Well, I guess you and I have very different ideas of “good links or resources” then.
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And true, a lot of folk discount the Patterson film. I’m not convinced, myself. But even if we KNOW that it is a fake, it doesn’t mean that such a creature does not exist. Besides how does what Cliff Crook ‘thinks’ he ‘might’ have found discount anything?
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I just wanted to point out that not even everyone within the Bigfoot community believes this thing is genuine. There is considerable controversy over that issue. And considerable evidence that it’s likely a fake. Evidence that’s both circumstantial and scientific. Read the linked CSICOP story. How does what Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin “think” they filmed support anything? Crook thinks he sees something thay may or may not exist. Patterson & Gimlin think they’ve filmed something that may or may not exist. They’re equivalent. If one thing is capable of changing the status quo, so is the other.
But that’s exactly the point. There has been 50 years of investigation - much of it by people who are less than disinterested scientists, people who very much want to prove the existence of a Bigfoot, but we have nothing except equivocal and suspect evidence.
Again, no there isn’t. There is no scientifically credible evidence. Else this discussion wouldn’t be necessary.
I’ve been to the temperate forests of the Pacific northwest. I’ve camped for weeks on end in Bigfoot country many miles from the end of the last logging road. And I think Duck Duck Goose has hit the nail on the head regarding the probability of Bigfoot actually existing. The lack of the slightest shred of definitive physical evidence from an area so well known as the Pacific Northwest pretty much precludes the existence of a population of Bigfoots.
The thing about so-called “unknown” animals like the Saola in Vietnam, etc., is that these species are unknown only to outsiders. The local people always know them quite well, and know how to find them. Once they are aware that scientists are interested, it’s generally only a matter of months - not fifty years - before they are able to come up with definitive physical evidence - skull, pelt, etc. Locals in the Pacific Northwest - whether Indians or others who live in the back country - would be able to do the same with Bigfoot if it existed.
I’ve spent a great deal of time camping in rainforests, and have never seen a jaguar (I have heard them though, and very frequently found footprints), and seen tapirs only a few times. But if I were to go to an Indian village in the Darien, and hire some of the locals, I have not the slightest doubt that they would be able to come up with physical remains, most likely an actual specimen, within a few weeks.
Let’s be clear: sightings in general don’t constitute definitive evidence. There are tons of sightings from all over the U.S., including New Jersey, Texas, Florida, and suburbs in Ohio. (I really wouldn’t be too surprised if there have been reports from South Central.) Are you contending that sightings alone are valid evidence of the presence of Sasquatch? If so, its range includes the entire U.S.
The issue at hand is the lack of definitive physical evidence. (I say definitive, since while footprints are physical evidence, they are easily hoaxed. I mean bone, hair, hide, or even DNA extracted from a fecal sample.) There is no fossil evidence; there is not a shred of bone or hair preserved by Native Americans who have supposedly lived alongside these critters for thousands of years (and who would undoubtedly have regarded such remains as valuable to keep in a medicine bag); there is nothing that has ever found by a single wildlife biologist, hunter, scientist, or anyone else who has worked in these areas over more than fifty years of intensive interest in the subject.
Speaking as a professional biologist who has participated in wildlife suveys in extremely remote areas from the Peruvian Amazon to the rainforests of Africa to the Southern Alps of New Zealand, it is simply not credible that a population of large mammals (whose possible existence has been highly publicized, and which many people are interested in finding) could exist in the Pacific Northwest without any definitive physical trace being found by now.
I would love to believe Bigfoot exists, too. Unfortunately, I think the utter lack of solid evidence at this point makes their existence extremely unlikely.
I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me … 'cause there’s a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. ‘Run, he’s fuzzy, get out of here!’
I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for twenty years. A, the Rockies are a fair bit further east (our mountains are the Cascades; handy tip, buy an atlas), and B, they’re not impenetrable at all. I’ve been all over Washington, Oregon, northern California, Idaho, parts of Canada, and so on, and you don’t need a machete to get into the backcountry, just a map, a good pair of boots, and a lot of free time.
The assertions you have made regarding issues about which I have first-hand knowledge are simply false. This does not give me faith in the assertions you have made about which I do not have first-hand knowledge.
Just because you haven’t turned around doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone behind you. I’m so much further back in that queue it’s going to be aeons before I get to where you’re standing.
One way to judge what she knows would be to look at her CV. There’s not one item on it that indicates she knows anything whatever about North American ecosystems. All of her field work has been in Africa. I would also point out that her degree is in Ethology (Behavior). She is an anthropologist/animal behaviorist, not a wildlife biologist. Whatever her qualifications on chimp behavior, she has no serious expertise in the question of whether a large mammal might exist undetected in the Pacific Northwest.
In my book, this is extremely good evidence that it is in fact mythical. No other mammal besides humans would have such a wide range, if indeed it was a real animal. And such a wide range would only serve to strengthen the probability that physical evidence would have been found if it did exist.
