First of all, there is no “undiscovered mountain country” in North America. While there are regions sufficiently remote that they are visited only by a few hunters, hikers, or researchers a year, the extend of surveying, exploring, and zoological research has pretty much assured that any novel mammalian species yet unfound must be a) small, b) localized, and c) easily confused with an adjacent known species. As I write in this [thread=395683]old thread[/thread]:*If one were to posit that any major species–say, Homo sapiens–suddenly, and without any precursor evolved from a much smaller, proto-hominid ape without any record of intermediate forms, then yes, there would be a substantial reason to doubt the veracity of that claim. There is, and I repeat, no fossil or residual evidence of any large, bipedal hominid in the Americas which uses plantigrade locomotion and is quite apparently derived from family Hominini. None whatsoever.
Furthermore, for such a species to exist historically, it should have been in competition with the Black Bear (Ursus americanus), and judging by their retiring behavior, in roughly the same numbers. We have a vast amount of evidence of the manifesetly extant Black Bear in record, but yet absolutely none of the sasquatch. And to claim that a large, upright mammal–as large and massive as the largest mammals in the Americas, short of mastadons and mammoths–still exists but remains completely hidden to even determined, if amaturish, searches and incidential evidence is an extraordinary claim, requiring equivilent evidence. Muddy, improperly cast, and often deliberately faked footprints are evidence of nothing but the willingness of people to be led by their own preconceptions. Any creature that lacks sufficient stealth to leave footprints should be easily tracked by an experienced outdoorsman. Any large herbivorous mammal is going to leave regular evidence of its existance (tracks, spoor, consumed or damaged follage). Marlon Perkins (who did join Hillary on one of his treks to find traces of the Yeti in the Himalayas) would have had that sucker on film and chasing it around with a helicopter like a lioness circling a herd of wildebeasts.
Either we have to believe that the best naturalists, zoologists, paleontologists, trackers, hunters, enthusiasts, et cetera have all collectively failed to find more than a few footprints and some fur that allegedly “can’t be identified as any known animal” (can’t be identified by whom? using what methods?) 'cause it’s so incredibly stealthy, or it doesn’t bloody exists. Lord of Occam’s razor tells us that the solution that requires fewer leaps of logic or evidence is likely to be the correct one, and I see no reason why that principle shouldn’t apply here.*
and further down:*Furthermore, there is significant question about the biomechanics of such a creature. A quick perusal online gives estimates of Bigfoot range from 300 lbs to over 2000 lbs, and heights from >6ft all the way up to 12 feet. The upper end of the scale is almost certainly untenable for a biped, certainly one derived from hominids; the hip and leg structure of a hominid simply can’t be scaled up to support that kind of weight. The lower end of the range–say, about 8ft in height and around 500 lbs–is biomechically the limit for plantigrade bipedalism without a major restructuring of the basic anatomy of a hominid.
Then there’s the evolutionary impetus for achieving such height. Even if we dispense with the issue of a lack of fossil record, there’s no explaination for a biped to have developed to such an extrema of height. Unlike, say, the giraffe–whose extended neck and accompanying phenotypical features–originally come from pressure to get leaves on the relatively sparse savanah plains of southern Africa (though the sexual dimorphism suggests that subsequent factors came into play), a primate in North America would have no conceivable reason to develop such height, especially one allegedly as intelligent as the sasquatch. A shorter, stalkier body might make sense in terms of warding off the large mammalian predators of the previous era, but that comes back to a creature more alike a gorilla or bear than an upright biped.
And the supposition that “they bury their dead”? Seriously? While there are examples of some of the more intelligent mammals performing apparent “burial” rituals (covering a body with loose sticks or rocks), there is no precident in the whole of zoology, save for the “advanced” members of Homo–modern humans, Neanderthals, perhaps Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis), for regular burial of deceased members. To assert that an entire species directly unrelated to genus Homo has developed social traditions and advanced tool-making ability sufficient to cause said species to conduct effective and undiscovered burials without a single shred of physical evidence is an absurd breach of reason. If they are advanced tool-makers, we should expect to see occasional incidence of lost or broken tools, scaled to their size and (presumed) strength. If they aren’t advanced tool-makers, they can’t be constructing the kind of underground vaults hypothesized to explain the lack of skeletal remains.
All of this is naught, though; the fact that this is an allegedly extant species but has never been reliably documented, tracked, or indentified on a heavily populated and industrialized land mass is an extraordinary claim. Before asserting that it is “likely” that Bigfoot/sasquatch/the Swamp Ape exists, you ought to have at least some small amount of credible evidence (beyond tufts of hair and murky photographs). And if you’re going to claim that they’re tool users, I bloody well want to see at least some primative tools.*
The manifest and complete lack of verifiable evidence for an apparently widespread population of unknown primate-like creatures is a pretty solid argument for the lack of validity of the claim. On the other hand, the American Black Bear (Ursus americanus) can be large, stand upright, smells bad, and is generally retiring, i.e. it fits most of the requirements for a “Sasquatch” without actually being one. My guess is that most sincere but credulous observations of Bigfoot are actually bears whose size and locomotion are exaggerated.
Stranger
Well, acting on the premise that nothing is truly discovered until a Westerner sees it, I have to say the orang-utan was still never mythical, because Western sailors reaching Borneo saw them pretty early on and did not have to take the natives’ word for it. I’ve never heard of them being mythical myself, but if they were, possibly it was among the folks back in the West who had heard highly embellished stories from returning sailors.
