Cryptids are always an interesting subject of conversation—whether you're a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between.

What's a cryptid?

A cryptid is an animal—such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster—that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist.

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People who study the legend and lore of cryptids are called cryptozoologists.


Reddit user GhostintheCircuit0 asked:

"What mythical creature is the most likely to have existed or currently exist?"

Questing Beast

"Questing Beast from Arthurian Legends (King Arthur). Leopard spots, noises like a pack of hounds, feet of a camel, neck of a snake."

"It’s a giraffe."

-Skinnydipandhike

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Kraken

"The Kraken. I mean, giant squids are a thing."

-SlashingManticore

"Also, a mundane giant squid attacks an escape boat, some tiny little rowboat. a game of telephone later, it's kraken taking down a 60 man crew on a naval ship."

-Aerik

Unicorns

"When Romans described unicorns, they described them as hippos with a horn on the face. Not sure how we ended up with a horse with a horn on its face. Some bad translation somewhere. Anyway, unicorns absolutely exist and we currently call them rhinos."

"As it's been pointed out, Hippopotamus means river horse. So if you were someone who had never seen a river horse you would probably think it looked like a horse, but like, by a river. Then if someone said there was an animal like a river horse but with a horn on its head, you would probably come up with something like a unicorn."

-thedankbank1021

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Big Cats

"I think the stories of big cats in the UK are plausible. Granted a lot of the photos that turn up in the tabloids are laughably just big housecats, but some sightings seem reasonable."

"For example I was watching a police car chase show once and out of the blue the helicopter highlighted what was clearly a big cat moving through the undergrowth at the side of the motorway."

"Then there was a news story about a boy who claimed to have been clawed by a big cat and the markings were allegedly found to be consistent with a puma."

"Finally during a visit to a wildlife sanctuary near Bodmin Moor a keeper told my family and I about big cat prints found outside their puma enclosure ... Their animals were all accounted for."

"A law change - I think in the 60's - made it illegal to own big cats and the zoos quickly became full, so it's thought that some owners let their animals loose rather than have to pay a fine/ have them put down."

-ASDowntheRedditHole

Maltese Tiger

"When I was a kid I got really into Cryptids."

"Even then I knew which one was the most likely to exist. https://allcryptid.fandom.com/wiki/Maltese_Tiger"

"Just a grey coloring of a normal tiger. We already get white ones. Why would a grey/blue one be impossible?"

-Collegenoob

El Chupacabra

"Chupacabra is probably just a coyote with some disease like mange."

-yabs

"There is a coyote that lives in the hills by my house, and it has mange. When I first moved in, it was almost completely bald. Really weird looking. I see it probably once a week or so, running on my street. It has slowly gotten better, but man did it look bad."

-Eddie_shoes

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Dragons

"Dragons? I read somewhere that one theory for the legend of dragons being popular across multiple cultures is because of dinosaur fossils. We did have giant flying reptiles, they were just pterosaurs and didn’t breathe fire."

-boot2skull

​Jackalope

"Jackalope sightings may have been rabbits with HPV (causes gnarly keratinized tumors on their heads that look like horns/antlers), though the myth was largely perpetuated by creative taxidermists"

-yowahtitlooklike

Bigfoot

"Bigfoot. I think they're just mountain men who got fed up with living with other people. Just big ungroomed hairy dudes covered in animal furs that see hikers and people so they grab some shit and disappear back into the woods. And when they're spotted they nope out."

-Mortimer_and_Rabbit

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The world is a very strange place, who knows what wonders actually exist but actually have purely mundane explanations?

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