[ol][li]No.[/li][li]It is highly unlikely, to the point of certainty, that a large anthropoid species that is retiring and presumably a vegetarian-leaning omnivore could exist in even the most remote areas of North America and yet not be photographed or leave definitive skeletal or scatological evidence. [/li][li]I don’t know that I’d use the word “insane,” as otherwise-functional people believe in all kinds of things I regard as incomprehensibly wrong-headed (Douglas Adams was apparently a big booster for the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis), but I’d say that they certainly haven’t looked at the evidence and alleged claim very critically. I’d give a little more credence to people who reside under #2 if they’ve only a passing knowledge of cryptozoology, but anyone with more than a high school biology class under their belt and a modicum of skepticism should be able to punch holes in Bigfoot claims big enough to let a Meganthropus climb trhough.[/ol][/li]
Stranger
Believe in Bigfoot? Hell, I’ve seen one. I even posted pics.
- No
- No, it’s not possible
- I don’t think they’re insane. They may not even be uninformed. But they’re wrong. (Sorry, Winston, but I do not believe you saw what you think you saw).
I wouldn’t shoot it. I’d see if I could take lessons from it on how to maintain one’s privacy in the 21st Century.
I vote #3. If I did see one, and had a gun, I would blast it so that I could prove to the world that I’m not crazy like Winston Smith.
Of all primates, only the Baboon and the Human thrive in areas without significant fruit resources. There are limited wild fruit resources in Europe and North America, compared with Sub-Sahaharan Africa, or Southeast Asia. So, we’re not a promising site for primates.
Most of North America has an annual hunting season for wild game, in the Autumn. Men, familiar with the outdoors and skilled in tracking & stalking wild game, go out by the thousands, every year, armed with shotgun, rifle, carbine. crossbow, or longbow. We’ve been doing this throughout the Colonial period, the Pre-Civil War Era, the Golden Age of the American West (would the Mountain Men and trappers have failed to catch one? I don’t think so.), through two World Wars, & into the current Postmodern Era. Nobody has ever bagged one yet! If they had, they could have been rich & famous overnight. I’ve lived in the Wisconsin countryside, & in the mountains of East Tennessee. I’ve known the outdoorsmen who live there, thrive, & love the back country. Believe me: if Bigfoot existed, they’d have shot one by now.
There ain’t no such animal!
- Believe in Bigfoot (in any of its various forms) —> Not really
- Think it is possible some Bigfeets exists somewhere, but unlikely —> Possible sure, but very unlikely.
- Think anyone who answers #1 is insane, and anyone who answers #2 uninformed? —> I would not think them insane, but I would question their sanity.
I would never shoot a rare and exotic creature to prove its existence. What a selfish concept. I would just have to live with the knowledge that I saw what might have been a Big Foot and I would probably not tell anyone else.
Jim
I’m going with option 3 and would not shoot.
I think what Sal means is what other people have alluded to:
There has to be a breeding population of Bigfoots to have any Bigfoots
It takes momma Bigfoot and daddy Bigfoot to make baby Bigfoot. If Momma is in the Canadian Rockies and Daddy is in the Smoky Mountains, then they will never meet. Therefore, where there is one Bigfoot, there has to be a group of Bigfoots. Also inherent in breeding population is that there has to be a genetic diversity, which requires more than one momma and daddy bigfoot. It varies from species to species, but inbreeding past a few generations usually produces nonviable offspring. Amish populations in Ohio and Pennsylvania have only been genetically isolated for 100-150 years and most show signs of genetic diseases. I actually went to a Bigfoot Convention in New Philly, Ohio and a ‘cryptozoologist’ proposed that they migrated in family groups, up to 500 miles a night. Still, its hard to imagine that Smoky Mountain Bigfoot is going to Canada to get it on with another Bigfoot.
Large animals require large ecosystems.
Also at the Bigfoot Conference I went to, I learned, through some believable science, that Bigfoot probably would weigh a half ton. If you scale up a human to be 8-10 feet tall, muscular, and deep chested, it seems reasonable. Half-ton animals require lots of food. Lots of food requires (assuming Bigfoot is an omnivore) seeds, nuts, and fruits and catchable animals. These have to be located near water and shelter, too. With the amount of human penetration into wild areas, it seems unlikely that we haven’t bumped into one and taken reliable pictures or video. If they exist, they have to be travelling through our communities and farmlands, and crossing our roads and highways. If you believe that they live in groups, then they would be that much easier to find. Half a ton of animal could hide, but could 5 tons of animals hide?
