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  1. Very likely true. I don't think we will get exact 1:1 calorie requirement comparisons with any known species but we are likely to get in the ballpark. Calorie needs have to account for exact body weight, surface area, internal temperature, and how effective their insulation is, behavior factors like time spent in the water because it "steals" heat faster than air, and activity level. However ... diet is important. Comparing them to a gorilla, no ... they're not built, externally, like a herbivore. They'll fall somewhere midway between a 50/50 omnivore and 100% carnivore. A percentage of the calories go back into obtaining more calories rather than the other functions. Diet ... content, how it's obtained, and how it's processed ... affects efficiency in ways that can stir the total a bit. The extra piece of that is how much of the total calories might be obtained by poaching calories humans don't notice missing. The dumpster diving behind WalMart isn't a good way to stay hidden but if it's a "super" Walmart with groceries, it might be a way to get a huge amount of food in a really short time .. tradeoffs sometimes warrant risk. If most of the calories come from meat, from careful / limited pilfering of farm crops, and from making use of discarded stuff that won't be missed, then a 10K calorie diet doesn't require a trail of destruction like gorillas going through. It just ... doesn't. My notion ... when we have a substantial body of evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, for something happening "that can't", we need to reexamine our beliefs about what is and is not possible before we start discarding evidence no matter how that evidence confounds / offends our preconceived notions. (I refer to that as chasing the data wherever it goes.) Bottom line, there are enough reports from urban areas that I'd want to go to the site and see what factors I might be missing rather than letting my imagination, my stereotypes, interfere with truly seeing. MIB
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