Editing 1947 flying disc craze (section)

===Biological===
{{see also|Space animal hypothesis}}
Another line of thought argued that the reports might be caused not by technological alien spacecraft or mass hysteria, but rather by animal lifeforms that are indigenous to Earth's atmosphere or interplanetary space.

In 1923, paranormal author [[Charles Fort]] had mused "It seems no more incredible that up in the seemingly unoccupied sky there should be hosts of living things than that the seeming blank of the ocean should swarm with life".<ref>''New Lands, 1923, ch 17''</ref><ref name="WhoDiscovered">[https://web.archive.org/web/20210214054202/http://www.cufos.org/CSI_NY/CSI_NY_%2322.pdf "Who 'Discovered Space Animals'?"], Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York Newsletter, (December 15, 1957)</ref> On July 7, 1947,  a fan of Fort's writings named [[John Philip Bessor]] became the first modern proponent of the hypothesis when he authored a letter to the Air Force suggesting that discs might be "animals bearing very little likeness to human beings".   In 1949, he wrote to the Saturday Evening Post to suggest that the discs might be "more like octopuses, in mentality, than humans".<ref>Saturday Evening Post, July 2, 1949 "He Believes in Saucers"</ref><ref name="WhoDiscovered"/>   In April 1949, the Air Force's Project Sign released an essay which considered the hypothesis, writing "the possible existence of some sort of strange extraterrestrial animals has been remotely considered, as many of the objects described acted more like animals than anything else".<ref name="WhoDiscovered"/>

In October 1954, [[Alfred Loedding]] was publicly quoted on his suspicion that the disks "may be a kind of space animal".<ref>Times-Advertiser, Oct 10 1954</ref>  By 1955, original saucer witness [[Kenneth Arnold]] began to promote the theory, suggesting that the UFOs are "sort of like sky jellyfish."  Arnold added: "My theory might sound funny, but just remember that there are a lot of things in nature that we don’t know yet."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/la-grande-observer-kenneth-arnolds-cryp/12450519/|title=Eerie Blue Light Said Live 'Thing' |date=January 29, 1955|pages=1|via=newspapers.com}}</ref>