Animals die…where are the carcasses?
I find animal carcasses all the time. I saw a dead raccoon on a bluff overlooking the Wisconsin River last weekend. I’ve found bones of deer, raccoons, possum, bison, small rodents (I assume), snails, frogs, chipmunks, etc. Animals die and they leave behind remains. Where are the Bigfoot bones? Even if you believe that Bigfoots are supremely intelligent, you have to conceed that dead Bigfoots aren’t smart enought to hide. So, if you believe in Bigfoots, you have to believe that they somehow perminantly dispose of their dead, which requires them to live in groups, which makes them more easily seen.
And where are the little ones?
If there are breeding Bigfoots, there have to be baby Bigfoots and we have never seen evidence of an adult walking alongside a youth in footprints. At some point they have to learn how to walk, so we would see baby bigfoot prints alongside some big bigfoot prints. Maybe we don’t notice baby bigfoot feetprints because they look like ours, but momma has to be close by.
Anyway, I’m wandering off course, but I think that was the point of Bigfoot ecology. I am firmly in the camp of they don’t exist and I think that people who believe they exist haven’t considered the full implication of their (the bigfoots’) existence. I would not shoot one, but would do my damnest to take a credible picture.
But I would definitely go to another Bigfoot Convention, they are great fun and really make you think about what is real and what isn’t.
Put me down for 1.5.
The supposedly rational reasons for hotly denying bigfoot’s existence just don’t wash with me.
A. How could something that big hide from people? They can’t exist.
- Well, NH has a population of 10,000 moose. They are seldomly seen, and much larger than Bigfoot is supposed to be. Why couldn’t something smaller hide too? Not to mention moose manage to hide despite being not very bright.
B. We’ve never found any live or dead ones etc. They can’t exist.
- If they’re primates, perhaps they’re inteligent enough to bury/otherwise hide their dead and scat. Some non-human species do things like that. (Mammoths, for example are thought to have buried their dead and it’s debatable if elephants and some monkeys still do) as well as avoid people (these monkeys eluded dectection until recently). Maybe they live in areas too remote for humans to stumble across often. Several large mammals (mostly species of deer) were discovered in Southeast Asia in the 90s, and dozens more species of various animals and birds were also discovered within the last year. There wasn’t much scientific evidence of them before they were discovered, either. Of course, natives probably knew that they were there, but we historically disbelieve native folks. Look at the Okapi for example.
Although I’m skeptical that they’re real, I’m also not ready to rule things out.
-
Believe in Bigfoot (in any of its various forms) yes
-
Think it is possible some Bigfeets exists somewhere, but unlikely
-
Think anyone who answers #1 is insane, and anyone who answers #2 uninformed? no
I don’t think anyone with a serious interest in and respect for cryptozoology would shoot an animal to prove it is real!
But if you know how to track moose, they can readily be found. If Bigfoots actually existed, they also could be found.
I’ve never heard of mammoths burying their dead; and an elephant putting twigs on a dead individual doesn’t exactly conceal the corpse in any way. Elephant bones are easily found in areas where they occur. And you would have to suppose that Bigfoots never died by accident in areas where their group mates couldn’t bury them.
Except the vast majority of so-called “evidence” - sightings, tracks, etc, - is not from remote areas but from areas people visit regularly, and where Bigfoots could not go undetected indefinitely. This is a fundamental contradiction - there is lots of alleged evidence from areas where Bigfoots could not possibly exist, and little if any evidence from remote areas where they might possibly be able to avoid detection.
Local peoples have always known these “newly-discovered” animals very well long before they became known to scientists. Often they were made known to the outside world because a scientist came across a skull or skin that was in the possession of some local people.
This in fact is one of the most telling facts that indicate that Bigfoots do not exist. You would really think that if such a manlike creature were real, it would figure very prominently in Native American iconography and mythology. Yet there are very few depictions that can be interpreted as a Bigfoot, and even these are debatable. And the presence of manlike beings in legends doesn’t indicate they were based on real creatures any more than many other monstrous mythical beings that appear in the same legends.
One would also expect that skulls or other remains would be have been preserved by Native Americans for religious or magical reasons, just as they are from many other animals with mystical significance. The fact that no Native Americans ever seem to have found and preserved any physical evidence of Bigfoots over thousands of years of living in the same areas rather strongly suggests that no such evidence was available to be found.
