Excerpt from the personal journal of Thomas Corbin:
As someone who has been recently thrust into the field of cryptozoology, I have had to take some time to wrap my head around certain concepts that seem very foreign to me. While going through my studies at college and my time in the field, I thought I knew how the world worked and that academia was a place of unbridled science…only to find out I was wrong. I have decided to sit down and write out my thoughts and what I have discovered while reading the SIRU papers.
Firstly, what is a cryptid? Cryptozoology is the study of “hidden animals” or animals whose existence are not accepted or recognized by science but are known to native populations. While many zoologists spend their time looking for new species, the creatures that cryptozoology focuses on are animals whose existence would seemingly call into question our assumptions and beliefs about the world around us. This seems an odd concept, because new species are discovered all the time─ but always within a certain set of parameters. Most new species are small, allowing for the belief that the reason we haven’t found them yet is due to their size. Also, most new species are really sub-species of animals known to exist. Discovering a new type of miniature deer or newt does not call into question the current scientific models.
But how do large animals like a sasquatch or Loch Ness monster stay cryptids? Wouldn’t their sizes make them easier to find than the miniature deer? This is the part that really shook me up and that I still do not fully understand. Firstly, the population size of the average cryptid is small─ critically endangered in some cases. As a zoologist I have had to spend weeks in the field to locate even one endangered animal, and that is with knowing their territory, food supply, and times of activity. Even an animal the size of a rhinoceros can remain hidden from human sight, in the right terrain, for over a century (like the Sumatran Rhinoceros). Secondly, as scientists, we are not looking for these creatures! There was a time when we were genuinely open to the existence of these creatures, and then around the turn of the century (1900) we stopped. The worst part of this is that cryptids are seen all the time; they are not as “hidden” as one would expect. I don’t know why, but I suspect SIRU might have something to do with the turn away from searching for “relic” populations, and if that is the case, then I’m going to have to keep following their papers for my answers.
