists" are quick to dismiss them, stating that they are creatures which they obviously aren't.

Perhaps you've heard of De Loy's Ape, a five foot ape-like creature killed and photographed by a famous scientist who was doing research in S. America. The Thunderbird, a giant bird-like creature with a 25-30 ft. wingspan one of which was even placed within a museum (there are two different varieties to date one with bat-like skin and dinosaur features, the other variety a giant bird). There's also been giant octopi, squids, and even corpses of possible sea monsters discovered. Each time scientists were quick to dismiss them. (However, scientists did end up acknowledging the existance of giant squids due to a later satellite picture. Odd that a corpse was not enough evidence, but a satellite photo was.)

It's only when they are faced with living, moving, indisputable truth that scientists seem willing to admit to the existance of a cryptid. Having taken courses in Marine Biology, Anthropology, etc., I think it's because they feel the existance of creatures they've declared extinct or non-existant will throw doubt on much of their "convential wisdom". Since most of the world's history is based upon their assumptions and potentially incorrect methodologies (like Carbon Dating, and the extinction of dinosaurs before man's existance) they are quick to protect their doctrines.

I have personally encountered multiple cryptids and each time I tried to report the incident to the proper authorities, I was met with skepticism at best, mockery at worst. What made it worse was that these were personal sightings, I have spent more time in the field than almost any scientist I've met, and the cryptids I reported should not have seemed so unbelievable. A Black Panther (Fairhope, AL, USA) and a large, dark colored wolf (Smoky Mnts., NC, USA) were two cryptids I reported only to have most of the scientists dismiss it and walk off during my report.

I truly believe until scientists are willing to open their mind to the possibility of cryptids anything short of a living, squirming, squeeling cryptid irrefutably placed before them will continue to be dismissed. Until then the only new species you'll see acknowledged will be species whose existance doesn't throw doubt on modern scientific theory.

Here's some interesting links which show a small portion of the evidence out there:
www.cryptozoology.com...
www.unexplained-mysteries.com...
www.bfro.net...
www.oregonbigfoot.com...
www.bigfootsounds.com...

www.n2.net...
(Check out subsection "Big Foot Creatures/Footprints" in the above link. It's an eye opener.)
My Grandfather participated in the excavation of one of the sites mentioned in the above link where they discovered evidence of humans living alongside dinosaurs. I've seen the evidence myself, it's set in stone, indisputable, but most scientists had a fit when they heard about it, denouncing it without ever visiting the site.

You have to ask yourself:
a) Why aren't most scientists interested in trying to search for evidence of cryptids instead of sitting in an office trying to debunk any evidence of them?

b) How is that every civilization on every continent has legends, recordings, art, or pictures (including cave art) of "dragons", dinosaurs, cryptids, or animals we know to have existed but suposidly died out "millions of years ago" (according to scientists). How did those scholars/artisians know what extinct, unearthed dinosaurs/prehistoric creatures looked like in order to draw them in the middle ages? Hmmmm....

Sorry for my ranting, I just feel I have seen enough to understand why most cryptids aren't acknowledged, investigated, or researched by the mainstream scientific community. It's not that they are uncatchable, it's that the mainstream scientific community isn't interested in catching them.

I have read every single bigfoot sighting on almost every bigfoot sight and have taken a lot of time analyzing and putting together the different pieces of the puzzle. I will try and sum up why we haven't been able to "bag a bigfoot" so far.

Bigfoot has lived side-by-side with man since the beginning of mankind. There have been reports, sketches, idols, totem pole carvings, cave paintings about Bigfoot in almost every culture throughout the world. Hundreds of reports come in every year from all types of people. To say that Bigfoot (and I can only speak of Bigfoot and not other types of cryptids) doesn't exist is to say that all evidence, historical and anecdotal, is completely false and the hundreds and hundreds of eyewitnesses are all wrong or flat out lying. We know that something exists we just don't know what it is exactly.

