Cryptids

[silver wind]

They say there are monsters lurking in the world's lakes,
that hairy bipedal apes hide in forests, and there's even a living sauropod in Africa.
Discuss !
What makes reasonable people believe in Big Foot, etc?
Why do videos of Nessie always come out blurry?
How come the same witness 'see' the cryptid 2,3,4 times and no one finds it suspicious?

 

[LaDestitute]

I for one, believe in cryptids. Mankind has been on this planet for more than 2000 years...and we still have a lot to learn about our species, our planet, and our ecosystem. Even science can't prove everything.

These so called cryptids are most likely an undiscovered species, something we thought was extinct or a evolutionary gap or niche...some may, though rarely be hoaxes/fakes.

It's because we fear the unknown and want to believe there's something out there, weather it's your local bigfoot or the htought of ideas.

 

[silver wind]

I'm open to the idea that some extinct animals are still around, like the Coelecanth fish.
Another intersting thing to note is that some real animals, like the Komodo Dragon, and the Beaked Whale were once considered cryptds.

However, while it's possible there are new animals we don't know yet,
some cryptids cannot even follow the simplest of rules in biology: ie: All animal families (except insects) have Exactly 4 limbs or no limbs. Dragons and fairies have 6. It amazes me how many believe in dragons-
they say "there are too many accounts on them throughout history". Yet their physiology is simply impossible! There's no way they could even glide for a short distance.
The heaviest animal to be able to fly today (Albatros I believe) weighs 1kg or something. Unless your dragon is a cardboard plane in a Redbull contest, it'll sink like a stone.
(Otherwise, it'll sink like a cardboard plane in a Redbull contest)

 

[dadevvtsvre]

I'm willing to accept that there are many species on the planet that we have yet to discover and learn about. And I know that we may never know them all.

But a large species existing in a relatively populated area is highly unlikely. Take Bigfoot. Most of his "sightings" have occured in places like Washington, Oregon, and California, which despite all their forests and mountains have a lot of people. The chances that these very few and sporadic sightings are actually a human-sized bipedal species that we have yet to discover are very slim. Most sightings are misidentifications, tricks of the mind. We see what we want to see, and a lot of people want to see Bigfoot exists.

There are probably thousands of species of insects, birds, reptiles and mammals that we may never know exist. But large, humanoid apes? Spotted almost always under suspicious circumstances? Doesn't seem likely.

 

[silver wind]

Your argument does make sense, but it isn't always true.
There are owls and bats in my back yard, they hang there for years now. I've seen a single bat for a split second once, and the owls- not even that. If they weren't making their distinct sounds/eating our fruits I wouldn't know they are there. It's not that they are extremely rare or quick to flee, they're just nocturnal.

 

[psiclone]

Then that raises the question of, well where are they hiding? Where is Nessie hiding? Why haven't we gone under the lake to find her? We can go down huge depths in the ocean.. make it happen. All that nonsense is just things people want to believe.

Now, aliens.. those are some real thingies.

 

[silver wind]

True.
So many Big foot/ Mokele-Mbembe fans go on a journey to find them, and once in a decade somebody finds a footprint, if anything.

Aliens.. I'm not too sure. I've heard the closest habitable planet is tens of thousands of light-yeas away.
Seeing as the maximum speed possible is a light year, aliens will have to survive a 10,000 year-long journey. We wouldn't see them as often as the believers say- maybe once in a millennium. I've also watched a National Geographic show where people experienced a 'close encounter' in the lab after being hit with electric pulses (could be wrong here, it was long ago). This suggests alien sightings are caused by an interference in the brain waves.

 

[psiclone]

An interference from the aliens, mind you. They're among us. Watching.. waiting..

I'm just yanking your chain. If there are aliens, we will never see them unless one of us can figure out instant space travel. First, we have to colonize another planet.. so, not going to happen within the next 100 years.

 

[Jason]

Who says we'd have to go to them?

What if they come to us, like many people have claimed, funnily enough, most of them are American, lol...

To be honest, I'm not sure if I believe in aliens and bigfoot etc. since there isn't any solid proof of it, I mean, it all seems interesting, and I'd love it to be true, but so far, we're not any closer to finding aliens or the likes, than we were say... 20 years ago, or not that I know of, the closest thing we "know" about aliens, is that one APPARENTLY crashed in Roswell, which I think is utter bullshit, and if they had proof, they'd show us pictures and announce it...