Certainly fruits of any description are absent during the winter in the Pacific Northwest. Apes in general are dependent on the year round avialability of fruit resources, or in the case of the gorilla tender herbaceous material.
One of the major ecological arguments against the possibility of Sasquatch existing is the absence of adequate food resources for an omnivore in the winter in its supposed habitat. Bears survive there, but they hibernate during the winter (or technically, undergo dormancy.)
To survive in this habitat, a Sasquatch would have to have some adaptations not found in any other ape, or for that matter any other primate:
The ability to live on a diet composed only of mature evergreen leaves or dried vegetation. This would require some unique dietary specializations not found in any primate. The relatively few leaf-eating primates subsist mainly on fresh new leaves; mature leaves are too tough.
The ability to hibernate like a bear.
The ability to store caches of nuts or other food. But the kind of enormous caches required by an animal the size of Sasquatch have never been found.
I mentioned the Weekly World News article not to highlight the fringe elements lurking within the field of Sasquatchology, but rather because I think the article was at least in part responsible for the recent “resurgence in interest” that MelCTheFirst asked in the OP.
Pardon me, Bigfoot apologists, but this is important. Educated or uneducated, what does Ms Goodall’s opinion on the possibility of Bigfoot have to do with the reality of the lack of concrete evidence for fifty years? So she’s a believer—so what? It’s gonna take more than a few celebrity testimonials. This isn’t the Bigfoot Comedy Roast. It’s the search for repeatable, testable scientific evidence.
Sheesh, it’s Jimmy Carter vs. the Swamp UFO all over again.* Someone important says he believes, and suddenly we abandon the need for proof.
Sure. There’s a remote, distant possibility that there’s a creature out there who has been living in the Pacific Northwest and a) buries its dead so no traces are ever found, b) hides its scat, c) combs its coat of loose fur, d) weighs twenty-six stone but doesn’t appear to fight off intruders, bite enemies, or ravage the local environment for food, e) recognizes cameras and runs from them but happily cavorts before people with no recording devices, f) evades the most skilled hunters and woodsmen for at least five decades, g) makes no discernible nests, h) doesn’t kill humans or show the slightest curiosity to investigate or stalk humans, j) eats fruit but still smells like a dirty great carnivore, and k) ate DB Cooper. Not only this, but it is so real that people feel they have to make up more evidence for its existence.
This possibility is only a glimmer. What’s to discuss while we wait for a body to turn up?
Maybe it was a Swamp Rabbit. You could never tell with Carter.
I have just as much proof it’s a fake as the original film has that it’s real.
That is to say, nothing.
It’s like a religion to some people.
Just because I can’t prove it’s a fake doesn’t automatically mean it’s real. Nothing short of a live capture or at least a well preseved corpse will change my belief that’s it’s all not a load of BS.
Depends on what you mean by “Bigfoot country.” My dad spent much of his boyhood (from about age 13 to 19) in Humboldt County – right near where the term “Bigfoot” was invented by the Eureka Times. Dad spent hours and hours stomping around in the redwood forests up there and never saw then least sign of anything remotely like a Bigfoot or Sasquatch. Now, Dad joined the Navy in 1955, so he wasn’t at home for the first big kafuffle caused by Mr. Wallace in 1958. However, he had a good friend who told him later that he, along with an entire bus full of people, actually saw a Bigfoot in the woods. The bus driver spotted it first, stopped the bus, and all the passengers watched out the window as the critter ran off. Dad’s first response upon hearing this account (and knowing his friend) was to ask how much his buddy had had to drink. Allen acknowledged that he had taken a case of beer on board the bus with him and had drank the best part of it… But, again, the whole bus was supposed to have made the sighting along with him. During that same visit home, my Dad read the newspaper accounts of those early sightings – the sighting by the busload of passengers was mentioned, as was a slew of footprints. Dad also remembers reading something in those articles about evidence that one of more Bigfoot (Bigfeet?) had gotten into a logging camp and slung some full oil casks over a cliff – Dad remembers seeing pictures of the broken casks at the bottom of the cliff. Anyway, I just spoke with my dad on the phone and although he can’t exactly pin down the dates, he says that 1958ish sounds right for all this. He knows he was home on leave from the Navy (again, he joined up in 1955). He also remembers that his friend, who had himself joined the Navy at about the same time as Dad, had already been discharged after his one tour when these events occurred. So, 1958 seems entirely plausible. Maybe Allen’s busload of people saw the late Mr. Wallace filming his wife stumbling around in a gorilla suit? Or maybe they just saw a bear and, enflamed by the coverage of the mysterious footprints, decided it was a Bigfoot?
There is a lot more in the article, and some of the stuff the guy says makes me think he might just grand standing a bit like:
By the way, the guys phone number and E-mail are listed at the end of the article, you might want to give him a call and see if you can tag along. This will be a chance for skeptics to say “See I told you so!” OR For the believers to do the same thing. I am still thinking it’s hog wash, but I think it would be cool if they discover one. I really have my doubts as to weather this guy will actually spend a million buck to flush one out though.
