Bigfoot - serious, not follies

[LAL]

Big feet are seen near and at roads...
And never become roadkill.
Humans become roadkills.

I seem to have failed completely in painting a picture of what the PNW is like. Near towns you find roadkill ....... people's pets, possums (they're slow an people aim at them), occassionally a deer that leaps directly in front of an auto. There's little traffic at night when these animals seem to be most active.

Bigfeet are seen at places where people hunt...
And are never shot or fall in traps.
Humans get caught in traps and sometimes are shot by mistake.

Hunters are out in the daytime for a few weeks a year, except for Coon hunters and poachers. Other than for Beaver, I don't recall much trapping. Those traps aren't big enough to do much damage to a large animal.

These giant humanoid marsupials are smarter than humans, that´s why solid evidence is never found!

I thought you said they evolved from squirrels. Now it's Oppossums?

edited to add
Bigfeet are seen at places where people are always with cameras at hands, such as National Parks, camping sites, etc...

I don't know where you're getting your information, but that's incorrect.

>snip<

I´m getting more and more convinced I have a bright future in criptozoology

I don't think you make it as far as one of MM's expeditions.

 

[LAL]

Lu, why do so many people describe ET aliens as being skinny, gray, and having big black slanty eyes?

Is it because that's what they actually saw, or because everyone knows that that's what an ET alien looks like, and they're sure they saw an ET alien?

The fact is that eyewitness accounts are often the worst evidence.

Lu, I think the bottom of Patty's foot looks absolutely ridiculous. I haven't seen the P/G film in a while, but it was brought up in a seperate thread, and I just looked at that frame at the BFRO site.

Would you comment on this in the P/G film thread?

Why not join the board and comment yourself?

 

[LAL]

You might have had something wrong with your feet, but you are not describing the process of bunion formation, nor is the Bigfoot print evaluation consistent with bunions/bunionettes..

You do the googling..

I have. A bunionette is not quite the same thing as a bunion, but flat feet are a pre-disposer. We're talking about the bulges on the outside of the right foot, right? They're a result of the deformity.

 

[LAL]

Have none of those people hever heard about Bigfoot before they reported their sighting? The answer is, yes they have. This goes for all kinds of sightings. People see what they expect to see. Flying saucers were not saucer shaped til somebody described them so, then they were suddenly saucer shaped in nearly all sightings. Aliens were little green men till somebody described a "grey", then everybody started seeing greys.

There was no rash of sightings after the events in Skamania County in 1969, or even after Bossburg, as I recall. People's accounts were matching long before there was publicity on any of it. Even today I meet people who've never heard of this.

Could be because the large hairy hominid fits age-old descriptions of the Yeti (again seing what you expect to see), sightings of bears, and ...humans .

There are several types of Yeti. Why would people in North America only think they see one type? The resemblance is much closer to the Russian Kaptar, right down to the eating of hibernating rodents with the thumb not opposed. How many North Americans have ever heard of the Kaptar?

Bears don't walk on their hind legs for any length of time.

All that said, I do not consider it absolutely impossible that an unknown large hominid might exist, just very very unlikely.

Check out the tracks. Check out the PGF on Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (best copy available).

 

[LAL]

Would you believe .......... 37 ?

It is in the same category as the missing aircraft in the PNW ..

My God! Do you know how many pine cones disappear in the PNW every day ?

Why is it that you never see a sharp, clearly identifiable picture of a pine cone ? Oh, wait. Never mind..

Considering that Pines mostly occur east of the Cascades (except for ones planted), I wouldn't expect to find many in the forests of the PNW. Didn't I mention the climax forest is mostly Douglas Fir? Also Spruce, Hemlock..........

You're just not familiar with the area, are you?

 

[LAL]

Like LTC8K6 said, are we dealing with two different crippled Bigfoots ?

No.

Your cast doesn't match the print ( in the snow ) that LTC8K6 posted .

Variation in tracks is the mark of a living foot. In this case, the raised toe printed sometimes, sometimes it didn't. There were 1088 more tracks counted in that trackway (see the video). If they'd all been identical for both feet, that would point to a hoax. Living feet leave prints of articulating toes. They form themselves around objects. Some trackways even show half tracks where the foot was bent.

