Originally posted by ignorant_ape
NYGDAN wrote : " All of these animals, except the coelacanth, I'd say qualify by a broad definition of cryptids"
what ????????
I agree, its a very very broad definition. When I hear 'cryptid' I think bigfoot and nessie personally. Tho I can see a good case made for
thylacines or even some of the odd 'dogs' and maybe even ABCs (alien big cats)
With the gorilla and opaki, you can see how for a long time there were reports of these animals and people simply didn't beleive that they existed.
Similar with the 'king' cheetah, though I agree thats a minor difference.
The giant squid is a perfect example tho, its existence was very much in question not too long ago. Blobs would show up on beaches every so often,
but people would dispute it saying squids can't get that big and it must be a rotted whale carcass (indeed, often it was). So the giant squid was a
crpytid, or hidden animal. Then, it was found. So like the gorilla it moved out of it. If bigfoot was found tomorrow tho, we couldn't really call
it a cryptid anymore, I'll agree, but most cryptozoologists consider the animals to be real, just un-proven. That orignal list apparently was like a
'cryptids of all time' sort of list.
The more I think about the 'king' cheetah tho the less I like it as a cryptid. There are often hard to confirm reports of variations of an animal
species.
We could definitly restrict our list to ones still hidden, so no giant squid or thylacine.
The mongolian death worm is a good classical cryptid too!
edit to add:
also,
Homo Florensis? What a crock, the thing's extinct, and been extinct long before anyone knew about it, and there's never been a
sighting of
homo florensis (sure there are stories about elves, but thats not the same at all). A cryptid is, perhaps, an animal that we have
an idea of first, and then evidence for, not the reverse.
[edit on 22-11-2005 by Nygdan]