Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths Paperback – September 1, 2017

As a cryptozoological reader of some 40 years and writer of 20+, and a correspondent of Dr. Naish, I looked forward to this book, and I'm hardly disappointed. Naish offers a very good skeptical analysis of the whole cryptozoology business, even if I think it could have been a little better. One point a reader will notice early on is that there is so much ground to cover that the author can only touch on many points in passing. Skipping over the Great New England Sea Serpent, a touchstone of the sea monster topic, is an example.Nash starts with whether cryptozoology is, or can be, scientific, and agrees it can be but isn't often. He begins and ends with the point cryptozoology exists in a cultural mileau and is influenced by folklore, tradition, etc. as well as modern innovations like the Internet. This isn't entirely original and he credits Dr. Charles Paxton, whose work I greatly admire, and folklorist Michel Meurger, who I've always thought overreached the subject.Naish is not closed-minded about this. He has himself put forward new species concepts over the years to explain cryptozoological sightings, including a cryptid seal and a giant orangutan, but in his blog Tetrapod Zoology and elsewhere he's uncovered or been offered new information and has generally come to conclude the "star" animals are not physically there. This book explains his reasoning well.When he offers an explanation, I'm not always entirely convinced: the "finning" seal (a seal waving one flipper in the air for cooling) for the Valhalla sighting, for example, is clever, but I can't look at the first-hand original drawing and get a seal out of it. (As you can tell, I enjoy sea serpent lore more than the rest of the subject these days.) The opposite is true of the HMS Daedalus sighting, which I think we can put to rest.The subject is vast and Naish can't help that, so the bibliography is essential: it's pretty good but could have been more extensive.Least anyone think I'm damning with faint praise,this is an excellent and important book. If it doesn't hunt down every major cryptid, it will make the veteran cryptozoology reader think hard and will give the new reader an excellent starting point grounded in good science.  Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology

Drawing on the best old and new cryptozoological literature and the author's professional knowledge of zoology and paleontology, this book is a fresh view under the surface of cryptozoology, into the weeds in some cases. It had to be done. Naish is an advocate of ending "cryptozoological literalism", that is, to assume that the stories and legends of animals all represent creatures unrecognized by science. Instead, a view is emerging of cryptozoology as a hybrid subject including biologic and zoologic themes but influenced very heavily by human perception, psychology and folklore. In that respect, the evidence for the biological reality for famous cryptids as unidentified animals is absent. This book is one of several newer, scientifically-based, well-referenced works that go far deeper into the field than just telling monster stories. It aims to reveal what is reasonable to accept about cryptids and what is unreasonable and almost certainly false. Revealing the flaws and errors of the field, however, does not actually diminish the scholarly purposes for it. This book is available only in Kindle for the first release and may be printed in paperback in the future. It is recommended for those serious about the science and reputation of cryptozoology.

This book is written by someone who studies animals. As such it deconstructs many of the claims made about cryptids. I do have to warn that some people (true believers) might find parts of the book disrespectful. I feel the author does a great job speaking about the topic in a respectful trip manner but my experience leads me to believe there is a certain percentage of believers who always seem offended by these essays.

I am a regular reader of the author's science blog (called "Tetrapod Zoology"), which I think is one of the best blogs on the internet. So I was very excited when I learned that Professor Naish had published a book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by this book. I think it tries to do too many things at once, and ends up failing to do any of them well.The book is divided into chapters based on type of monster: there is a chapter about sea monsters, a chapter about lake monsters, a chapter about ape-like monsters, a chapter on dinosaur-like monsters, etc. In each chapter, the author generally does the following: (1) attempts to catalog the various types of monsters that have been claimed to exist, (2) reviews the history of sightings of those monsters, (3) reviews the history of written scholarship about those monsters, (4) debunks the sightings and the scholarship, (5) suggests cultural factors that may explain why the sightings of those monsters happened at particular points in history, or took a particular form.When you have multiple chapters, and do the same 5 things per chapter, a few problems emerge:Problem #1: All of the chapters more or less share the same format: which makes the chapters seem repetitive. The chapters on lake monsters and sea monsters could easily have been merged - likewise, the chapters on ape-like monsters and dinosaur-like monsters could also have been merged, as both are ultimately claims about living fossils.Problem #2: Doing five things per chapter mean you don't do them well. The catalog of claimed sightings never seem exhaustive. The debunkings seem rushed and are poorly cited: often the author will say something like "a carcass of this creature washed up on a shore in Scotland, but was determined to be a shark", but does not discuss how this determination was made or even cite to the article making this determination.Problem #3: The author missed multiple, obvious opportunities to bring in his background as a paleontologist. For example, the author notes that dinosaur-like monsters in Africa strongly resemble theories of how dinosaurs were thought to behave in the 1920's - theories that have been debunked by more recent science. But the more recent science is never mentioned: a few sentences about the modern view of sauropods would have made this section stronger. The author similarly misses chances to talk about how modern science thinks plesiosaur necks would have been relatively inflexible (debunking many Nessie sightings) and manages to discuss sightings of Pterosaur-like creatures without saying anything about how Pterosaurs are thought to have behaved: despite the author's day job as a pterosaur specialist!Problem #4: The book is poorly illustrated. Many times, it references a particular picture of a monster, without showing that picture. Instead, we get descriptions of the picture, which can take up an entire paragraph and still isn't easy to visualize. Perhaps this is because they had a problem getting the rights to these pictures. If you read the author's blog, you know that he is a talented artist as well as a scientist: his blog posts about animals (living or extinct) are often accompanied by drawings of those animals in his own hand. There are disappointingly few of these drawings in the book, and they could have gone a long way towards making it more visually engaging.Ultimately, the most interesting part of this book (and the closest thing it has to a central thesis) is the author's idea that monster sightings must be understood in the context of culture. For example, he argues that sea serpent sightings in the 1840's and dinosaur sightings in the 1920's were inspired by paleontological discoveries going on at that time, and that Nessie sightings in the 1930's were influenced by the movie King Kong. If the author had focused on making this a book about how pop culture (and pop understanding of science) influences monster sightings and causes them to change over time, that would be an original, interesting work. Instead it comes off as a rushed book with occasional flashes of insight and brilliance.