 

[psiclone]

That's what I said. "One of us" meaning, either us or the aliens.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

If there are no aliens on earth, then what the hell is the point of the MIB organization? Moron.

Really, though, of course there are species left that we haven't discovered. I'm not really sure what the discussion is about beyond that. Are we talking about specifically bigfoot and loch ness monster and such? I think those are probably unlikely because of the fact that these are things that apparently have been seen, only not in any way that can be proven. I wouldn't be surprised if we find some species that resemble some of the descriptions of those legends, but probably not in the same places, and I guess a loch ness monster not in loch ness doesn't really count :D

 

[Ellie]

I'm more inclined to believe creatures exist on Earth that we haven't discovered than in outer space. [there are]

What I hate, however, is when people refer to them as aliens. There was a program on Sky about ALIENS ON EARTH and it's like no, don't excite the Americans, they're just undiscovered life.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Yeah, because America is the only country with stupid people :P

But the whole thing of describing previously undiscovered life as possibly coming from another planet is just a ratings thing. They think they can get more people to watch that way. It's like that episode of Family Guy: "And coming up next, can bees think? A recent study confirms that, no, they cannot"

 

[Daxis]

Cryptids are a bit of a long shot. I very much doubt that most of the major cryptids, such as bigfoot, lochness monster, etc. exist. I mean, it's proven that nothing of the magnitude and size of the loch exists in the lake. There are hundreds of people searching for the cryptids every day, with no results for dozens of years.

I mean, it's not like it'd be bad if they existed. But for years and years of constant searching, unconfirmed and testimony of negotiable validity, such large public knowledge yet few actual finds... yeah, the really big cryptids out there I doubt.

Aliens I do believe live, quite certainly. However, they are nothing like us(you fucking listening, star wars/trek/gate/whatever), and are different in terms of how they can be considered living. Hell, a gigantic ocean of viruses could be out there someone and because they aren't considered living by us, they won't be considered aliens. I'm quite sure that it's entirely impossible to find any contact with aliens ever, although(should they be benevolent), I'd love to be proven wrong/

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

I don't think there's any particular reason that humanoids wouldn't be present on other planets. The development of life on other planets would likely happen similar to the way it did on ours, so it stands to reason that they would turn out somewhat similar. I guess it depends on what the actual surface of the planet is like.

A little bit of fun with numbers:
The number of planets with intelligent life that we know about is 1 in some real finite number.
If the universe is infinite, then mathematically speaking there should be an infinite number of planets with intelligent life.

kind of dumb, but it could very well hold true.

 

[silver wind]

If there's a mathematical proof there, I didn't get it
The chance for life to be created from non-life is a statistical monstrosity.
I can't remember the exact number, but it was 1: x,
where x > the number of atoms in the universe.
Some people believe it happened once. They think- we must have got here somehow.
However saying the impossible happens all the time is..
What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes, WRONG.

 

[Daxis]

If the universe is infinite, then mathematically speaking there should be an infinite number of planets with intelligent life.

it's not. we're 156 billion lightyears wide.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m ... 40524.html

the drake list or m list or whatever lists the variables needed for extraterrestrial life. it isn't inlimited, although I personally believe very much possible.

 

[Jason]

If there are no aliens on earth, then what the hell is the point of the MIB organization? Moron.

Wait... were you really calling me a moron because my opinion differs from your own?

... Niiiiice.

Hint: /sarcasm

 

[Ellie]

If there's a mathematical proof there, I didn't get it
The chance for life to be created from non-life is a statistical monstrosity.
I can't remember the exact number, but it was 1: x,
where x > the number of atoms in the universe.
Some people believe it happened once. They think- we must have got here somehow.
However saying the impossible happens all the time is..
What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes, WRONG.

Not impossible; just largely improbable. And the fact we are here now suggests the improbably did happen, however unlikely. When the same person wins the lottery three times, you don't hear the lottery company refusing them saying "that's highly improbable so it can't have happened".


-

There's a theory called something like the observer theory - that we are here because we are here. If that makes sense. Folks have looked around us and we seem to be exactly in the right place for life to form, and that no other place would do. Now you might say "then isn't it improbable that we happen to be here?" Well, no; we are life, and so there is no other place we could be. It's not improbable at all, it's just plain logical.

 

[Jason]

Just like you can't build an igloo in a volcano, right?