WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FORTEAN ZOOLOGY AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY?
There are three main types of mystery animal. The first are simple. They are ‘cryptids’ – species of animal whose existence is unrecognised by mainstream science. The second grouping are quasi or pseudo-cryptids. The animals in this group are a little more problematical as they are members of a species which is KNOWN to exist in a place where it is not SUPPOSED to be. This can either be because it is presumed to be extinct in that specific area or, more commonly, because they are exotic species that have escaped or been introduced The third, final, and in some ways the most contentious of the three groupings of apparently unknown creatures are the ones that may well not be creatures at all! At the risk of severely angering the folk in the Bigfoot camp and indeed some of my friends and colleagues who have spent so much of their lives sitting on the shores of Loch Ness waiting for something to happen, this is the category into which most of the most well-known members of the iconography
