Happy Fathers’ Day Cryptozoology
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 18th, 2006
Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there. But who was the “Father of Cryptozoology,” in reality?
In 1955, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans wrote a groundbreaking book in French, a now classic opus entitled (in English) On the Track of Unknown Animals. But in the 1955 French and the 1958 English editions, you will not find the word “cryptozoology,” in any language.
The first published use of the word “cryptozoology,” in French, occurred in 1959 in a book by wildlife biologist Lucien Blancou, dedicated to “Bernard Heuvelmans, master of cryptozoology”. At least, that is as far as we know.
My candidate for “father of cryptozoology,” actually worked the word into print in the first English-language book. The premiere utilization of the term “cryptozoological,” in English, was in 1961, in Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life by Ivan T. Sanderson.
In Heuvelmans’s 1968 book In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, it is clear that the word “cryptozoology” had been around for perhaps over twenty years before it came into print in 1959. Speaking of two articles on water monsters written in 1947 and 1948 by Ivan T. Sanderson, Heuvelmans wrote: “When [Sanderson] was still a student he invented the word ‘cryptozoology,’ or the science of hidden animals, which I was to coin later, quite unaware that he had already done so.”
My friend and associate, Mark A. Hall, has made the case for some rather older “romantic natural historians” as candidates for the first cryptozoologists and “fathers of cryptozoology.” Who is your nominee for the “Father of Cryptozoology”?
Random Posts
- Similar Phenomena:
Loren, I’d have to vote for Bernard Heuvelmans. Even though he may not have been the first to coind the term “cryptozoology”, “A rose by any other name would still be a rose.”
I guess I have to vote for Sanderson if only because he was the first person I ever heard discuss the subject back in the sixties. He was a frequent guest on the old Alan Douglas late night radio show and exposed me to all kinds of wonderful news and theories on the subject. It led me to purchase the issue of Argosy magazine with the first Patterson photos, (I still have it), and I was hooked. I enjoy reading and rereading his many books even today.
we all have that first person who tickled our interest and drew us in and hooked us. these people are very important in our lives .
our spouses/significant others may not be happy with them because of where the search has taken us but that is usually the case with in laws. for this case they are crypto-in-laws.
happy fathers day, to the fathers of every ones interest in cryptids and to the fathers of the future crypto junkies everywhere of the world.
my fathers day tribute would go to Dan Taylor. I promised you I would come to meet you when you brought nessa to Loch Ness and I would bring an umbrella incase of leaks
Unfortunately it was not to be. I miss your cheerful and optomistic emails that always made me smile. A great loss, a brave man,an adventurer and most of all a gentleman.
How about Mr Charles Fort? not specifically cryptozoology but a for-farther of all that was not conventional?
Here’s a different perspective: How about Thomas Jefferson?
Consider some thoughts taken from the National Park Service’s website for the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.
“He had a love for nature and was fascinated by the unknown…if it had not been for his passion for the unknown, would this country have expanded from sea to shining sea? …He believed that in the west anything could exist… Jefferson had heard many stories about the west from explorers and trappers. But were these stories true? Did wooly mammoths and giant seven-foot beavers really roam the countryside?”
Thanks in large part to his influence and following the example set by the Corps of Discovery, dozens of future government-funded exploratory and surveying “expeditions” included naturalists and artists charged with actively searching for, collecting, and documenting previously unknown species.
From what I’ve read, Heuvelmans (How the heck do you pronounce his name, anyway?) acknowledged his debt to Sanderson, and by the same token, Sanderson didn’t seem to have a problem with Heuvelmans being called the Father of Cryptozoology for all his efforts. If that is indeed the case, and Sanderson had no problem with it, then my vote is for the Frenchman.
Not an easy choice, as it is my understanding that Sanderson was a fellow resident of the great and beautiful state of New Jersey that everyone else likes to make fun of for some reason…
Heuvelmans was Belgian, and Sanderson, Scottish, who happened to live in NJ, late in his life.
I side with those who have chosen Bernard Huevelmans as the so-called “father of cryptozoology.” He certainly was the author of the book that got me interested in the subject when I ran into it at the public library. I must of checked it out 6 or 7 times in a row, a record for a 10 year-old. Sanderson certainly should garner praise for all of his early work.
Huevelmans is definitely the “flag ship” of crypto’s, and he brought the work to light to much of the rest of the world. There are also many others who catalogued and recorded the unknown before him.
Personally, I don’t want to lay all the blame for my passion on any one person…let’s give everyone their due for their contributions and go out in their honor and find some real test-of-time evidence for our favorite cryptids!
Last of all, let’s give the honor to all of our male cryptids who keep propogating thier species so that we have something to search for:)
“cryptozoology” is not a word only, but a methodology and his “father” is Bernard Heuvelmans without doubt.
OK, so I should have said French-speaker…and I knew Sanderson was a Scot, that’s why I said resident, like Albert Einstein, not native, like James Fenimore Cooper.
I love Ivan T. Sanderson… but Bernard Heuvelmans was a mentor to Ivan…
Grandfather of cryptozoology?
Jeremy, sorry, but you have it backwards. Heuvelmans is very open that it was ITS’s article in Saturday Evening Post in 1947, which stimulated Bernard to undertake a study of unknown animals. After writing about jazz and doing some science articles, Heuvelmans was looking about for a project to devote his time and from which to obtain an income. He discovered that article, and thus stumbled into what would become “cryptozoology.” If anyone was the mentor, it was Ivan to Bernard.
But as far as a “father,” I was looking for any older suggestions than Sanderson or Heuvelmans.
I vote for ME!!!
Well, if you go back much farther, any ol’ naturalist or explorer would probably do, as they were certainly looking for unknown animals, just not in a specific manner. Even as late as the 1930’s, there were regions of the world that were unexplored to the western mind. Anything could be there, that’s why the Lost World, the Land That Time Forgot, Tarzan, and King Kong seemed rather plausible.
Having said that, to get back on your track, how about some of these guys- A. C. Oudemans, Gunnar Olof Hylten-Cavallius, Dr. DeWitt Webb, Rupert T. Gould, William H. Harkness (His wife, Ruth, should get Mother status then), W. M. Gerald Russel, and Tom Slick.
I believe Heuvelmans personally believed Oudemans as the first initiator of the field of Cryptozoology.
good call mnynames…and let us not forget Pliny the Elder…can’t remember off the top of my head where he sat in time in relation to Oudemans…but he was in the thick of it too…and now that I think of it, Aristotle was at least recording zoological phenomenonononon…some of it which would have fallen in the realm of the crypto…
What about the priest who rebuked the Loch Ness monster way back when? Get it? Father of Cryptozoology?
Now that’s a groaner…
Unless I’m mistaken, I believe that was Saint Columba, said to have converted people to Christianity as much by his sword as by his word. Of further Fortean interest is his supposed sacrifice of one of his followers (Another saint), buried alive beneath the cornerstone of his church. He was dug up many years later, still alive (Or so the story goes), at which point he began to utter prophecies of future history so disturbing that Columba had him reburied.