Do I believe in a large North American ape, but I think belief is not really the question. That stems more from something you think is true when you really don't have the evidence or facts to support it, and that's more faith-based. I think in science, what we have to do is develop a hypothesis and then develop data and evidence to support or refute that hypothesis.
Well in science the first step is to look at the evidence. The vast majority of evidence for such creatures is anecdotal, that is solely based off eyewitness reports. A glimpse in the darkness, a distant figure in the woods. Arguably the weakest form of evidence. People can easily become deceived or lie. We know enough about cognitive psychology to know how easy it is to self-deceive. However this isn't always the case, physical evidence such as photographs and videos to footprints crop up from time to time. And lines of evidence can give some scientists pause. But then again such things can be hoaxed or explained. Blurry photographs, grainy videos and stories about hearing a noise at 3:00 AM in your tent, do not constitute evidence in science. For this reason the most valuable but also the rarest physical evidence for cryptids must be actual body parts and remains of the reported creatures. If Bigfoot exists, he bleeds, he loses his hair and must use the restroom and by the collection of such bodily structures and fluids we can obtain his DNA. I think with every cryptid the only way to completely prove its existence is through DNA or an actual living, breathing caged creature that will fully put an end to the conjecture and skepticism.
Bigfoot is interesting to me because there was a creature called gigantopithecus, an extinct Miocene ape that lived in the Pleistocene of tropical Asia: India, Nepal, Vietnam, Laos and southern China roughly 9 million to 100,000 years ago. It ate bamboo and possibly moved on all fours. Gigantopithecus was a genius with three species, the largest being Gigantopithecus blacki, which some researchers estimate was between 8 and almost 10 feet tall. It was the largest ape that ever lived. It was basically in the orangutan family. It looks almost orangutan-like but enormous and it was a real animal. And they didn't find out about this until like the 1920's. They found a tooth in an apothecary shop in China and a deceased German paleoanthropologist examined this tooth and they took him to the site where they found it and they dug up bones and they determined from the jawbone that they think it was bipedal. Most likely there was interaction between human beings and gigantopthecus for thousands and thousands of years. Scientists agree visions of large apes hit a primordial cord in many humans. If there was a thing, what's really interesting is thats where it would be. If you look at some of the parasitology that's been studied from the scat that's been found in the United States there's parasites that that are consistent with animals and people only found in southwest China which of course that's where gigantopithicus came from. Because it lived exactly where the Native Americans and all the animals that came across the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia to Alaska 20,000 years ago. Many animals navigated and migrated from China and Russia and Asia to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest several different geologic times. And that would be the natural path for that thing as well. And thats the other thing, too. When you look at the First Nation or you look at American Indian lore it's not an animal that lives down in Guadalajara in Mexico. It's an animal that's really coming from the northwest. And it has the same distribution as other animals that came over the Bering Straight from Asia. And the Northwestern forests are pretty impenetrable, too. The Washington forests. That's what makes it interesting, is the location of the area where if the thing crossed the Bering Land Bridge and it came into the United States that's exactly where it would be. It would be in that Pacific Northwest because as you walk down from Alaska to Canada. It probably looked exactly like what we think of as Bigfoot. I think it used to be a real thing because if scientists agree that this gigantopithecus was a real thing, if that is the case then it's entirely possible that at one point in time human beings were in direct contact with them on a regular basis and those stories have been passed down through generation after generation. The real question is are they still here. Because the people that are telling these stories, when we talk about people in North America it's widely accepted that most Native Americans they share a lot of genetics with people from Siberia. Because Siberia is what was close to the Bering Land Bridge, they come down, these people eventually over many, many, many, many, many thousands of years migrated into America. So those are people who would have been in contact 100,000 whatever years ago. They know that these teeth that they found from Gigantopithicus indicates that at least 100,000 years ago they were alive. Does that mean they were alive 50,000 years? Very possibly. The fact that there are sightings of a corollary to a giant ape similar to what we encounter here in North America, in Asia as well, strikes me as very interesting because there are many aspects of the environment shared by these two continents. There could still be some of them out there. Possibly remnants of a species that may be Gigantopithecus or some relative of Gigantopithecus. We've found coelacanths and we were pretty certain they'd been extinct for millions of years so yeah sure it's possible. Likely no but it is possible. My point is "If" Bigfoot exists its likely just a long thought dead primate. Maybe not gigantopithicus but maybe a close relative. In millions of years, they could have evolved in many different ways. And this is something that's accepted in the paleontological record, when anthropologist look at the history of primates they think this is a widely accepted real animal. As for the gigangtopothicus, the general consensus is that their method of locomotion resembled that of orangutans (their closest relatives), especially given their massive size. This would mean that since the last common ancestor of all extant apes when the orangutan line split from that of gorillas, chimps and humans (hominins), a separate line of bipedalism arose convergently with the line of our own, leaving little or no fossil evidence. Humans developed bipedalism as a response to moving out of an arboreal environment into open fields/plains, yet Bigfoot is said to live in the forest, so why would it have developed bipedal movement? I've heard speculation that Bigfoot is an ancient species of orangutan (depending on the location of the sighting). Perhaps one could justify the bipedalism issue by suggesting that Bigfoot is actually opportunistically bipedal like bonobos? Orangutans are able to exhibit a similar form of locomotion for short periods of time, however a comparison can be made much more easily to that of the chimpanzee. Perhaps sightings of a bipedal Bigfoot are instances of luck? There is no evidence for large primates in the past several million years in North America. In 1960 zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky, briefly described in the journal Nature a 1951 photograph of alleged yeti tracks taken by Himalayan mountaineers Michael Ward and Eric Shipton. Tschernezky concluded that the yeti walked like a human and was similar to Gigantopithecus. Subsequently, the yeti attracted short-lived scientific attention, with several more authors publishing in Nature and Science. The only scientist who continued trying to prove such monsters exist was anthropologist Grover Krantz, who continued pushing for a connection between Gigantopithecus and Bigfoot from 1970 to his death in 2002. Among the binomial names he came up with for bigfoot included "Gigantopithecus canadensis". Krantz met no support from neither mainstream science nor from amateurs who said he readily accepted clearly false evidence.
