The Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Congo River Basin’s Mokele-mbembe are a motley crew championed by a strange subculture known as cryptozoology. 

Is this a lesser known digital currency? It is not. Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience devoted to proving the existence of animals that, according to the common academic consensus, do not exist. Namely those that appear in folklore – such as the Abominable Snowman, and particular dragons.

In Britain, Nessie is queen of the so-called “cryptids”, but she has many lesser known relatives around the world. These include the Mongolian death worm, the Loveland Frog – a four foot-high humanoid amphibian in Ohio that was the mythical star of the musical Hot diggity dog! It’s the Loveland frog! – and Selma, a Norwegian sea serpent.

Together, they make an elusive rogues’ gallery. The Loveland Frog allegedly turned out to be only a large iguana that was missing its tail. But some have more grounding in reality than others.

The Beast of Exmoor is one of the more convincing. The phantom big cat that reportedly prowls the Exmoor National Park in the South West is a hungry type. In the 1980s, local farmers were complaining about so many sheep deaths, the Royal Marines were called in to stake out the hills with night vision equipment.