The Sukotyro: On the Extinction of a Nonexistent Animal

In an essay on cryptids, those elusive animals pursued by cryptozoologists, Michael Shermer warns that "anecdotes alone do not make a science." Although his point is well taken, he is off the mark from the perspective of historical context. Anecdotes may not make a science directly, but they certainly do make culture; and culture inevitably does make science. A case in point is the Sukotyro, a creature "discovered" by the Dutch explorer Johan Nieuhof in 1670, and described hundreds of times in subsequent natural histories. The resilience of the image from its originary moment in Nieuhof's remarkable Voyages and Travels in the late seventeenth century to references in the mid-nineteenth century is a useful reminder of the power of representation in natural history. As an anecdotal creature, the sukotyro may not have belonged to "real" science, but as I suggest, it has everything to do with the making of science and scientific culture. Like it or not, the Sukotyro, though not widely known today, is firmly lodged in the annals of science no less than Dürer's fanciful (yet oddly archetypical) Rhinoceros. With that in mind, we must look at the sukotyro itself as a natural paradox: a nonexistent animal, which cannot go extinct.