Tuesday, November 15, 2011

I want to believe.

According to some, I should be ashamed of my interest in cryptozoology. I am well-educated and intelligent; I am therefore expected to hold the entire subject in contempt. If I do not, some people insist on holding me in contempt for what they see as my credulity. After all, I am a science writer. Skepticism is requisite in someone whose profession is founded upon the scientific process. And yes, when it comes to contentious topics like cryptozoology or the paranormal, I am a skeptic.

But I am also a writer. I like interesting things. And though I may be a skeptic, I am not interested in skepticism. Pure skepticism is boring. Just as believers sometimes make themselves ridiculous by closing their minds to scientific fact, skeptics can be every bit as obnoxious, small-minded, and ridiculous as the people whose beliefs they despise.

It's true that most of the A-list cryptozoology legends -- the Jersey devil, Sasquatch, Nessie -- are absurd. You think that plesiosaurs are still hanging around, looking exactly as they did tens of millions of years ago? You think they've been living, dying, feeding, and breeding in great enough numbers to keep from going extinct, while somehow remaining undetected within the extremely limited limits of a freshwater lake? And they still, despite our vigorous search for evidence, will not give us so much as a single scale off of their backs? You can see where I'm going with this.

Image from thinkatheist.com


On the other hand, the desire to believe it all  -- the desire to believe that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of, etc. etc. -- is completely understandable. That impulse has driven a huge amount of legitimate scientific discovery. And although I don't believe that a species of plesiosaur has made its habitat in the chill waters of a Scotland loch, I do believe that it is far, far more interesting to imagine that it has, than to dwell on the fact that it hasn't.

And I think the fact that we still go out and look for evidence, the fact that a great number of people persist in these beliefs, says something about human psychology. What it says about human psychology I haven't yet determined, but I bet it's fascinating.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

What 'scolopendra' means and why I care.

'Scolopendra' is a kind of centipede. It's a genus that includes all the largest centipedes in the world, like Scolopendra gigantea, also known as the crazy motherf***ing Peruvian centipede that can catch a bat in mid-flight and eat it. (Here is a Youtube video of S. gigantea in action. Despite the fact that it's narrated by the sublime David Attenborough, the video will very likely give you nightmares and leave you questioning the existence of God.)

In the American Southwest lives Scolopendra heros, otherwise known as the Redheaded Scolopendra. She is not one of the Scolopendromorph heavyweights (she is only an average of 6.5 inches long), but she has a stylish black body, 21 or 23 pairs of bitchin' yellow legs, and a bright red head. (This is her aposematic coloring -- very bright, distinctive color markings, to warn predators that the bearer of the markings should not be eaten because it is poisonous. In my opinion, the presence of 42 legs is sufficiently discouraging in a meal, but the color is also a pretty good idea.)

Anyway, long ago, 'scolopendra' used to mean an ill-tempered woman: a shrew, a scold. Since I have red hair, and I like to think of myself as ill-tempered, you will occasionally find me online under the name Redheaded Scolopendra.

One other thing: I absolutely, with a nuclear-powered passion, hate centipedes. Hate 'em. They give me the howling fantods. Yet I'm fascinated by them. Maybe it's my fondness for doing research of any sort that led me to learn about them. Maybe I had the ill-conceived idea that to know your enemy is to fear it less. I dunno. Why do I assume the name of the very thing I loathe? I dunno. Am I crazy? I dunno. Well, OK, probably.

P.S. Scolopendra gigantea is over 12 inches long. You're welcome.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Inventing a cryptozoological mystery species.

My current work in progress, Beings of the Ancient Age, is about cryptozoology.

I spent the last six months trying to invent the perfect cryptozoological animal for my setting in the New England/Acadian forest in Maine. I had to think up a fictional source for an entire body of fictional folklore. Finding an animal that's plausible both as a cryptozoological legend and as a legend specific to Maine -- it was a job of work, let me tell you.

I decided that my make-believe nonexistent species would be the pleistocene-epoch dire wolf. The dire wolf (Canis dirus) was slightly larger than the modern gray wolf, and was a pack hunter like the gray wolf. But its legs were shorter, possibly because it chased other megafauna, not the relatively small and agile animals that the gray wolf preys upon today.

Dire Wolf drawing by Mark Hallett

The idea that the dire wolf didn't go extinct with all the other pleistocene megafauna, that it survived and is now frolicking somewhere deep in the forests in Maine -- I mean, come on. It's not any weirder than the idea of plesiosaurs in freshwater lakes. And the idea that a creature long supposed to be extinct might still be alive -- a lot of cryptozoology is based on that theory.

But a few days ago, I found out that in fact Maine already has a history of dire wolf sightings (or something that some people say they think could in theory possibly be a dire wolf-like animal). So imagine my dismay. Sure, I hit the nail on the head as far as plausibility goes, but the whole fun of it was going to be inventing my own crazy eyewitness reports and blurry photographs. And the real world beat me to it.

But it's National Novel Writing Month, and I'm 10,500 words into my novel. I don't have the leisure of inventing a whole new mystery animal from scratch. And I'm sort of locked into using wolves, whatever their species or epoch of origin. I've come up with some wild, canid-style shenanigans that will happen later on in the story, things that wolves might do, but other kinds of animals, not so much. So dire wolves it is, I guess.