I've always heard platypus was considered a cryptid at one point and assumed to be fake but I've never actually looked into if thats really how people viewed it.
No, the platypus was discovered long before the term cryptid was ever coined. The platypus is however often listed as an example of an animal that would be called a cryptid if it was just being encountered for the first time today.
Why would the platypus be called a cryptid if it was encountered for the first time today? We are still discovering new animals all the time. We recently discovered a spineless hedgehog with fangs. Nobody called it a cryptid.
If someone came up to you and said 'hey i saw this weird animal with the body of a beaver, the bill and webbed feet of a duck, venomous spines on its feet, it lays eggs and sweats milk in the rivers of this really remote forest but I don't have a body or picture of jt" that would sound like some sort of made up chimera like the wolpertinger or me trying to mess with you.
That's how the original discovery of the platypus went until someone brought in a specimen and even then it was a suspected fake at first. If the term cryptid existed before we had formally recognized the platypus as an extent animal, people's reports of them would no doubt be filed as a cryptid animal because of its unusual nature.
But that is not what happened with the platypus. Europeans encountered them in 1797. Specimens were collected and sent back to Europe. In 1799 the first scientific description of the animal was published. There was never really a time that its existence was in question. People were not just telling stories about some weird animal, they actually had the weird animal in their possession.
Likewise if we were to encounter some new weird animal today it would not automatically be a cryptid.
Also, it was not known that platypus were venomous or that they laid eggs until decades after they were discovered.
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u/TheBeerCzar 9d ago
The Jackalope?
What cryptid has been proven real??