Ivan Sanderson

Ivan Terence Sanderson (January 30, 1911 – February 19, 1973) was a British biologist and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Sanderson wrote on nature and travel, and was a frequent guest on television talk shows and variety shows of the 1950s and '60s, displaying and discussing exotic animals.

Along with Belgian-French biologist Bernard Heuvelmans, Sanderson was a founding figure of cryptozoology, or the study of unknown animals, a field critics describe as a pseudoscience and subculture. Sanderson authored material on various paranormal subjects, and also wrote fiction under the pen name Terence Roberts. Born in Scotland, Sanderson traveled widely in his youth. His father, who manufactured whisky professionally, was killed by a rhinoceros while assisting a documentary film crew in Kenya in 1925.

As a teenager, Sanderson attended Eton College and at 17 years old began a yearlong trip around the world, spending most time in Asia. Sanderson graduated BA Hons in zoology from Cambridge University faculty of Biology, a degree traditionally upgraded to MA (Cantab) in botany and ethnology after six years without further study.

He became famous claiming to have seen an "olitiau" (a large cryptid bat) after being attacked by a creature he described as "the Granddaddy of all bats". Sanderson conducted a number of expeditions as a teenager and young man into tropical areas in the 1920s and 1930s, gaining fame for his animal collecting as well as his popular writings on nature and travel.

During World War II, Sanderson worked for British Naval Intelligence, in charge of counter-espionage against the Germans in the Caribbean, then for British Security Coordination, finally finishing out the war as a press agent in New York City. Afterwards, Sanderson made New York his home and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In the 1960s Sanderson lived in Knowlton Township in northwestern New Jersey before moving to Manhattan. He died in 1973.