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Podcast Transcript
For centuries, people have believed in animals whose existence remains unverified.
Creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are often cited in folklore and alleged sightings, yet lack any scientific validation.
However, while most of these creatures remain unproven, there are rare occasions when some are eventually discovered and recognized as new species.
Learn more about real-life cryptids and their discovery on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
A while back, I had an episode about mythical creatures. These are creatures such as unicorns and dragons that people believed existed for thousands of years, but turned out not to be real.
In this episode, I want to do the opposite. I want to look at creatures that were thought to be legends but actually existed. The truth about them might have been exaggerated by stories passed down from person to person over the years, but it turned out they were based on something real.
Before we do that, we first have to know what a cryptid is. A cryptid is any creature whose existence is supported by eyewitness accounts, folklore, or local legend but lacks scientific recognition.
The word cryptid comes from the Greek word kryptos, which means “concealed” or “hidden.”
For a creature to be considered a cryptid, it must meet specific criteria. To start, it must be a physical animal. This means supernatural folklore is excluded. The creature must also be physically plausible despite the lack of scientific evidence.
People who study cryptids are known as cryptozoologists. This field is considered by academics to be a form of pseudoscience and is composed mostly of amateur investigators.
Many people remain skeptical of cryptozoologists, and for good reason, but that does not mean every cryptid is fictitious. Historically, animals once deemed imaginary have been discovered, lending credibility to some research.
One of the most famous real-life cryptids is the platypus.
When Europeans arrived in Australia in 1606, they were told of the platypus by the Aboriginal people. However, their descriptions of the animals were unbelievable to the new arrivals.
It is understandable that Europeans doubted the existence of the platypus. The creature’s very existence contradicts everything they had previously known and understood about mammals.
Some features of the platypus aligned with those of other animals: it had fur, lived in rivers, had otter-like feet, and a beaver-like tail. All of which could be found on other mammals.
However, these conventional traits contrast with unique ones. The platypus lays eggs, possesses a duck-like bill, and produces venom. At that time, all mammals were believed to give birth to live young. Additionally, bills were observed only in ducks, and venom was something that was usually found in snakes. This made the idea of a platypus feel far-fetched.
As more Europeans moved to Australia, some of them began to see platypus and tell tales of the unique creatures. However, the rest of the world was still doubtful of their existence, convinced that the story was a tall tale and that a creature with these traits was not possible.
For many Europeans, it was believed that the platypus specimens they occasionally saw were an elaborate ruse by Asian taxidermists, who would attach a duck bill to the body of a mole.
Eventually, in 1798, a British Governor named John Hunter sent back a platypus specimen for examination. The Keeper of the British Museum’s natural history collection, George Shaw, looked at the creature and, once again, assumed it was fake.
However, upon inspection, he was surprised to learn that the creature was real. Shaw published his findings the following year. Overall, it took almost a century for Europeans to accept that the platypus was real.
The next example of a real-life cryptid is the Okapi.
Unlike the platypus, you might never have heard of the okapi, and the animal’s elusive nature contributes to this obscurity.
An Okapi looks like a cross between a horse and a donkey, but has two horns on its head. It also appears to have zebra stripes on its legs. Despite their resemblance to horses, Okapis are actually more closely related to giraffes.
Okapi are native to the Ituri Forest, which is located in the northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The forest is known for being dense and undisturbed, and the environment is difficult to navigate. If an animal is sly enough, it can be difficult to confirm their existence because of the difficulty in exploring the region.
Despite these features being relatively normal compared to those of the platypus, they were still perceived by Europeans as a myth. This is because Europeans had explored much of Africa and its forests, but had never seen any Okapis.
Okapis were known throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe as the “African Unicorn” because they were nearly impossible to find in the wild. Okapis are known for being elusive and hard to see. Therefore, despite native Africans knowing and telling stories about the existence of okapis, they were viewed as a legend.
The myth of the animal became a European sensation in the 1880s and 1890s. During this period, an explorer named Henry Stanley, of Stanley and Livingston fame, wrote an account of his travels through Central Africa.
During this time, he wrote about a creature the natives called the atti, which resembled a donkey. This was the first written report of the animal, but Stanley never saw an Okapi with his own eyes.
The animal was not confirmed to have existed for another decade. This occurred when Sir Harry Johnston, the British governor of Uganda, saved some of the native pygmy population from being put on display. As a thank you for being safely returned to their home, the group showed Johnston the tracks of an Okapi.
Johnston had previously heard of the creature through Stanley’s travel logs. Despite not physically seeing an Okapi, Johnston found the creature’s skull and skin.
The discovery of the skins and skull was enough for scientists to formally declare Okapis as a species in 1901. Although classified in 1901, okapis were not filmed in the wild until 2008, providing evidence of just how elusive they are..
The next animal on this list is the giant squid. Interestingly, many people still consider this creature a cryptid because of its incredible size.
Stories of the giant squid originated as sailors’ tales. One of the earliest interpretations of a giant squid was the Kraken in Norse Mythology. Many of the Kraken’s descriptions match the squid’s physical traits.
Many people heard sailors’ stories about giant squid and believed they had to be exaggerated. Sailors came back home telling tales of monsters with tentacles attacking their ships.
It took years for scientists to determine whether or not giant squids were real. As there were no cameras, there was no evidence that the squids existed. Many scientists believed that the giant squid sightings were likely sailors confusing other sea life for the squid.
There are two main reasons the giant squid was so difficult for scientists to confirm. First, their habitat presented a challenge. Giant squids live in the deep sea. Humans have explored only a small fraction of it.
The deep sea is considered to be one of the least accessible places on Earth. Being thousands of feet below sea level, there is no sunlight, and there is no way for fishing nets to reach the depths and pull the animal up.
