Phylogenetic roulette and the identification of sea monsters

To make a PDF--if the document is in Microsoft Word--do this:

OPen the doc. Go to file>print...; in the printer window there should be a button or dropdown menu that says PDF. Engage that button or dropdown menu, and it'll give you an option to 'save as PDF.'

Thanks. But I don't want to do that: I want to make a pdf of something that I will first have to scan. What I don't get (and what no-one explains) is how you 'stitch' the separate scanned pages together.

There is a program called "PDFmerge". you can stitch serveral 'loose' pages together. Comes in very handy, especially when dealing with scans.

Btw, this is my first comment on this wonderful blog. I check it daily and am always impressed by the superb quality of the posts.

Cheers!

In Adobe Acrobat (at least the version I use: 7.0), there's a "Create PDF" tab which then drops down a menu asking for the source of the PDF pages: if you choose scanner, you can then scan in each page separately.

When you say you want to stitch pages together, is your desire to stitch a double-page image in the book into a single page in Adobe? If this is your aim, I imagine Adobe Illustrator would be better suited for this purpose, since you can properly align and touch up images. You can then create a PDF from your newly stitched image.

My officemate (and fellow PhD candidate) recently interviewed Ben Radford (a lake monster expert) on his podcast, the Cosmic Tea Party (www.cosmicteaparty.org); admittedly, I haven't listened to it yet, though I'm sure it's good! I always found it funny when the hosts of dinosaur documentaries I watched as a child took legends like Mokele Mbembe seriously...

On topic... is it possible that the Daedalus "monster" was an oarfish? Or am I just being silly?

Mitch, doesn't that only work with Macs or can you do that operation with PCs now? I know that when I had to make a PDF of my thesis that I was provided with a very long list of instructions on how to make a PDF, which I completely disregarded as it was so simple with my old ibook.

The point about phylogenetic roulette seems obvious, but it apparently needs saying. We need measures of cryptozoologoical uncertainty!

Thanks, Simon and Steve. Steve: on the oarfish suggestion -sorry, but yes you are being silly :) In fact, sin of sins, identifications like this shouldn't be made, and you're guilty of playing phylogenetic roulette. The drawings and eyewitness reports of the Daedalus creature do not mention any oarfish-like features, so there's no reason at all to use oarfish as a potential identity, nor do oarfishes behave like the Daedalus creature at the surface.

Having a "save as pdf" option is not at all standard for Windows. However, there are freeware pdf-making and -merging programs for Windows out there.

If you don't have/want full scale Acrobat, simply scan your pages, save them as .jpgs and insert them sequentially into a word document. Then, as David suggests, help yourself to some freeware such as CutePDF, which installs as if it were a printer, so you simply select it in your Print function (it asks you where to save the .pdf file automatically). Print the document with all the images on it to e.g. CutePDF, and Bob's yer uncle.

"people are inclined to latch on to highly specific identifications when mystery animals are reported, even though critical thinking and parsimony show that they've either gone way too far with the evidence they have, or have gone well astray in their interpretation, or both."

- As I understand it, psychologists find that this is a very common pattern in human reasoning in general.

People pretty strongly prefer to defend their current ideas rather than discard them for new ones.

Hmm, apparently "confirmation bias" is the term I'm thinking of - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias .

Could giant squid hold part of the mantle above water? I thought they are very gelatinous animals.

PS. And yes, their eyes don't shine with electric light. ;)

Well, not a pdf then... How about a collection of your own articles on alternative subjects!?

Thanks for the shout-out on your blog Darren!

Jerzy: I suppose the gladius could keep the mantle fairly rigid in the event that it leaves the water. Even if we presume exaggeration in the reports, the portion of the Daedalus cryptid leaving the water, estimated to be ~3 m long at a height of ~1.2 m, sounds implausible even for a hypothetical Mesonychoteuthis with a 4 m mantle. The reported speed (12-15 mph), duration of the sighting (20 minutes), and the description of the movement by one officer as "steady and uniform, as if propelled by fins" does not seem compatible with the (probably weak) jet propulsion of giant cephalopods.

If you have Photoshop, it's easy to composite scanned pages. If you don't, send 'em to me and I'll stitch them.

I found interesting bit of reading:

http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/in-the-wake-of-the-sea-serpe…

Large squid come in two kinds, the blobby kind, such as Mesonychoteuthis, and the streamlined kind such as Architeuthis and Taningia. Colossal squid, of course, would not be able to hold themselves above water like that, but the other kind might be able to; certainly Taningia danae seems quite rigid and a powerful swimmer from the videos I've seen (which are absolutely amazing, by the way).

The problem, of course, is that all these large squid are deep-dwellers, only rarely coming to the surface and generally because they've been caught by something, usually the ship they're being viewed from.

I think part of the problem with such sightings is the way seeing works. The brain doesn't just dispassionately assess the actual visual data supplied by the eyes (which are often markedly less detailed than one imagines); it manipulates and reinterprets them quite extensively in terms of both timings and geometry according to what, on past evolutionary and personal experience, "makes sense". Consequently when someone sees something novel, their brain is liable to present it to their mind in more familiar terms, so they may honestly think they saw characteristics and features that were not genuinely present.

This results in various manifestations of pareidolia, from Rorschach interpretations to misperceiving objects - especially in low light and/or when tired, and often as people. A personal anecdote by way of illustration: when driving suburban streets late at night, I sometimes think I see one or more persons standing at the roadside, only to realise that it's a pillar box or other piece of street furniture. The oddest thing is that I don't just perceive 'a person', but 'a middle-aged woman with a slight stoop, wearing a thin beige windcheater, a knee-length dark skirt and a worried expression' or some equally detailed image.

While I am, of course, mad, I don't think this is very unsual, and there are (I assume) sound evolutionary reasons for the brains of humans (and any other potential prey species) to behave like this - repeatedly misperceive patterns of leaf shadows as leopards and you'll just waste a little extra energy; misperceive just one leopard as a pattern of shadows, and you're liable to become leopard lunch.

A further difficulty is that memory is not a fixed record but a dynamic process, so when we "recall" things our brain is liable to edit the recollection according to what makes (more) sense to us. It's also very susceptible to being influenced by what others say. This is why witness testimonies (in court or elsewhere) are often both honest and incorrect, and why witness statements (whether of a crime or a sea-serpent) should be recorded as soon as possible after the event.

Hey Terry,

what a nice summary of Heuvelman's :The Metamorphosis of Unknown Animals into Fabulous Beasts and of Fabulous Beasts into Known Animals, Cryptozoology: Interdisciplinary Journal of the International Society of Cryptozoology 9 (1990), 1-12!

MistarX @ 17: Really? Sounds like something I'll have to get hold of: I'd say "great minds think alike," except that clearly his was and mine isn't. Just to dispel any doubt, the above was an entirely off-the-cuff synthesis of factoids I've picked up (mostly from New Scientist, probably). I think the riff on leopards is original - though consciously inspired by someone or other's claim that leopard predation has been the numerically largest cause of death in hominid history - but I've read so much over the last 47 years that almost any idea surfacing in my thoughts might actually be someone else's, read long ago and forgotten.

I remember reading in a recent book that the most likely explanation for this particular sighting would be a leopard seal,especially given the location of the sighting. Actually I think this makes more sense than a squid swimming with its tail out of the water.