What's also interesting is there was a bunch of different kinds of humans. Homo Sapiens lived concurrently with Neanderthal man and possibly other species. About 10 years ago they found those little people on the Isle of Flores that were 3 feet tall and they existed 50,000 years ago which is incredibly recent. And this is a completely new discovery that people found, that there was a totally different species of human being that was very small with a chimp sized brain but it was human, it used tools and it lived amongst humans. For example if Homo floresiensis is proven to be a distinct species, they existed as recently as 14 thousand years ago (albeit a little small to be Bigfoot). If this species is real it seems likely that other pockets of other species existed in other parts of the world, yet to be found. They found these bones in Siberia and Australia called the Denisovans, they have been finding more since the 1970's. There's probably dozens more that they just haven't uncovered somewhere. So if they know it lived 100,000 years ago it could have easily lived 50,000 it might have lived 20,000 years ago. So if there was at one point in time some big giant hominid it's totally possible. There is the Almas, which allegedly lives in the Caucasus and is sometimes described more like a neanderthal than a giant ape. I think on the off chance it does exist, it would be more like what you are seeing with the Almas. Some form of hominid that somehow managed to avoid extinction by hiding in extremely sparsely populated wilderness. I just don't think, you'd have to eat so much to be alive today. It's like a bear, you find bear shit everywhere. Where's the Bigfoot shit? Is it eating plants or animals? It's gotta eat a lot. Some suggest Neanderthal, Homo erectus, or Homo heidelbergensis to be the creature, but no remains of any of those species have been found in the Americas. Perhaps these myths come out of very real stories of other species that early man lived next to. Passed down over thousands of years.
Primatologist John R. Napier and anthropologist Gordon Strasenburg have suggested a species of Paranthropus as a possible candidate for Bigfoot's identity, such as Paranthropus robustus, with its gorilla-like crested skull and bipedal gait —despite the fact that fossils of Paranthropus are found only in Africa. Michael Rugg of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum presented a comparison between human, Gigantopithecus, and Meganthropus skulls (reconstructions made by Grover Krantz) in episodes 131 and 132 of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum Show. He favorably compares a modern tooth suspected of coming from a Bigfoot to the Meganthropus fossil teeth, noting the worn enamel on the occlusal surface. The Meganthropus fossils originated from Asia, and the tooth was found near Santa Cruz, California.
Our galaxy and even our whole planet and are so unfathomably vast. One of the only reasons why an animal of that size could possibly be out there is the (PWN) region's ecology. We're talking about such a vast area of wilderness. When you think about how thick and densely wooded that area is. That would be a natural habitat for something that's hiding from people. In Washington State outside of Seattle around Mount Rainier the woods are so dense up there in the rainforest that if anything goes 10-20 feet its gone. You could be 100 yards away watching people from the trees and you would never allow them to get close to you. It's just some of the densest wilderness in the United States, its like a box of Q-tips. I mean it's insanely dense forest and foliage. And it's pine needles so you don't make any noise. This type of forest floor with a heavy layer of pine needs and leaf litter is a good example of why tracks don't register very well in an area like this a soft-footed mammal like a Sasquatch could walk through and the leaves would spring back and there'd be no sign of its passing at all. Over half of the state of Washington is forested. I certainly don't think that anyone has a real accurate account of what's going on in the entirety of these woods. So I could see that especially if it was living really high up in the mountains and eating shrubs. It really is like you're stepping into another dimension. And it's so rich with plant life. When you see how dense and thick and the amount of trees and foliage up there, you do start entertaining the idea that there's a possibility that some extremely endangered being could be hiding out in these depths. There's something about the amount of trees that you see up there and the density of it all and when you take that in that's when you really start considering it, thats when you really start going maybe. You've got a lot of uninhabited area, a lot of swamplands that are really hard to get into. There are countless thousands of acres of swampland between Big Cypress and the Everglades. It is not unimaginable for an animal to remain secluded in that area without being seen by a human being. The swamps of the southern US can support a wide variety of animals. It's a very dense, swampy area where a larger creature could live and not really be seen by humans. And there's a lot of wildlife. There's things for it to eat like chokecherries. From the tip of the Florida Everglades through Louisiana's swamps and bayous and into the big thicket preserve of eastern Texas, there are 1,650,000 acres of connected, mostly impenetrable forests and swamps, larger than the state of Delaware. There are over one million square miles of federally protected wilderness in the United States and 10's of millions of acres of unexplored and undocumented wilderness in North America. Many people don't appreciate just how uninhabited many parts of North America still are.
