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.

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 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.

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.

[2] Illustrated with Sanderson's drawings, they are accounts of his scientific expeditions, but they are addressed to a popular audience and include somewhat purple prose of the beauties of nature, as well as humorous anecdotes, some of which may be exaggerated.

[citation needed] In November 1952, Sanderson purchased the "Frederick Trench place" a 250-year-old farmhouse, outbuildings and 25 acres (10 ha) of land a short ways from the ultimate location of the zoo between the communities of Columbia and Hainesburg.

In the spring of 1954, he established "Ivan Sanderson’s Jungle Zoo" and Laboratory, a permanent, summer, roadside attraction near Manunka Chunk, White Township, Warren County, New Jersey.

[citation needed] Sanderson developed and toured winter traveling exhibits of rare and unusual animals for sports shows and department stores.

[citation needed] During the 1950s and 1960s, Sanderson was widely published in such journals of popular adventure as True, Sports Afield, and Argosy, as well as in the 1940s in general-interest publications such as the Saturday Evening Post.

Later he became known for writings on topics such as cryptozoology, a word Sanderson coined in the early 1940s, with special attention to the search for lake monsters, sea serpents, Mokèlé-mbèmbé, giant penguins, Yeti, and Sasquatch.

[citation needed] Sanderson has been described as credulous for suggesting that aircraft and boats went missing at Devil's Sea because of a wrinkle in spacetime, gravitational or magnetic aberrations, extra-terrestrials or mysterious underwater people.

Vile vortices are supposed to be "anomalic regions" regularly distributed on Earth where disproportionately many strange phenomena occur, such as disappearances, UFO sightings, or poltergeist activity.