Get Kraken: Why Scientists Should Study Sea Monsters

From the Loch Ness Monster to the Kraken, sea monsters still capture the imagination centuries after medieval cartographers doodled them in the blank spots of their maps. But to Charles Paxton, a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, sea monster sightings are more than fish tales.

A collection of the weird and mysterious creatures found on Olaus Magnus's 16th-century "Carta marina," or "map of the sea."

CREDIT: Public domain

Paxton is no wild-eyed cryptozoologist who spends his weekends imagining Bigfoot behind every tree. He's a fisheries ecologist and statistician who believes that, with the right methods, anecdotes about mysterious monsters can become scientific data to tell us about human perception and the odd reports that science can't fully explain.

On July 12, Paxton and other bonafide, peer-reviewed researchers like him will discuss ways to bring cryptozoology into the scientific fold at the Zoological Society of London Communicating Science event "Cryptozoology: Science or Pseudoscience?"


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