Leaderboard

First, Bodhi, I am a scientist, a licensed professional chemical engineer. I'm also a West Point graduate and served on the faculty at West Point for four years. I hold four US patents and ten international. I don't make wild claims. But I'll tell you this: I have had not just sightings of bigfoot, but encounters with them. You are entitled to your opinion that bigfoot does not exist, and others, who may not have seen a bigfoot yet believe in them, are entitled to their positions as well. In fact, your belief system, devoid of personal encounter, is exactly equal to theirs in validity. All you can do is say that you do not accept the current evidence. That does not equate to non-existence, just opinion, and when you act on that opinion you are simply proselytizing your particular belief system. That does not make you an authority. If anyone asks me, I do state that they are real, but I will tell you that from my experience they are no more animals than we are. They are a sub-aboriginal people. And I don't much care whether or not you believe me.

Hopeful skeptic here. Hopeful that sometime bona fide proof of bigfoot existence will be found and presented. That being said, if one of the foundation planks of your belief in bigfoot existence is that there is a gigantic conspiracy to keep bigfoot skeletons, remains, and other evidence secret for generations of time, I'd suggest reexamining the whole durned thing.

I believe it's so hard to believe due to the lack of non-anecdotal proof and lack of logic as to the "why". How would a Bigfoot exist so close to civilization without being noticed? Also, an even bigger question to me is why? I can only assume a BF would only choose to live near civilization if it needed to scavenge. This would indicate a sick or injured BF that could not properly hunt or gather on it's own, I believe that what BF do exist would not be anywhere near an urban environment even if in the worst of situations. The extremes they go to in order to remain hidden would not be thrown out the window just to live a bit longer by exposing themselves to an urban environment or else we'd have had a body long ago via a shooting, hit by a vehicle or simply finding one dead of natural causes.

Plenty of incredibly smart accomplished people might see things that are not there. John Nash, for example. Added to which, we have no way of verifying a single word of what you claim.

Easy-peasy if you step back a couple steps so the forest is visible through the trees. On a meta-level, it is "religion": dogmatic belief vs open minded questioning vs dogmatic disbelief. It's about hairy folks in the woods rather than some guy called J.C. nailed to a tree, but the pattern is the same. Scoftics/denialists are to bigfoot as active athiests are to that religion we can't talk about, not merely ignoring what they don't believe, but trying to destroy others' belief. They present it ... and maybe even perceive it ... as a service to others when in fact it is entirely about hiding their own insecurity from themselves .. entirely self serving, "others" are just pawns in their internal head game. ... and they get really, really huffy when you point it out to them. Anyways, we should probably get back to bones, especially bone stacks in the woods and research papers. So far all I've found are disarticulated carcasses. This idea of stacked / organized bones in the woods intrigues me. It's a new thing to keep my eyes open for. Question for BTW ... you may have answered this when I was not paying attention: in the stacks so far, do they seem to be single animal, single use, or does it look like "whatever made them" has brought several kills to the same site for consumption? My notion is that a site which has seemingly been used several times, especially if one is recent, might be good candidates for trail camera "sets". MIB

With regard to the contributions of non-scientists, the following article is interesting. I would argue that intital discovery by non-scientists is more the rule than the exception, and that scientists are largely responsible for follow-on work, exploiting the initial discovery. This is how it will go with bigfoot. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/10-amazing-archaeological-finds-discovered-by-ordinary-people-and-one-badger/ar-BBmOvMp?ocid=spartandhp Many non-scientists should be credited with their initial work after the fact.

I think those are called hobos.

""A body could not be denied"? If any one of a half dozen accounts I have read about what happened when a body is present is true, ..." They are not.

" Without evidence there is no proof. The foot dragging and nay saying that has been going on for years in the majority of the scientific community with respect to this creature is going to be hard to overcome even if a body or part thereof is brought in" That is, simply put, wrong. A body could not be denied. How you can even say something like that is beyond me. Furthermore, if your results are analyzed by other scientists and your conclusions not supported, then why would you think your paper should open the eyes of the scientific community? You need to have valid, repeatable results. So far, the one time someone in the scientific community has examined your paper, she has not agreed with your findings. You need to crank down the footer rhetoric and be a bit more objective. And the next time you write a scientific paper (if there is one), I would suggest you don't mention the spooky forest and the hairs on the back of your neck. Nonsense like that does not help your paper at all. Are you writing a bigfoot campfire story, or a scientific paper?

<Having the benefit of expert opinion behind you can sometimes help.> And you think that's going to make any difference here? If so, good luck with that.

You can adopt an aboriginal infant, raise it in a modern family, and it will become culturally indistinguishable from the adopted family. A sub-aboriginal culture has some commonality with us with regard to baseline behaviors, and has its own culture, but a full-blooded bigfoot child would be incapable of adopting our culture and functioning within it. If there is truth to the tales of Zana's children and half-bigfoot native American children who have been culturally assimilated, however, it would have to indicate that bigfoot are essentially human, possessing 23 pairs of chromosomes and the capability to interbreed with us, though still something less than aboriginal with regard to full-blooded bigfoot. Plenty of incredibly smart accomplished people might see things that are not there. John Nash, for example. Added to which, we have no way of verifying a single word of what you claim. With regard to my background and qualifications, I would happily share documentation of that with a moderator who can verify them for you. With regard to my encounters, you are entitled to your opinion. But it is only that, your opinion. I plussed you for consistency.

