Bigfoot research and credible researchers!?

[Brazoo]

I'm not prepared to say I believe in Bigfoot, but I can't rule its existence out for two reasons.

The area that Bigfoot is supposed to inhabit is huge. In Canada alone you have Alberta with 255,541 square miles and British Columbia with 364,764 square miles. That's over 620,000 square miles. The combined population of these 2 Provinces is just over 8 million people who mostly live in urban centers. That's a lot of space for an animal to hide in if it doesn't want to be seen. Cougars are masters at not being seen. In my 53 years of hanging out in wilderness areas that have solid populations of apex predators I've seen lots of coyotes and bears, a few wolves (generally their rear ends as they high-tailed it out of sight) but ZERO cougars. Lots of cougar tracks, but they don't count. I'd imagine a wary animal at least as intelligent as a cougar could easily remain hidden in over half a million square miles of wilderness. They hide hundreds of thousands of illegal marijuana plants in British Columbia, it's no stretch that a few hairy, stinky, tall apes could remain hidden too.

Most public libraries have microfiche files -- or updated digital files -- of The London Times. These files all originate from the same archive. Spend about an hour looking through the earliest files of The London Times and you will come across a report from the late 1700's about a British naval ship that docked in Newfoundland to drop supplies. The local Indians had captured a hairy "Wild Man" and brought it to the British. It never made the return trip to England. I can't remember if it died or was set free, it's been 35 years since I read that 18th Century news clip, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't a hoax.

Yeah - but every other continent with Apes has other primates, and we can't (as far as I know) confirm North American primates of any kind from our fossil record.

I tried googling the story you sited, but didn't come up with anything. Though a 'hairy man' could also be a guy with a rare genetic disease like Hypertrichosis. Obviously I have no idea, and I do agree that weird things happen, and as I've said before the probability of big foot, in my mind, isn't zero - just very unlikely.

[Brazoo]

Brazoo, there is no harm/no foul here with you or anyone in this thread. This is something I love talking about. At the end of the day people believe what they want. If people give it a second thought, maybe where they live look around the woods a little bit more carefully and see something they never noticed before, that would be cool. If people don't want to hear it-that's their perogative. I have said what I can in favor of it. We're not here for a barfight. We're just throwing out theories and shootin' the breeze. I enjoy reading everyones 2¢.

I have read a lot of books on the subject, read many articles on the web and seen a lot of the TV documentaries. I can only repeat from memory what I learned and add a bit of my opinion in it too. I can't completely nail down which shows I saw them get a testable DNA sample and a hair sample they could examine in detail. I am far behind in watching Destination Truth so I have to catch up. I did see the Penn & Teller hoax and heard about their admission some time after it happened.

I would be pretty sure it was in a Monster Quest Episode or Sasquatch: Legend Meets science but I would have to re-watch them to be sure. In the case of Monster Quest they have done so many Bigfoot stories with different names it will be hard to track. I'm pretty sure the hair follicle they examined was spec. as primate but "no known primate". They said the hair strand was missing 1 feature human primate hair usually has but were sure it was primate. I would have to track the show down and watch it again to get the details.

I also have to say it is exhausting getting this involved in a thread!

johnmiic - thanks so much for all your input in this thread. I work from home and have been waiting for clients to look over proofs the last few days, so I didn't have much to do except stress out about work. This was a nice distraction, but I probably got a little carried away, because I really do like this subject.

I haven't seen that show yet - but I'll try to track some episodes down.

No barfights here my friend - if we happen to meet in a bar the first draft is on me!

[Brazoo]

Here's another way of looking at it. The ocean is the least explored territory left on earth. Yet we have been able to discover the prehistoric jaws of the Megalodon (ancestor of the Great White). No one has footage of it still existing. No claims, that I am aware of, suggests it still exists, although it may. Yet we do have conclusive evidence it DID exist. Big Foot is claimed to be "roaming" the countryside working on a unprecedented streak of always bumping into people who can never prove what they saw. And yet no one has ever found as much as a fossil of this animal. How can that be? How could they sustain life and mate without some interaction with the environment around them showing they were there? It's just not possible. The counter argument is right up there with how kids reason Santa Claus. So what it comes down to is just like what a child does to reason Santa. Believe if you want, but it requires faith and a special imagination for the supernatural, without any proof to reinforce it. Santa leave "gifts" as his proof. Big Foot leaves "foot prints". Merry Christmas!