Good but nothing new

Mit HUNTING MONSTERS legt Autor Darren Naish eine wirklich launige und sehr gut lesbare Abrechnung mit dem weiten (und oftmals wirren) Feld der Cryptozoologie vor.Hierbei schreibt er sehr punktiert und nimmt sich in einer Art großen Rundumschlag praktisch alle großen Klassiker dieses Feldes, von Nessie über Bigfoot, Champ, Ogopogo bis hin zu Mokele-Mbembe, vor… und stellt seine Sichtweise sehr überzeugend dar.Letztlich ist Darren Naish ein sehr fundiert argumentierender Skeptiker, und es gelingt ihm sehr anschaulich zu zeigen, dass hinter vielen der bekanntesten Sichtungen von cryptozoologischen Phänomenen bei Lichte betrachtet nicht viel (oder besser: gar nichts) übrig bleibt. Berühmte „Beweise“, wie das mittlerweile definitiv als Fälschung überführte, „Surgeons Photo“ oder auch das mehr als dubiose Foto von Champ, welches Sandra Mansi in den 70ern machte, stehen ohnehin in sehr wackeligem Licht, wenn man sich die komplette Gesichte zu diesen Fotos vor Augen hält. Gleiches gilt für viele Zeugenberichte, welche bei näherer Betrachtung nicht viel mehr als kaum verifizierbare Anekdoten sind.Gleichzeitig belegt Naish, wie unterschiedlich die Berichte, z.B. zu Nessie oder Mokele-Mbembe, genau genommen sind – selbst wenn die Zeugen allesamt glaubwürdig wären, so würden sie keinerlei einheitliches Phänomen schildern. .. und nicht zu vergessen, wie erstaunlich sich manche Monster bei Sichtungen den neusten popkulturellen Trends anpassen. Das natürlich auch eine bekannte Cryptozoologen, unter anderem (natürlich) Bernard „Super-Otter“ Heuvelmanns, ihr Fett abkriegen, überrascht nach alledem sicherlich nicht.Letztlich zeigt Naish einfach, wie man mit einer gesunden Portion Skepsis und ein bisschen logischen Hinterfragen viele seit Jahrzehnten bestehende cryptozoologischen Mythen schon im Ansatz gründlich entzaubern kann – und viele der wichtigsten Beweise alles andere als irgendwie belastbar sind. Dabei leugnet Naish gar nicht, dass es durchaus noch unbekannte Tiere und unbekannte Phänomene geben könnte, es geht ihm nur darum zu zeigen, wie sehr Menschen sich die Existenz irgendwelcher mysteriöser Monster wünschen – und wie schnell hierbei alle Rationalität über Bord geworfen wird.Alles in allem sehr lesenswert – und dabei auch sehr unterhaltsam geschrieben!

This not a book about 'Cryptids'. Neither is it a book about 'Crypto-zoology'. It is more akin to an anthropological analysis of what so-called 'crypto-zoologists believe and what leads them to hold and expound these beliefs. While the author readily allows for the probability that there does exist animals currently unknown to science awaiting formal discovery and classification, his assertion is that none of the famous 'cryptids' of longstanding public fame exist in reality. The analysis of crypto-zoology is cutting and stark. Crypto-zoology is not a branch of science. It's practitioners are not scientists. While some of them valiantly strive to apply empirical evidence-based scientific methods to their hobby of choice, crypto-zoology is in reality a belief-system couched in scientific language in order to lend it legitimacy in the academic community. The fundamental principle underlying the 'discipline' - that legends and folklore concerning mystery animals contain and their heart mythologised accounts of real biological creatures. Naish also demolishes the reliability of eye-witness accounts, noting them to be highly subjective and unacceptable as evidence under the parameters of the scientific standards for proof. He also notes that many of the ideas concerning certain cryptids, specifically relict dinosauria surviving into modern times, rely on highly outdated and superseded theories on how those animals lived and behaved. An excellent book which, while always treating its subject with politeness and respect, demolishes many of the pillars upholding crypto-zoology.

A very enjoyable read. Naish approaches the subject with the obvious benefit of a lifetime studying animals, living and dead, and in particular, vertebrates and tetrapods. This brings considerable credibility to the discussions of things like plesiosaur fins, pterosaur wings and primate feet. Naish not only understands the anatomical details of numerous animals, he understands how information is gathered from palaeontological field work and naturalists' observations of living creatures.While it is basically in the genre of a "debunking" book, he doesn't do it in a smug or condescending way. Naish tries to seriously engage the claims of cryptozoologists and gives their motivations the benefit of the doubt. Only after considering a range of options does he suggest that certain observations may be deliberate hoaxes.The basic point is that cryptozoology, or the beliefs in mystery monsters, tell us much more about human beliefs, perceptions and folklore than about possible species new to science.

Der Autor dieses Buches lässt keine Zweifel daran, das alles was nicht dokumentiertund von mehr als einer Person unter Eid ausgesagt würde, Blödsinn oder Fake ist.Interessiert wahrscheinlich nur die Leute die ehedem schon ihre eigeneMeinung zu dem Thema haben.