Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

[Mudcat]

It is NOT up to us to disprove the plausibility that Giganto etc might have migrated from Asia, it is up to the proponents of this "theory" to provide valid scientific evidence that would cause a reasonable person to consider the "theory" in the first place.

I think this is only the start of the problems for the Giganto migration hypothesis. Not only would they (Bigfoot propents) need prove they survived the journey here to America from Asia, but that they would also need to connect those creatures to Bigfoot. Which means fossil evidence, and a live or recently deceased Bigfoot specimen. None of which is any more forthcoming now than it was when the PGF was filmed.

 

[William Parcher]

Parcher,

Am I correct, is this your thesis on sightings: Well over 90 percent of sighting reports are fabrications; a very small number of the reports are people misidentifying other people as Bigfoot or people having hallucinations?

Almost correct. Of the misidentifications, I speculate that that most of those are of people but also include things like animals, shadows, trees and foliage, geologic formations and hallucinations. I regard hallucinations as misidentifications because the observer has failed to properly identify Bigfoot as actually being a hallucination.

You and I both know that your thesis is not demonstrable; it is just opinion. I assume it is reflective of how you think about the Bigfoot phenomenon, that it is primarily, overwhelmingly dishonest. So the "mostly" is a "virtually." My complaint.

Of course it's just opinion. In reality it could be that 100% of the reports are fabrications. I don't know and you don't know. It would seem logical that some would be mistakes instead of lies.

Then you can also look at a real example like the Jacobs Creature. Is that a real misidentification or a lie?

I think your take on sightings is a negative image of the True Believer's. A TB hears or reads about a sighting and thinks it must be true because no one can be that mistaken about what they said they saw. You hear or read about a sighting and think no one can be that mistaken about what they said they saw, so they must be lying. In both cases, a literalism prevails.

It's always speculation because you cannot know exactly what a person is thinking inside. It is also speculation that True Believers exist. There may be none. It would seem logical that there would be some True Believers but we don't really know that.

It might be best to evaluate encounter reports on an individual basis and to discuss them specifically. Many encounter narratives are written in a way that essentially rules out misidentification if the story is taken literally as it is written.

Sightings of anomalies can basically be tricks our minds play, where memory, imagination and expectations color how we perceive what we saw. A brief view of a standing bear or the back end of a moose moving away through brush might be converted in one's memory as a sasquatch. It is my opinion that if you (virtually) allow only the chance that people are misperceiving other people (since sasquatch are supposed to be human looking) as sighting explanations, you are looking at the issue too literally and don't allow for the profound tricks our minds can play on us.

You are describing a hypothetical skeptic/denialist and not an actual person - one who thinks that misidentifications can only result from seeing other people and cannot include animals or other things (see above).

I agree that a lot of Bigfootery is tomfoolery. There are many hoaxes and deceit mixed into the raw ingredients of the phenomena. I grant you the Ostmans, Roes, Pattersons, Marxes, Dyers and so forth. They were deceivers. I just don't think you can virtuallyreduce the entire thing to knowing dishonesty.

I don't and I don't know of anyone who does. Do you know of anybody like that?

I'll close with this appeal to authority. If you read or examine the arguments from published skeptics on the subject, such as the anthropologist David Daegling, you won't find the phenomenon of Bigfoot sightings virtually reduced to knowing lies.

I don't have any Bigfoot books so I haven't read Daegling. I have read countless excerpts and discussions of his book online. If his opinion is that Bigfootery is not predominantly composed of lies then my opinion differs from his. FWIW, I frequently criticize published "professional skeptics" because they often don't seem to properly understand what is going on with Bigfooters.

Does Daegling reduce the phenomenon to anything at all? Does he suggest that it cannot be reduced? I want you to know that I regard it as having complex explanations with a variety of reasons existing for why people are compelled to both believe and to pretend to believe.

 

[jerrywayne]

Seeing bigfoot? If you can see a giant hairy biped, then you can photograph it, film it, or shoot it.

Attributed by who?

Purported by who?

Mountains of what???

I don't attribute or purport tracks or vocalizations to anything but tomfoolery.

What film is purported to be of bigfoot by anyone who is not believer?