The second reason is the enormous size of the Giant Squid. Seeing as they are literally called “Giant Squid,” they are predictably rather large, reaching 13 meters, or close to 43 feet, in length and reaching an estimated weight of 600 pounds. However, the reported weight and size are based on the specimens we have found, which are rather limited in number.
The giant squid was declared a species in 1857 through the research of a scientist named Japetus Steenstrup. Utilizing the reports of Giant Squid over the 17th century and the remains of one large squid beak, Steenstrup was able to confirm the species existed.
Despite evidence of the animal, the first recorded discovery of a giant squid did not occur until over a decade later.
The first recorded discovery of a giant squid occurred in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1873. The squid’s carcass had washed up on the shore, was brought home, and photographed by a reverend.
Around this time, other sightings of the Giant Squid were reported, and more and more sailors were coming back with parts of the specimen.
The carcass of a giant squid was eventually transported from Canada to New Haven, Connecticut. There, scientists A.E. Verrill and James Emerton examined and illustrated the squid’s biology. Their findings were published.
During the early stages of study, zoologists could research giant squids only from the occasional carcass that washed ashore. This situation was less than ideal because other hungry animals ate the sample as they washed to shore. Additionally, the squid corpses tended to rot quickly, leaving little for scientists to work with.
Because of this, little is known of the giant squid.
The giant squid has been seen alive only a few times. The first confirmed live sighting was in 2004. This sighting occurred off the coast of Japan. Footage recorded at the scene showed the squid swimming off into the depths.
Since the giant squid’s existence was confirmed, only 500 reports have been recorded worldwide; of those, only 50 were complete specimens, underscoring how much more we have yet to learn.
The final real-life cryptid is one you may be shocked to hear people didn’t believe in: the Gorilla.
Today, we can see gorillas in person in zoos and in countless documentaries. But for centuries, people considered gorillas to be nothing more than an exaggerated tale.
The first reported discovery of a gorilla by a non-African was reported by a Greek Explorer named Hanno in the 5th century. While exploring the African coast, Hanno reported encountering a tribe of violent, monstrous humans whom he called “gorillae.”
While many modern historians believe he encountered a different type of great ape, such as a chimpanzee or baboon, the term “gorillae” and the legend of terrifying humanoid creatures stuck.
Reports of the humanoid creatures continued to be made over the course of centuries. People described the great ape visiting their villages and wreaking havoc or visiting campfires at night, but these reports were not taken seriously by scientists.
Gorillas were considered to be cryptids until 1847, when a scientist named Thomas Savage began an expedition in Africa. While searching the continent, he found a skull belonging to a creature that had never been recorded before.
Upon finding the skull, he declared that a new species existed and began searching the surrounding areas in the hope of finding it, but without success.
However, this led to other scientists who read the research to travel to Africa in hopes of finding the secretive species. One of these explorations was led by a French explorer named Paul du Chaillu between 1855 and 1859.
While exploring modern-day Central Africa and Gabon, Chaillu encountered a gorilla and took photographs, further cementing the animal’s existence.
The first physical gorilla captured and brought back for research was in 1902. A German explorer and hunter named Robert von Beringe wanted to track and hunt a gorilla to bring back its carcass as evidence of its existence.
Beringe succeeded on this mission, and what is now known as the Mountain Gorilla was confirmed to have been discovered. In his account of the expedition, he reported on the strength of gorillas, describing how they kept moving despite being shot, and commenting on their massive size.
However, this was not the end for scientists searching for gorillas. After the discovery of the mountain gorilla, the scientific community sought to find and research more of them.
In 1904, a German zoologist named Paul Matschie found the remains of a new type of Gorilla, now known as the Cross River Gorilla. Matschie reported his findings but never found a living specimen, leading the scientific community to believe the creatures were extinct until the 1980s.
There were a few reasons it was hard for scientists to confirm the existence of gorillas.
To start, gorillas live in very remote areas, often in dense forests at high altitudes. This makes the terrain difficult for humans to traverse without having years of prior experience.
Additionally, gorilla coloration makes them hard to see. As their fur is black, they are camouflaged in the natural shadows of dense forests. Given that gorillas are always moving, it is extremely difficult to see one, even when tracking them.
While it is true that some creatures that have been considered legends have been proven to be real, it doesn’t mean that every cryptid is real. In almost every example, the animal’s remains were found before it was seen alive. To date, we haven’t found the remains of any yetis, sasquatches, or reptiles lurking in Loch Ness.
But that doesn’t mean that there still aren’t undiscovered animals out there, most probably lurking somewhere in the deep ocean.
The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.
Research and writing for this episode were provided by THE Olivia Ashe.
I want to remind everyone that the 6th anniversary episode of Everything Everywhere Daily is coming up on July 1, and I’m going to turn the show over to all of you. You can record a brief audio message at https://www.speakpipe.com/EverythingEverywhere and tell me who you are, where you are from, and what your favorite episode is.
There is a link to the site at the top of the show notes.
Today’s review comes from listener Ferris Mewler on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write:
Thanks for the Classroom Help
Thanks for the help. I’m an American teaching English conversation in the Czech Republic. The students have been learning English their whole lives, but don’t have any practice using it. I’ve been having my students listen to an episode and talk about it with their classmates.
They can practice their listening and speaking English, and it provides them with something interesting to talk about. It’s been really successful.
Also, I accidentally wrote the instructions to listen to the podcast in permanent marker on one of our whiteboards, so you have a permanent advertisement that hundreds of students see every day in a classroom in Prague.
Thanks, Ferris! I’m glad to see that I have gained a permanent place in the land of defenestrations. I will raise a Czech pilsner in honor of you and your class.
Remember, if you leave a review of the podcast on any of the major podcast apps, you can have it read on the show.