Dude - Megalodon - most bad *ss animal name ever! How awesome would it have been if we had film of one of those things in action?

[jwyblejr]

Anybody catch the special they had on National Geographic Channel tonight?

[johnmiic]

Here's another way of looking at it. The ocean is the least explored territory left on earth.Yet we have been able to discover the prehistoric jaws of the Megalodon (ancestor of the Great White). No one has footage of it still existing. No claims, that I am aware of, suggests it still exists, although it may. Yet we do have conclusive evidence it DID exist. Big Foot is claimed to be "roaming" the countryside working on a unprecedented streak of always bumping into people who can never prove what they saw.

There is still a lot of land left unexplored even in the USA & Canada. Just like those links I put in a previous entry about the undiscovered Gorillas in Africa. Even the poachers didn't know about them and they are estimating more than 100,000 of them have just been discovered in that one area. That doubles what they thought the entire Gorilla world population was. If that many Gorillas can be found, in a region where you have people and poachers and wars going on it does mean there could be a large number of Bigfoots spread accross the US & Canada; but we can't actually place a figure on it. We haven't tracked them all down because there are no professionally funded expeditions charged with tracking them down, finding their hiding spots, using equiptment to capture them unharmed. Who goes into the woods in the US? Hunters, naturalists an campers. There's not enough people dedicated, canvassing the woods, searching for Bigfoot that you can claim they should have found one. The animal may be hiding or they're clever and avoid humans or they go to places in the wild where people do not go or fear to go. Bigfoot sightings rise and fall from year to year but the fact that people see them at all is usually by chance/accident. Saying sightings have hit an "unprecedented streak" is just not true.

Most people do not carry video-camera's or still camera's around with them. Until the age of the cell-phone that is. There's not much people can do except report what they saw. Even if you have a cell-camera the resolution is limited. How good of a picture are you going to get? In the cases of the Patterson/Gimlin film and The Paul Freeman footage you have people who set out to try and film/videotape this animal. They took time off from work, looked for the likeliest places to search, they were persistent and they came back with something which could be examined. Most people don't plan an expedition and are not prepared for the situation if it occurs.

The Patterson/Gilmin film is pretty good. There is some very clear film when Patterson stood still to get a good shot. That part of the film has been enlarged, stabilized and even scanned by laser scanner in recent years to see what details could be detected. Scientists like Dr. Grover Krantz and Dr. Jeff Meldrum have examined the film, stuck their necks out and given some interesting opinions on what is in that film. They were very impressed.

Dr. Krantz originally set out to prove all Bigfoot evidence was fake back in the 1960's. He was a University professor and would be able to tell fakes from real foot-prints. Instead of declaring it all baloney, he recognized which casts were real footprints and which were fakes. He turned his opinion around and concluded it had to be a real animal. He even went to the FBI to support his theory. Footprints have traces of lines from the individual like fingerprints. These are called Dermal Ridges. In the book Big Foot-prints he states he submitted casts to the FBI for verification. The FBI's position is: there is no known way to fake fingerprints. They stated that the casts were of real feet-not fake feet. The casts were not forgeries. They could not state these were Bigfoot foot-casts but stated they were of living persons. Dr. Krantz mentions in his book 1 FBI guy would not finish the examination because he got upset and said it just couldn't be real. That is a case of an emotional reaction. When your senses tell you something is real but you just can't accept it. Another of these FBI guys did appear on Legend Meets Science. He was an expert in human and known primate foot patterns. He went on camera to say the prints submitted in the special were authentic-not fakes-but a living person. That goes a long way in this investigation. Some of those foot-prints are 17, 18, 20, 21 inches in length. The size and wieght of the individuals that made those are almost out of the range of a human being.