Put me down for 2. I’m open to the possibility. As for the population, maybe they’re endangered. Most large animals in North America were driven to near-extinction by man. Why should Bigfoot be any different?
Also, I should note that deer manage to hide quite well, even when they’re very close to human settlements. My last apartment complex has a couple of small patches of woods (very, very small; probably no more than an acre) that nevertheless managed to support a deer or two. I saw the deer a couple of times over the course of the five years I lived there, but otherwise you never saw them.
Basically, I don’t really believe that Bigfoot exists, but the idea that a large animal can hide from humans is not nearly as unbelievable as armchair sceptics living in urban locations generally think it is.
Maybe Bigfoot is just really blurry.
</Mitch Hedberg>
Because unlike all those animals, despite many people looking for a long time, not one scrap of evidence that he ever existed has been found. When a lot of animals die off, they leave remains behind, you know?
Deer are not eight feet tall, 700 pounds, and reported to make a loud yodelling noise. Also, once again, it may be hard to see deer hiding, but there is evidence they really exist.
As Colibri aptly explained, rejection of Bigfoot is based in much more than a vague idea that big animals can’t hide from humans, or a snooty auto-skepticism.
I however am not an “armchair skeptic;” I am a professional biologist who has led biodiversity survey expeditions in remote jungle areas in Central and South America and in Africa. While I have never seen a jaguar or leopard in the wild, I have frequently found positive evidence of their presence. My mammalogist colleagues on these expeditions generally readily detect sign of all the large mammals present in the area, even the rarer and more secretive ones. And our local guides are well aware of their presence and know how to find them if need be. While some species may possibly elude detection during a short survey, this is unusual, at least for the larger species.
I in fact would take the opposite position; the idea that a large animal can hide from humans in the face of a determined search is not nearly as credible as armchair believers living in urban locations generally think it is.
Because we have evidence (fossil record, skeletal evidence buried in silt or tar, et cetera) that the Dire Wolf, Short-Faced Bear, Mammoth and Mastadon species, Smilodons, Dinofelis, American Lion, Camelops, Old World Equus species, Gastornis, Megatherium, Teratornithidae, et cetera, all existed. We can estimate how long they existed and when they became extinct. There is, on the other hand, absolutely no evidence for a large, upright biped of family Hominidae or otherwise, nor the anticipated precursors to such, anywhere in record. This means that such a population would either have to be restricted to some scarcely explored region (highly unlikely that this even exists) or they would have to be so sparse that there is no statistical likelyhood that they would have been fossilized or skeletal remains preserved; again, this is highly unlikely.
On top of that, plantigrade bipedalism appears to be such a unique means of locomotion that only one genus, Homo, has developed it, and only one remaining species, H. sapiens uses it. To find another extant species–one not derived from tribe Hominini–without any precursors in record would be astonishing beyond belief.
By weight of evidence, aliens visiting from other worlds to buzz fighter jets and mutilate cattle is more probable than the existance of a sasquatch-like creature existing in North America. Genuine fleeting sightings, when they occur, are more likely to be bears which can stand and walk (if but briefly) in plantigrade fashion on rear legs, but are more likely failures in eyewitness objectivity.
Stranger
And Colibri is my cite. 
Stranger
No
No
Frankly, I’d think of them the same way I think of anyone who believes in a god. That is, “people have a right to believe whatever they want but I happen to think it’s pretty silly.” On the scale of silliness however, believing in the Loch Ness Monster is far sillier.
Definately not.
I lean towards 3 myself but wouldn’t necessarily call anybody who believed insane. I tell you what I find interesting, the troubles with the recent rediscovery of the ivory billed woodpecker is the only thing keeping me from saying a hard three at this point. That’s a big, very distinctive bird that has been hidden for a long time and people who are out there looking can’t get that proof positive ID to the skeptic’s satisfaction. A semi-intelligent ape species that not only is elusive but actively avoids humans could possibly be even harder to find. That said, the evidence against is just overwhelming. I’d also shoot. Proof positive with a body to examine would be a scientific marvel and lead to protection and further study.
As big as an Ivorybill is, there’s still a world of difference between its detectability and that of an 800 pound terrestrial primate. Arboreal birds, unlike terrestrial mammals, can’t be tracked. And intensive searches for the Ivorybill have only been going on for a couple of years.