I consider Ivorybills and Thylacines to be cryptids because people report seeing them but repeated attempts to confirm their persistence have fallen short.
Animals like okapis, gorillas, and saolas were not cryptids because there was no problem of repeated, failed attempts to find them. They just happen to live in remote places that weren't well explored until recently.
Coelocanth - not a cryptid because no one was looking for it.
As for giant squid, here's something I posted on them some time ago:
“Giant squid have spawned mariner's tales for centuries, but some people mistakenly think they were finally discovered by science a few years ago - not so. Steenstrup appears to have published the first description of giant squid in 1857, and there have been literally hundreds of specimens examined since then. What's more, Aristotle wrote of giant squid in the 4th Century B.C., and Pliny the Elder provides a description of a specimen examined in the 1st Century. Wikipedia provides the references for those last items as follows:
• ^ Aristotle. N.d. Historia animalium.
• ^ Pliny. N.d. Naturalis historia.
When Aristotle and Pliny are the references for something, then "science" has known about that something for a long time. The thing that was a recent discovery related to giant squid is that a live one was photographed in the wild for the first time in 2004. Very cool - yes. Cryptid - no.”
|