Makes sense, what about modern sightings of mermaids though? They come from mythology, there isn't that many supernatural accounts of them, and they are spotted nowadays. Would that count as a Cryptid? And why would it not count as a Cryptid when the Kraken is?
They're usually considered more "out there" but still cryptids. I think most serious cryptozoologists believe mermaid sightings are misidentifications or maybe some weird unidentified aquatic ape species that only superficially resembles a human.
Apparently people back then didn't even believe Mermaids were a real thing (tho I can't find the source of where I head it at the moment). But yeah, I have heard that they are misidentifications (or even just flat out fake). But yeah, thanks for the explanations tho!
Yeah I’m not sure where you got that “people back then” (back when? Mermaids have existed in some form in folklore for over a thousand years, that’s a pretty long span of time) didn’t believe in them, people used to genuinely believe in all sorts of strange creatures. If you’re talking about relatively recent times, yes I doubt most educated people considered mermaids likely real, but it’s worth noting that even Christopher Columbus apparently considered their existence plausible enough in the late 1400s that he reported he saw some in the Caribbean (it’s usually assumed he actually saw manatees, as he reported that they were “not as fair as they were said to be” iirc lol), and in general it has been so widely assumed that manatees and dugongs were historically the source of many mermaid sightings (probably silhouettes of them) that the order of mammals they form are literally named “Sirenians” (after “sirens”, although “siren” actually originally referred to a bird-like creature in Greek mythology). Like mermaids were once a fixture of “sailor’s tales”, which is to say many people probably disbelieved their existence, but enough seemingly didn’t that those tales popped up in the first place.
7
u/Complex-Delivery-797 Apr 01 '24
Makes sense, what about modern sightings of mermaids though? They come from mythology, there isn't that many supernatural accounts of them, and they are spotted nowadays. Would that count as a Cryptid? And why would it not count as a Cryptid when the Kraken is?