It looks like the drawing could be based on your cast though..

Krantz mostly used the casts in his studies.

 

[casebro]

I've posted this before. It's based on reports.

"Nocturnality

An actual ratio cited by Green consists of 735 daytime sightings (58%) and 540 during the night (42%), or a ratio of 1.38 to 1. If only sightings on roads are considered, the ratio shifts to 58% in favor of night sightings. This discrepancy can be interpreted as activity by the sasquatch that exposes it to being seen about 1,500 times more often at night than an even distribution would predict. "

Let me give you an alernative interpretation of this same basic set of facts: When suspicious phenomenon are seen in a well lit scenario, it becomes obvious that it is NOT bigfoot. Per Green's math, the daylight clarity reduces supposed BF sightings by 1500 to 1.

 

[William Parcher]

"Voice of Reason: The Reality of Bigfoot"

Live Science.com
July 28, 2005

The (bison) DNA result will not, of course, deter the Bigfoot believers and eyewitnesses. But it does provide an excellent example of what happens when hard evidence of a mystery is subjected to the rigors of science. This high-profile Bigfoot hair analysis by a reputable scientist also addresses a criticism often heard by monster enthusiasts: That mainstream scientists ignore Bigfoot evidence for fear of damaging their reputations in pursuit of what some would call a myth. Yet if Bigfoot or other mystery creatures do exist, they are certainly worthy of serious scientific scrutiny. At the same time, since all previous samples were found to be hoaxes, inconclusive, or from known animals, scientists' lack of enthusiasm for spending time and resources on yet more such evidence is understandable.

Article by Benjamin Radford

 

[casebro]

Questions about BF

Gorillas also live in rain forests. When 600 pound gorillas have exolved to only a 6 foot stature, what evolutionary pressure made 800 pound BF need to be 8 feet tall? And 4 feet wide? Or is his size as imaginary as the rest of him? (Girraffes don't live in rain forests. Neither do Long Horn cattle)

Except for adolescent males, other large primates live in large sociable groups. Why are so few BF sightings of groups? Are most sightings of lone immature male adolescents 8 feet tall? If so, how tall do you think a really full grown male gets?

Wouldn't this lack of social groups make procreation difficult? With the thin dispersion of these animals, I would think it nearly impossible for a fertile couple to ever come face to face. This rare breeding opportunities would increase the likelyhood of multiple births. I've never heard of a twins sighting. Or are BF costumes too expensive to make in multiples, or are midgets too costly to hire?

Why are so many BF tracks of big feet? Every species needs more children than adults in order to maintain a constant population, shouldn't there be more little feet than big feet?


And therefore, there should be lots of engorged mammaries seen.

But, If I consider Occams Cleavage: rather than all these anomalies being likely, the psychology of human hoaxers would solve all of these questions. Like who would believe human size foot prints are actually proof of "Little Big Feet", not just human feet?

 

[Hellbound]

I've posted this before. It's based on reports.

"Nocturnality

The nocturnality of the sasquatch has been questioned on occasion. This trait can be considered from a statistical standpoint. Take a hypothetical area randomly seeded with sasquatches, evenly distributed during day and night. Their apparent temporal distribution will depend on them being seen by human observers. Assume a very conservative ratio of such alert observers during daylight as compared to the hours of total darkness in the mountains to be 20:1. A daylight observer will have a circular observational area with a radius of, say, 500’, over which recognition of the subject will be unambiguous, roughly 800,000 square feet. A nighttime observer has at best the expanding cone of headlights in one direction with recognition of a grey object at 300’ and an expanding width of illumination to 100’, a sector with an area of about 15,000 square feet. Factoring in the number of observers produces a ratio of 800,000 X 20 : 15,000 X 1, or better than 1,000 : 1. This 99.9% : 0.1% ratio describes how sightings should be distributed between day and night, a number that will get more extreme if flashlights or moonlight is the alternative illumination.

