Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

[Cervelo]

As I've said to other friends before, "not judging, just saying" that you guys are letting the instigator antagonist trawler troller run you ragged. She's even using the exact same rude tactics as our national park car camping guru ChrisBFRPKY. Admit to nothing, concede nothing, claim immutable righteousness and lie through your teeth as needed. Such a wise and wonderful way to intelligently communicate with other humans in a deliberately friendly non-stressful environment.

Well said....I just don't get the motivation for such behavior.

 

[Resume]

It depends on what kind of memory it is, the circumstances surrounding the event, and the trigger for recalling the memory. What you posted doesn't apply wholesale to every situation, reconsolidation isn't a given.

Yes, we've all read books and taken courses. The books I've read suggest a rapidly unfolding incident as the one you've related is highly likely to be subject to cognitive errors.

The fact remains that scientists with lifetimes of experience all agree as to the malleability/fallibillity of memory and it is "unlikely that anyone is immune . . . ”

This includes your own memory and cognition, and your recalcitrant refusal to admit you could be wrong tells us much.

 

[carlitos]

This.

+1

 

[The Shrike]

I just don't get the motivation for such behavior.

I'm not going to be ignored, Dan!

 

[LTC8K6]

Obviously you didn't bother to look more deeply into how memory is laid down and I don't see a giant improvement in your manners. Now let's talk about the sin of omission, if you really wanted a serious discussion about this, and I'm assuming that you are familiar with SC, you might have included information about the state that would have supported a panther or cougar traveling through the area, but you didn't do that. Whatever your contributions are here, they definitely lack balance.

Have there been any documented livestock kills by cougars in SC?

A cougar would see livestock as easy prey. Far easier to get than a wild deer.

I think that might be the surest sign of cougars in any given area.

 

[William Parcher]

It's a damn shame that Jodie's cougar was stupid beyond stupid for going after the deer's butt! Had it acted like a real cougar she and her friends would have watched it suffocate the deer with the throat bite only 15 feet away from them. Lots of photos and video and of course lots of cougar DNA. It would have been a historical moment for South Carolina and the East. The media would make Jodie famous. But instead, all we have is yet another Jodie story and a forum full of rude and insulting pseudoskeptics.

If cougars really are tackling deer right next to houses in the East we should have real evidence of that instead of Jodie stories. Home security cameras (really a form of trailcam that is a yardcam) are not rude pseudoskeptics and yet they never capture what Jodie saw. Never ever.

 

[Drewbot]

This is why there are no more Cougars in the East. They forgot how to kill deer properly. The West Coast Cougars crush the neck vertebrae killing the prey quickly, those stoopid ECCougars go for the rear of the deer, and they escape into the woods.

 

[William Parcher]

Cougars have a few different killing bites for ungulates that focus on the throat, neck, or skull. If you watch them in action on YouTube the trachea crush (throat) appears to be the most common.

 

[Resume]

A dyslexic cougar?

 

[The Shrike]

Maybe it wasn't trying to kill the deer. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, saynomore.

 

[Drewbot]

Cougars have a few different killing bites for ungulates that focus on the throat, neck, or skull. If you watch them in action on YouTube the trachea crush (throat) appears to be the most common.

Yes, both are tactics, but I rarely have heard of a cougar attacking the hindquarter of any prey, maybe the cougar Jodie saw was mentally ill.

This is how a Texas website details the predation, Parcher's and my description are both related here.

Cougars usually kill larger animals, such as deer, elk, horses and cattle, by leaping on their shoulders or back and biting the neck. Claw marks on the neck, back and shoulders are characteristic of these kills. The prey animal’s neck may be broken by bites or by the animal failing from the attack. There may also be bites in the throat of these larger prey. The size of the canine tooth punctures and the type of bone damage help distinguish cougar kills from those made by coyotes, dogs and foxes. An adult cougar’s upper canine teeth are approximately 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 inches apart; the lower teeth are approximately 3/8 to 1/2 inch closer together. A cougar’s teeth are massive compared to those of the average coyote or bobcat.

http://agrilife.org/texnatwildlife/predators-and-predation/predator-species/cougars/

 

[Dinwar]

THose are successful kills, though. Predators CAN miss, or make unconventional attacks unlikely to succeed. From a purely biological perspective, how would one find data for failed attacks of this nature? By definition, the organisms would still be running around (at least for a while).

