3 Cryptids That Kill: the Merit of Cryptozoology

hi I'm Bob Gimlin and today I want to talk about three cryptids with confirmed and documented attacks or kills on people I do this to prove a point and that point has to do with cryptids and therefore cryptozoology itself see the scientific community at large held a closed-door meeting wherein they decided that cryptozoology is in fact a pseudoscience pseudoscience being defined as a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method clearly I wasn't invited the American philosophical societies encyclopedia of time science philosophy theology and culture in collusion with Scientific American and propagated by something called the skeptics dictionary agree that cryptozoology is a quote pseudoscience with the goal of identifying and describing beings from the folklore and the fossil record which cryptozoologists referred to as cryptids these include creatures that are otherwise considered extinct beings of folklore fictitious there was a note skeptics dictionary added such as Bigfoot and chupacabras and I'm so glad they were kind enough to put Bigfoot in Juba copper in quotations or else we would have had no idea what they were talking about I take grievance with this definition bordering offense particularly the implied reason that creatures from folklore or the fossil record are discounted as pseudoscience identifying animals with the basis and folklore or fossil evidence is absolutely science the giant squid was purely folkloric until it was verified in the 1850s the giant panda Anaconda gorilla the obligatory seal camp restrict Li the subject of either folklore or the fossil record before there was any reason to believe that they existed at all even the discovery of the Billy ape some 15 years ago was preceded by folklore in fact many believed it was a gorilla apes don't leave a strong fossil record but fish certainly do and a coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago until we learned that Indonesians have been eating them for a very long time so these are just a few of I would imagine dozens if not hundreds of creatures described with the use of folklore and/or the fossil record so let's get this straight cryptozoology is a pseudoscience until it is successful in which case it magically become zoology that can't be how this works and it doesn't make any sense the academic community with all of its conventional wisdom in their closed-door meetings as promoted by their advocates may consider cryptids to be pseudo scientific and fictitious but apparently no one told the cryptids that because there are still some out there and some of them kill people the United Kingdom is home to aren't identifiable black cats much like Bigfoot the photo evidence is shaky also like Bigfoot we don't really know anything about them other than the fact that they seem to exist and there are a few options as to just exactly what they are skeptics say that the majority of these photos are simply misleading camera angles on ordinary household cats though some have proportions of big cats proportions that domesticated cats simply can't achieve some say that they are escapees from earlier circuses or travelling zoos who are just barely interbreeding enough to have a small and unhealthy population but I don't think so I feel like it contaminated both behaviorally and genetically big cat would be tracked down and destroyed fairly easily there were such sightings in Scotland in the late 1970s and a Puma was trapped in 1980 it is believed that it was an escaped pet are these cryptids escaped pets well in 1760 a writer named William collet reported seeing a cat quote as big as a middle-sized spaniel dog he probably saw your Asian links but according to the powers-that-be links don't live in England anyway escaped Puma and run away links distribution certainly don't account for the modern well-documented uniformed black cats described as the size of black labs or larger living the sheep infested highland moors of england characterized i tempered grass and trouble and and by a low-growing foliage did you know a 300-pound lion can be almost invisible in seven inches of grass anyway they're more than just fuzzy photos of feline forms to prove these cryptids he's quite literal hidden animals the year was 2000 the place my mouth Shire an 11 year old boy said a large black cat attacked him and left scratches on his face a single image rarely conveys much detail but according to BBC News whales of August 2000 the police called a big cat expert named Danny 9m the expert said the claws were much too far apart to be an ordinary household cat even an enormous one probably wouldn't have launched a grip the boys neck from a crouched and ambush position fortunately the cat missed its mark and that's why we have a witness as opposed to a corpse the Boyar members very little basically he was walking remembers being hit with something hard that grabbed his face he screamed and it disappeared into the brush he said it was quote black long and slinky looking Danny 9m thought the wounds were consistent with an adolescent