An actual ratio cited by Green consists of 735 daytime sightings (58%) and 540 during the night (42%), or a ratio of 1.38 to 1. If only sightings on roads are considered, the ratio shifts to 58% in favor of night sightings. This discrepancy can be interpreted as activity by the sasquatch that exposes it to being seen about 1,500 times more often at night than an even distribution would predict. "

And if you'll look to your right, you see this fine example of what we call "Begging the Question", a logical fallacy commonly refered to as "Circular Argument". Next in our tour of logical fallacies and mental mistakes, we'll see Ad Hominem, the Strawman, and various types of special pleading.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

I don't think you make it as far as one of MM's expeditions.

You mean the high priced camping trips, where they almost always see ( at least MM or one of his regulars do ) a Bigfoot, but still haven't managed to bring home any bacon..

Of course a real sighting would have MM looking for a real job, but it doesn't look like there is any danger of that happening anytime soon..

 

[Correa Neto]

I seem to have failed completely in painting a picture of what the PNW is like. Near towns you find roadkill ....... people's pets, possums (they're slow an people aim at them), occassionally a deer that leaps directly in front of an auto. There's little traffic at night when these animals seem to be most active.

Who cares about PNW´s outstanding different conditions from the rest of USA, tougher than what can be found at rain forests in Amazonia, Vietnam and Sumatra? Specially if bigfeets are not supposed to live just in PNW, and that there are reports from areas where there are much more roads, and with much more traffic.

Your opinions, based just ion PNW are again, biased and of little use. They would be valid only IF the animal´s habitat was restricted to PNW.

Hunters are out in the daytime for a few weeks a year, except for Coon hunters and poachers. Other than for Beaver, I don't recall much trapping. Those traps aren't big enough to do much damage to a large animal.

Seems we know different types of hunters. And I see you are again using PNW as a standard. Once again its not usefull. See, you can´t also restrict your timeline to your lifetime. For how long people have been hunting bears, cougar and wolves in North America using traps? Not only at PNW, but also all along its supposed habitat. Why not a single bigfoot trapped and caught? Or a kaptar?

No, reports are not valid.

I thought you said they evolved from squirrels. Now it's Oppossums?

Given the ammount and the quality of the evidence used to make suppositions on big foot, the following (my pet theory on bigfoot) is as valid as any other.

Bigfeet are part of a genus of marsupials that initially evolved in the Pliocene or before, in South America, and by convergent evolution, they looked quite like hominids, but were bigger to avoid predation. They became bipedal for the same reasons hominids became. When the Panama land bridge appeared, the original species expanded its habitats to North America, adapted to the condition there, becoming a new species. When the Bering Land bridge appeared, this species expanded its habitat to Northeastern Asia. The original species still lives, its the mapinguari.

Opossums -marsupial mammals- have a "chemical weapon", a liquid with a horrible smell. At many sighting reports, the witnesses stated that the animal had a terrible smell. Its this smell that make dogs freeze and be scared of bigfeet. It was perfected by millenia of evolution, as a defese against terrible megafauna predators such as the saber-toothed-cats (and their evolutionary convergent equivalent marsupials from South America). Bigfeet size -and smell- are adaptations against these and other fierce predators.

Enjoy your time debunking it. You will see the very same type of argument you are using being used against you. And you´ll see how weak they are.

Bigfeet are seen at places where people are always with cameras at hands, such as National Parks, camping sites, etc...

I don't know where you're getting your information, but that's incorrect.

What´s incorrect?
There are no bigfeet sightings at National Parks and camping sites?
That people are not always with cameras at these places? OK, always is an overstatement, quite often would be better suited.

In both cases, I am correct.

I don't think you make it as far as one of MM's expeditions.

A lot of the information I wrote in this thread came from personal experience. I am not an armchair caver, inferring things from pictures, for example. I have tracked and still track animals, even if just for fun. I work mostly in the field, so I spend a lot of time in the wilderness. I´ve worked in conditions much harsher than you can imagine, and "expedition reports" such as that of Bossburg are crystal-clear evidence of how unprepared these persons were.
edited for typos and missing HTML codes

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Hunters are out in the daytime for a few weeks a year, except for Coon hunters and poachers.

And an excellent reason why a Coon hunter or poacher would probably have brought us tangible evidence of BF by now...

