"Bigfoot" **Impossible** and not just non-existent?

[mike3]

Bigfoot doesn't exist because if they did they would have been captured or killed by now. Fossil evidence in the area has all the animals in the area but bigfoot.

Agreed. And with all the cameras out there, why isn't there any really good photos? There should be lots, I'd think.

 

[River]

Personal preference of the skeptic plays a role here. Some prefer to ignore woo-claims, others prefer to engage the woo-peddlers directly.

With respect to bigfoot, I am one of the latter. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I think I can do/have done more to promote critical thinking among the bigfooters through my participation at the BFF than I ever could have accomplished by not participating there. For many people, my input has not led to more game, it has led to decidedly less game and the realization that there is nothing more to bigfoot than some good storytelling, money-grubbing con-artists, and folks who need some medical care.

You are more patient than most! I do commend you on that, and for your polite demeanor with those so inclined to believe in the mighty wooness.

I just see the banter as a waste of time after years of observing it. Sometimes I think it's better served up cold and harsh. Sometimes it hits home a little better. Everyone has their preferences though, and some may be more inclined to "listen" when you're giving out honey instead of vinegar.

I understand, and am glad there are folks like yourself doing those exact things. I think there needs to be the harsher side too. Especially when confronting the "pros". There are many "pros and cons" (insert a few well known pro bigfoot phd holders here) to bigfooting

Things are never what they seem to be, or initially observed to be. A closer look/inspection reveals it's all a sham.

 

[mike3]

You are more patient than most! I do commend you on that, and for your polite demeanor with those so inclined to believe in the mighty wooness.

I just see the banter as a waste of time after years of observing it. Sometimes I think it's better served up cold and harsh. Sometimes it hits home a little better. Everyone has their preferences though, and some may be more inclined to "listen" when you're giving out honey instead of vinegar.

I understand, and am glad there are folks like yourself doing those exact things. I think there needs to be the harsher side too. Especially when confronting the "pros". There are many "pros and cons" (insert a few well known pro bigfoot phd holders here) to bigfooting

Do you have some evidence to suggest a "pro" is more likely to concede with a "harsh" approach? And what is a "harsh" approach -- you mean just making it blunt, like "you're wrong and your beliefs are all crap" or something? Mocking their belief? Do you have any examples from on this forum? Aren't "pro"s pretty much immune to any form of argument whatsoever? So mocking won't help.

And since it seems unlikely to get them to concede, then to me it seems the purpose of debate shifts from trying to convince the opponent to making a show that will hopefully be educational to the audience, so as to sway people whose minds are more open. And a mocking post is not very informative to a third party as to just why the mocked belief is wrong.

 

[River]

Do you have some evidence to suggest a "pro" is more likely to concede with a "harsh" approach? And what is a "harsh" approach -- you mean just making it blunt, like "you're wrong and your beliefs are all crap" or something? Mocking their belief? Do you have any examples from on this forum? Aren't "pro"s pretty much immune to any form of argument whatsoever? So mocking won't help.

And since it seems unlikely to get them to concede, then to me it seems the purpose of debate shifts from trying to convince the opponent to making a show that will hopefully be educational to the audience, so as to sway people whose minds are more open. And a mocking post is not very informative to a third party as to just why the mocked belief is wrong.

I have no evidence either way.

Not so much

"you're wrong and your beliefs are all crap"

But more show why it's crap. The point I was trying to make is, we may as well say "it's possible for *insert anything here within physical limitations known to date* to live in the USA. The reason why it's not possible is: There is no real evidence of its existence. What has been claimed as "evidence of bigfoot" is evidence of man playing jokes, or hoaxing for cash, or perhaps even some of them are delusional, or even mistaken identity. (on purpose? elk lay what?) The whole point is, there is no fairy dragon footy. There are humans fooling around... That was my point. We should be exposing the "pros" and "cons" instead of playing the game. It is all a sham, and should be called it. Not, well maybe its out there... we just don't know. "it's totally possible for it to be out there" Is not acceptable. (to me) "there is enough food to support bigfoot" is acceptable... (to me haha) as a skeptical viewpoint. If it were out there, we would have some evidence of it by now. It mimics other social constructs perfectly. It should be presented as such (IMHO!) and the "pros" should not be coddled.