If we believe that Bigfoot exists then we can only determine what it is based upon eyewitness accounts. From these accounts we can only determine characteristics based upon multiple reports and not any single report. When we look at the reports here are the things we know so far:

The creature is
A. Very tall
B. Very muscular
C. Has a pointed or crowned head (Like a gorilla)
D. Walks upright
E. Has a flat face with large lips
F. Covered in hair
G. Lives mostly in remote wooded areas all over the world
H. Lives in family groups
I. Is very fast and stealthy
J. Is primarily nocturnal
K. Eats meat, nuts, berries, and grubs

Based on the reports the sheer size of these creatures, the speed at which they run, and the stealthy nature makes it nearly impossible to catch one in thier domain. Also the reason you don't hear about one being killed is because most hunters don't have the firepower to bring one down, or they are so stunned to even see one they forget to even take a shot, or lastly the creature looks so human-like that they are afraid to shoot it.

One report I read was of a hunter who thought he was shooting an Elk from behind and when he walked up on the creature realized that it was a dead Bigfoot (at the time Bigfoot wasn't well known so he wasn't sure what it was) he was so freightened that he ran away. Another report I read was of a woman back in the 1950's that claims her father, who was a school teacher in the small town they lived in, was asked by one of the locals to come out to his truck and look at an unidentifiable creature he had shot and tell him what it was. She said when her father approached the truck he was astonished at what he was looking at, so she ran up to the truck and said she saw two large hairy feet sticking out the back and a large hairy creature lying on the bed of the truck, obviously dead. She said her father immediatly got scared and told the man he should bury it.

These two story's are outrageous claims, but if true speaks to the reaction that humans have at seeing these creatures and why it is so hard to catch one, at least by accident anyway.

Thanks to the internet people are able to read eyewitness reports so they will feel more comfortable in reporting their own sightings. Also it allows those who are interested in the phenomena to get more involved in helping to solve the mystery and hopefully contribute to bagging one for scientific study.

another problem with catching bigfoot is simply that he may not be legally catchable. If ol' foot is more man than ape, his capture is illegal and is considered kidnapping. i am not completely sure, however, how one would draw the line between ape and man. Perhaps if the sasquatch had huts or something, and actually herded animals..... Naw....

well to me its simply a case on intellegence with big foot alest. after all what are we talking about an ape? no not by a long shot more likly its a off shot of man himself and whats so hard to belive about this ?we KNOW for a fact they excisted even an ape like creatcher 10 11 feet tall did excist.
so scienc says there extinct now this is a strang conclusion .Do they say this just because they have never seen a body? less the 80 years agaio no one had ever seen a body of a gorrila a yet they exist.
So heres an (animal?) a primitive type man is more likly. who is nearly as smart as we are who has lived along side us for 150,000 years who knows us as we know our selfs. I would say such a creatcher would have no trouble eluding us even in this paved world.
heck ever go to the woods even you hunters looking and knowing what it is your looking for how manny times do you get your deer right off the bat ?and yet theres so manny there overgrazing to the point of starvation in some places.and this is just a animal .And your talking matching wits with an animal who is just a notch below you. lets say a 12 year old intellegence. Not quite smart enough to devolipe civilsation but just on the edge of it.

hey, the kids in lord of the flies had a civilization, and they were only seven!

Finding them kills the mystery and legends.

If we did find them wed just KILL THEM it would be better if they stayed ALIVE even if that meant never been able to capture one

Once caught...they cease to be cryptids, of course.....

We can see several examples of these in modern times...

The vietnamese deer with the nose slits, the ceolocanth, the striped hyena, etc.

For many years, the African gorilla was considered a cryptid until early explorers returned with one.

I was watching TV about 2 years ago and I saw this guy that had hair all over his body. HE LOOKED LIKE A BIG FOOT. It was some kind of diasease or case of something that made him grow exessive hair all over his body. He hated life and hated living because everyone made fun of him. Can you imagine living a life looking al outta whack. I know some people may throw there baby away if they came out like that ... Or even maybe try and raise it and maybe with all that hair on them they didn't feel right and went on a rampage killing everyone that ever Scorned them about their HAIR. Just some ideas of why we don't have very much information on them. =-0 ..

Yep, there is a whole family of Mexican acrobats in the circus that have this condition (or had, the story was quite some time ago). The condition is also documented in history, even some old black and white photos of the afflicted ones, even children. (manifests pretty much at birth)

Many believe the condition might have lead to the basis of the werewolf legend.