Poll: Sasquatch, Nessie, and jackalopes oh my!

[Something Amyss]

The only creature I would even consider as a possibility would be a "Loch Ness monster" type of creature in the ocean. There's just a ton of water on this planet (for those of you who haven't noticed) and there's potentially something like that in the darkest corners of the ocean...

Unfortunately for the claims, Nessie and her ilk are normally found in smallish lakes rather than large bodies of water. the odds of enough Nessies to survive in Loch Ness almost completely undetected is pretty much nil.

It's possible in larger water that there's stuff we just don't know about, but yeah. Seems unlikely.

Which is a shame. The world needs more weird stuff. And I'm not just saying that because I live near the home of another purported monster, Champ.

 

[FPLOON]

I wouldn't care either way... except if any of them touch my Snickers...
*gets too serious*
You don't FUCK with my Snickers, yo! That's when I draw the line between "playing it cool" and "keeping it real"...

 

[Skizzick]

Jackalopes are real, sort of. Jackrabbits that have contracted a form of papilloma virus and have huge growths on their head, looking like horns. There are plenty of clear, real pictures of them.

As for the sasquash/yeti, they actually recently made a big breakthrough in determining what it could actually be. They did some DNA testing on some *alleged* Yeti fur discovered in the Himalayas, and found that it actually came from a species of bear that was thought to be extinct for thousands of years.

The truth is that for all we know about the creatures on this planet, we're constantly discovering new ones. From small bugs to new mammals, we find new species every day. I think someday we'll find something big.

On the other hand, many of these myths/cryptids come from oral traditions passed down from generations when megafauna walked the earth. Our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago lived with woolly mammoths, sabretooth tigers, giant sloths, and 10-ft tall gorillas. No doubt some of these ancestral memories live on. Add that to older generations discovering dinosaur fossils, elephant bones, etc, and that leads them to assume that these come from some giant mythical beast that still walked the earth.

 

[Guffe]

I'm going to go the say what I always say in cases like this.

I doubt they are alive today since no one has actually ever seen them.
But the myths have started somewhere, be it a prank or an actual animal that excisted.

Sasquach could be a "deformed" gorilla that was a bit bigger than the normal ones and walked more upright.
Loch Ness monster could be, I don't know, a leftover sole surviver dinosaur or someone who saw a submarine in the dark of night?

Theories all, but they are myths and stories, and best stories always have a hint of truth into them

So yes, maybe no waterproof proof yet, maybe someone finds some one day, or maye not, remains to be seen.

 

[Sandjube]

No, but like some have said I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest at what crazy shit could be in the ocean...seriously. Gives me the creeps.

 

[Ieyke]

So like 87% of voters have common sense.

Real talk, I don't believe in any of this stuff, but I won't dismiss them as outright impossible (except jackalopes, that's just stupid).
The amount of new species we've discovered in just the last few months RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES is completely absurd.
The idea that areas where humans rarely tread are hiding some strange things we've missed is not outside of the realm of the possible.

I hate shows like Ghost Hunters. Those idiots will cry "Ghost!" at every stray dust mote, weird bit of reflected light, quirk of static, and image artifact.

Now, what I DO actually have respect for is Destination Truth (a show where they hunt for cryptids like Bigfoot, or Nessie, in case you're unfamiliar). Most of the team is that same sort of idiots you find on Ghost Hunters, but Josh Gates (the guy in charge) is completely the opposite. He doesn't seem to believe in ANYTHING weird, and he makes it his team's mission to go out there and figure out what the reasonable explanation is for any weird shit that the locals believe. He's pretty much dead-set on disproving everything he can.
That said.....he's run into a couple of really weird things that no one can seem to explain. He still doesn't even START to claim them as proof of whatever it is they're investigating, but on those occasions he sometimes admits that he just doesn't have a better guess than the superstitious natives do.

The most interesting example I've seen being their trips to Nepal to investigate the existence of the Yeti. They've produced results that scientists just don't seem to know what to do with. And really, in a part of the world as utterly remote as the Himalayas...who knows?