leopard mark an animal between 40 and 60 pounds an animal more than capable of dispatching prey much larger than itself and then dragging it up a tree with all the resources of a government facing public terror the cat specialist took to a helicopter with heat-seeking equipment but the biologist was unsuccessful in tracking the animal on that day or trapping the animal on days after that in fact he found nothing and as a note this is an imposition of the United Kingdom on to Southern California it's a big cat expert with the military's backing couldn't track down a big cat here then should we have high expectations to find something much smarter than a cat in much tougher terrain with exponentially higher and harder to fathom tree cover especially as compared to the countryside of Wales in England especially when you take into consideration that there really are no big experts no offense but if any of us were truly experts we would probably be having more luck by now and one difference between decrypted that did this and the cryptid sketched here is that if the US government did manage to capture or kill one of these creatures I suspect we would never hear about it anyway five years after the Monmouth Shire attack to the south of London in a place called Sydenham Wells Park a man named Anthony holder was tragically and a little ironically looking for his lost kitten in the nearby area he called it quits and it almost returned inside his house when he was attacked in his own garden Anthony said the pseudo-scientific bouncer was six feet long and that had knocked him to the ground and gripped him with hooked nails for 30 seconds until his screaming brought onlookers and a creature flood Anthony told the British Broadcasting Corporation quote I am six foot away 15 stone it was considerably stronger and bigger than me this thing was huge well Anthony I'm sure was absolutely terrifying but it probably wasn't bigger than you cats are known for that kind of strength if the cat was 15 stone or 210 pounds or 95 kilograms I think the story probably would have ended differently and not so favourably holder was lucky to receive only head trauma bruising and lacerations police and sharpshooters were called the South London area no shots were fired though an officer did report glimpsing a feline described as quote like a black lab only lower to the ground and longer and that is what is so unnerving in the first place think domestication cats and dogs were bred to be manageable and comparable to humans even a German Shepherds dull claws and conical teeth are not designed for locality whereas a cat needs to be about the size of a garden gnome tap claws long enough to sever an artery in 2000 the 11 year old boy was attacked here in 2005 a similar creature attacked a man just south of London some 150 miles away by Road it is hard to say if it was the same creature an African leopards home range is generally thirty square miles whereas a mountain lions range can easily exceed three hundred square miles African lions home range is typically 100 square miles and these are the kind of variables I would be factoring in but why bother it is pseudoscience after all which brings me back to the initial definition cryptozoology being a pseudoscience with the goal of identifying and describing beings from the folklore and the fossil record which cryptozoologists referred to as cryptids these include creatures that are otherwise considered extinct beings of folklore fictitious regarding folklore the beasts of Exmoor or a black panther has been talked about in the UK since the 1970s it became nationally famous when a rancher lost over a hundred sheep in 1983 many of the sheep were found with cutthroats so does it seems to be cryptozoology and become zoology because there were attacks sightings wouldn't have been sufficient with it because they call it the Beast of Exmoor that it became cryptozoology where's the line the black cat part of it should be a dead giveaway as to what exactly these are a black panther refers to either a Jaguar or a leopard with a melanistic trait or color variants Jaguar don't really live longer than 14 years in the wild and leopards even less so it certainly can't be one animal sightings in the 70s cannot account for attacks thirty years later in 2000 and 2005 so is it a breeding population of escaped pets again it just seems unlikely to me but so do all the other alternatives so what is it well to be honest it's a cryptid the timeframe of attacks and sightings as well as the nature of the attacks leave me confused the only black Panthers or large black cats I'm aware of our leopards or Jaguar and it is hard for me to picture a situation where a leopard or Jaguar seen here dragging a small rhinoceros up a tree attacking prey six or seven times its size plucking a caiman out of the water or feasting on this 16-foot anaconda would attack this kid in such a way that he would walk away from it so I'm not sure what these cryptids are but I do know of a much worse one this in 1955 a man allegedly received a dinner plate sized shark bite