We can prove what leaves the footprints many times over. (humans, or humans misidentifying) The woos just don't like the answer, or what has been proven. All they need to do is prove one was left by a bigfoot. We can prove many were left by men.

Films/videos? Search youtube. Nuff said.

Real actual biological evidence based on DNA or remains = 0
Specimen = 0
Authentic sasquatch anything =0

Not one piece of so called evidence has ever been attributed to a bigfoot. (other than humans misidentifying, or outright fabricating)

Humans making so called sasquatch evidence? = all of it.

The bigfooter point of view: "I hate hoaxers! they should all burn for eternity muwaha" You get the point... Yet, that is the entire phenomenon. It reminds me of this image ;-)

Bigfooters = this

 

[ponderingturtle]

At least we can agree that biomechanics makes the so called Giraffe impossible right? If it had a neck that long it would have an aneurysm if it tried to drink.

It seems an engineering challange and given the size of bipedal dinosaurs there seems nothing fundamentally impossible about bigfoot. It just doesn't actually exist.

 

[The Shrike]

[qimg]http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k273/iammenotu/gh_zpsd6da2b68.jpg[/qimg]

Also pet peeves and Sharpies.

 

[The Shrike]

At least we can agree that biomechanics makes the so called Giraffe impossible right?

Great example, but it can also open us up to special pleading arguments, e.g., "We don't know the specific muscle insertions on the long bones of bigfoots so we can't assume that they couldn't support, say 1200 lbs on a bipedal frame."

To me it's much simpler to acknowledge that we have bipedal athletes at least as big as many reports of bigfoots, so bipedalism does not make bigfoots impossible.

 

[River]

Also pet peeves and Sharpies.

Lol

 

[LTC8K6]

Great example, but it can also open us up to special pleading arguments, e.g., "We don't know the specific muscle insertions on the long bones of bigfoots so we can't assume that they couldn't support, say 1200 lbs on a bipedal frame."

To me it's much simpler to acknowledge that we have bipedal athletes at least as big as many reports of bigfoots, so bipedalism does not make bigfoots impossible.

Yao really looks nothing like typical bigfoot descriptions, though.

He's comparatively a very skinny weakling, with little weight.

 

[The Shrike]

Yao really looks nothing like typical bigfoot descriptions, though.

He's comparatively a very skinny weakling, with little weight.

Cover him with long hair and meet him in the dark woods. He's bigfoot. If you don't like Yao, Shaq has sufficient bulk. There are many examples. Check out the many pro wrestlers who have competed at over 400 lbs, several of whom have also been in the neighborhood of 7' tall.

 

[LTC8K6]

Cover him with long hair and meet him in the dark woods. He's bigfoot. If you don't like Yao, Shaq has sufficient bulk. There are many examples. Check out the many pro wrestlers who have competed at over 400 lbs, several of whom have also been in the neighborhood of 7' tall.

Most, if not all, of the humans you named, have serious problems from their extreme height and weight.

Most of them are also not very athletic or very fast, even when healthy. They run slow.

They couldn't do what bigfoot is claimed to do, even if they were very hairy and living in the woods.

 

[Drewbot]

Well, the impossibility argument only applies if the alleged bipedal Giganto/bipedal bigfoot is impossibly large to be bipedal. What I tried to point out upthread is that bipedal primates can be much larger than average humans - big enough to weigh about as much as an adult gorilla yet much taller. A silverback gorilla in the wild weighs 300–400 lbs; there are dozens of NFL linemen playing at over 300 lbs. Andre the Giant was fully bipedal at more than 500 lbs.

Thus, we've got plenty of examples of bipedal primates that are/were larger than gorillas, so the quadrapedalism of gorillas is not a function of two legs being unable to support a creature that weighs 300–400 lbs. The actual weight at which bipedalism becomes untenable is quite a bit more than that, and I'd argue that it's more than 500 lbs.