It's all very interesting, and I'll happily accept real solid proof, if they ever find any.
But, for now, I don't actually believe anything about any of these things.
*shrug*

 

[Thaluikhain]

So like 87% of voters have common sense.

Real talk, I don't believe in any of this stuff, but I won't dismiss them as outright impossible (except jackalopes, that's just stupid).
The amount of new species we've discovered in just the last few months RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES is completely absurd.
The idea that areas where humans rarely tread are hiding some strange things we've missed is not outside of the realm of the possible.

Certainly, it's a given that such things exist, in a broad sense. However, the ones people talk about specifically, Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster etc...that's another matter. There are very good reasons for thinking that they don't.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Considering everyone and their dog now have access to cameras you would have thouggt there would be more nodern photos floating around.

 

[piinyouri]

I think it's possibly something akin to the Lochness monster resides in the deepest blackest unexplored regions of our oceans. We've recently found real giant squid down there, big as a bus, and they were once thought to be only a myth.

Sasquatch/Bigfoot though, I want to believe it's possible, and it might be, but it's SOOO hard to keep thinking that when you see show after show of guys going into the woods, jumping at every noise. Clearly these folks are not accustomed to nocturnal animal noises.
Ever heard a cow giving birth?
It positively sounds like a woman being murdered when it's echoing from so far away.

 

[Estranged180]

Which is a shame. The world needs more weird stuff. And I'm not just saying that because I live near the home of another purported monster, Champ.

See what I mean?

 

[Drizzitdude]

The antlers on a jackalopes head would cause such a massive imbalance of its body that it would never be able to survive at all. If any of these mythical monsters did exist, most are mammals and would undoubtedly have died by now.

 

[Hagi]

Nope, I think all those examples are rather silly.

As others have mentioned, the only place where a completely unknown creature of those sizes ( well Sasquatch and Nessie at least ) could exist is the ocean.

I also believe that in more remote areas there will be many smaller creatures we don't know much, if anything at all, about.

There's probably hundreds of small mammal species we haven't identified. Thousands of insect species and I think you'll easily reach into the millions for things smaller than that ( especially since at that level species kinda break down ).

 

[Yopaz]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooope, most of those aren't possible.

Sasquatch is a great example. Evolution is, contrary to what people believe, very restrictive in terms of what may or may not occur. So why isn't sasquatch possible you may wonder? Well from what I can gather sasquatch is supposed to be a humanoid ape. Well, humanoid apes have origin in Africa after Pangea split up (while primates did originally have their origin in North America). It's really a matter that evolution doesn't have the goal of making humans, coincidences and historical events made the humanoid apes evolve. Thus Sasquatch would have to have a common origin with humans and be found in Africa.

A rabbit with antlers isn't possible. Not because of the selective disadvantage it would cause (although that also makes it all but impossible unless there's a breeding project), but because the genetic variation for antlers doesn't exist in the genome of the entire genus.

Nessie... well, it can't actually exist because the lake isn't suited for such life, it's hardly suited for fish for that matter.

However just because these sightings are fake or these species can't logically exist there's still reason to believe that something might exist. Seeing a bear in the dark standing on its hind legs or something might make us think of big foot, seeing giant tentacles coming up from the ocean might sound like Kraken. We know there are octopuses and squids of enormous sizes now. Uninhabitable areas of the earth hides secrets to us. Bigfoot might be fake, but someone might have "seen" it nevertheless. Witness statements are never accurate.

I think it's possibly something akin to the Lochness monster resides in the deepest blackest unexplored regions of our oceans. We've recently found real giant squid down there, big as a bus, and they were once thought to be only a myth.

Sasquatch/Bigfoot though, I want to believe it's possible, and it might be, but it's SOOO hard to keep thinking that when you see show after show of guys going into the woods, jumping at every noise. Clearly these folks are not accustomed to nocturnal animal noises.
Ever heard a cow giving birth?
It positively sounds like a woman being murdered when it's echoing from so far away.

