One of the most subtle, pervasive, and insidious forms of racism – or to put it more mildly, as that really isn’t the case here, blinkered thinking – is to presume that anything another culture believes for which you don’t have proof is a “legend” or a “myth” or a “quaint belief.”

The example I would use is the sasquatch, for which native cultures don’t use any terms or references in describing it that they don’t use as well for the animals we know about. To this day Native Americans and First Nations people – 21st-century people in most every other sense – insist it’s real.

It’s my personal opinion that zoology would make a whole lot more headway as a science, a whole lot more quickly, by focusing less on the DNA sequencing of mouse lemurs and more on investigating the possible basis for species that may be out there but we haven’t confirmed yet. Just killing the kneejerk scoff would be one of the biggest sea changes in the history of science.

Look where physics, chemistry, astronomy and paleobiology (for the most part) are going. They are all – despite some obvious flaws – very-low-scoff-quotient sciences.

I’m part Scottish (and also Catholic btw).

Also to Bob K:

I have the same name as you almost as my name is Bob and my last name starts with a K as well.

Moreover, the same biography by Adamnan mentions Columba encountering a whale off the Scottish coast. Are we meant to regard that as demonic too? In the same light, we should regard the water beast seen in the river as an animal too.

For a story with some similarities, see the account of St. Anthony’s journey to see St. Paul the Hermit. St. Anthony meets both a centaur and a satyr, which the Greek version of the story explicitly states are demons.

If anyone is really interested in a patron saint for cryptozoology, it appears that St. Albert the Great is considered the patron saint of the sciences, but Adam would make an appropriate patron saint for zoology in particular, because he named the animals. (Likewise, Solomon later named the plants, making him a good candidate for patron saint of botany.)