Your "we have" is an empty hand, imo. A bluff without the cards.

I agree that the "we have" does not trump the "we don't have." I disagree that the "we have" doesn't exist except as tomfoolery.

 

[jerrywayne]

I think where the honest misidentification reveals its true nature is in the subsequent actions. I believe this has been expressed here several times. Let's use the case of NL to illustrate:

He claims that he has seen or interacted with what he is positive is a bigfoot on more than one occasion. One event was a thermal blob, the other the now infamous candy tossing story. He has also mentioned other details of his life such as the financial burden of putting children through post secondary education. He believes, based on his comments here, bigfoot to be a creature roughly 9ft tall and very large.

When you look at these claimed interactions, and the startling ( relatively ) regularity that NL and his group can experience them, you begin to detect the dishonesty. If someone truly believed these interactions they would, I think in fair estimation, do one or more actions, such as:

Alert the authorities to the clear and present danger presented by a 9ft, hulking primate in our midst.

Make a concerted effort to capture proof and enjoy fame and fortune enough to remove all financial burdens.

Crap their drawers and never return to claimed encounter location.

And so on...

Failure to do anything remotely like the above exposes the honest misidentification as nothing more than the conjured justification for entry into the LARP. Claiming to encounter bigfoot is your ticket to the game.

I realize none of this is strictly demonstrable, but actions speak louder than words in some cases.

ETA: I don't believe that all encounters are fabricated entirely from nothing. Many, and most likely NL, are likely examples of a form of self deception. A person eager to believe and enter the game as a "knower" would be more inclined to transform the common or ambiguous into a bigfoot sighting.

I think you have some valid comments. When I was looking at the NAWAC saga, I ran across an audio of Brian Brown interviewing Kathy Strain near a nighttime campfire. At some point Brian made a reference to the fact they heard something moving in the woods nearby and believed they were being watched by a wood ape. Then they proceeded to carry on their conversation as if in no potential danger. I mentioned this surreal event on Brown's thread at BFF and he laughed it off as a result of firepower and acclimation (if I recall.)

On the other hand, have you ever noticed how devout Christians cry or weep over the death of a loved one who is also a devout Christian? Since they believe in life everlasting, and they are assured by faith that fellow Christians receive eternal life, it is hard to reconcile their profound sadness over death with their deeply held belief that they triumph over death. People act in contradiction all the time.

My sense is that while Bigfoot True Believers talk certainty, they have their secret doubts. This might explain why they don't act as a one might expect. If NL was convinced there was a grizzly bear nearby their night camp, I'm sure his reaction would be more fearful or cautious than it was with the putative sasquatch. He had his doubts.

 

[tsig]

I agree that the "we have" does not trump the "we don't have." I disagree that the "we have" doesn't exist except as tomfoolery.

If you have any "we have" that isn't tomfoolery now would be a good time to present it.

 

[Cainkane1]

Watching Tv about cryptids investigators never find them. In depth searches always fail to verify these sightings or reveal them to be something else entirely.

 

[jerrywayne]

Jerrywayne,
I happen to agree with WP about BF sightings being lies. In fact, "misidentifying _____ as bigfoot" (person, bear, whatever) is technically a lie. In a misidentification scenario, the honest answer would be something like " I saw something that looked like it might have been a bigfoot. It looked tall, hairy and like it was walking on two legs, but I didn't see it well enough to know for sure". As soon as this person who actually saw _____ (person, bear, whatever) says "I saw bigfoot" then it is a type of lie - they actually don't know what they saw. When they start adding "statements like "I know what a bear looks like...and it wasn't a bear" then they are just embellishing their lie.

So my question for you would be what percentage of the "I saw bigfoot for sure" reports do you think are real vs. lies?

As far as hallucinations go, and this is just opinion, I don't think it is a high enough number to be statistically relevant...so you can drop the "virtually" and just say "all" are lies.

