Can mythical creatures exist

Could mythical creatures like Bigfoot or Nessie exist? This topic has fascinated people for years, but science remains skeptical of anecdotal evidence. Recent years have seen the loss of two figures connected to these legends: Douglas Herrick, creator of the humorous jackalope, and Ray Wallace, who championed the Bigfoot theory. Cryptids, though often treated with a pinch of salt, can hold true secrets of nature. The history of new species discoveries demonstrates that every lead is worth pursuing, but science requires concrete evidence—and this remains elusive.

Do mythical creatures exist? Show me the body—alleged sightings of Bigfoot, Nessie, and Ogopogo fire our imaginations. But anecdotes alone don't make science.

The world recently lost two of the greatest biojokes of all time: Douglas Herrick, father of the undeniably hilarious jackalope (originally spelled "jackalope," meaning half-hare, half-deer), and Ray Wallace, patron and defender of the less absurd Bigfoot. The jackalope provokes laughter for such oddities as jackalope-hunting licenses restricted to people with IQs between 50 and 76, bottles of rare but nutrient-rich jackalope milk, and such evolutionary hybrids as the jackpanda (jackpanda - meaning half-panda, half-deer). Bigfoot, on the other hand, while occasionally provoking peals of laughter, receives more attention for a simple evolutionary reason: great, long-haired apes now roam the forests of Africa, and at least one species of Lesser Giant Pithecus evolved alongside its ancestors several thousand years ago.

Is it possible that the real Bigfoot is alive, despite the Wallace family's claims that he was practically a hoax? Certainly. While Bigfoot advocates don't deny that Ray Wallace was joking, they correctly note that tales of a giant Yeti inhabiting the Himalayas and Native American legends of a Sasquatch roaming near the Pacific Coast were already circulating long before Wallace came up with his hoax in 1958.

Let's get one thing straight: throughout the 20th century, it was perfectly reasonable to speculate about the search for Bigfoot, just as it was with the creatures of Loch Ness, Lake Champlain, and Lake Okanagan (Scottish Nessie, Northeast American Champ, and British Columbian Ogopogo, respectively). Science is powerless in their case, so for a long time, these chimeras demonstrated how little we have explored nature. So why aren't they doing the same now? The study of animals whose existence needs to be confirmed is called cryptozoology, a term coined in the 1950s by Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans.

Cryptids, or "hidden beasts," as some would prefer, begin their lives as blurry photos, grainy videos, and countless stories of strange creatures that appear at night. Cryptids appear in various forms, including the aforementioned giant hominids and lake monsters, as well as sea serpents, giant octopuses, land snakes, birds, and even living dinosaurs.

The reason cryptids deserve our attention is that there have been enough successful discoveries made by scientists, based on local anecdotes and folklore, that we can't completely dismiss them. The most famous examples include the discoveries of gorillas in 1847 (and mountain gorillas in 1902), the giant panda in 1869, the okapi (a short-necked relative of the giraffe) in 1976, and the giant gecko in 1984. Cryptozoologists are particularly proud of the 1938 capture of coelacanth specimens, an archaic fish species previously thought to have gone extinct in the Cretaceous period.

Although discoveries of previously undiscovered species of bedbugs and bacteria are routinely reported in biological annals, these examples are surprising due to their freshness, size, and similarity to other cryptid cousins like Bigfoot, Nessie, and others. They also share a common characteristic—a body! To name a new species, a reference specimen—a holotype—is required, from which a detailed description, photographs, a model, and a professional scientific analysis can be made.

If any cryptids survive in remote regions of North America and Asia, they can certainly be discovered. For now, we have reports. Anecdotes are a good starting point for research—which alone cannot verify new species. Indeed, in the words of scientist Frank J. Sulloway of the University of California, Berkeley—words we should embrace as a maxim: "Reports do not make science. Ten reports are not better than one, and a hundred reports are not better than ten."

I apply Sulloway's maxim whenever I encounter Bigfoot and Nessie hunters. Their stories are captivating, but they don't constitute science. A century has passed since the search for these chimerical creatures. Until we see a body, skepticism is the most reasonable response.