Leaderboard

I've given the broad brush picture a few times over the past couple years but I don't have it linked or anything. It's a story I've gotten tired of telling. There are also details I've chosen to gloss over. The jist, however, is that the behaviors I experienced were too human-seeming to me. Based on what I've experience to date I would no more kill one without provocation than I would kill you without provocation. Everyone has to find their own path. We each have our own backgrounds, experience, morals, etc. I can't any more pick a path for you or Nathan or Norseman or anyone else than I'd tolerate someone else trying to pick one for me and force me down it. There's no room for group-think in matters of conscience. MIB

I respectfully disagree . The protection of something undocumented that has no basis of concrete proof. Seems to be a waste of time and is futile. Without a type A specimen. No fossil record yet discovered, No concrete DNA,no proven hair samples,no specimen to examine evaluate and reexamine. Questionable foot prints,hand prints ,sounds,knocks, tree breaks and the worst of all eyewitness reports. One awesome film over 50 years ago that can't be easily dismissed. Anecdotal and certainly not proof. Now having said that ,I am very interested in the subject matter and have been for over 50 years. Hoping to be disproved of my own beliefs and conclusions. If they do exist I agree with conservation. As the habitat decreases in the name of progress and population of men in the dark forests. I think a one sacrifice ,one body on the slab will be in the best interest if the remaining species is to survive. This should force documentation and preservation. If they do exist .Without it they will pass into myth , legend and great campfire stories.

As a fellow scientist I think a specimen is unnecessary. And I do absolutely think "harvesting a specimen" in this case is immoral, but that's not really the reason I choose to butt heads on the topic anymore; they don't need people like me looking out for them. It's because I treasure my experiences with them, even as limited as they are compared to many others', and I just want that for other people. I believe they want that for people too. You simply can't have those encounters through the scope of a rifle. Going out there and approaching them with earnest respect is the established methodology, it is the only experimental design that gives consistent, repeatable results. I fail to see how refusing to acknowledge their advantage and stubbornly insisting on only considering results obtained in the most technical and technological ways is in any way scientific. We've already learned far more about them from "go and see" than we ever could from a body on a table. The real reason we need the body is to grab peoples' attention, and scientists have no different stake in it from laymen in that regard.