And yet no one has ever found as much as a fossil of this animal. How can that be?

Finding fossils is a tricky business. Conditions have to be right for fossils to be preserved. The American West is like a dinosaur fossil treasure trove. They're always digging up stuff there and it gives the impression that fossils are easy to come by and plentiful but that is not the case. That is one location in the US where fossils are found. They are found there because we lucked out and conditions were right when the Dino's died and their remains were preserved. A dead animal has to be covered up quickly to prevent it from being eaten by scavengers or broken down by the environment. You don't find fossils all over the USA. Also those are Dino fossils. How many fossils of ancient man are discovered every year in the US? Thousands? Hundreds? Tens? One? Zero? Compare that with how many Neanderthal remains have been found here or in Europe. People are the most widely spread animals on the Earth but we don't turn up ancient human fossils all the time.

Also look at that environment. Fossils of early man have been found in dessert regions in Africa like Ethiopia. There's no tree cover, no leaves on the ground to hide things, there's no acidity in the location to break down carcasses. It is totally opposite of a forest environment where most people say Bigfoot lives. There are not many sightings or claims that Bigfoot lives in desert locations. Things left out in the open in a forest get re-absorbed by the forest.

On Monster Quest they did an experiment. They took a deer road kill and tied it down to a spot in the middle of the forest and mounted a time lapse camera to a tree right by it. They came back after something like a month to see how long before that carcass decayed and/or was devoured by scavengers. They discovered from the time-lapse camera that carcass was gone in under a week-approx. 5 days, I think. Lets say there is a Bigfoot that has just died. It's waiting in the forest to be discovered. You have 5 days to find it. If you don't already know where that carcass is how are you going to find it before it's gone? Saying there are no bones is a dead end argument.

There is also animal behavior to consider. If an animal is hurt or injured what does it instinctively do? Does it lay out in the open to be found? Or does it hide until it gets better. An animal is not going to lay about in the open in the event a predator finds it and makes it dinner. It's going to hide. Chances are if it's ill it will hide, die, decay, be eaten by bugs and scavengers attracted to the smell, and whatever is left will break down and be re-absorbed by the forest.

How could they sustain life and mate without some interaction with the environment around them showing they were there? It's just not possible.

There are things that are found which are attributed to Bigfoot. In your case if Bigfoot = Santa Claus then nothing I explain to you will change your mind but there is physical evidence. Bigfoot is not like a ghost that floats through the woods and never leaves anything behind. There are people who have a trained eye and know, when they examine certain things found in the woods, who or what left evidence. I would not be able to recognize some of these things; except for an obvious footprint. There are the footprints, hair samples, trees broken above a level that a human or bear couldn't reach, there have been scat finds, nest finds, recordings of vocalizations, screams, howls, and wood-knocking that have been caught on tape. They have in some cases vandalized cabins, attacked cars, (uspstate NY not too far from where I live), campers, knocked down tents with people inside them. These attacks are infrequent but they have happened.

johnmiic - thanks so much for all your input in this thread. I work from home and have been waiting for clients to look over proofs the last few days, so I didn't have much to do except stress out about work. This was a nice distraction, but I probably got a little carried away, because I really do like this subject.

Proofs? Do you make counterfeit money or something? I want in! You didn't get carried away. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

[Joe90]

Yeah - but every other continent with Apes has other primates, and we can't (as far as I know) confirm North American primates of any kind from our fossil record.

National Geographic discusses primate fossils in North America.

I tried googling the story you sited, but didn't come up with anything. Though a 'hairy man' could also be a guy with a rare genetic disease like Hypertrichosis. Obviously I have no idea, and I do agree that weird things happen, and as I've said before the probability of big foot, in my mind, isn't zero - just very unlikely.

I've looked on line for it too without any luck. But if you're interested in reading the report first hand, you'll be able to find it at any Public Library that has the digital/microfiche archived collection of The London Times. I'm surprised it's never been cited in Bigfoot lore.

By the way, "hairy man" is a term that has been used by not only American Aboriginal People to describe bigfoot, but also by Africans to describe the gorilla.