on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago the powers that be call this a myth because there are no photos or hospital records of the incident from the 1950s in a time before computers this shouldn't be shocking also I doubt the doctors in Chicago even had a forum or standard operating procedure or file cabinet dedicated to shark attacks so the powers that be say it never happened but that doesn't change the fact that south of Minneapolis in 2005 shark teeth were found in a Minnesota water system called Minnehaha Creek the beachcombers were shocked when experts stated the teeth were not in fact fossils but freshly discarded teeth from adolescent bull sharks since the Sharks were still shedding their baby teeth it is likely that they had not traveled there but rather were born there the larger the bull shark the more tolerant it is to freshwater because body can retain more saline the DNR said it was an isolated incident and probably a shark or a small population of sharks got lost and isolated inland after the flooding of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 the same year the teeth were found the problem of course of that is that the oldest teeth were shed 14 years ago based on where and the youngest teeth were shed less than one year ago the issue of sharks in Minnesota and Wisconsin became harder for the DNR to ignore when 2006 a year later a bull shark was found taking refuge in a Pepsi truck that had veered into a lake on the Wisconsin Minnesota border the lake called Lake Pepin was closed for a while but keep in mind one five foot shark cannot for 14 years worth of shed baby teeth swimming in Lake Pepin was restricted for a whole year but I still wouldn't recommend it and don't worry Lake Pepin has folk lore behind monster sightings the powers that be agree that bull sharks have a rectal feature that allows them to maintain required salt levels for extended freshwater habitation they're well-documented swimming thousands of miles up the Amazon of South America and the Zambezi River in East Africa but Wisconsin Chicago Minnesota lakes the ones I fish and set up game cams decide a proven man-eating super predator persisting even if only seasonably to the marshland of the Midwest is by definition a cryptid or hit an animal and it is no pseudo-science big cats are scary anyone who has spent time in big cat country can attest to that and sharks yes I'm aware of the statistics probability extreme unlikelihood and such that you're more likely to be killed by a rogue vending-machine etc etc than a shark regardless sharks are absolutely horrifying animals yet I would argue that they are not nearly as formidable as the final cryptid it is the least definitive and most lethal one with more kills than we will ever really know and it's called velasca and I propose the unique environment create unique animals in the lusca inhabits what is perhaps the most unique coastal ecosystem the blue holes particularly those are the Bahamas seem to be the epicenter of lusca reports some are inland and landlocked while others are oceanic some are big and some are small these blue holes are exceptionally intriguing and mysterious because of my shoddy Microsoft Paint depiction attempts to represent they go far deeper than the bottom of the ocean and according to Carol and Moore's journal entitled blue holes definition in genesis carbonate sand evaporates they're probably all connected less than 8 percent of these chasms have been even remotely Lord because they run so deep and now it hazard to say that 8% is much too high a number the inland blue holes are a favorite to tourists and locals alike seen here from the ground they're particularly inviting because they have essentially no current the water is often as clear as water can be there's obviously nothing to get entangled or snared in and in moles don't really contain any creatures of any substantial size partially because the surface is freshwater with increasing depth comes increasing salinity and since they superficially appear as independent holes as opposed to an interconnected network they seem safe and serene until they're not because these are the highways of the lusca in the mid-2000s a group of young persons went swimming in a Blue Hole on Andros Island this hole you're seeing here is also on Andros Island so the scene probably looked something like this a male member of the party the one furthest out was clearly pulled under by something and never seen again the survivors said there was no struggle no scream his head popped under and he disappeared they saw nothing more of him let alone his attacker a search was conducted for the young man's corpse the hole was dragged though obviously not at the bottom nothing was recovered not a trace and this is not typical of a shark attack even the biggest of sharks tend to leave quite a mess of anything that's even roughly close to the size of a human blood and tissue should have been visible in the water if the attacker had those iconic serrated teeth not to mention that the other swimmers probably would have seen at least a dorsal or a