 

[Jodie]

Yes, we've all read books and taken courses. The books I've read suggest a rapidly unfolding incident as the one you've related is highly likely to be subject to cognitive errors.

The fact remains that scientists with lifetimes of experience all agree as to the malleability/fallibillity of memory and it is "unlikely that anyone is immune . . . ”

This includes your own memory and cognition, and your recalcitrant refusal to admit you could be wrong tells us much.

That's not what the research says so I can only assume you are cherry picking what you would like to apply to any given situation.

 

[Jodie]

Have there been any documented livestock kills by cougars in SC?

A cougar would see livestock as easy prey. Far easier to get than a wild deer.

I think that might be the surest sign of cougars in any given area.

Not that I heard or read about.

 

[Jodie]

It's a damn shame that Jodie's cougar was stupid beyond stupid for going after the deer's butt! Had it acted like a real cougar she and her friends would have watched it suffocate the deer with the throat bite only 15 feet away from them. Lots of photos and video and of course lots of cougar DNA. It would have been a historical moment for South Carolina and the East. The media would make Jodie famous. But instead, all we have is yet another Jodie story and a forum full of rude and insulting pseudoskeptics.

If cougars really are tackling deer right next to houses in the East we should have real evidence of that instead of Jodie stories. Home security cameras (really a form of trailcam that is a yardcam) are not rude pseudoskeptics and yet they never capture what Jodie saw. Never ever.

I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I've been to this house numerous times over the last 6 years. That was the one and only cougar sighting I've had anywhere in the wild.

 

[Resume]

That's not what the research says so I can only assume you are cherry picking what you would like to apply to any given situation.

No. I'm applying it to your anecdote; the one in which you could be mistaken in your observations they way others have been show to be mistaken. A coyote mistaken for a cougar as one example.

 

[Jodie]

Yes, both are tactics, but I rarely have heard of a cougar attacking the hindquarter of any prey, maybe the cougar Jodie saw was mentally ill.

This is how a Texas website details the predation, Parcher's and my description are both related here.



http://agrilife.org/texnatwildlife/predators-and-predation/predator-species/cougars/

Well, I don't know what to tell you about that, to assume every cougar attack in the wild is successful seems like an ill founded assumption.

 

[Jodie]

No. I'm applying it to your anecdote; the one in which you could be mistaken in your observations they way others have been show to be mistaken. A coyote mistaken for a cougar as one example.

I Know what a coyote looks like, I don't see any resemblance to a cougar. You're simply rejecting the research I linked for the sake of your argument and applying whatever you've read inappropriately.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

As I've said to other friends before, "not judging, just saying" that you guys are letting the instigator antagonist trawler troller run you ragged. She's even using the exact same rude tactics as our national park car camping guru ChrisBFRPKY. Admit to nothing, concede nothing, claim immutable righteousness and lie through your teeth as needed. Such a wise and wonderful way to intelligently communicate with other humans in a deliberately friendly non-stressful environment.

As I've said before, I think the BLAARG subject pushed this poster into attack-mode, as it rang a little too true to her. Maybe it's because she's been played by her own "friends" on more than one occasion when she put her trust in them.

Her friend has had an encounter with Bigfoot, whom she says she believes can be trusted. Then she, herself, has had a past-life memory of attending a speech made by Abe Lincoln, she's seen an extinct Cougar in a place where they shouldn't be...

There's so much woo going on with her. To make matters worse, she's continually lied about things I've said, as well as other people, and has never so much as offered to show proof for it. I've called Troll for a while now and I stand by it. She might as well be NL 2.0 at this point, imo.

How on earth can anybody continually claim that sceptics don't allow for misidentification in Bigfoot sightings when it's been all but rammed down their throat that this isn't the case?

If a person who does all of these things isn't a Troll, then they're merely taking the proverbial pish.

 

[Resume]

I Know what a coyote looks like, I don't see any resemblance to a cougar.

I know what a fisher looks like; I know what a red fox looks like, as does my wife. Yet, yet, we misidentified a red fox as a giant red fisher. We were mistaken, as you very well could have been.