Rare Animals as Cryptids and Supernaturals: The Case of Dugongs on Flores Island

Abstract

ABSTRACT Expanding on recent anthropological writing on cryptozoology, this paper demonstrates how animals perceived as both rare and cosmologically anomalous can be usefully compared with cryptids, “mystery” animals not currently recognized by scientific zoology. The case is advanced with reference to the dugong (Dugong dugon) as experienced by the Lio people of the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, who credit these large sea mammals with supernatural properties even while otherwise recognizing them as physical or natural creatures. Lio describe the seldom seen animals as half human and half fish and, as detailed in a widely known myth, descendants of a human female. Their human quality finds expression in dugongs’ retaining or regaining human form, particularly in dreams, and in numerous magical uses made of dugong body parts, most of which are explicitly rationalized with reference to the animal’s human origin. But while the spiritual or supernatural character of dugongs reflects their derivation from a human, Lio otherwise treat the animals as a kind of “fish,” and most people will consume dugong flesh – a duality that finds further expression in the variety of names Lio give to dugongs. Combined with their unusual morphology and behavior (displaying numerous features of land mammals while living exclusively in the sea), it is the rarity of dugongs – understood as a quality of remaining “hidden” from all humans except those who are privileged to encounter one – that explains both their supernatural quality and their close similarity to cryptids. Accordingly, the paper aims to advance an anthropological study of rarity, conceived as a quality of not being regularly accessible to the perception of ordinary humans, as a factor connecting certain empirical animals both to spiritual beings and to the usual subjects of cryptozoology.