An interesting point of view. I would agree that if someone says he had a clear and near sighting that lasted for a few minutes, he is not mistaken but is probably fabricating. The fleeting sightings are of a different nature. People see something quickly and they don't recognize it. Memory then applies patterns based on the individual's mental database and the unknown takes shape, and, in a few cases, a sasquatch sighting occurs. Of coarse, we can not rule out that the sighting, while not of a Bigfoot, was at such a distance or angle that someone predisposed to believe reports it as a Bigfoot sighting.

I have no idea what percentage of Bigfoot reports are honest vs. dishonest. I think the problem with this particular debate is that with the advent of the internet, people may easily falsify their experiences so that if we were to just look at Bigfoot websites and their sighting collections, we could reasonably say that the dishonest outweigh the honest substantially.

What I mostly take issue with here is the virtual absence in discussions of the most important element driving the Bigfoot story: honest belief. I just don't think you would have the phenomenon we have now if honest belief were a minor element and dishonesty the primary motivation.

 

[jerrywayne]

If you have any "we have" that isn't tomfoolery now would be a good time to present it.

Anyone who honestly believes he saw a Bigfoot, or any advocate who makes arguments he believes valid in favor of Bigfoot, to name a two examples, would not be examples of tomfoolery, if by "tomfoolery" you mean dishonesty.

 

[jerrywayne]

. . . And that's where I was in my early years as a bigfoot skeptic, participating on the BFF. I acknowledged that there's always the possibility that those claiming to see bigfoots were lying, but even I dismissed it as probably a minor component of the phenomenon. I ran with the basic claim that thousands of people think they've seen bigfoots and I devoted my energies to exploring the reasons they were were wrong about that. My perspective made me everybody's favorite skeptic at the BFF, and it was the middle ground that every pointed-headed academic takes to appear fair-minded. In doing so, I gave the 'footers exactly what they wanted: attention.

Ultimately, the claims got wilder and the knowers got louder. The inescapable solution had to be that the majority - not the minority - of the claims were complete fabrications. There are the obvious whoppers that are the hallmarks of bigfootery: Ostman, Patterson, etc. There is the scientific champion of all things bigfoot, Don Jeffrey Meldrum. There is the entire infrastructure of the BFRO - the place that is the repository for all those crazy stories. (Think about the rush for the sophomoric or the attention-starved to submit a story to the BFRO and get it posted to Moneymaker's awesome bigfoot website.) There is every habituator and knower out there. There's Ketchum and Smeja. All of these people are playing fast and loose with the facts (at least) or just bald-faced lying - soup to nuts lying.

So who is left? How many of the claims of bigfoot are actually just somebody saw something bigfooty like you suggest? It seems to me that the great majority of the annals of bigfootery are associated with the truth benders referenced above. These days, I have no problem at all assuming the lie first, but it took me years to get here. Have Daegling interact daily with some of the BFF characters for a few years and then see if he changes his tune.

Since the publication of his book, I imagine Daegling has had his share of Bigfooter nuisance.

I agree that there is some really crazy stuff going on in Bigfoot land. My point is that, generally, the belief piece of the phenomena's puzzle is ignored and replaced by the ever handy and easy to use lying piece. I doubt we would have such a blooming phenomenon if it consisted primarily of liars telling lies to other liars. Is there any other cultural phenomena that you know of that is so constructed, virtually absent sincere belief?

 

[Castro]

... When I was looking at the NAWAC saga, I ran across an audio of Brian Brown interviewing Kathy Strain near a nighttime campfire. At some point Brian made a reference to the fact they heard something moving in the woods nearby and believed they were being watched by a wood ape. Then they proceeded to carry on their conversation as if in no potential danger. I mentioned this surreal event on Brown's thread at BFF and he laughed it off as a result of firepower and acclimation (if I recall.)...

Did it surprise you and don't you think that this anecdote perfectly illustrates the idea of knowers knowing with little doubt what their bigfoot is all about?

 

[William Parcher]

Is there any other cultural phenomena that you know of that is so constructed, virtually absent sincere belief?

Available in adult sizes...

 

[The Shrike]

Available in adult sizes...