Here is another response from someone at the University of British Columbia after I explained that bigfoot enthusiasts think bigfoot is responsible for some of these types of tree breaks: I hadn't realized this was a thing. Well, there are plenty of trees that twist due to a number of reasons, and the twist isn't revealed until the bark is removed (or the branch broken). An example of these that are readily spotted in British Columbia's interior are ponderosa pine trees. Here's a study on the biomechanics of grain spiral in ponderosa pines: http://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/publ/spiralf.pdf (Why grain in tree trunk's spiral: a mechanical perspective). From that study, they found that if the grain angle was greater than 37°, the failure prediction (of breaking) increases dramatically for that species. That angle could be higher or lower for other species. It just seems like there are easier explanations to me for the phenomenon. Research and Biodiversity Informatics Manager University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research

Hold on. Bhodis question is exactly on topic. The topic is tree breaks, what is the evidence? What could better support the assertion that bigfoot might have twisted the limb than to collect something like unknown primate DNA from hair or skin cells found on the limb near the break? How is that not on topic?

I don't.

It goes beyond big skeletons disappearing. The fact that they existed, whatever they were, is quite adequately documented. Anyone arguing otherwise has failed to do their homework and is not to be taken seriously. Since they are purportedly in the hands of a museum, not gov't hands, the notion of a gov't coverup to hide the fact there was a gov't coverup has less strength. If they wanted to, they could sweep the whole thing under the carpet by saying "oh, look at this neat box of dusty bones found in the archive", put them on display somewhat quietly, and go on as if nothing ever happened. Whoever has them, if they weren't outright destroyed, has almost certainly done DNA testing on them by now and knows what they have. I don't see investing the effort to keep them hidden, and knowingly feeding conspiracy theories by doing so, merely to preserve the reputation of some long dead museum curator. That doesn't add up. Something has to have been learned that makes the continued effort worthwhile. It could be a lot of things. It doesn't have to be bigfoot, early European entry to the Americas, red haired aliens, etc. 'til we know what it is, we don't know, we can only speculate. It could bring ownership of resources into question. It could have some bearing on validity of treaties and tribal financial reparations. Or it might indeed be proof of bigfoot ... "we don't know" means we do not know. MIB PS: gotta "plus" JDL .. sub-aboriginal people ... I have several ideas what they might be and most of the probable ones fall somewhere under that umbrella. Nicely said!

Well, why not declare that the animal is real and start up the zoo exhibits? I see this claim made by you repeatedly; there really is evidence if the skeptics/scientists would only look. Clearly, the "evidence" has been found lacking, not just by the skeptics on this forum but the vast majority of mankind. So maybe demanding that we are all blind you might re-examine your first principles? The objectivity you claim seems more like delusion and claiming that volume equals evidence is a logical fallacy and I'm pretty sure you know that.

I don't understand what's so hard to believe about "urban Bigfoot." The dated idea that Bigfoots are these super rare creatures that only live in remote areas of the Pacific Northwest just isn't true. In my experience any many others, Bigfoots live right next to humans and neighborhoods. I had a group that literally lived a few feet in the thick woods behind a col-de-sac.

A plant pathology might not directly cause a spiral break, but could weaken the limb to the point that a spiral break can happen more easily by storm winds, snow, human agent, etc. Plant genetics might also play a role, i.e. a spiral grain. That seems far more likely to me than attributing this to something that hasn't even been proven to exist. A couple of plant pathology examples might include: ( from http://homeguides.sfgate.com/tree-diseases-cause-upwardcurving-branches-30590.html ) Plum Pockets: Affecting trees in the Prunus genus, plum pockets cause the infected tree to develop discolored, swollen branches that distort, twist and gnarl the tree’s branches and stems. Anthracnose: Anthracnose is a damaging group of diseases that generally first appear as spots that may have a tar-like appearance on leaves. When the infection reaches the branches, distortion may occur, causing the branches and stems to twist and curve upward

Snow.

Let's be equally clear and honest. You want bigfoot to be near the top of every list, that much is clear. I am discussing the evidence when I offer alternatives to "bigfoot did it". You don't want people to consider those alternatives because it steers the focus away from bigfoot as the likely culprit. You will grasp at just about anything to keep bigfoot as the probable source, even when there are far more mundane, and obvious, choices to make. What benefit does that do the conversation and evidence analysis?

Is it blanket dismissal to say that it is far more likely that these are caused by natural events ( weather, plant pathology, human agent, etc), than an unclassified animal? Or is it accept bigfoot as a likely culprit or get reported in your books? People are allowed to say they don't think bigfoot did it without risking a report. Showing evidence that could easily be explained by something other than an unclassified, 9ft bipedal ape, and then insisting or making up reasons why that ape should be on the list of likely culprits, is going to be met with resistance by some people. If there are other, far more likely scenarios, then there is no reason to constantly shoehorn bigfoot into the list of likely causes. The title of the thread, is "Tree Manipultion Wood Structures What is the Evidence"? That invites discussion. That discussion might include people who think the evidence points to mundane causes. The title of the thread is not "Bigfoot Tree Breaks: Let's Talk About How Only Bigfoot Could Have Made Them" Do you see the difference now?

Hello Crowlogic, Yeah, electricity changes things huh

Spot on wingman. Skepticism is healthy, for sure. But skepticism on the levels that are seen on here at times isn't, and it even crosses the line to become closed mindedness and that's not good at all. I've never understood why the extreme skeptic would spend much time on a forum regarding something they absolutely no way think can exist and are more so, hugely unimpressed ( and rightly so ) with the evidence presented of its existence up to now. Then I realised it wasn't Sasquatch that the extreme skeptics were interested in, it was the people that follow the subject that they are interested in, and that makes me uncomfortable. It most certainly isn't good for a healthy forum neither, make no mistake.