Cryptids — Bigfoot, Nessie and Why People Keep Searching

A cryptid is a creature whose existence has been claimed by witnesses or documented in local folklore, but which has not been confirmed by mainstream science. The term comes from the Greek word "kryptos," meaning hidden, and was coined in 1983 by the zoologist John Wall. The study of such creatures is called cryptozoology — a field that occupies an uneasy position between legitimate zoological inquiry and paranormal belief, and whose practitioners range from rigorous field researchers to enthusiastic amateurs.

The world's catalogue of cryptids is remarkably rich and geographically diverse. Every inhabited region of the planet has its own legendary animals: the Yeti of the Himalayas, the Bunyip of Australia, the Mokele-mbembe of the Congo, the Chupacabra of Latin America, the Kraken of Scandinavian seas. Some cryptids are described as surviving examples of animals thought to be extinct. Others appear to be entirely new species. And some seem to defy biological explanation altogether — creatures with characteristics that no known animal possesses.

The two most famous cryptids in the English-speaking world are Bigfoot — also called Sasquatch — a large, bipedal, ape-like creature said to inhabit the forests of the Pacific Northwest of North America, and the Loch Ness Monster, an aquatic creature of disputed size and form, reported since at least the sixth century from the waters of a deep freshwater lake in the Scottish Highlands.

What makes cryptids culturally significant is not simply the question of whether they exist. It is what our responses to that question reveal about the relationship between human beings and the natural world — our desire to believe in the undiscovered, our willingness to interpret ambiguous evidence in ways that confirm existing beliefs, and our enduring fascination with the idea that the world is larger and stranger than science has yet confirmed.

Bigfoot first entered popular culture in 1958, when a California newspaper published an account of a construction worker who had found enormous humanoid footprints near his worksite in the forests of northern California. The story spread rapidly, and sightings multiplied. By the 1960s, Bigfoot had become one of the most recognisable figures in American popular mythology. The creature is typically described as standing between two and three metres tall, covered in dark hair, with a strong odour and the ability to move silently through dense forest.

The most significant piece of evidence for Bigfoot's existence remains a short piece of film shot in 1967 by two men named Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in the forests near Bluff Creek, California. The footage, known as the Patterson-Gimlin film, appears to show a large, upright, hairy creature walking away from the camera and looking back briefly before disappearing into the trees. The film has been scrutinised by scientists, special effects professionals, and anthropologists for more than fifty years. Some experts have concluded it shows a genuine unknown primate; others are equally convinced it shows a man in a gorilla suit. No consensus has ever been reached.

The Loch Ness Monster has a longer documented history. The earliest written account dates to 565 CE, when the Irish monk St. Columba reportedly encountered a creature in the River Ness and commanded it to retreat. The modern phenomenon began in 1933, when a local newspaper reported that a couple had seen an enormous creature thrashing in the loch. The story triggered a media frenzy that has never fully subsided. Dozens of photographs have been taken over the decades, the most famous of which — the so-called "Surgeon's Photograph" of 1934, appearing to show a long-necked creature emerging from the water — was revealed in 1994 to be a hoax, constructed from a toy submarine fitted with a sculpted head.

Despite the exposure of the most famous evidence as fraudulent, sightings of Loch Ness creatures continue to be reported. A 2018 environmental DNA survey of the loch found no evidence for the presence of a large unknown vertebrate. The researchers suggested that the most likely explanation for reported sightings was large eels.

The scientific consensus on cryptids like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is overwhelmingly sceptical. No physical evidence — a body, bones, definitive biological samples — has ever been produced for any major cryptid. The ecological argument against large unknown megafauna in well-mapped regions like the Scottish Highlands or the forests of the Pacific Northwest is compelling: a breeding population of large animals would require substantial territory, leave physical traces, and be subject to death from old age and predation, producing remains that would eventually be discovered. The absence of such remains is, for most scientists, conclusive.

Yet people continue to search. Amateur investigators spend their weekends in forests with cameras and plaster casting kits. Organised expeditions deploy camera traps, sonar equipment, and, more recently, environmental DNA sampling across vast stretches of remote terrain. Crowdfunding campaigns raise significant sums for cryptid research. Why?

Part of the answer is that genuine zoological discoveries continue to occur. The gorilla was not confirmed by Western science until 1902. The giant squid, long dismissed as a sailor's fantasy, was first photographed alive in 2004. The coelacanth — a fish believed extinct for 65 million years — was found living off the coast of South Africa in 1938. These discoveries, cited endlessly in cryptozoological literature, provide a real foundation for the argument that large unknown animals might yet exist in unexplored or under-explored regions.

But psychology also plays a role. Cognitive biases — particularly confirmation bias, which leads people to seek and remember evidence that supports an existing belief — are well documented and particularly relevant to cryptid investigation. A misshapen tree root becomes a footprint; a submerged log becomes a long neck breaking the surface; a brief glimpse of something dark and large in poor light becomes a Sasquatch. Human pattern recognition, extraordinary in most contexts, can be a liability when applied to ambiguous phenomena in emotionally charged situations.

Whatever the ultimate verdict on the physical existence of creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, cryptids are genuinely revealing objects of study — not because they prove the existence of unknown animals, but because they illuminate the psychology of belief, the sociology of communities, and the cultural function of mystery.

Cryptid belief frequently clusters around specific geographical communities. Bigfoot sightings are concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, where the creature has become deeply embedded in regional identity — featured in tourist attractions, local businesses, and public art. The Loch Ness Monster is the economic engine of an entire tourist industry in the Scottish Highlands. In both cases, the cryptid has moved from a claim about biology to a claim about place — a way of saying that this landscape is special, ancient, and not yet fully known. Challenging the creature's existence can feel, to local communities, like challenging the significance of their home.

From an anthropological perspective, cryptids serve many of the same functions as mythological creatures in earlier cultures. They embody fears — of the wilderness, of what lies beneath dark water, of the limits of human control over nature. They also embody hopes — that the world remains larger and more surprising than our maps suggest, that discovery is still possible, and that not everything has been catalogued, classified, and domesticated by science.

Perhaps most significantly, the persistence of cryptid belief in the age of satellite imaging, environmental DNA analysis, and camera-equipped smartphones raises genuinely interesting epistemological questions. If these creatures existed, we would almost certainly know by now. That we do not know — that the question remains officially open — suggests that the search for cryptids is not fundamentally about zoology. It is about something deeper: the human need to believe that the world still holds secrets, and that we might be the ones to find them.