Monsters
Austin Society to Oppose Pseudoscience
How many large, unknown animals are there on our planet
yet to be discovered by explorers and zoologists? The great 19th century
naturalist, Baron Georges Cuvier, remarked in the course of a lecture in 1830
that naturalists of the future would have to concentrate on extinct animals,
since no new discoveries of large living animals were to be expected. As Willy
Ley says, “He was statistically right, even if he was wrong otherwise.” In the
150 years since Cuvier spoke, many tens of thousands of previously unknown
extinct animals have been found in fossil form — but only a handful of
previously unknown large living animals. Examples are the Giant Panda, the
Okapi, the Komodo “dragon,” and the living fossil called Coelacanth. Most of
the discoveries have been of slightly different species of well-known animals
such as deer and birds. With rapid transportation dominating the latter half
of the 20th century, it seems almost impossible that any very large animal has
somehow remained undiscovered.
Yet a popular claim of pseudoscience is that many very
large animals are as yet unknown to science. Of these, the best known are the
North American ape-man Bigfoot and his Himalayan cousin the Yeti, or
Abominable Snowman; the monsters said to lurk in Loch Ness in Scotland and
several large lakes in North America; and the great Sea Serpent.
Scientists have two major objections to pseudoscientists’
claims concerning the existence and habits of these animals. The first
objection is that no evidence of any kind has ever proved that the animal
actually exists. The second objection is that the places where the animals are
said to exist could not support them in the numbers required to prevent them
from becoming extinct. In pseudoscientific claims regarding such creatures
there are always gross ecological, zoological and herd-size contradictions
that render the claims simply impossible. Since no direct evidence of the
existence of such animals is ever shown, the attitude of zoologists and other
scientists is one of complete skepticism.
Let’s look at some claims in more detail, to see just
what kinds of objections these are, and how they arise. Consider Bigfoot or
Sasquatch. This is supposed to be a large (7-12 feet tall) ape-like animal
with short red-brown or black hair, reported all over the Pacific Northwest,
from California to British Columbia. Many organizations and newspapers have
offered cash prizes of up to $100,000 for hard evidence that Bigfoot exists,
or a live Bigfoot. Despite this, no evidence has ever been forthcoming. What
is put forward in place of real evidence are eyewitness reports of sightings —
all vague, all contradictory in major details, and all curiously lacking in
specifics; footprints in the snow, no two sets of which look at all alike;
recorded “noises,” no two tapes of which sound even vaguely alike; and various
photographs and one movie, all of which appear to show someone in a standard
costume-shop ape outfit stumbling about in the woods.
Discounting this non-existent evidence, a scientist would
ask: how many of these creatures are there? We worry about the gorilla and
chimpanzee becoming extinct if the numbers of these animals fall into the
hundreds. Thousands of individuals are needed, at a minimum, to prevent a
single drought or epidemic from destroying the species. It seems very hard to
believe that thousands … or even hundreds … of Bigfeet are active but unseen
in woods fairly heavily traveled by tourists. They should be encountered as
frequently as bears! What do the Bigfeet eat? Do they live and hunt in groups
of 5 to 50 individuals, like chimpanzees, gorillas, and primitive ape-men, or
are they solitary like orangutans? Where and how do they live? In trees? In
caves? Underwater? How do they fit into the ecology of the region where
they’re found in largest numbers? What do they prey on? What preys on them?
Why don’t we find bodies of Bigfeet dead in accidents, killed by predators,
run over by cars, dead of illness, dead of old age, etc.?
We haven’t dealt with the most severe zoological problem
of all. In an area as vast and varied as North America, we expect many
varieties of the same animal; not just “bears,” but black bears, brown bears,
grizzly bears, polar bears, etc., etc. Yet in all of North and South America
there are no known species of apes; apes are native only to the “Old
World,” Africa and Asia. How then do we have this single species of remarkable
giant ape (or ape-man) in such a narrow strip of North America, and no other
apes anywhere in all of North and South America? We don’t expect apes in this
hemisphere any more than we expect to find native elephants, camels, or
kangaroos!
How about the yeti, the abominable snowman? The high
Himalayas are poorly explored even today. Isn’t his existence more probable?
No. We can raise exactly the same questions as above, and no answers are
forthcoming. No evidence exists that these creatures exist. British
expeditions to Tibet in the early 1950’s brought back the usual meaningless
reports of footprints and “sightings.” But a 1960 expedition led by Sir Edmund
Hilary found absolutely no physical evidence of such an animal, and also found
simple explanations for the bogus “evidence” cited by earlier expeditions. For
instance, yeti “scalps” said to be kept in inaccessible monasteries turned out
to be caps made of goat fur.
One of the most famous of all monsters is “Nessie,” the
plesiosaur-like, 20-50 foot long, gray, brown, or black monster of Loch Ness.
Right off, the first problem is that Loch Ness is about the last place on
earth one would be likely to find such a creature. The Loch is about 20 miles
long, but only a mile wide. Its waters are deep and murky because of suspended
particles of peat; the 400 F water would be an impossible
environment for reptiles; nor is there room for the several hundred or so
individuals that a zoologist would expect to form a stable population.
Believers in Nessie sometimes claim that the animals actually live in the sea,
and only solitary individuals swim up to appear in the Loch. This would
require supernatural feats on the part of the animals, since Loch Ness is part
of the Caledonian Canal system and there are 19 locks between Loch Ness and
the open sea! Upstream of the Loch is the large city of Inverness, where the
water is only a few feet deep.