Indeed, and if you wanted to extend that sentiment to the great majority of adult humans on the planet, I'd offer mainstream Christian faith in the US as an example of people not really believing what they so vehemently profess to believe. If the millions of self-professed Christians in this country were actually following the teachings of their personal lord and savior, then they would not concern themselves with making money at all, they would share freely the entirety of their possessions, they would abhor violence in all its forms, they would not brandish weapons of any kind, they'd be absolute pacifists, and they would spend their days in prayer and altruistic service to the most destitute and ostracized people among us.

Are mainstream Christians actually LARPing for the benefits of social acceptance, tradition, chicks, etc.? Yes, I'd argue that the great majority of them are.

 

[barehl]

If you have some specific and reliable sources of information on Meganthropus, I'd love to learn more about it. As far as I have been able to discern, there is great uncertainty about the degree to which putative Meganthropus remains (again, just a few skull and jaw fragments) are distinctive enough to warrant species status, or if they just represent some upper end of the size range for Homo erectus. At least it seems clear that this form was restricted to Java.

Right but I'm sure that footers could presume a giant version of Homo Erectus just as easily since it is a primate. My point was that the Gigantopithecus jaws match the shape of a gorilla so there is no reason to believe that they walked upright. I don't think either one is possible since neither has been found in Siberia.

Actually, maybe I should be more clear about this point. You cannot develop an upright posture in an animal the size of a chimpanzee. The largest I know of is the siamang which I believe tops out at 31 lbs. So, even if hoards of great apes stampeded into North America, none of them today would be bipedal. Australopithecus afarensis only weighed 48 lbs and was already bipedal. This would be consistent with an earlier ancestor similar to a siamang. It has been pointed out that while monkeys have narrow shoulders unsuitable for swinging by the arms, apes have wider shoulders and are able to do this. So, it has been suggested that arm swinging may be a necessary element of an upright posture in primates.

 

[The Shrike]

1) Meganthropus as Homo erectus presents the additional problem of having to abandon a whole lotta human technology to develop into Bigfoot.

2) Siamangs and gibbons are ostensibly bipedal, but only because their arms are too long for knuckle walking, right?

3) Bonobos are quite comfortable walking bipedally. They're smaller than chimps, but on what do you base the statement that chimps are too big to be bipedal? I assume you mean that it's unlikely for a large animal to develop bipedalism de novo, but I know of no morphometric argument that makes such a case.

4) Snub-nosed monkeys are frequent bipedal walkers, so there doesn't seem to be any reason that bipedalism can't develop in a monkey-like (as opposed to ape-like) body plan.

 

[barehl]

1) Meganthropus as Homo erectus presents the additional problem of having to abandon a whole lotta human technology to develop into Bigfoot.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make. There is no evidence of any primate in North America (including Erectus) more recent than 40 million years ago. However, because I've never heard of a firm definition of what a bigfoot might be, I assume it is broad enough to cover anything from large Erectus to Archaeoindris and any other large primate that is discovered.

2) Siamangs and gibbons are ostensibly bipedal, but only because their arms are too long for knuckle walking, right?

It's not as simple as arm length. There are differences in the hips and spine. Siamangs can use their arms in what is called crutch walking where they place their weight on their arms and swing both both feet forward at the same time.

3) Bonobos are quite comfortable walking bipedally. They're smaller than chimps, but on what do you base the statement that chimps are too big to be bipedal? I assume you mean that it's unlikely for a large animal to develop bipedalism de novo, but I know of no morphometric argument that makes such a case.

First of all, you seem to be exaggerating bonobo bipedality. Bonobos never walk upright when in a hurry whereas gibbons do. Secondly, the typical time that bonobos do walk upright is when carrying things; other monkeys do this too. However, you will often see bonobos while carrying, walk a short distance upright and then go back to digit walking while still carrying.

I think the simplest is to distinguish between what is possible and what is an advantage. For example, peacock males have pressure to grow larger tails but this is countered by the pressure of getting eaten by tigers. Bipedal evolution is not impossible for chimpanzees but it would be countered by being less suitable to survivable. I'm sure that in a protected environment, you could eventually breed bipedal chimpanzees but I believe the pressure against it in the wild would not be surmountable.

The size issue has to do with what is a too costly evolutionary path versus what is still within limits of suitability. It would only take a small pressure for siamangs to move towards afarensis. And, they could do this without a large adaptive disadvantage. The disadvantage for a larger animal would be too much and they would go extinct.

