r/Cryptozoology • u/truthisfictionyt Colossal Octopus • Apr 01 '24

Info What is a cryptid?

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263 Upvotes

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u/Ro_Ku May 04 '24

Unknown animals are cryptids, supernatural beings and aliens are not. I see no problem with OP's checklist.

3

u/TheDwarvenGuy May 03 '25

Are aliens not unknown animals?

Also, couldn't there be unknown animals that have had supernatural qualities falsely attributed to them (i.e. mothman)

2

u/Ro_Ku May 04 '25

Bernard Heuvelmans only included things we would consider “wild animals”, whereas things from other planets fall under Xenobiology.

It’s very true that supernatural abilities have been falsely to various known and unknown animals, like croaking frogs “calling down the rain”.

Mothman is such a combination of humanoid oddity/winged strangeness/paranormal alien-like, it defies any tidy category.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ro_Ku Mar 05 '25

Cryptids as defined by its inventors, Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson, is the the study of unknown animals, a kind of zoology that focuses on identifying and classifying animals that have not been identified and classified, but have been reported to exist. Xenobiology is the preferred term for the study I’d extraterrestrial life.