The giant oarfish could be mistaken for a sea serpent and it's believed to be able to be as long as 15 meters at its longest. Considering the origin of many stories of giant squids and sea serpents being in a time where the ocean floor was disturbed for some reason these animals are believed to have surfaces because of it before things settled down and sightings became rare or non-existent. We can rule out a lot of sightings and we can make hypotheses concerning the plausible ones, but we can't rule out future discoveries completely because as I said, we do a lot of mistakes in interpreting what we see. There's no reason to believe in a sea serpent, but a giant (red?) herring might have been sighted. The ocean is vast and fascinating.

 

[Soundwave]

Gigantopithecus Blacki was real. The only evidence was eaten by the Chinese, or destroyed by the Japanese bombs.

 

[miketehmage]

I feel like being Scottish kind of makes it compulsory to believe in Nessie

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Maybe, just maybe there's a Sasquatch-ish thing that we haven't discovered... But Jackalopes and Nessie, no fuckin way. If I ever do see a Jackalope though... well... I might have to domesticate it.

 

[Something Amyss]

See what I mean?

I do. It's big tourism money for one.

Just a friendly piece of advice, you may want to expand that post before someone hits it for Low Content.

 

[Ieyke]

It should be noted that we live a world of truly insane shit.

2 years ago a marine biologist discovered what he concluded must've been a kraken's lair, indicating that the kraken may have been an actual living creature at one point in time, in the form of an inconceivably massive octopus/squid-like creature.

The leviathan, "Livyatan Melvillei" (named after the biblical Leviathan and in honor of Herman Melville), was recently discovered. It's an extinct cousin of the sperm whale, very slightly larger than both the sperm whale and megalodon at about 60" long, except with VASTLY bigger jaws and VASTLY bigger teeth than either.
The largest bite and largest teeth of any creature ever discovered.

Megalodon was a 55" long cousin of the Great White shark.

Up until 200 years ago New Zealand was home to the Giant Moa Bird - a 12' tall 500lb cousin of the ostrich. This was a monstrous bird that was hunted to extinction by modern humans.

This week they discovered that there was an extinct gigantic 3 foot sharp-toothed species of carnivorous platypus that once roamed Australia.

Sarcosuchus Imperator and Deinosuchus were both titanic 40 foot crocodiles that once lived in Africa and Texas repectively.

Argentavis was a 6 foot tall condor-like bird with a 28 foot wingspan which once lived in Argentina.

The coelacanth and frill shark are both ancient species of fish thought long extinct and dubbed "living fossils" when they were recently discovered to still be alive.

This week they discovered a new species of hammerhead shark.

A new species of scorpion was JUST discovered in Turkey.

Fossils of Lythronax Argestes "King of Gore" - T-Rex's oldest known ancestor were just discovered.

Within the last few weeks we discovered a new species of dolphin.

Within the last few weeks we discovered the Cape Melville Leaf-tailed Gecko, Cape Melville Shade Skink, and Blotched Boulder-frog, all in Australia.

There are completely comical, seemingly implausible, tree-climbing goats that live in Morocco.

A bizarre squid with a human-looking mouth was discovered in the southern Atlantic in 2007.

65" long oarfish live in the oceans of the world. An 18" one just washed up on the Texas shore a couple weeks ago.

A few weeks ago we discovered the olinguito - the first new mammal to be discovered in the Americas in 35 years.

441 new species of plants and vertebrates have been discovered in the last 4 years JUST in the Amazon rainforest.

Titanoboa was a snake that went extinct about 60 million years ago. It was about 12 to 15 m (40 to 50 ft) long and weighed up to 1,135 kg (2,502 lbs).

The Giant Squid is totally normal to us now as a thing that lives in the oceans....and we recently proved that the even bigger Colossal Squid also lives in the depths.

The largest creature to ever live is still alive today - the Blue Whale.

Hell, up until the mid-twentieth century the mountain gorilla was considered a myth.

.

