For me, it’s all about the evidence, whether that is by a local, or by a fisherman out in the middle of international waters. Heuvelmans’ definition is simple and works on its own without considering what is “ethnoknown” or not. Evidence should be considered on its own merit. If I was out studying a “lost world” where no humans had been before, and found evidence of a new animal by accident, that to me is still cryptozoology if I make an effort to get to the bottom of what I found. If it is evidence of some kind, it doesn’t seem to really matter if it is ethnoknown or not. Other scientists reviewing my findings are certainly not going to be hung up on whether the evidence I present is considered ethnoknown or not by some vague definition.

As I said before, I’m not sure, though, that folklore or myth should be written off. It can be intrinsically tied to real animals, as I mentioned with Japan above. However, whether that is considered “ethnoknown” or not, it is all just more circumstantial evidence to me. However, if we must place importance on what is “ethnoknown,” and use these terms, then in this case I could say that “ethnoknown” evidence in the form of stories or folklore is very important to me.

In all fairness, Arment, as quoted by Loren, apparently doesn’t mean the definition as narrowly as it might sound like – after all, he recognizes ‘chance eyewitnesses’ equally with native people. But that makes the word ‘ethnoknown’, which sounds like folklore and ancient myths, all the more unfortunate.

Other than that, the argument becomes pretty complicated. Like m_m says: how many people does it take to make the cryptid ‘ethnoknown’? To me it’s about culture, not about numbers.

Of course, there’s a flaw in my argument: the Montauk Monster had a definite impact in the American pop culture. Should it be considered a bonafide cryptid? Some people would agree, but others wouldn’t.

Maybe the passage of time is the adequate test for any of these mysteries. 10 years from now I doubt the Mountak Monster will be remembered outside the circles of cryptozoology, but I’m willing to bet my money that 50 years from now many people will be still talking about Nessie and Bigfoot.

I suppose one of the main questions I’m posing here is in Raynal’s statement, what exactly constitutes non-ethnoknown circumstantial evidence, and at what point does that become ethnoknown circumstantial evidence? I don’t feel this is clearly defined.

For instance, does he mean something along the lines of evidence found in remote areas by people outside of the country who come across some evidence or sightings for an animal which nationals of the country have never heard of or found any sign of? If this is the case, then what if this same evidence was stumbled upon by someone from that country? If we say that the very bare minimum for something to be defined as “ethnoknown” is that at least one person from the country has seen it, then automatically this must then be considered an ethnoknown animal if it’s evidence is found by a national. By this definition, the evidence would be of a non-ethnoknown creature only if found by a foreigner. So for example a team of Japanese scientists or even a fisherman sighting or coming across evidence for a never before seen sea monster in Japanese waters would make the creature immediately ethnoknown, yet it would be non-ethnoknown if the person in question was, say, American in the same location?

It can become even more complicated. If for instance a Japanese person sees evidence found by Americans in Japan that no Japanese know anything about up to then, does the circumstantial evidence at that instant go from non-ethnoknown to ethnoknown simply by them seeing it? Would this be the case even if they just watched it on TV or read about it on a website? In Corrick’s example above about the moth, how can you be sure that not a single person from that country has ever even glimpsed that moth? This all ends up just becoming a nitpick on who is actually finding or seeing the evidence, and that Raynal allowing for creatures based on non-ethnoknown evidence to be allowable by cryptozoology becomes really an argument over semantics.

How do you define “searching for cryptids based on non-ethnoknown circumstantial evidence” versus doing so on ethnoknown evidence of the same kind when the lines between the two can be so tenuous?

Is the difference really just as simple as one person from a given country seeing or even hearing about the creature present there or is there something more?

Maybe I’m thinking way too much about this one. But the statements by Raynal and the definitions here seem to me to be open to some interpretation based on the point at which one actually considers an animal to be truly ethnoknown in that country. Perhaps there needs to be more of a clarification or concrete parameters made on just what is required for a creature to be classified as ethnoknown.

I think based on the definitions already made, it could be argued that if only one person is needed for “ethnoknowness,” then a great deal of the evidence Heuvelmans talks of when he says “still unknown animal forms about which only testimonial and circumstancial evidence is available, or material evidence considered insufficient by some,” would likely be ethnoknown evidence to some degree.

These are just some random thoughts on an interesting topic.

“Think this discussion on the term ethnoknown is mostly just an argument over semantics.”

Well, maybe true. But maybe not “just.”

One thing crypto – however one defines it – has to do is jack up its cred with the hard sciences. I mean, this is essential, because I don’t think amateurs are gonna confirm cryptids. You have to get science interested; science has both the authority and responsibility for the proof.

The thing under discussion here – what constitutes ethnoknown – is an argument about channeling search resources, I think. I’d argue that you want to channel them toward animals for which the information you have shows both frequency and coherence; there’s a lot of it, and the picture it paints is a consistent picture that seems to point to an animal. Yeti? Check. Sasquatch? Check. Lake monsters? Well, I’d like to see more coherence there, even if the frequency numbers might say go. That’s why I spend most of my time here on the yeti and the sas; frequency and coherence. They sound to me like they could be real critters.

Luck can give you a big lead without all the data. I believe that in the case of the saola, a zoologist with mainstream cred, on a mainstream search, found a skull fragment in a village with horns attached, the latter identifiable to no known animal. This trumps a LOT of stories. If no one had ever reported a sasquatch, anywhere, I bet a skull found in the backcountry would pique attention anyway.