silhouette in the pristine water especially if an attacker was large enough to take on a person or take off with a person which a shark can't even really do whatever a shark bites tends to detach from the rest it isn't so much swimming off with you it is swimming off with a piece of you which is actually quite considerate given the alternative it was clear to the search was involved that whatever took the boy literally digits that took him away intact down to the depth deeper than any other ropes could drag or any other divers could dive into the darkness and rock so what made a healthy male swimmer completely disappear without so much as a sound ripple or sight one of the first responders I'd divide only as Peter even went as far as to say these are letter ins anything can be down there when asked why people swim in these blue holes if they believe in such a creature Peter said we all saw jaws right we still go swimming life is all about risks I suppose dr. Samuel Gruber a marine biologist specializing in sharks located at the Bimini biological field station shark laboratory said that unexplained Blue Hole disappearances with no evidence or trace are quote not a story that happens that's real that's as real as can be he doesn't think any shark establish says that plenty of massive tiger sharks and swarms of reef sharks have been documented in oceanic blue holes but they sure don't seem to be able to get into the interconnected inland blue holes because of the connecting tunnels are either too deep or too narrow for any shark particularly one the size of a maneater could endear so we have people disappearing in tranquil clear water with no body or remains and shark experts saying it's not being done by a shark so what is at home in tunnels and narrow passages what grasps without drawing blood what is invisible and what have the intelligence to pull it off well there is one animal that fits all that criteria and that is of course the octopus and I'll start with the first criteria as this video can attest of the speed has doubled octopus are masters of contortion this octopus which I believe is a Giant Pacific octopus is probably between five and six feet long and weighing somewhere between 25 and 30 pounds as you can see it manages to fit through a water drain that appears to be about the width of a deck of playing cards they can fit there anything that their formidable beak can squeeze through because of their amorphous nature the crevices that interconnect the blue holes would serve as a safe and 100 percent stealth or cryptic corridor of travel and they are probably hungry after traveling second is what grabs without cutting what is delicate enough and strong enough to envelop and transport prey items without mutilating them this should speak for itself they use muscular tentacles aided by powerful gripping cups to envelop a prey item and spirited away often to Kashin for later at which point its formidable beak can rip the corpse apart the third and most telling criteria is what is invisible the locked oppose are obviously not actually invisible they are about as close as possible their specialized camouflage is enabled by sensory organs called chromatophores these skin cells rapidly mimic surrounding pigmentation in an eerily accurate way but they also mimic textures of surrounding objects or even water and light conditions smooth than water and abrasive on coral I don't pretend to understand the science behind how that works but what honestly boggles my mind is how it doesn't really mimicry at all like this octopus which is in stealth mode by pretending to be a coconut so on some level the octopus is some kind of decision-making process to control these chromatophores for these skin cells what predator gives a drifting coconut on the seafloor a second thought which brings me to number four intelligence forget disguising of the coconut octopus actually use coconuts as mobile homes camouflage and shelter they will hold on to them and incorporate them in their daily function octopus at the largest brain-to-body ratio of all invertebrates which is particularly apparent and this mimic octopus who enjoys a fear free lifestyle by appearing as a cluster of or a hyper venomous coral snake the skin even mimics of snake scales if you can make that out octopus in aquariums have you even been documented travel to different tanks to feed and then replace the cap before returning to their own tank which conceptually what the lusca does in the blue holes I firmly believe that an octopus is behind the blue hole disappearances or at least some of them science would say no because the larger octopus in the Bahamas Caribbean or anywhere nearby for that matter really shouldn't exceed four and a half pounds or more than a couple feet in length it is possible that the unique ecology of blue holes and their underwater passageways grossly exaggerated the normal size of octopus following the principles behind white catfish explode inside when in certain environments or different regions than their home one and I have an idea regarding size and lifecycle see octopus