If they do exist they can only have survived alongside our species without being killed off or dominated by being far more elusive than we can readily understand or are even willing to. But this possibility requires the mind to stretch beyond its accustomed conception of the forest and its inhabitants. The problem is you can't hide from people anymore, it's just too hard. They'd see you from space. Something would catch you on a trail camera. There are probably tens of thousands of trail cams in Kentucky alone because of the sheer number of hunters active in the state. There's 4k trail cameras and camera traps everywhere now that are incredibly accurate. Its so high-definition they're super clear and the audio's clear they would catch one of those things if there was something out there. This country's incredibly difficult to get through and like most animals in that kind of terrain, they'll utilize trails where they find them. The number one way to have a Sasquatch encounter statistically is have one cross the road in front of your vehicle. Most of the sightings that have ever happened that have been recorded have happened that way. Especially as night-vision and thermal imaging improve. They actually caught two guys poaching a mother bear in her den. They were talking about how they're not going to get caught doing it. But the way they were caught was there was a 4k camera right behind them that was observing this area where this bear was denned in.
There are millions of hikers, campers, hunters, loggers, surveyors, climbers, skiers, birdwatchers, forest & park rangers, conservation officers, game wardens, wildlife biologists & researchers, search & rescue personnel, drones, satellites, airplanes, helicopters, foragers, spelunkers, off-roaders, mountain bikers, kayakers, people riding horses and walking with their dogs, construction workers that more than likely something would have turned up by now. But I think there's still enough remote wilderness out there that it's POSSIBLE for an undiscovered large primate to exist, but I think it's highly unlikely. That said, there have been a number of sightings in my area, whats more difficult to dismiss are the multiple sightings reported by some forest rangers and some local police and state troopers, individuals trained in the art of observation and attention to detail.
http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/342397/58/Upstate-New-York-a-Bigfoot-hotspot
Many of these are clearly hoaxes or self-appointed pseudo-scientists and many more are just misidentifications, illusions and hallucinations, people seeing shadows and the trees and bears or some other local animal and they want to believe is Bigfoot. Especially if you believe the hype. Or especially if you're high on mushrooms. It's Seattle, why wouldn't people be high? Everybody is on mushrooms up here. The problem with that area of the world is the fact that there's a lot of black bears up here. And black bears often times stand up on two feet. They do it all the time. Especially when they're trying to see something, they'll stand up. And they'll even walk, there's a lot of videos of them walking on two feet. These animals when they get a hurt paw they'll walk on their back legs like Bigfoot. And they look huge when they stand up. And there's variations in color. They can have a cinnamon color, they can be brown, black but all variations of the black bear. When you're in thick dense forest and you see a bear walking on two legs and you see them at the dusk it can be deceiving. These mammoth creatures were only fairly recently confirmed to exist in Kentucky. The first confirmed sighting in Kentucky was in Knott County in 1985. The real problem is the people that are into it, they want to believe so bad that they just have this crazy confirmation bias and they only look at the good things. When you meet the people that claim to have seen it, almost all of them were clearly lying. It's the same feeling I got talking to psychic readers and UFO experts: everybody wants to believe.
Although witnesses can often be very confident that their memory is accurate when identifying a suspect, the malleable nature of human memory and visual perception makes eyewitness testimony one of the most unreliable forms of evidence. Memory degrades rapidly with time (significant fading in 20 minutes), is easily overridden by circumstances. But the sheer volume of eyewitness sightings is enough to give any rational thinker pause. In fact, Bigfoot sightings and footprints have been reported since the dawn of the American nation, and Native Americans have long believed in and reported on the existence of the creature, claiming that they have lived alongside it for thousands of years. But perhaps this is all folklore.