 

[LAL]

"Voice of Reason: The Reality of Bigfoot"

Live Science.com
July 28, 2005



Article by Benjamin Radford

Whatever they saw, it wasn't this animal:

"Not only was the hair from a bison, it was from a long-dead animal, said Coltman. The DNA was highly degraded and of very low quality, said the researcher. It was either exposed for a long period of time to moisture and sunlight, or came from a hide that had been tanned."

http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=sasquatch-not-280720005

 

[LAL]

You mean the high priced camping trips, where they almost always see ( at least MM or one of his regulars do) a Bigfoot, but still haven't managed to bring home any bacon.

You know this how?

Of course a real sighting would have MM looking for a real job, but it doesn't look like there is any danger of that happening anytime soon..

He's very selective and has a personality that might be described as overbearing. I doubt anyone on this board would be accepted (myself included).

He has a real job. He's an attorney.

 

[LAL]

And an excellent reason why a Coon hunter or poacher would probably have brought us tangible evidence of BF by now...

The ones I knew weren't even very good at bringing in coons and bear. They had dogs, vehicles, horses, booze, and didn't venture too far from town.

One of the poachers did have enough tangible evidence of bear to earn himself a jail term.

 

[LAL]

Who cares about PNW´s outstanding different conditions from the rest of USA, tougher than what can be found at rain forests in Amazonia, Vietnam and Sumatra? Specially if bigfeets are not supposed to live just in PNW, and that there are reports from areas where there are much more roads, and with much more traffic.

Such as Elkins Creek, Georgia?

I've said before I don't know how good the evidence is for those areas. The best evidence is from the PNW, and that's the area I'm most familiar with, so I choose to mostly confine my discussion to the PNW.

If you want to go on about the Yeren, Ucu, Orang Pendek, Nugoi Rung, Teh-lma, Didi, Marked Hominids or any other reported bipedal primates from other parts of the world or even the US, feel free to enlighten us.

Your opinions, based just ion PNW are again, biased and of little use. They would be valid only IF the animal´s habitat was restricted to PNW.

See above. The Southern Rockies seem to be a hot spot, and they're about as rugged and roadless as the PNW.

I already know what you think of my opinions.

Seems we know different types of hunters. And I see you are again using PNW as a standard. Once again its not usefull. See, you can´t also restrict your timeline to your lifetime. For how long people have been hunting bears, cougar and wolves in North America using traps? Not only at PNW, but also all along its supposed habitat. Why not a single bigfoot trapped and caught? Or a kaptar?

How's your French? Was this a Kaptar or another variety of Russian "Wildman"?