And yet no one has ever found as much as a fossil of this animal. How can that be? How could they sustain life and mate without some interaction with the environment around them showing they were there? It's just not possible.

The first Gigantopithecus remains described by an anthropologist were found in 1935 by Ralph von Koenigswald in a mainland China apothecary shop. Even though Gigantopithecus had existed in the fossil record, evidence had never surfaced because no trained anthropologist had ever looked for it. I suspect that if an anthropologist expressed an interest in looking for Bigfoot remains that pronouncement would most likely kill his or her credibility.

New species are being discovered all the time. Granted, they're not tall, smelly, hairy apes (well... not in the last 100 years) but there is much that we don't know of the animal kingdom.

And the region where they are allegedly inhabiting is vast. There are areas where it's understood that European-Canadians haven't stepped foot in. Aircraft go missing in these parts and are never found despite organized and intensive searches. If you can't find an aircraft that's crashed and burned in that country, it's easy to understand that something hiding there would be much more difficult to find.

So what it comes down to is just like what a child does to reason Santa. Believe if you want, but it requires faith and a special imagination for the supernatural, without any proof to reinforce it.

Arguments much like these were used to debunk the existence of the Mountain Gorilla, until it was proven to exist in 1902. I agree that it's a stretch to believe in Bigfoot -- especially when he's linked to UFO's -- but drawing parallels between belief in Bigfoot and a child's belief in Santa folklore doesn't really provide any definitive proof to the non-existence of Bigfoot.

[The Bat]

The coelacanths, which are related to lungfishes and tetrapods, were believed to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. More closely related to tetrapods than even the ray-finned fish, coelacanths were considered the "missing link" between the fish and the tetrapods until the first Latimeria specimen was found off the east coast of South Africa, off the Chalumna River (now Tyalomnqa) in 1938.[1] This discovery 65 million years after they were believed to have gone extinct makes them arguably the most well-known example of a Lazarus taxon, a species that seems to have disappeared from the fossil record only to reappear much later. Since 1938, Latimeria chalumnae have been found in the Comoros, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, and in iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa.

[stevenlore]

I've looked on line for it too without any luck. But if you're interested in reading the report first hand, you'll be able to find it at any Public Library that has the digital/microfiche archived collection of The London Times. I'm surprised it's never been cited in Bigfoot lore.
.

Joe90,

I thought I read of that story in some book years ago, but can't remember where. It sounded so familiar.

[Hector]

The coelacanths, which are related to lungfishes and tetrapods, were believed to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. More closely related to tetrapods than even the ray-finned fish, coelacanths were considered the "missing link" between the fish and the tetrapods until the first Latimeria specimen was found off the east coast of South Africa, off the Chalumna River (now Tyalomnqa) in 1938.[1] This discovery 65 million years after they were believed to have gone extinct makes them arguably the most well-known example of a Lazarus taxon, a species that seems to have disappeared from the fossil record only to reappear much later. Since 1938, Latimeria chalumnae have been found in the Comoros, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, and in iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa.

I was waiting for the first mention of the coelacanth...

One thing is a fish in vast oceans, and another is a seven foot tall bipedal creature strolling around in a First World country, surrounded by 300 million camera-carrying people.

How many people are underwater at any point throughout the world?

Aquatic lifeforms is a whole different thing than terrestrials specimens.

We can't even film an existing live giant squid swimming because of the depths and darkness of the oceans...plus unless they wash ashore, good luck finding remains of countless other sea creatures. The only way we get fossils from prehistoric sea creatures...are from terra-firma, where water used to be...they are never found in oceans.

Terrestrial specimens are so much easier to detect...for they are truly in human territory.

Could I be wrong?

Of course...but highly unlikely...

[Brazoo]

I almost thought that the coelacanth argument he was making was an argument for not believing big foot existed, because as Hector point out, this is a deep sea animal which is much harder to find than a terrestrial animal, presumably the East Coast of South Africa area was populated by less people looking for the fish back then compared to the amount of people looking for big foot now, and the main point is that even with all that they found it.