The thing about Bigfoot that's interesting is Native Americans had more than 100 different names for that animal, between all the various tribes, over 100 different names for Sasquatch. And they don't have names for other mythical creatures. Dr. Philip Stevens professor of cultural anthropology at State University of New York in Buffalo, one of his interests is the study of belief systems which includes both religions and folklore. According to him, there is a class of folkloric belief in hairy humanoid or human-like creatures that is reported from every region of the world living undisturbed in a pristine wilderness it seems to be universal to the human cognition, the human psyche to project images of ourselves out into nature this is called anthropomorphism. This is a sociocultural phenomenon, there is something fundamentally human going on here. The fact that people all over the world are seeing similar creatures suggests very strongly not weakly very strongly now that this is something that people do something that the human mind does. I still think bigfoot/yeti/yowie sightings and legends have more to do with human psychology than the existence of a bipedal cryptid. In China, it's the Yeti. In Nepal, the Abominable Snowman. In Australia, the Yowie. In North America, Bigfoot. But to me just the hairy man is an incredibly easy to construct monster. Just take a human and add some more hair. It is too difficult to visualize. It makes sense that the most primitive and most common monsters and mythical creatures humanity would fabricate would be based around the animal they are most familiar with: humans themselves. Ecologist Robert Pyle argues that most cultures have accounts of human-like giants in their folk history, expressing a need for "some larger-than-life creature."
Real biologists have analyzed hair samples and they're all bears. And when they say that there's some human or primate DNA, it's always contaminated. The thing is, not knowing what something is doesn't mean that we do know what it is and it is Bigfoot. It could be some
other undiscovered animal, or a misidentified extant animal. I don't know what this long rod is, but that doesn't make it a magic wand. Without any other corroborating evidence one is in a very tenuous position to claim something exists because of an
unidentifiedcommon experience. What does science have to say about this? Well the largest problem scientists encounter is that although there is a lot of testing being done with every year or so somebody new claims to discovered unidentified primate DNA, almost all of these studies do not go through a normal scientific process of peer review. Most famously a DNA study headed by Dr. Melba Ketchum in a veterinary laboratory reported to the media to have analyzed 109 samples of Bigfoot specimens and verified that some belong to a new unidentified species of primate. However, the Ketchum Project was a disaster as her work was turned down by all of the scientific journals and publications as they believed her methods to be unsatisfactory and evidence did not support her conclusions provided in her paper. Ketchum later announced that her results were finally published in the DeNovo Journal of Science. The journal is… I don't want to say a fraud but the Huffington Post discovered that the journals domain had been registered autonomously only nine days before the announcement. This was the only addition to DeNovo and was listed as volume one issue one with its only content being the Ketchum paper. It seems the journal was created explicitly just to skirt around the normal methods of publication and peer review. Actual geneticists who read the paper were extremely unimpressed with the the research and no data or analysis were provided to support the claim made by Ketchum. Ketchum additionally made politically charged public statements concerning her research. Yes, I guess you could come up with an elaborate conspiracy theory such as suggesting that real scientists want to hide the truth of Bigfoot by suppressing the research of the fringe through the process of peer review. But that's the kind of thing people like Alex Jones and the Ancient Aliens guys come up with. I find it is far more likely that it is the other way around. And the Ketchum incident is just another example of why the peer review system works so well in science. Because it calls out mistakes and errors for what they are. Unethical and unscientific practices such as this are common with research about Bigfoot and other cryptids. It makes finding verifiable and objective research into Bigfoot DNA extremely difficult. But don't loose hope, there are a few neat publications of extensive research put into these samples that have been peer reviewed and double checked for accuracy. Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to Yeti, Bigfoot and other anomalous primates published in the Proceedings of Royal Society B Biological Sciences and conducted by a joint study between the University of Oxford and Lausanne Museum of Zoology is one of the examples. (
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2014.0161 ) The paper analyzed 30 hair samples attributed to what the paper dubbed anomalous primates. Samples ranged widely geographically from the Pacific Northwest of the United States to Bhutan to Russia. Hair samples were compared to gin or gene bank catalogues of know animal species DNA. Some hair samples turned out to not even be hairs at all. Some were plant material or glass fibers. As for those that were genetic material when compared to known animals all of the 30 samples belonged to known animals. All but two belonging to common animals of their respective regions, black and brown bears accounted for the vast majority of the samples. The other samples belonged to a wide range of common animals. Cow, horse, dog, wolf, coyote, sheep, goat, raccoon, porcupine, deer and tapir. Only one sample belonged to a primate, a sample from Texas belonged to homo sapient a human. There were two samples however that yielded a very unexpected result. Both were said to belong to a yeti. One came from Bhutan the other from northern India. The yeti DNA was apparently closest to that of a fossilized genetic sample of a 40,000 year old polar bear from the Ice Age. This is strange because polar bears do not currently inhabit either region. The DNA could possibly represent an ancient relic population in the region. However a later study disputed this finding and identified the hairs as belonging to an incredibly rare type of brown bear. (
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.0892) Thought this was interesting. Out of all those samples, only 18 were actually tested and provided results. And they STILL discovered what very well may be the largest land predator on earth. This does NOT rule out Sasquatch's as a possible species. Regardless the study debunked the claim that the hairs belonged to an unknown species of primate. There have been several similar published papers that have conducted and concluded on the same findings. Evolutionary history of enigmatic bears in the Tibetan Plateau-Himalaya region and identify of the yeti identified all nine yeti samples. Some hairs, some bones. Eight belonged to bears characteristic of the region, the other one was a dog. A yeti hand and scalp was reportedly held in the Pangboche monastery in Nepal before both were stolen in 1991. A finger of the hand was spared this fate and was tested by the University of Edinburgh. The finger yielded DNA of a human. The hand probably belonging to a long-dead monk. The scalp was not recovered and is likely lost somewhere in the black market trade right now. But it most likely belonged to a bear or mountain goat like so much other yeti paraphernalia. There are a few other papers that have yielded similar conclusions. As far as science is concerned it appears the ape-man legend and folklore have not been proven. Every single DNA sample of a Sasquatch or yeti has belonged to known animals. But who knows maybe one we'll get lucky with one of these jokers which have evaded us for so long. Or there's an elaborate conspiracy amongst scientists to cover up the existence of ape-men as well as the reptilian overlords that control our government and worship Satan.