"en 1925, le général soviétique Topilsky put examiner le cadavre d'un homme sauvage tué par un Ouzbèque dans une caverne du Pamir, au cours de combats contre les Russes blancs :
"A première vue, j'eus l'impression d'avoir sous les yeux le cadavre d'un singe : il était en effet entièrement couvert d'une sorte de pelage. Mais je savais qu'il n'y avait pas de singes dans le Pamir, et son corps ressemblait d'ailleurs tout ß fait par la forme ß celui d'un homme. Nous avons essayé de tirer sur les poils, mais nous avons pu nous assurer qu'il ne s'agissait pas d'un quelconque déguisement. Nous avons plusieurs fois retourné le cadavre sur le ventre et sur le dos, et nous l'avons mesuré. Son examen minutieux et prolongé par notre aide-médecin établit qu'il ne pouvait s'agir en aucune façon d'un homme ordinaire.
"C'était un mâle de 1,65 m ß 1,70 m de haut. A en juger par ses poils, qui grisonnaient ß certains endroits, il était assez âgé et peut-être même vieux. On pourrait définir la couleur générale de sa laine comme brun grisâtre. Sur la partie dorsale du corps les poils étaient cependant plus bruns, alors qu'ils étaient plus gris sur le ventre. A la hauteur de la poitrine ils étaient plus longs mais plus clairsemés, tandis que sur l'abdomen ils étaient au contraire plus courts mais plus drus. Dans l'ensemble, le pelage était grossier et sans duvet sous-jacent.
"Il y avait moins de poils sur le bas des fesses, d'où l'aide-médecin déduisit que cette créature se tenait habituellement assise comme un homme. C'est sur les cuisses qu'il y avait le plus de poils. Sur les genoux, en revanche, il n'y en avait pratiquement pas : on y remarquait plutôt des callosités. Sur la jambe, la pilosité était moindre que sur la cuisse, et elle allait encore en se raréfiant vers le bas. Complètement privés de poils, le pied et sa plante étaient garnis d'une peau dure et brunâtre. Les épaules et les bras étaient étaient couverts de poils dont l'épaisseur diminuait vers la main. Sur le dos de celle-ci, il y avait encore quelques poils, mais ceux-ci étaient tout ß fait absents de la paume : la peau de celle-ci était rude et calleuse. Des poils couvraient tout le tour du cou, mais sur le visage même, il n'y en avait guère. La couleur du visage était foncée. Il n'y avait ni barbe ni vraie moustache : seuls quelques poils follets au bord de la lèvre supérieure donnaient comme une ombre de moustache.
"Sur la partie antérieure de la tête, au-dessus du front, il n'y avait pas de poils, comme dans une calvitie s'étendant vers l'arrière, mais sur la partie postérieure de la tête, des cheveux épais s'entremêlaient jusqu'ß former une sorte de feutre. Le cadavre gisait les yeux grands ouverts et les dents découvertes. Les yeux étaient de couleur sombre. Les dents étaient très grandes et régulières, mais ne différaient pas par leur forme de celles de l'homme. Le front était fuyant. Les pommettes très saillantes conféraient ß tout le visage une certaine ressemblance avec le type mongol. Le nez était écrasé, avec la racine profondément enfoncée. Les oreilles étaient glabres et, semble-t-il, plus pointues vers le haut que chez l'homme, et avec un lobe plus long. La mâchoire inférieure était très massive.
"L'être en question avait la poitrine large et puissante, et une musculature très développée. Nous n'avons pas remarqué sur le corps de notables différences de structure par rapport ß celui de l'homme. Les organes génitaux étaient d'apparence humaine. Pour ce qui est de la longueur des extrémités, nous n'avons rien remarqué de vraiment particulier, ß ceci près que la main était tout de même un peu plus large que chez l'homme et que le pied était ß la fois plus large et plus court." (d'après Heuvelmans et Porchnev 1974)."

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cryptozoo/vedettes/hom_sauv.htm

The Minnesota Iceman may have been shot in, guess where? Minnesota. It seemed to match descriptions from Viet Nam as well, however.

No, reports are not valid.

Your sweeping assumption certainly isn't either. It's always preferrable to have some physical evidence along with the sighting to help rule out misidentification.

Given the ammount and the quality of the evidence used to make suppositions on big foot, the following (my pet theory on bigfoot) is as valid as any other.

Bigfeet are part of a genus of marsupials that initially evolved in the Pliocene or before, in South America, and by convergent evolution, they looked quite like hominids, but were bigger to avoid predation. They became bipedal for the same reasons hominids became. When the Panama land bridge appeared, the original species expanded its habitats to North America, adapted to the condition there, becoming a new species. When the Bering Land bridge appeared, this species expanded its habitat to Northeastern Asia. The original species still lives, its the mapinguari.

Opossums -marsupial mammals- have a "chemical weapon", a liquid with a horrible smell. At many sighting reports, the witnesses stated that the animal had a terrible smell. Its this smell that make dogs freeze and be scared of bigfeet. It was perfected by millenia of evolution, as a defese against terrible megafauna predators such as the saber-toothed-cats (and their evolutionary convergent equivalent marsupials from South America). Bigfeet size -and smell- are adaptations against these and other fierce predators.

Enjoy your time debunking it. You will see the very same type of argument you are using being used against you. And you´ll see how weak they are.

I can already see how weak the arguments being used against me are; I don't need to debunk yours above.

You know Gorillas give off a "fear" smell?

What´s incorrect?
There are no bigfeet sightings at National Parks and camping sites?
That people are not always with cameras at these places? OK, always is an overstatement, quite often would be better suited.

In both cases, I am correct.

Nope. There are very few. Most sightings seem to be of them crossing roads. Even if a person has a camera, how many would be able to point and shoot before the creature is gone? A friend's sister saw one at dawn while getting water on a camping trip in Washington State. She didn't have time to go back to the camp for a camera, let alone try to get a good shot in poor light at a distance.