live rather short lives because females die after giving birth and males die within weeks of the fertilization process the action of sex and birth release chemicals and hormones into the octopus that essentially says you did your job but now you're done so an octopus with no reproductive Drive or incentive may not experience this perhaps some common octopus or Caribbean reef octopus for some reason or another are born or become sterile via injury or possibly a genetic pathology if you happen to be a marine biologist with a penchant for anatomy and blades dry Spang or neutering an octopus and let me know what happens if an octopus does not terminate itself by its own doing then it is inherently susceptible to indeterminate growth meaning so long heavy stays free of starvation disease or predation they will keep growing intern octopus would find few enemies in the crannies and nooks of the subterranean blue holes they would find plenty of food without needing to venture far from the marine blue holes or who knows what kind of food sources may be in the tunnels themselves but sometimes probably in transit from one place to another via the watery underground networks they find food in the inland blue holes and before anyone claims that this is all an awful lot of speculation there's the matter of this photo taken on Bimini in 2011 it shows the remains of an octopus the creature was scavenged before washing ashore this show is part of the octopuses mantle mouth or head but based on very simple ratios the creature was estimated to be between 25 and 30 feet in length this is not a myth these are the remains of an octopus washed ashore in the Bahamas 25 to 30 feet in length wherein the average octopus is two to three feet in length in the North Pacific where the cold water is denser with oxygen a Giant Pacific octopus tend to average around 12 feet in length and weigh maybe 140 pounds the Bimini specimen was 25 to 30 feet in length well over doubling the creature in this photo putting the Bimini specimen at a conservative 290 pounds a 290-pound octopus would be unparalleled threat to humans and certainly capable of dispatching human sized prey and unlike a shark they could get away with it undetected think about it this is part of the head of a creature that was longer than the largest confirmed great white shark but unlike a shark this one would have been able to enter or exit through an opening no larger in the drain of a toilet these remains are legitimate they were collected and examined by the assistant superintendent of fisheries named Clement Campbell and turned over to the Bimini Department of Marine Resources and I don't know how long an octopus takes to achieve at this size but in the years it took to do so it was clearly unseen or at least on photograph and it probably had contact with humans at some point and I doubt it ended well for them this animal was certainly more dangerous than the currently accepted apex predator of the Bahamas the tiger shark speaking of which local lore calls this animal the lusca meaning octopus shark and I can easily imagine a Western scientist laughing at this absurd name for an impossible creature do I think it's a ridiculous notion about as ridiculous as a tiger shark bull shark or nurse shark lusca was named because of shared characteristics like size or danger to humans obviously not an actual genetic match up but remember science definitionally discounts folklore regardless velasca exists as far as I'm concerned you can see a fraction of it right here it is demonstrative Lee reel whether or not it is responsible for blue hole disappearances well let you decide that but as an avid fisherman of bull shark lake in Minnesota I can tell you that there is always a bigger fish out there and reason holds that it didn't get that way by being stupid oh and if the typical Caribbean reef octopus is three pounds but we found a specimen that is 300 pounds then a 30 pound Giant Pacific octopus can grow 3,000 pounds which is the weight of some whales which some would call a Kraken so feel free to call cryptozoology a pseudoscience but I feel there are still monsters out there rooted in folklore fossil and fact hidden animals that we cannot quite yet understand or fully explain but just because we don't understand something does not mean it is fictitious it just means we have a long way to go anyway make sure to subscribe because I have a lot more content soon to come and as always thanks an awful lot for listening

Channel: Bob Gymlan

Views: 432,979

Rating: 4.702641 out of 5

Keywords: bigfoot, sasquatch, big cats in the UK, Felids, chupacabra, cryptozoology, real bigfoot evidence, sasquatch sightings, bigfoot encounters, sasquatch encounters, bigfoot sightings, real monsters, is bigfoot real, proof of bigfoot

Id: GHUAdi247r0

Length: 28min 10sec (1690 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Eddiebaby7]

Great video

[u/ManFromTaured]

Well said.

[u/smricha1]

What did I just watch?

[u/Notademocrat17]

Bob gymlin blows my mind every video

[u/Ancient_Nuances]

This was awesome and a well made point!