There's some interesting things like in terms of dermal ridges they've found on footprints in nearly all climates and environments across North America. Dr. Jeff Meldrum has long spoken on the specific qualities of Bigfoot tracks, and as the associate professor of anatomy and anthropology as well as the adjunct associate professor of the department of anthropology at Idaho State College, he is well qualified to speak on the subject. Meldrum is an expert on foot morphology and most importantly, on locomotion in primates. Dr. Meldrum understands how primates feet are shaped by evolution, and how this affects their locomotion, and while initially skeptical on the phenomenon, his investigation into hundreds of casts has now convinced him: there is a possibility of an unidentified large primate in the American forests. Dr. Meldrum has expressed the opinion that evidence collected of alleged Bigfoot encounters warrants further evaluation and testing. Dr. Meldrum's conclusion is derived from several common qualities found among the footprint casts he considers to be authentic. The first is the identification of dermal ridges, these are patterns in the skin that are similar to that on your finger tips, and while drying plaster can sometimes form impressions that seem like dermal ridges, it is not a common phenomenon. The second piece of evidence is the presence of a midtarsal break, identified by the way that the footprints is created on the ground as the creature moves. This is a feature common to apes but not found in humans, and is caused by the foot actually bending before it takes its next stride. Next is the spacing of the footprints themselves, which is often in excess of three feet. By measuring the space between footprints, the gait, or walk, of a creature can be measured, and time and again this figure comes up to such a superhuman value that it would be extremely biologically difficult, and sometimes impossible for a human to hoax. But Dr. Meldrum is far from the only professional expert who believes in the possibility of a large, unidentified ape. Police fingerprint technician Jimmy Chilcutt became interested in the phenomenon after watching a Bigfoot documentary, when in his own words, he was shocked at the appearance of primate identifying characteristics in the plaster casts such as dermal ridges. The discovery propelled him to look into the phenomenon using his specialized technical knowledge as a fingerprint forensics specialist, and he became convinced that while some tracks were fake, others misidentified, a large enough body of them exists that pointed to the possibility of a large primate. That's pretty interesting. If these dermal ridges are fake it means whoever faked them has a deep knowledge of the anatomy of the foot. But is it proof? So I'm gonna put these dermal ridges into the *very interesting* pile.
Another thing that I'd very curious to me is where's the big trails like elephants and giraffes and big creatures even bear and moose they leave trails all the time and you can tell. You can see their hoof prints, you can see the paw prints, you can see the scat. Something that is reported to weigh as much as 900 pounds has got to leave more marks in the bush.
Interesting thing about hoaxers and trying to lay out hoaxes is that those who are getting involved are really getting pretty good at it. In some cases you look up and their tracks going straight up a hill six foot stretch stride. Now how is that possible by a human? You wear the tracks on backwards and go down the hill. Where there's a will to hoax there's a way.
