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Why? Because people like attention.

And I have heard it said that people who are anonymous on the internet will say things to people that they would never say in person.

It's moot anyway, there's no reason to expect that bigfoot is in danger of decline when virtually every predator and prey species out there are on the rise.

Why? Because people like attention. You know they say that people often attribute to others the same motivations the drive themselves.

Anecdotes are unprovable. " features of morphology and behavior only known to be characteristics of higher primates by primatologists." How about you list some of these that you feel are only known to primatologists? That way, we all can play along too. But you won't, will you? Because you know that it is much easier to just make an assertion and not actually support it.

There is no proof because either the animal does not exist, or no one has collected proof yet.

Wrong. They are unconfirmed because there is no proof. Provide proof, and they will be confirmed.

The thing that bothers me about the lying aspect ... is statistics. I'm painfully familiar with liars. I've got a couple family members who seem to work from the notion that you shouldn't tell the truth if a lie will do. I wish I were joking. The thing I know about liars from that context is that they are attentions ... "hounds." (Yep, I almost used a different word.) As such, each tries to outdo the others. The pattern of lies is a pattern of escalation. That's not what we see in the bigfoot report data. What we get are various bell curves. Look at Henner Fahrenbach's graphs of height, weight, foot size, stride, etc. The reports fit the pattern for a real biological species, not the pattern for lies. The only way I can see lies accounting for the reports is if the liars are coordinated, working together, deliberately. And that gets us into that whole 400 or 1000+ year conspiracy thing which is necessary if it's all lies. Even if I hadn't seen a bigfoot, the idea that you could have a conspiracy of lies crossing hundreds of years without someone breaking rank, knowing what I know about liars, is totally unbelievable. Edit to add: there ARE some anomalies in the patterns in the midwest - northeast data that point to something "different" ... what I call "bug eyed monster reports." Call it ... beyond one standard deviation. There are few enough of them it is hard to see whether they fall along a 'scatter plot' suggesting a real biological thing or whether they fit that pattern of escalation that seems to suggest lies / hoaxing / attention "hounding." If I'm somehow mistaken about what I saw ... which I absolutely don't believe ... there's still something going on. Any counter explanation that can produce the same sort of data pattern as a real biological thing points to a real fundamentally serious problem. We better HOPE it is "merely" bigfoot. MIB

And that's how goalposts are moved.

First of all logging is pretty automated now. While trees are still cut with chain saws most all the handling is done with heavy equipment. So there is not a lot of unskilled manual labor any more. And in this area, the unskilled stuff like replanting is done by Mexican crews. They are not going to run around shooting their mouth off when most are probably illegals. Then there is the natural tendency of people, even BF researchers, not to be honest about what they are doing out there in the woods. Only one of my neighbors knows what I do in the woods, and he all but said he thinks I must be nuts, because BF is not accepted to exist by science. So loggers are faced with that same social pressures not to talk about what they see. Oh they probably talk among themselves like we do but not to the general public. Most of us fear our sanity being questioned more than government black SUV's. well according the following article, they are actually in demand of up to 20k forestry workers by 2020 "https://www2.viu.ca/forestry/Careers/Forestry-in-BC.asp" And by your account, trees are cut by chainsaw (human operated), and are picked up via heavy equipment (operated by humans) Where is the automation? As far as I know, and feel free to correct me ( I love learning knew things ) there are no "automated" machines that cut and collect trees on a mountain side. We are still using humans or human operated apparatus to cut a log and a human apparatus to collect the log. According to "http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1757e/i1757e.pdf" There were 234,000 forestry employees in N.A and Central America. Sure, some of those are not in the "BF" area as we know it, but even a percentage of that still constitute a large number of people that could report a BF. If they are covered up by forestry workers as we are lead to believe. Are we really to believe that, out of that many people, none of them, based on fear of future employment, come forward to admit that big business, aka forestry, has threatened their life and or livelihood?

i'd suspect the university and the good doctor have long known the potential value $$ of the BF gravy train in regards to publicity and reality TV........ if you build it , they will come .

Behold 3D printed skeletons of a unicorn and the easter bunny, respectively.

Almost amazing considering Dr. Hart not only took the time and effort to fairly and honestly consider Dr. Ketchum's work but also offered to help her repeatedly despite the reception he received. I don't think most people realize how difficult it must have been to write up his work in a manner that is understandable by forum members with minimal exposure to DNA testing and yet still remained suitable for peer review. The fact that he paid out of pocket to ensure open access for members here is incredible when compared to the secrecy most researchers place on their efforts. I think it illustrates how honest and open research could benefit the whole field. It should be pointed to each and every time anyone posts nonsense about selfish and disinterested scientists failing to address the evidence available.

I get that industries, such as forestry are big business and there has always been the belief that BF would devastate them if known to be true, which leads to all forestry workers being threatened with their job if they talk. To me I believe this is a conspiracy to help perpetuate the myth why they do not speak about them. Forestry work is hard manual labor, any hard manual labor job goes thru employees, some come in and don't cut it, this means there are a lot that leave the industry. What is keeping them from speaking on BF, they no longer fear losing their job. What's the next reason, they fear the black SUV's rolling up if they speak?