Preserving Our Monsters - Why Is Cryptozoological Discourse So Repetitive?

Howdy, the first half-dozen or so of my posts act as mirrors for Reddit posts and adhere largely to that style, just modifying the contents of these posts slightly, I will eventually come back and amend these when I decide on a cohesive format for my posting. This post combines two different, informal pieces I wrote in one accessible place for convenience. 

In my opinion, cryptozoological discourse has become increasingly redundant and paltry over the last decade. There are a variety of factors at play, however one of the least-acknowledged but most crucial is cryptozoology’s general refusal to concede - we preserve our monsters at the cost of progression. The constant discussions on the possibility of Bigfoot and Nessie are the clearest example. I am not the first to point this out, but I’ve seen very few in this sub speak about it. Cryptozoology needs critical discussions of this sort if it ever wants to obtain academic legitimacy, so let’s have them.

Bigfoot and Nessie are, following Heuvelmans’ usage, no longer cryptids. Once a cryptid is discovered, it is no longer a cryptid - there is a handshake and the knowledge is transferred to another field. We predominantly think of this within the context of zoological discovery, but even Heuvelmans used it in other contexts. Heuvelmans rejected the majority of mermaid reports, he regarded them as misidentifications and mirages. These mermaids were founded upon the same sworn testimony from reliable observers as Heuvelmans’ sea serpents, but were rejected because, to him, their origins could be clearly traced and they could be explained away. The mermaid was not an unknown animal, but a solved mystery shuffled off to anthropology, sat between manticores and minotaurs in the roster of monsters to be studied from a cultural perspective. 

We can do the exact same with Nessie and Bigfoot, but instead we preserve them. I have a couple general ideas on why and how which act as a good baseline for further inquiry.

Bigfoot and Nessie are what I call "wieldy mysteries” - mysteries that are easy to engage with and plausibly compelling in the most barebones way possible. This allows them, and by extension cryptozoology, to be incredibly accessible, able to be enjoyed independently of other beliefs, or acting as gateways into both hard zoological science and pseudosciences of all sorts. 

Bigfoot and Nessie have an inherent plausibility and low barrier to entry because they are animals. There is no suspension of disbelief because we all know about great apes and murky bodies of water. We know that scientists discover new animals every year and that large portions of the planet remain poorly understood. Vague conceptions of how biology works is all you need to engage with these monsters, and they thrive best when you don’t have a thorough understanding of the minutia of primate anatomy or lake ecology. There is a further personal element because these monsters inhabit the backyards of most enthusiasts - American and European audiences are drawn in by the idea that they can be the ones to find the monster, not just witnesses to the antics of foreign explorers. These facts guarantee a constantly growing audience, and therefore self-perpetuation.

Inherent plausibility and a low barrier to entry are absent in cultural explanations. Many people do not have relevant background knowledge, and media discussing relevant subjects is often scattered (out of print, expensive, obscure) or concepts are poorly communicated (misconveyed or overly snarky). The personal element comes into play here as well - are you really going to doubt what your neighbors say they saw? These combine to make mass-misinterpretation and folklore building seem less plausible than an unknown animal. Cultural explanations are also unappealing because they completely kill any materiality. If your favorite paleontological or archaeological pseudotheory is disproven, the dinosaur or pyramid at the center of it still exists. If your favorite cryptid is disproven, there is nothing in its place.

Casual audiences also simply find these explanations as boring, something I can’t say I disagree with - every skeptic dreams of the hidden creature, not the log that looks like one. This alone is ample motive for preservation. Monster discussions are simply more appealing - look at the numbers of spaces which explicitly reject progress (e.g. r/TrueCryptozoology) and those who embrace it - even looking at the posts here, those on wildmen, lake monsters, neodinosaurs, and other long-disproven monsters attract more attention than critical essays, microfaunal cryptids, or even the genuine cryptozoological discoveries made over the last twenty years.

Cultural explanations are good science, but not good subculture. The subculture perpetuates monster beliefs to prevent a vacancy from occurring and foster a lively community. Unfortunately, good science and good subculture quickly become mutually exclusive - enthusiasts become ghost hunters, creating an afterlife to pursue, removing themselves from the science completely by actively contradicting its conclusions. 

The monsters that cryptozoological enthusiasts keep alive are also quite interesting - Bigfoot and Nessie have significantly more “productive” discourse than other cryptids of a similar caliber like Thunderbirds or Alien Big Cats, or other monsters like the Jersey Devil or Loveland Frogman. Returning to the label of “wieldy mysteries”, I think mysteries of this sort are united by a trait called “plausible malleability” - these stories can be translated, mutated, adapted, and perpetuated to fit whatever interpretation and individual wishes without losing the core of their character. I imagine this as a spectrum, with “plausibility” (readily identifiable traits) on one end and “malleability” (easy changes of form) on the other, with Bigfoot representing plausibility and Nessie representing malleability. 