There are a handful of scientists on the other side of the fence. Read up on Dr. Roderick Sprague and Dr. Grover Krantz - they were Palouse-area professors (U of Idaho and WSU, respectively) who were unabashed Sasquatch researchers. Ivan T. Sanderson was a British biologist and writer and Dr. Bernard Heuvelmas was a Belgian-French scientist, explorer, researcher and writer are often regarded as founding figures in the pseudoscience and subculture of cryptozoology. Dr. George Schaller is a mammalogist, biologist, conservationist & author. Schaller is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Dr. Russell Mittermeir is a primatologist and herpetologist. He received his PhD from Harvard university in biological anthropology. He has authored more than 300 scientific papers. He served as an adjunct professor at the Stony Brook University and a research associate at the Museum of comparative zoology at Harvard university for more than two decades. Daris Swindler was an anthropologist in a long time professor at the university of Washington, he also taught anatomy at Cornell University Medical College, the University of South Carolina and Michigan State University. Swindler was generally acknowledged as a leading primate expert, having specialized in the study of fossil ice teeth. Dr. Carleton S. Coon was an anthropologist and a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, a lecturer and professor at Harvard university and was president of the American Association of physical anthropologist. Dr. Esteban Sarmiento is a primatologist and biologist with over 10 years of teaching experience at universities around the world. Sarmiento does not suggest that the existence of Bigfoot has been established, but that its existence is possible and that claims and evidence deserve careful scrutiny. He earned a biological anthropology Ph.D. He worked as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. John Bindernagel was a biologist and wildlife researcher, he served as a wildlife advisor to the United Nations for 18 years. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Jeff Meldrum's research is interesting, he has casts. He's an anthropologist and anatomical scientist at Idaho State University. Dr. J. Robert Alley is a retired professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Alaska Southeast-Ketchikan. John Mionczynski has been a respected wildlife field biologist and ethnobotanist with the US Forest Service since the early 1970's. He was the first person to do radio-telemetry studies on bighorn sheep. The U.S. Forest Service actually gave him an award for his studies. Kathy Moskowitz Strain is a professional archaeologist and anthropologist and is currently the Forest Archaeologist (GS-12) for the U.S. Forest Service. Dr. Franklin Ruehl held a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics from UCLA. Dr. Briggs Hall is a retired Washington State wildlife science veterinarian. Dr. Russ Jones has a bachelor's degree in science, his doctor degree in chiropractic. He is a certified master naturalist and a master gardener. He wrote an award winning book called "Tracking the Stone Man" which developed new Bigfoot theories. Doug Hajicek the Producer for the hit TV series "MonsterQuest" built the camera system that filmed the first giant squid well over 54' feet long living in its natural habitat. John Willison Green was a Canadian journalist and a graduate of both the University of British Columbia and Columbia University, he compiled a database of more than 3,000 sighting and track reports. Generally the thought was that Sasquatches were small surviving populations of Gigantopithecus. But they could be silly people. Sometimes you study things, you memorize them, you pass a test but you're still silly.
How many new species discovered every year - is that including animals and creatures? Plants, plankton, microscopic organisms. There are about 9,000 known species of ants, and there are by, by some estimates, over 10,000 ant species as yet undiscovered. The jungle isn't the only place. We know almost nothing about fish 1,000 feet deep in the ocean. Crazy shit like the okapi discovered in 1901 in Central Africa. And the coelacanth, a six foot long fish found near South Africa in 1938. And the giant squid, caught for the first time in May 2005. The African mountain gorilla was the subject of great speculation and cynicism for a long time until it was proven to exist in the early 1900's. The Old World monkey species cercopithecus lomamiensis was known to locals but unknown to the international scientific community until it was discovered in 2007 and confirmed in 2012 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. New species of sub-nosed monkeys were discovered in Burma in 2010 & China in 2011 & 2015. They never found a body dead or alive but they found it. Not finding a tiny monkey in a giant rainforest the size of a continent is not the same as not finding a 900 lbs hairy biped roaming around a very highly-populated Pacific Northwest area. That's not the same.