So we need to talk about how to structure our search, how to get the info together and decide: here’s a lead; here’s wishful thinking. To me, “ethnoknown” suggests a large body of information, of whatever kind (forensic evidence; consistent accounts from people who haven’t compared stories with one another beforehand; frequent accounts providing what looks like a potential species profile; etc.)

I can go with your definition of crypto; it’s as good as any I’ve read here. But when we go to science and say, here’s an ethnoknown critter, it would be good for all of us to be meaning the same thing. Science is big on defining terms, and on consistency.

This is a very relevant point. I say this because the term does come up in posts here, quite frequently. I think it is an important distinction that Loren has clarified rather thoroughly.

I appreciate the the clarification by Loren and appreciate the questions posed by mystery_man and DWA. Oh, mystery_man, I left you a reply and detailed explanation in that Dr. Eugenie Scott thread. If you get a chance to read it, that will explain my perceived absence. LOL

Thank You Gentlemen!

I think the misunderstanding lies in perhaps different ideas of the criteria for what constitutes “ethnoknown versus “non-ethnoknown.” At what point is a new animal passing into the realm of ethnoknown? I don’t think this is as cut and dried as it was made to sound.

For instance, there are all sorts of questions that pop into my mind. If even one person seeing the animal makes it ethnoknown, as stated above, then if my neighbor claims he has blue squirrels living in his backyard, does that make it an ethnoknown Japanese animal because he or his family saw it? Does the person seeing the animal even have to be from here? I have lived in Japan for 13 years, does a sighting made by me constitute the animal being ethnoknown?

Also, how much time has to pass before the creature is considered ethnoknown? If some Japanese hikers see something strange never seen before by anyone, does the strange creature become immediately ethnoknown right then and there? After a year? 10 years?

This is relevant to the question of what is non-ethnoknown. What if there is a Japanese researcher that goes in to study a remote area near where he is from and spots an undiscovered animal? Is that animal by your definition “a little bit” ethnoknown, whereas if a foreign researcher did it would be classified as “non-ethnoknown”?

I’m little curious about as to what animals are completely hidden and not known by anything other than circumstantial evidence, meaning I suppose sightings or tracks. The circumstantial evidence must have come from somewhere, otherwise no one would be looking for the creature in question in the first place. So if even finding tracks by locals could be considered “a little ethnoknown,” as well as the sighting of even one local, then doesn’t this mean that the circumstantial evidence stems from “ethnoknown?”

If the meaning of “non-ethnoknown” here is undiscovered animals out in the middle of nowhere, for which not a single person of the country has seen or found any tracks of, then I suppose as DWA said, that animal was likely found by scientists out studying something else unrelated. Otherwise why would anyone be out there looking for something at all? People need something to go on in order to go through the time and expense of these excursions. If they were in the middle of nowhere looking specifically for a hidden animal, where did they get circumstantial evidence that is not even a “little bit” ethnoknown?

So I think the interpretation of what Raynal said has a lot to do with what criteria one holds the definitions of ethnoknown and non-ethnoknown to.

Yes, Chad is correct in that ethnoknown can mean “alleged animals with enough salience (observable characteristics) to be recognized as something distinctive or unknown, either by a native people group, or chance eyewitnesses. In some cases, a cryptid may be well-known, or may only have been reported a handful of times.” But Michel Raynal is also correct in arguing, “a cryptozoological research is still possible when no observation or native tradition is available: any information based on circumstancial evidence, allowing to forsee the existence of an unknown animal form, is relevant to cryptozoology.” I’m assuming Michel is alluding to the well documented mystery of a large orchid in Madacascar who’s fertility cannot be explained by science except by the existence of a very large as yet unknown moth. But do we really need to have a discussion about micro-redefining what is cryptozoology and what isn’t?

I actually think most readers on the list will agree with me when I write; Cryptozoology is all about animals who’s existence is not accepted by science, the discovery of unexpected new animals or the existence of animals previously declared extinct. Whether it’s just reading about, researching, debunking or even discovering any of those three, that’s cryptozoology to me. And the lumping and splitting of definitions won’t change anything for most of us.

Craig Venter isn’t a cryptozoologist. You can’t be a “renowned scientist” and be a crypto. It’s a rule and I didn’t make it.

[rimshot]

But seriously folks.

He’s a scientist, performing research along generally accepted scientific lines, to try to get a more concrete handle on a proposition nearly every scientist agrees upon: we haven’t got near everything that’s in the oceans.

If he were gonna sit in a blind waiting to put a bioassay dart in a Bigfoot – OK, bringing it into current context, a submersible, waiting for a Kraken – now we’re talking crypto.

“Hidden” means to me that science has OVERLOOKED it. And all I can appeal to there is usage. People combing the rainforests of Borneo and Irian Jaya and PNG and the Amazon and the Phillippines the past few years weren’t doing crypto. They were going into places science hadn’t been before, to conduct research into the kinds of animals they EXPECTED to find there, many types of which they had already found in similar habitats elsewhere.

And here we know about shrew moles and least shrews and every species of mouse and bugs and bugs and bugs galore, and pretty much every animal any bigger – except for an eight-foot bipedal ape. That is being OVERLOOKED.

THAT is crypto.

But we still need to define “ethnoknown” here. Hey, now that I have a few shares of blog ownership I feel the need to stay on topic. So sue me!

Craig Venter, the renowned scientist that was directly involved in the early days of the Human Genome Project, embarked a few years ago on his boat—the Sorceress II— to work on the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition, “to help assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities.” Basically, what he wants to do is acquire enough DNA samples to try to figure out what constitutes most of the unknown marine life forms that populate our oceans.

So my question is this:

Should Craig Venter be considered a cryptozoologist?