ABSTRACT
Cryptozoological species, or ‘cryptids’, are categories of animals which some group of humans considers real but are not attested, or have yet to be attested, by international zoology. Occasionally, anthropologists and ethnobiologists (or, more specifically, ethnozoologists) record local representations of animals, or what sound like animals, that do not immediately match known scientific species. Ethnozoologists might subsequently find a match, but they might not. In the latter case, anthropologists, to mention only these, regularly conclude they have recorded a name for a spirit or a fantastic being. Sometimes, to a western ear, such unidentified categories do indeed sound
fantastic. The ‘Loch Ness monster’ is one example. The Okapi (Okapia johnstoni), before it was ‘discovered’ by Europeans early in the twentieth century, might be another. However, these are not the only kind of cryptid an ethnozoologist might learn about. Another sort would be an animal of a known type which is, so to speak, not supposed to be where people say it is. Pumas (or cougars, Puma concolor) in the eastern United States (Downing 1984) or similar big cats in Wales (Hurn 2009 and this volume) or the southwest of England (Franklin, this volume) would be instances of this kind of cryptid. Often, though, the possible referent of a locally recognised cryptid is not immediately obvious: a category, especially if it does not sound supernatural or zoologically implausible (as would a creature reputedly capable of walking through walls, changing its form, or speaking a human language), could be either a new species, a known species not previously documented in the locality, a documented species which has somehow been misrepresented or represented in a way that makes it sound like something very different – or, indeed, it may be completely fictitious. Explaining the emergence and persistence of categories of the last two sorts
might be thought a special preserve of anthropology. Yet anthropologists have been neither particularly enthusiastic about nor adept at developing explanations of categories whose ontological status in international science is uncertain or which otherwise possess a degree of zoological plausibility. Of course, formulating a sociological or symbolic explanation for a cultural representation – the
usual anthropological recourse – does not in itself prove that what is represented has no basis in empirical reality (see Forth 2004: 115-137). By the same token, sociological or symbolic interpretations of manifestly or possibly non-empirical attributes can be equally valid when the phenomenal referent is an unequivocally known animal (for example, the pangolin among the Lele, lemurs identified as spirits of the dead among Malagasy peoples, and snakes, considered as embodiments of earth spirits in many parts of the world [see Attala, this volume]). Nevertheless, social scientists tend generally to assume that such interpretations discredit or at least reduce the zoological credibility of culturally represented images. The fact of ontological ambiguity – not knowing in advance whether the referent of a local category is empirically real or not real – may in itself be sufficient to dissuade anthropologists from becoming involved in cryptozoological questions (and it would not be difficult to argue that, for a number of reasons, they are well advised to continue this avoidance!). Yet in view of the privileged access anthropologists have to local communities through long periods of co-residence and participation of various kinds, they should be well placed to shed special light on cryptozoological problems. Ethnozoologists, who are often simultaneously social or cultural anthropologists, should be able to provide even greater insight, given their access to local environments and local zoological knowledge. The focus of this chapter is the way the Nage people, who reside in the
central part of the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, classify cats. More particularly, I am concerned with the identity of a large felid that appears not to fit any Flores species currently recognised by international zoologists. A major aim is to demonstrate the value non-western zoological knowledge, or ‘folk zoology’, may hold not simply for cryptozoology (which surely can never be an end in itself) but indeed for international zoology. As I show especially with reference to local categories of felids, Nage representations of what, to a western eye, may appear as ‘cryptids’ contradict a view, implicit in a good deal of modern anthropology – but, ironically, sharing much in common with older European representations of ‘primitives’ – that members of small-scale, nonwestern societies are governed by an unbridled imagination and so typically formulate and express their thought concerning non-human animals, and even organise their behaviour in relation to these, on the basis of all sorts of fantastic notions which are either empirically false or have little grounding in reality.