As a primate, Bigfoot has a selection of easily identifiable and iconic traits - intelligence, adaptability, and dexterity. These traits almost never change, hallmarks of Bigfoot encounters include an exceptional awareness of the environment, of the presence of the witness, and even the odd one-off encounters (e.g. Bigfoot with clothes, using tools) and crank explanations (e.g. interdimensional, extraterrestrial, religious such as Nephilim) emphasize these traits by insinuating intelligence and ability beyond our comprehension. The most widely regarded “pseudoplausible” explanation for why Bigfoot has yet to be found - a hyper-intelligent ape that actively avoids human encroachment by detecting trail cameras and burying their dead - is an obscene extrapolation of these traits and abilities. This all seems plausible on the surface because these traits are rooted in actual observation and understanding of great apes, including ourselves. Great apes genuinely are resourceful, inventive, cunning, and caring - medicine rituals, burying their dead, tool use, evasion tactics, and all sorts of traits assigned to bigfoot have been present in our lineage for thousands to millions of years it seems. Bigfoot does what we know apes do, but better. Monsters on the plausible side of the spectrum thrive on this sort of extrapolation. Monsters on the malleable side, meanwhile, thrive on interpolation. 

Nessie is little more than something unknown in the lake. The eel, the plesiosaur, the mollusc, the amphibian are all likely candidates because ultimately we see little more than a trunk and humps above the water - it can plausibly be whatever you need it to be. I think this malleability explains two key traits of lake monster lore, being their ability to constantly absorb aquatic myths in a given region, and the general paucity of supernatural explanations. Nessie enthusiasts have retroactively claimed the story of St. Columba as a sighting of their monster, Champ scholars have claimed Samuel de Champlain’s gar fish as theirs, and lake monster stories from across the world take elements from European hooped serpents, American horned serpents, Mesozoic reptiles, and all sorts of forms in a mix-and-match conglomeration - if your monster has no set form, anything can be considered the monster. Cloaking and wormholing lake monsters, extraterrestrial origins, and all the other crank ideas are broadly absent from lake monster lore because these lake monsters can assume any form or escape to the sea at any time, there is less reason to suggest that they “should have been found by now”. Lake monsters are also malleable in terms of locality, many bodies of water started reporting their own lake serpents not long after the popularity of Nessie, each acting as projections of local history, culture, and emotion, because every body of water can feasibly contain a monster.

Nessie also has its own pseudoplausible explanation in the giant eel - taking the mantle once the plesiosaur idea fell out of popular favor. This idea spiked in popularity with press releases for the Loch Ness eDNA survey (keep in mind that this data has not been published in an academic forum and peer-reviewed) which claimed to have ruled out many long-standing “skeptic” hypotheses such as sturgeon with the sole exception of European eels. Media quickly took this to mean that Nessie is certainly an eel, and this idea is now repeated as if it is proven fact - a six-foot European eel would be a record breaker, and there’s no physiological or ecological scenario which would permit a population of super-eels in Loch Ness undetected. The eel is just the next best image for the general public, and we may see another radical shift in the future simply because Nessie can be anything.

Other monsters are simply constricted in form and function. What could you mistake for a Hodag? What could the Loveland Frogman evolve from? Could the Jersey Devil be anything but a devil? These beings are so specific to where they cannot be anything else but themselves, and that excludes them from popular consumption. These can only be aliens, monsters, or inventions. It’s this problem that also excludes them from the label of “cryptid” - they’re too outlandish and specific to plausibly be any animal at all. Cases sitting on the border - such as Mothman - are more willingly entertained by some because, ultimately, mothman can be a giant bird or some other animal, but you can also entertain other paranormal and extraterrestrial ideas. The issue is, like with cryptids such as the Thunderbirds or Alien Big Cats, that these monsters are generic and blasé - we expect to see something like a giant bird in the sky, and we can explain its identity clearly as a “giant bird” or “big cat” with no room for speculation, creation, or attribution. This is to say that Bigfoot and Nessie are preserved because they’re the easiest to - you can do anything you need with them, they can fit any mold, and they constantly attract new people due to this. 

I don’t think these are complete answers, but they do offer some insight into how cryptozoological spaces consistently spiral in discourse, and why the main stars are so popular. A better sourced, more rigorous framework of this sort is necessary for critical discussions.