As always, the “evidence” for the monster consists only
of eyewitness “sightings” of extremely dubious significance, and a number of
extraordinarily blurry photographs and indistinct movie footage. The monster’s
publicity dates from 1933, when a road around the Loch was resurfaced and the
inhabitants of the locality were ready for increased tourist business. Much of
the early publicity was based on two famous photographs of the monster, taken
at about this time, which in fact seem to show otters playing on the surface
of the Loch, but were reprinted elsewhere as shots of Nessie. Not much more
was heard about the monster until 1957, when a book by Constance Whyte revived
the story. (This should remind the reader of flying saucer flaps … you don’t
see anything until you read that you should see something.) A famous bit of
newsreel footage made in 1960 shows the “monster” swimming about … looking for
all the world like a motorboat, and nothing like a large, swimming animal. The
best known, and least impressive, of all monster photographs were obtained by
an expedition led by wealthy pseudoscientist Robert Rines in the early 1970’s.
These shots, taken underwater, show essentially nothing until “computer
enhanced,” when a blurry image that could be just about anything emerges.
There’s been no monster activity since, to speak of. It’s worth noting that a
full-size model of a fanciful Loch Ness monster was lost in the Loch during
the filming of the 1968 Billy Wilder motion picture, The Private Life of
Sherlock Holmes. So there is at least one monster down there, and
it doesn’t need to eat, breed, breathe or swim about. Those are the
qualifications that all Loch Ness monsters would need to satisfy, and no
living animal is likely to meet such qualifications.
It is not well known that there are just as many reports
of such monsters in U.S. and Canadian lakes. There are from 30 to 40 lakes in
the U.S. which have been the site of eyewitness monster reports, ranging from
Elizabeth Lake in California to the Old Mill Pond in Trenton, New Jersey!
Probably the best known of such monsters is “Champ,” who is supposed to live
in Lake Champlain. Canada has the Naitaka, which infests British Columbian
lakes. In Lake Okanagan is Ogopogo, and in Lake Manitoba is Manipogo.
Photographs of these creatures show considerably more imagination on the part
of the photographer than do Nessie photographs, but they are even less
convincing for the same reason.
Lake monsters are also reported from Iceland, Norway,
Sweden, Lake Victoria in East Africa, and Lake Baikal in the Soviet Union. The
most famous of these monsters, which appears to prefer rivers to lakes, is
Mokele-Moembe, the target of a disaster-prone, hopelessly incompetent
expedition of two wealthy pseudoscientists to Africa.
In no case is any actual evidence provided that such
creatures exist. One is reminded of a quote from mountaineer James Ramsey
Ullman: “As late as the middle 1700’s, adventurous travelers would solemnly
commend their souls to the Maker before risking the crossing of what today are
considered the most prosaic Alpine passes, and to the occasional unhappy
wanderer on the higher slopes it was merely a question of whether a bandit, a
three-headed dragon, or the ghost of Pontius Pilate would waylay him first.”
He goes on to note that, up to 1725, guidebooks to Switzerland contained
detailed descriptions and classifications of Alpine dragons. Far travelers
have a well-known tendency to dramatize their adventures by inventing mythical
beasts. Probably many monsters have their origin in this human tendency, not
in the evolution of life on earth. Monster Stories also do no harm to the
tourist trade; the tourism at Loch Ness is almost entirely based on “your
chance at a sight of Nessie,” and every time a motorboat crosses the Loch the
tourists are in ecstasy at seeing the monster at long last.
The sad fact, however, is that the manufactured mystery
of monsters is always tawdry and unimaginative put up alongside the many
amazing and wonderful animals that are actually known to exist on earth, from
pandas to pangolins. If people would transfer some of their enthusiasm for
mythical beings into enthusiasm and love for the animals that do exist, and
desperately need man’s protection and understanding, we would all find
ourselves in a real world of almost infinite variety and beauty.
For further reading
Science and the Paranormal, G. O. Abell and B.
Singer (Eds.), Scribner’s, New York, 1981, Chapter 2.
“The Loch Ness Saga,” by Dr. Maurice Burton, New
Scientist, June 24, 1982, p. 872; July 1, 1982, pp. 41-42; July 8, 1982,
pp. 112-113.
Exploring the Unknown, C. J. Cazeau and S.D.
Scott, Jr., Plenum, New York, 1979, Chapter 11.
Myths of the Space Age, Daniel Cohen, Dodd, Mead,
New York, 1967, Chapter 8.
“Bigfoot on the Loose: Or How to Create a Legend,” Paul
Kurtz, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 1980, pp. 49-54.
Exotic Zoology, Willy Ley, Viking, New York,
1959.
Searching for Hidden Animals, Roy P. Mackal,
Doubleday, New York, 1980.
The Loch Ness Mystery Solved, Ronald Binns with
R.J. Bell, Prometheus, New York, 1985.
“Sonar and Photographic Searches for the Loch Ness
Monster: A Reassessment,” R. Rasdan and A. Kielar, The Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol. 9, No. 2, Winter 1984-5, pp. 147-158.
Acknowledgments
ASTOP – The Austin Society to Oppose Pseudoscience – has
prepared fact sheets on various pseudoscience topics for the benefit of
teachers and others interested in promoting critical thinking. Dr. Rory Coker,
Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of
this fact sheet. The International Cultic Studies Association (formerly
American Family Foundation), a professional research and educational
organization concerned about the harmful effects of cultic and related
involvements, prints and helps distribute these fact sheets. Because ASTOP
fact sheets seek to stimulate critical thinking, rather than advance a
particular point of view, opinions expressed are those of the authors. A list
of available fact sheets can be obtained by writing either the American Family
Foundation (P.O. Box 336, Weston, MA 02193) or ASTOP (P.O. Box 3446, Austin,
TX 78764).