We live in a world that has historically been jam-packed full of all sorts of crazy monsters that we're still discovering left and right, we are CONSTANTLY discovering new creatures living in our world that we were bizarrely oblivious to, and we even rediscover creatures we were sure were long extinct.

I won't rule out anything that appears to be plausible creature that could feasibly exist (like yeti-like creatures, or something akin to a plesiosaur), but I'll totally ignore anything nonsensical (jackalopes).
That said, I won't believe anything until I see proof either.

The fact is that we really don't really know half as much as we think we do about our planet....

 

[Xan Krieger]

It should be noted that we live a world of truly insane shit.

2 years ago a marine biologist discovered what he concluded must've been a kraken's lair, indicating that the kraken may have been an actual living creature at one point in time, in the form of an inconceivably massive octopus/squid-like creature.

The leviathan, "Livyatan Melvillei" (named after the biblical Leviathan and in honor of Herman Melville), was recently discovered. It's an extinct cousin of the sperm whale, very slightly larger than both the sperm whale and megalodon at about 60" long, except with VASTLY bigger jaws and VASTLY bigger teeth than either.
The largest bite and largest teeth of any creature ever discovered.

Megalodon was a 55" long cousin of the Great White shark.

Up until 200 years ago New Zealand was home to the Giant Moa Bird - a 12' tall 500lb cousin of the ostrich. This was a monstrous bird that was hunted to extinction by modern humans.

This week they discovered that there was an extinct gigantic 3 foot sharp-toothed species of carnivorous platypus that once roamed Australia.

Sarcosuchus Imperator and Deinosuchus were both titanic 40 foot crocodiles that once lived in Africa and Texas repectively.

Argentavis was a 6 foot tall condor-like bird with a 28 foot wingspan which once lived in Argentina.

The coelacanth and frill shark are both ancient species of fish thought long extinct and dubbed "living fossils" when they were recently discovered to still be alive.

This week they discovered a new species of hammerhead shark.

A new species of scorpion was JUST discovered in Turkey.

Fossils of Lythronax Argestes "King of Gore" - T-Rex's oldest known ancestor were just discovered.

Within the last few weeks we discovered a new species of dolphin.

Within the last few weeks we discovered the Cape Melville Leaf-tailed Gecko, Cape Melville Shade Skink, and Blotched Boulder-frog, all in Australia.

There are completely comical, seemingly implausible, tree-climbing goats that live in Morocco.

A bizarre squid with a human-looking mouth was discovered in the southern Atlantic in 2007.

65" long oarfish live in the oceans of the world. An 18" one just washed up on the Texas shore a couple weeks ago.

A few weeks ago we discovered the olinguito - the first new mammal to be discovered in the Americas in 35 years.

441 new species of plants and vertebrates have been discovered in the last 4 years JUST in the Amazon rainforest.

Titanoboa was a snake that went extinct about 60 million years ago. It was about 12 to 15 m (40 to 50 ft) long and weighed up to 1,135 kg (2,502 lbs).

The Giant Squid is totally normal to us now as a thing that lives in the oceans....and we recently proved that the even bigger Colossal Squid also lives in the depths.

The largest creature to ever live is still alive today - the Blue Whale.

Hell, up until the mid-twentieth century the mountain gorilla was considered a myth.

.

We live in a world that has historically been jam-packed full of all sorts of crazy monsters that we're still discovering left and right, we are CONSTANTLY discovering new creatures living in our world that we were bizarrely oblivious to, and we even rediscover creatures we were sure were long extinct.

I won't rule out anything that appears to be plausible creature that could feasibly exist (like yeti-like creatures, or something akin to a plesiosaur), but I'll totally ignore anything nonsensical (jackalopes).
That said, I won't believe anything until I see proof either.

The fact is that we really don't really know half as much as we think we do about our planet....

I was gonna say we've discovered some weird animals but this poster explained it way better than I could've. I'd never say never to the mythical beasts because of all the absurd shit we've found already. Life takes crazy forms and you never know what we're gonna find next.