I will end with this. If one was ever found with legitimate evidence ppl would lose their minds
We've found some "cryptids" before.
Leeuwenhoek was (I think rightly) initially dismissed when he described animalcules merrily a'squirmin' in his pond water when he looked at in through a microscope. But, presented with their own microscopes and pond water, the Royal Society agreed with his findings. Although it took everybody a lot longer to agree with him that sperm merging with an egg was all that there was to human conception.
Mountain gorillas weren't "discovered" until 1902. Previously they were dismissed as cryptids. But the scientific community had no problem accepting them.
Similar story with giant squids, but more recently if I remember right.
Like
@NMSbowhunter mentioned, the coelacanth is another example of cryptid made flesh.
Bigfoot will lose all his appeal if he's ever proven real. His fans will ditch him for Mothra, the Thunderbird, and Lizard folk.
There are often mutated humans for example gigantism where the bones in the body continue to grow eventually even outgrowing what the muscle density and internal organs can sufficiently support. Andre the Giant is a well known person who suffered from that disease. There are also mutations that can cause someone to be hairy. I have no reason to believe these genetic defaults wouldn’t have existed when Natives had control of this continent. So I think legends of big foot, Sasquatch or “skunk ape” as it is know in Florida probably stemmed from some people being outcast for mutated genetics. I mean surely somewhere in West Virginia, there was some giant hairy scary tribal men that was banned to the wilderness to help keep the genetics of the tribe heathy. That could easily have led to a legends from tribes or even settlers who might have never encountered someone with those types of genetic diseases. So I believe it’s a myth but I also believe there are small portions of real events that may have triggered those myths- (a little bit of fire, beneath all that smoke- you know how word gets around)
I think a cleaner theory is the one proposed by Daniel Dennet in either Breaking the Spell or Bacteria to Bach.
Memes replicate in the human mind: the same as microorganisms in the human body. Certain traits allow them to replicate more effectively.
The mind is a pattern detector that predicts future based on past inputs. As long as the current inputs match up with the prior ones, we don't "notice" much. But, was soon as novelty is introduced, and alarm is triggered. One car in a stream of traffic swerves suddenly. A gunshot rings out in a silent meadow. We notice one book turned backwards on a bookshelf. Your dog stands up on his back legs and starts talking to you about the latest political polls...
Last one got your attention, right? Dennet proposes that memes thrive in a sweet spot between mundane and incomprehensible. You have to have just the right degree of novelty if you wanna survive in the human mind amongst the other memes and outreplicate them. Too little and you're background noise. Too much and you're dismissed as gibberish.
According to Dennett, the Bigfoot meme hits the sweet spot. You can understand what he is (imagine a man, but bigger and hairier) but he's strange enough that he sticks out more than your kids soccer games or traffic or what you ate for dinner today. You think about him more and more. Mayne he's a little funny to you. Maybe he's a little scary. Maybe he's inspiring. You can't help but share him with other minds, who are also enticed by the novelty.
Share him enough, and get enough people to feel a thing, and he's hard to get rid of.