The the thing is there's a *lot* of mountain lions but good luck finding a dead one. They're sneaky creatures. You could go your whole life not seeing them and they could be around you all the time. That's a fact. If you live in the wilderness, if you live in Montana or Colorado and you live in the woods you might see one every few years. You might. And they are everywhere. Nobody ever finds remains of most animals that are highly reclusive. Bear, mountain lion, etc nobody ever finds remains of them. Try finding a wolverine. You might run into one. Or these super sloths in the South American jungle. They think they're real, there's one scientist that has literally risked his whole reputation and his whole credibility is in demise because he decided he was going to spend his life looking for the giant sloth. And these indigenous people have pointed him in the right direction and they recognize that there's dung that seems to be sloth dung. And the giant sloth was a real creature but there's no real evidence that a giant sloth is currently alive. But the thing is the vast wilderness of the Amazon rain forest is so impenetrable it would be like trying to walk across the earth and make a good audit of all the creatures that are on it. Many species are dying on this planet right now for various reasons but there are many that are being discovered we never even knew about before. The Soala or the Asian unicorn, one of the last large mammals to be identified and discovered by science. In 1992 three sets of horns were discovered at the homes of hunters in Vietnam. DNA testing confirmed the horns belonged to as of yet an un-described species of bovid, the group that encompasses goats, cows and antelopes. It was only until 1999 a photograph of this incredibly rare and elusive animal was taken in the wild using a trail cam. The Soala had been known through its DNA collected from trophies for years before the actual creature was seen. Something possible could be done with cryptids like Bigfoot. All we would need is something as modest and simple as a single drop of blood. There is a history in Colorado of difficult-to-detect species specifically the grizzly bear and the wolverine are two animals that have consistent sighting reports, but its been very difficult to document them. And for as massive as they are, moose are pretty elusive creatures even when you're hunting them they can be really hard to find. Bigfoot could also be skilled in camafloucging itself. One of the biggest issues is why do we not find bones? Most biologists don't worry about that question because they know the answer. It is so exceedingly rare to find predator bones. A cougar will go and hide when it wants to die. Trying to find their bones is very much a needle in the haystack. I imagine if it was an intelligent being who wanted to hide bones there's hundreds of thousands of bears in the wilderness and most people have never found a bear skeleton. At least on the question of missing bones the skeptical biologists and Sasquatch advocates agree. Many believe that the creature is more intelligent than a normal primate. And they believe that they may show a level of care for their dead. Perhaps secreting them away in caves or other locations as a form of a very primitive burial rite. They could be hiding deep underground for all we know. Hundreds living in abandoned mine shafts. Who knows maybe they burry their bodies. (Neanderthals buried their dead) What is known is that the natural state of North American forests can actually work to decompose even bones and scatter them wide enough as to make their discovery difficult if not impossible. Especially if Bigfoot is a primate with a very low population. The low population theory is supported by much of the evidence gathered on the creature. With some estimates ranging at a population of only a few thousand across North America. Animals like Bengal Tigers are very much real, and have an even lower population count thanks to hunting by humans. They too rarely if ever leave remains to be discovered by humans, despite their environment being located mostly inside the most populated country in the world: India. If we were to judge the existence of Bengal Tigers by the same standard we use on Bigfoot, well the scientific community would have very little actual evidence of their existence. Many Bigfoot researchers believe that the creature not only has a very low population but one that is actively being made extinct by human activity.
More than likely a bigfoot would eat berries, leaves, roots, tubers, fish, insects, mushrooms, carrion, and easy prey. That's plenty of protein and fat. In the Sierra Nevadas there is a huge variety of edibles here, and the PNW has even more. There are old loggers here who have claimed to have seen Bigfoot. Habitat is a combination of food sources and cover. At a higher elevation it might be more suitable for a large primate. But these sources wouldn't exist mid-October through February in the elevations and regions remote enough for Mr. Squatch to avoid detection. But what about the winter? Apes hominids don't hibernate, so they must amass cache's of food to survive the lean time. Bears hibernate due to the simple fact that without that evolutionary adaptation they would likely starve. Has anyone found a cave or shelter with hundreds of pounds of food in it? Also elephants have a 65' long large intestine to absorb nutrients from the grass they eat. Ruminants have a multi chambered stomach to process similar foods. No hominid has yet been found that can do either. There are many bears get fat for winter by eating moths. If bears gorging on tiny moths is enough to fatten them up for winter, we are ignoring insects as prevalent and easily harvested high calorie food source. Bears are larger than Bigfoot and find plenty of food. Bigfoot is more intelligent and would be expect to use techniques to find even more than bears. Their population is much lower, so they would have less impact on the ecosystem. Would you really expect to find Bigfoot food caches? No. They would hide them. Above 5000' in these places will be frozen and under feet of snow. Can you imagine being 800 lbs and trying to walk across a 3' deep snow field? You're going to sink up to your ass with every step. Gonna be hard to chase down an elk without tools. There are a variety of food sources available in the winter, admittedly some are of lower quality than what they would eat during the other three seasons. If they have a good sense of smell they could find the tubers and roots. They would also be able to eat pine cambium. Pinus jeffreyi or Jeffrey pine, are probably one of the most productive sources of protein we can find. Pinecone seeds are a complete protein for humans, it's not outrageous to think that a large primate of that size can actually get most of its protein from these pines that grow locally. Other animals are known to follow the ripening of pine cones. At different elevations there's a different time when these nuts become available. Often it has to be a quick movement because birds also feed on pine nuts, they also feed on the same berries that omnivores feed on. The large trout found in lakes could be another possible food source. They could even strip trees of bark up to great heights like the Donner Party did.
http://readynutrition.com/resources/what-to-do-when-you-have-no-food_29112009/ The "not enough calorie sources for a breeding population" argument was always one of the weakest arguments against the possibility of bigfoots being real. It was mostly formed by looking at gorillas and their diet made up entirely from jungle plants, and saying there weren't enough similar flora in the PNW. I think that might stem from people previously thinking Bigfoot is closer related to a gorilla than a man.