We're coming up on 50 years of hunting for big foot, in our back yard compared to the deep sea off Africa 80 years ago, and the best evidence we've found is still inconclusive. We also had a fossil of coelacanth - a concrete record of it's existence before it was found. We don't even know if big foot ever existed. Again, it seems like a good example for this side of the argument, to me.

I also want to point out that Africa is several orders of magnitude more diverse species-wise and gene-wise than any other continent. North America just doesn't compare.

[johnmiic]

I was waiting for the first mention of the coelacanth...

One thing is a fish in vast oceans, and another is a seven foot tall bipedal creature strolling around in a First World country, surrounded by 300 million camera-carrying people.

How many people are underwater at any point throughout the world?

Aquatic lifeforms is a whole different thing than terrestrials specimens.

Hec, that was a well stated point but I would disagree with you in one way. The coelacanth was caught and eaten regularly by the native people where it was found. They knew about it-they just thought it was a regular old fish to eat so they never told anyone. It just was a matter of time before it was re-discovered. In a similar fashion the Native American's have known about Bigfoot for centuries. They just never ate any Bigfoot. As their populations were wiped out so to was knowledge of the animal. What they may have know about it could've been important but their knowledge is mostly gone now. People who search for it do so in their spare time. There are not professional, big-budget expeditions out there trying to catch it. Again not everyone walks around with a camera but in the age of the cell-phone things might change and we may get lucky.

[Hector]

Good points, my friend.

[Hector]

I almost thought that the coelacanth argument he was making was an argument for not believing big foot existed, because as Hector point out, this is a deep sea animal which is much harder to find than a terrestrial animal, presumably the East Coast of South Africa area was populated by less people looking for the fish back then compared to the amount of people looking for big foot now, and the main point is that even with all that they found it.

We're coming up on 50 years of hunting for big foot, in our back yard compared to the deep sea off Africa 80 years ago, and the best evidence we've found is still inconclusive. We also had a fossil of coelacanth - a concrete record of it's existence before it was found. We don't even know if big foot ever existed. Again, it seems like a good example for this side of the argument, to me.

I also want to point out that Africa is several orders of magnitude more diverse species-wise and gene-wise than any other continent. North America just doesn't compare.

Exacto mundo.

[Joe90]

In a similar fashion the Native American's have known about Bigfoot for centuries. They just never ate any Bigfoot. As their populations were wiped out so to was knowledge of the animal.

The Aboriginal American populations were not "wiped out". Impacted, yes, but not eradicated. Just as the European population was impacted, but not eradicated, by diseases like small pox, leprosy, the plague, and cholera which were introduced from the Middle East and Asia. And Aboriginal American culture was not wiped out; it was adversely affected by European contact in the same way a culture like the Clan System of the Highland Scots was adversely affected by English Imperialism surrounding the Jacobite Uprising and the Highland Clearances. Cultures thrive, then die -- but mostly they just transform. Ask the Romans, the Iberian Celts, the Aztecs -- and Hector, my metis cousin from the sovereign Mexican territory of California.

And the Aboriginal lore surrounding the sasquatch -- the wild man -- survives to this day.

[The Bat]

I was waiting for the first mention of the coelacanth...

One thing is a fish in vast oceans, and another is a seven foot tall bipedal creature strolling around in a First World country, surrounded by 300 million camera-carrying people.

How many people are underwater at any point throughout the world?

Aquatic lifeforms is a whole different thing than terrestrials specimens.

We can't even film an existing live giant squid swimming because of the depths and darkness of the oceans...plus unless they wash ashore, good luck finding remains of countless other sea creatures. The only way we get fossils from prehistoric sea creatures...are from terra-firma, where water used to be...they are never found in oceans.

Terrestrial specimens are so much easier to detect...for they are truly in human territory.

Could I be wrong?

Of course...but highly unlikely...

My point was there are still new Species being discovered all the time, whether it be in the Ocean, or that new Species of Monkey in South American. Heck...a new missing link was recently found:

Missing link between man and apes found - Telegraph

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".