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Loren Coleman, Loch Ness snowman of cryptozoology | page 1, 2
Reading "Cryptozoology A to Z" can lead to a deep sense of unease -- not about missing creatures, but missing context. Take, for example, the entry for the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club. Hailed as one of the most credible groups of its kind, the BCSCC, we are told, organizes the International Sasquatch Symposium, "along with the Vancouver Sasquatch Society, Columbia Brewery and the North American Science Institute." Hey, a tip of the hat to the public spirited folks at the Columbia Brewery for co-sponsoring such important research. Come to think of it, the Columbia Brewery has done a lot to popularize Sasquatch lore in B.C. As brewer of locally popular Kokanee beer, it has for some years been running TV ads with a guy in a big abominable snowman outfit. He crashes weddings and campsites and steals Kokanee, which, according to Columbia Brewery, the big fellah heartily endorses. One ad even featured Rene Dahinden, the actual Bigfoot hunter caricatured in the film "Harry and the Hendersons." The beer commercial showed poor Dahinden skulking about the woods and being asked about the Bigfoot-Kokanee connection. "What do you think I am, crazy?" he replies in wooden cue card-ese. Anything for research money. Yet overall, things are looking up for a new generation of Nessie- and yeti-hunters -- Coleman may teach a for-credit course in cryptozoology at the University of Southern Maine in the year 2000. (Could prove to be a big boost to the school's athletic programs.) However, mainstream zoologists are predictably uneasy about Coleman's specialty. "It's not black and white," says Dr. Don McPhail of the University of British Columbia's zoology department. "A lot of biologists are romantics. They want to see what's in the next jungle or stream. There's a perfectly respectable scientist over on Vancouver Island who's got a bee in his bonnet over the Cadborosaurus." (A West Coast sea monster -- look it up.) "Cryptozoology ranges from perfectly legitimate scientific investigation through to the Ogopogo kind of thing, which on first principles is just not possible," explains McPhail, whose specialty is aquatic organisms. "You have a lake scoured by ice -- where would the monster come from? Where would it find food?" McPhail speculates that Bigfoot and his various worldwide relatives would face a familiar modern problem: How does an elusive cryptid get a dinner date? "They'd have to be in such low density, they'd have real reproductive problems. And they tend to be seen in areas that are not big on food sources." Still there's one hard truth that will keep cryptozoology running indefinitely. "You can never prove," McPhail admits, "that something doesn't exist." That's good enough for Coleman. And the tireless dragon hunter believes that academic support for cryptozoology is real and solid. "Scientists are looking for new animals all the time, and there are anthropologists and zoologists and biologists teaching at universities that are cryptozoologists -- they are members of the societies." In other words -- they're out there.
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