I don't think Dr. Johnson was thinking, "Lights, camera, action!" in his encounter:

"In July, a psychologist from Southern Oregon, Dr. Matthew Johnson, was hiking with his family along the coastal bluffs of Cave Junction National Monument. Suddenly he heard a low chirping noise and caught a whiff of a rank smell. He claims the peculiar sound startled him so much, he almost **** in his pants. Instead, he scurried to a nearby bush and from there, with his trousers around his ankles, Dr. Johnson claims that he caught an unobstructed view of a seven-foot tall Bigfoot which, at the time, was watching his family. "

http://portlandmercury.com/2000-09-14/feature-2.html

A lot of the information I wrote in this thread came from personal experience. I am not an armchair caver, inferring things from pictures, for example. I have tracked and still track animals, even if just for fun. I work mostly in the field, so I spend a lot of time in the wilderness. I´ve worked in conditions much harsher than you can imagine, and "expedition reports" such as that of Bossburg are crystal-clear evidence of how unprepared these persons were.
edited for typos and missing HTML codes

No one's denying that. The slick expedition was even worse and the participants ended up hating each other. They did discover four sets of tracks, however.

The Norway House incidents this year pointed up the need for a well-equipped team at the ready. That didn't happen.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

You know this how?

The same way you know about Bigfoot...

 

[casebro]

Inverse square as it applies to Big Foot

Re: Inverse square of "The incredible Giant Man": A man twice as tall would weigh 8 times as much, and have leg bones only 4 times as big in cross section. These legs would be very fragile with double the weight to support/ per cross sectional area. Sooo, Bigfoot needs proportionaly thicker legs than a man's. If a specimen weighs 800 pounds, his legs need to be 4 times as big in cross section, or twice as big in depth and frontal views. All the fuzzy pics show a critter of human proprtions. Sooo, maybe there is more than one species, you say? Then how come there are NO PICS of the 800 pounders that are proportrioned accordingly? Or at least videos of limping BFs?

 

[LAL]

Re: Inverse square as it applies to Big Foot

Re: Inverse square of "The incredible Giant Man": A man twice as tall would weigh 8 times as much, and have leg bones only 4 times as big in cross section. These legs would be very fragile with double the weight to support/ per cross sectional area. Sooo, Bigfoot needs proportionaly thicker legs than a man's. If a specimen weighs 800 pounds, his legs need to be 4 times as big in cross section, or twice as big in depth and frontal views. All the fuzzy pics show a critter of human proprtions.

No, they don't. The IM Index is like Australopiths and the shoulder joints on the animal in the PGF were a foot farther apart than the shoulder joints of a man of comparable height.

Sooo, maybe there is more than one species, you say? Then how come there are NO PICS of the 800 pounders that are proportrioned accordingly? Or at least videos of limping BFs?

You haven't seen the PGF, right?

The right thigh apparently has a rupture and her gait may be compromised.

The creature in the PGF wasn't that heavy. The 8-footers seem to be slim. And male.

"Weight and Calories

Weight estimates are notoriously difficult to arrive at by visual observation due to the cubic ratio (exponent of 2.9 in humans; McMahon and Bonner 1983) of weight to linear dimension. Human ratios, especially when applied to footprints (Robbins 1986), are clearly inappropriate. Some extrapolations have used the width of the dimensions of the heel or cubic volume of body parts (Krantz 1992), or the width of the ball of the foot. Estimated or calÂ_culated weights for the Patterson film Sasquatch (in Krantz 1992) range from 280 lb. (127 kg) (Grieve), through 350 lb. (159 kg) (Gimlin), 500 lb. (227 kg) (Patterson and Krantz), 650 lb. (295 kg) (Willoughby 1978), 800 lb. (363.6 kg) (Titmus and Green) to 2,028 lb. (920 kg) (Glickman 1997). GlickÂ_man (1997) has used digital image analysis for producing correlative meaÂ_surements between various frames of the movie, a process not readily verÂ_ified.

http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/WHF/FahrenbachArticle.htm