I disagree with your NBA comparison.
I am 6'6" 240 and I can't play basketball more than 2/week without my ankles hurting, or my knee feeling like it is bone on bone. I am playing on flat floors, with expensive shoes, ankle braces and motrin. You put a barefoot shaq out on a hillside in the PNW and tell him to ambush a deer as it runs along the path, I guarantee that he is going to have a very short career.

I do agree, that if a 7'8" sasquatch existed, an NBA team or Rick Pitino would have found him, and put him on the court. Therefore Bigfoot does not exist.

 

[Drewbot]

Also, we went over this all once before http://www.forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=205292

 

[ponderingturtle]

Most, if not all, of the humans you named, have serious problems from their extreme height and weight.

Most of them are also not very athletic or very fast, even when healthy. They run slow.

They couldn't do what bigfoot is claimed to do, even if they were very hairy and living in the woods.

The thing about them is that humans have not evolved for that size. You could get better results from an animal that evolved for that height. As for how fast one could run, probably not terribly fast but that is getting away from the whole idea being impossible due to bio mechanics.

 

[LTC8K6]

We know of nothing bipedal and apelike that evolved for that size. There's not a scrap of evidence for anything like that at any time, ever.

The PGF was once professionally analyzed at great cost and the result was that Patty weighed about 2 thousand pounds. 2 thousand.

Below is straight from the BFRO, which cuts Patty down to 540 pounds:

Body Size and Weight

The height average for the sampled population is 7’ 10", derived from a combination of eye witness estimates and scaling from footprints. Babies shortly after birth are small (and "ugly", as one eye witness commented) by human standards, but grow rapidly and evidently walk at an early age. Aside from infants being carried, small walking sasquatches, 3-4’ tall, have been seen. The animals reach maturity at a height of 6’-7’ and the largest, reliably estimated individuals exceed 10’. Males are taller than females, but seemingly by no more than about a foot at the median of the population.

Weight is difficult to estimate on sight and seems to vary from animal to animal as much as in people, but a tight, established relationship exists in primates between chest circumference and weight. Applying this formula, the average sasquatch can be estimated to weigh 650 lbs (Fig. 12), the Patterson sasquatch 540 lbs, and the maximum (for a 24" or larger footprint) probably to exceed 1,000 lbs.

 

[The Shrike]

Re: knee, ankle, hip problems of big guys - irrelevant. One only need to survive long enough to be able to successfully reproduce.

The question is if it's biomechanically impossible for a biped to evolve to bigfoot size. If by "bigfoot size" we mean "within the range of size reported for bigfoots", then no, it's not impossible.

 

[LTC8K6]

Well, a tyrannosaurus was bipedal...

But I think we are talking about things relatively close to human...

 

[The Shrike]

^Right. I don't understand why people have mentioned Tyrannosaurs in this thread. The counterbalancing of birds and other bipedal dinosaurs quite obviously can accommodate greater weights on two legs than can the bipedal body structure of hominids.

Analogy: How heavy can a prop plane be? "Well the Space Shuttle weighs . . . "

 

[Drewbot]

Re: knee, ankle, hip problems of big guys - irrelevant. One only need to survive long enough to be able to successfully reproduce.

The question is if it's biomechanically impossible for a biped to evolve to bigfoot size. If by "bigfoot size" we mean "within the range of size reported for bigfoots", then no, it's not impossible.

No.
They need to successfully reproduce at a greater rate than competition.

Knee ankle and hip problems of big guys is relevant. We are talking about a creature with the same basic structure of humans. There is a reason that human size is not gigantic, it is because our brains are huge, and we carry spears and extra water in our free hands. The added stresses of extra weight and long bones and joints that support them is a simple physics problem. A creature that eschews tool making, doesn't have spears or fire, would not just have to reproduce successfully, it would have to reproduce successfully at a greater rate than the humans around it, and the bears. Huge size would be an obstacle to that endeavor.

 

[LTC8K6]

If you are going to use humans at the extreme end, then I think I would like to use bigfoots reported at the extreme end...

Such as 12 foot tall ones, or the poster here who reported a 6 foot wide by 9 foot tall one, etc.

BFRO gives the average BF height as 7'10", just for a meaningless reference.