Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/28/mapping-the-most-popular-cryptids-from-every-country-in-the-world.html
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I haven’t seen most of those critters in the wild, but that is not what sasquatch or the loup garoo look like at all so I have to question the artist’s naturalism
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Love the artwork. And there was a link on the same site by the same author to a list of most popular cryptids for each state, with some different but equally cool art (but no link to who made that version; doesn’t appear to be the same artist).
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The Sasquatch recognizes no borders and is not strictly a creature of the United States. One of the earliest recorded descriptions is from Chief Mischelle of the Nlaka’pamux in British Columbia in 1898.
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I’d argue that the Sasquatch isn’t even limited to earth, really.
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Some chosen species are clearly artifacts of the method: I’d wager that Dwarfs/Gnomes comes up often because Garden Gnomes. Dragons are the most used cryptid in literature because Tolkien. Etc.
In some parts of the country, every county has it’s own monster. It would be fun (and really hard) to collect them…
(For example, in WV, you have the Mothman of Mason Co, Braxie from Braxton county, a man-eating catfish that roams Kanawha County, Putnam county has a Bigfoot (also bears and panthers, but those don’t count), and so on. There are civil war ghosts (Shepardstown) and Fae lights (Barbour County) and the little folk and ghost panthers (Randolph county) and the mummies (Also Barbour county, but also real so they don’t count). I’m sure everywhere has these local legends and stories and it wwuld be really cool to collect them somehow…)
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Delightful - and yet somehow without disparaging a dead guy while promoting your upcoming book.
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Interesting way to think about “famous mythical creatures,” to be honest. “Sasquatch” is on here for the US–a mythical hairy “Bigfoot” creature. For India it lists “Shesha” which is one of the primal beings of the Hindu creation story. This is kind of an apples/oranges thing in terms of “famous mythical creatures.”
It’s kind of like comparing Jesus to a local yogi.
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To be fair, they’ve got a lot of choice when it comes to mythological beasties from these parts:
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Steve Austin agrees.
When he awakes, Steve learns from Shalon - a female alien - that Bigfoot was built and controlled by the aliens to protect them.
Source: Fandom.com wiki on The Secret of Bigfoot of The Six Million Dollar Man ( $29,172,972.97 Dollar Man adjusted for inflation 2020) , season 3, episode 117, 1976 .
Source: Youtube clip of The Six Million Dollar Man, s3, e117, 1976, (see links above), posted by user Dean Kinnear on 2020 03 13. Episode available at NBC with advertisements.
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It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast - it makes the classic laymans mistake of confusing mythological creatures with cryptids, there is overlap, but they are not the same. Dragons are essentially mythological as there are very few, if any, reports of actual sightings, likewise unicorns, whereas the conspicuously missing Nessie and Mongolian Death Worm have a body of continuing sightings which put them firmly in the cryptid category.
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Unicorns are the national animal of Scotland
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I noticed that with the Zar (Eritrea). Same, I believe, with Buda (or, the one in Sudan is different).
(I also spotted a former BBSer on the map)
Well, to be fair, there’s the same amount of evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster as there is for dragons.
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I love me some cryptids and cryptid maps, but I have to say, I made some
faces looking at the big map, as some of the “cryptids” are actually, you know, gods. You go down that road, shit starts getting problematic, fast. Because, of course, only some religions get treated that way. I mean, you could stick any number of deities with hybrid/non-humanoid forms on here; e.g. “Yahweh” doesn’t show up on the list, even though he sometimes got depicted like so:
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