4) Snub-nosed monkeys are frequent bipedal walkers, so there doesn't seem to be any reason that bipedalism can't develop in a monkey-like (as opposed to ape-like) body plan.

Which species? I've seen golden and black snub nosed monkeys walk on all fours like macaques.

 

[The Shrike]

I was responding to this statement from you:

Actually, maybe I should be more clear about this point. You cannot develop an upright posture in an animal the size of a chimpanzee.

This was a new idea to me so I was interested in where you might have gotten it. Apparently, this is your opinion because you did not provide any references for your source. That would be congruent evidence with the fact that I'd never heard anyone else make such a statement.

As for Meganthropus, we were discussing it as a hypothetical antecedent for stories of bigfoot, and you seemed to indicate that you knew some things about it. Again, I took the humble approach and assumed that you might have something new to add that was unknown to me. Can I assume that you are aware that most authorities consider Meganthropus to not represent a separate species (and genus!) but to merely be some unusually large individuals of Homo erectus from Java? If that's the case, then it presents an additional problem for the Meganthropus hypothesis, namely, that it would have been a human species with far more material technology (e.g., stone tools and control of fire) than bigfoots or yetis are normally claimed to exhibit.

Other items:

Bonobo walking bipedally (yes, carrying something).

Nice video of white-handed gibbon in bipedal locomotion.

Golden Snub-nosed Monkeys, although I doubt the color of the pelage has much bearing on the skeletal ability to walk upright on their hind legs. (Couldn't find a handy video of them online just now, but check out "Wild Indochina" on Netflix for the footage.)

 

[HarryHenderson]

Which brings up the notion of why Bigfoot, regularly claimed to be "so smart" he can avoid any and all electronic image capturing devices, didn't evolve into more than just a big oaf of an ape. Modern day cameras he so ******* OWNS them, yet otherwise lives a lonely, simple ("takes only memories, leaves only footprints"), nomadic life eating pine bark and wild onions and has never once used a wheel or fire or shelter or toilet paper? Even living amongst those things for the last several thousand years. Nope, everyone's lovable ape just plunders casino trash dumpsters once in awhile. Evolution at its finest baby. That is, the supposed output (present day Bigfoot) doesn't seem to match the input (Giganto[?] 100,000 years ago + evolution).

 

[The Shrike]

Well Harry, we shouldn't lose sight of those 'footers who claim bigfoots that have language, keep coyotes as pets, and follow people for hours through the woods just to toss a Good-n-Plenty into their drum circle.

 

[HarryHenderson]

Well Harry, we shouldn't lose sight of those 'footers who claim bigfoots that have language, keep coyotes as pets, and follow people for hours through the woods just to toss a Good-n-Plenty into their drum circle.

So funny. I've said before I pretty much knew in an instant I was barking up the wrong Bigfoot tree (at the old BFF) when a thread came about called "Does Bigfoot have pets?" Are you bleeping kidding me? Pets? How could I have been such a ******* idiot¹?! Right after that I started a "There Is No Bigfoot" thread and then shortly after that left. Nothing more to see there.


¹ While never a true Bigfoot "believer", the PGF had always intrigued me enough to hope some genuine "other evidence" would show up. It didn't. My actual "moment" came (in the same time period) when discussing there being Bigfoot or not, a friend said to me "What are you, a ******* idiot?" Light bulb. Apparently I was.

 

[barehl]

Anyone who honestly believes he saw a Bigfoot, or any advocate who makes arguments he believes valid in favor of Bigfoot, to name a two examples, would not be examples of tomfoolery, if by "tomfoolery" you mean dishonesty.

I'm not sure about this. When I've watched Ghost Hunters, it was clear that there was zero honesty; they knew there were no ghosts but they wanted to make money. That is quite clear. With bigfoot, it is also clear that many who are prominent in the field are also dishonest. However, I'll admit that I do waver back and forth concerning the show Finding Bigfoot. Sometimes it seems that they must be dishonest and other times it seems that Matt, Cliff, and James are the Three Stooges and think that everything that moves is bigfoot.