These massive bipedal creatures, if they exist, would require a substantial range to support their massive caloric requirements, and while studies have shown that there does in fact exist enough subsistence in American forests to meet these requirements, the range of a family group of these creatures would have to be extremely large. A sufficient breeding population of an animal that large would also have a clear ecological impact on its environment, which we also do not see. With human encroachment into the wilds of North America, and activities like the damming of rivers interrupting fish supplies, these elusive North American great apes may perhaps truly be our most intelligent relatives. But are surely on the way to complete extinction. Sadly, they may fade away entirely before their existence is conclusively proven, though perhaps sometime in the future remains maybe discovered that shows that once, a great ape truly did stalk the American wilds.
Pinus jeffreyi or Jeffrey pine, are probably one of the most productive sources of protein we can find. Pinecone seeds are a complete protein for humans, it's not outrageous to think that a large primate of that size can actually get most of its protein from these pines that grow locally. Other animals are known to follow the ripening of pine cones. At different elevations there's a different time when these nuts become available. Often it has to be a quick movement because birds also feed on pine nuts, they also feed on the same berries that omnivores feed on. The large trout found in lakes could be another possible food source.
It has to do with population and propagation of the species. For bigfoot to be seen by so many people in so many locations, the population would have to number in the tens of thousands of individuals. If you use the example of a modest population of something as comparatively small as goats (when compared to a bigfoot) - these animals are textbook examples of foragers. Imagine what a herd of 500 goats would do to an area even a few square miles in size. Larger animals - bears, elephants, lions - they need a lot of food to sustain their size. A population of a species of primate that is twice the size of humans would need about double the amount of food to sustain itself. In other words, the impact of a (modest) population of 50,000 super-sized humans on the environment would be roughly equivalent to 100,000 regular-sized humans. The other argument is that there are still undiscovered tribes of humans living in the Philippines or Borneo or East Asia, and yet their populations are very small and they survive on foraging. While this is true, their populations are declining - and they are not sighted with anywhere near the frequency that bigfoot is sighted. But this is assuming that bigfoot is staying in one area. If you have a smaller population with very large ranges, or one that is possibly migratory, they will be sighted in many different places, and not have as much of an impact on the environment. Then there is a problem with a diverse territory of population. It would mean that they would have to congregate in an area to propagate the species - increasing the likelihood that they would be seen more readily and with greater frequency. I'm just using known, peer reviewed, scientific principles used in biology. We can only infer, with a high degree of accuracy, behaviors of an unknown species based on knowing the behaviors of humans and great apes. The model of a low-density population of humans, apes or a species between the two doesn't work or even approach the behavior of the two outlying species. Models aren't perfect - but they do give us a good idea how a species will (roughly) behave. The smart "man/ape" mixture that has a population that hides in the woods but forages for food doesn't fit or approach any model that is known. Creating a model to fit presumed behavior is poor scientific principles. "The smart "man/ape" mixture that has a population that hides in the woods but forages for food doesn't fit or approach any model that is known." Can you explain what you mean by this please? Why are hiding and foraging mutually exclusive? It doesn't necessarily mean that they must have to congregate to mate or reproduce. There are plenty of large animal species, big apes included, who do not gather to mate, but instead use a model of small family groups or overlapping territories. Gorillas, big cats (lions, tigers, cougars), wolves, elephants, whales. The list spans species and habitats. I can understand wanting to use known models, but locking an unknown species into known behaviors of other species is just as poor science. Are there going to be similarities between Bigfoot and great apes? Yes, most likely. But Bigfoot could also end up being just as different from great apes as humans are.
There is a tenet of biology known as the "Rule of 50", which basically says that for a species to be able to survive in the wild, you need at least 50 randomly breeding individuals in order to maintain sufficient genetic variability. If the population drops below that, then there simply won't be enough individuals left to breed, nor enough genetic variability among the surviving individuals, to enable the species to survive big events.
From almost all accounts Bigfoot appears to be nocturnal. You rarely if ever see him during the day. However, mainstream science largely disputes this claim as all known apes, including humans, are diurnal with only lesser primates possessing nocturnality. The human eye has an extremely poor nocturnal vision. Due to this the brain tends to make errors in describing things in the dark. Skeptic Joe Nickell conducted a test using cardboard cutouts in the dark and had people drive by in cars estimate how tall some were. All the estimates overestimated a considerable amount. The brain tends to not be a great eyewitness to things in the dark.
The real secret behind the legend is that it's all an elaborate hoax perpetuated by a multimillion dollar industry. The Bigfoot business has actually grown exponentially over the years. Everybody's written books, there's all kinds of radio shows, museums, roadside attractions, lots of televisions shows, movies it's become quite a large business these days. It's a free brand to use. The prospect of becoming rich and famous has always muddied the waters in terms of research and it's especially pronounced today. One of the biggest brands today in America is Bigfoot. There are entire communities built around the Bigfoot folklore. The commercialism of the Bigfoot legend began in 1967 with the publication of the so-called Patterson-Gimlin film. It commands tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees.
