If you ask the average zoologist what makes mysterious creatures like Bigfoot or El Chupacabra so impossible today when once scientifically-dismissed species like the Mountain Gorilla or Giant Squid are now common enough concepts, they'll probably say, "The difference is the gorilla and the squid are real, and Bigfoot isn't."The scientific dismissal isn't keeping Animal Planet from releasing a new DVD featuring stories of cryptozoological oddities.
Announced this week and set for release this fall (October 6), Lost Tapes operates under the thesis that, while thousands of new species are discovered and classified each year, there are some creatures that science still refuses to recognize.
Lost Tapes offers dramatic reenacts of reported encounters with The Monster of Monterey, Cave Demons, the Megaconda and the Mothman.
A lot of this is outright bollocks, and Animal Planet could be accused of repacking a horror/sci-fi show as an animal documentary here. But, there's a "ghost story around the campfire" charm about shows like this that an intrigued audience could enjoy a chill or two. People need a good scare now and then, even if it comes from a non-existent Thunderbird or Hell Hound.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-19-2009 @ 7:35AM
jkmkay said...
While these shows are fun and a good scare is always welcome. Promoting them as reality is just wrong. I'm sure that cryptozoologists will find an unknown insect, small mammal or maybe even a monkey. Like the reality ghost shows. They will always come up just short of the big ones. They'll make it seem like if they just had a little more time.
When Animal Planet, Discovery or The History Channel put on these types of shows it hurts their credibility. It's like wrestling on SYFY. What's it doing there?
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7-19-2009 @ 8:36AM
Hobie said...
I'm one of the reasonable, haven't drank the cool-aid, non-cultish fans of cryptozoology and Bigfoot in particular. And jkmkay has it spot on. But further, crypto fans for some reason fall into an almost religious mindset. They believe faithfully in Bigfoot (rather than scientifically) and those who are skeptics are seen as persecutors of their faith and therefore hated. This they simply will not admit to, and desperately try to cloak their believerism with shallow pseudoscience. I'd LOVE for Bigfoot to be real. But using simple common sense, there has to be incontrovertible proof that they exist. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” ~ (Marcello Truzzi or Sagan). Crypto fans typically respond laughably that there's no proof that Bigfoot doesn't exist, as if one can prove a negative - a logical fallacy - or even that the burden of proof lies with anyone other than themselves in the first place.
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