Bernard Heuvelmans

The word cryptid comes from the term from the study of these creatures, cryptozoology, which means the study of hidden animals.

As a field, cryptozoology originated from the works of Bernard Heuvelmans, a French Belgian zoologist, and Ivan T. Sanderson, a Scottish zoologist.

In 1955, Heuvelmans published On the Track of Unknown Animals, a landmark work that would pave the way for dozens of similar texts, all of them about creatures that may or may not be real.

And thus, cryptozoology was born.

After that, there were decades of silence on the matter.

Going by Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, dubbed the Father of Cryptozoology, it wasn't until 1899 that the subject of the Yeti was written about again by a Westerner.

This time, it was Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Waddell, a Scottish explorer who wrote this in his book, quoting, "Some large footprints in the snow led across our track, and away up to the higher peaks.

These were alleged to be the trail of the hairy wild men who are believed to live amongst the eternal snows, along with the mythical white lions, whose roar is reputed to be heard during storms.

Uh, so I do...

Uh, Bernard Heuvelmans was the one that kinda, I believe, put this theory out there saying that he kinda thought that it may have been an, uh, basically a semi-aquatic rhino species that was undiscovered.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause keep in mind, this is the same area that the okapi took another, like, half a century to be discovered in.