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No field trip this weekend, but a great meet up with some of the local researchers at the appropriately named Sasquatch Inn for a dinner and gab fest. Besides my wife and I, Thomas Steenburg, MagniAesir and his daughter, and Robert "Stryder" attended. The food was good, as it always is there, and the conversations went on for over 2 hours, mostly Sas related. We didn't solve the mystery, but had a great time chewing away at it.

Even though there is no reference sequence for Bigfoot, eDNA may still yield a sequence with no exact match to any known primate or a close human relationship. Comparing that DNA to known primates would place it in the phylotree. eDNA is used all the time to validate new species claims and position the new species in the phylotree. However, other evidence, specimens, photographs, or videos are also usually required to gain acceptance for a new species. Note the case of the lesula monkey as an example: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0044271 Here, however, the DNA was taken directly from a specimen.

After having listened to hundreds of accounts on Sasquatch Chronicles and Sasquatch Odyssey podcasts, dozens of which include some very compelling reports that involve instances of supernatural or alien activity and behavior, I find it hard to believe that we are dealing with a purely natural undiscovered species of mammal. I'll readily admit that I am a completely novice and amateur Sasquatch enthusiast and only became interested in the subject because of recent sightings in my area and my own couple of encounters. But listening to the likes of Cliff Barrackman, Jeff Meldrum, and other noted researchers, they all seem to agree that we are still at the 5-yard goal line 50 years after the groundbreaking Patterson-Gimlin film. We don't know much more than what we did back then. However, the magic of the internet has made the collection and recording of sightings and encounters much more easy and common. And along with the vast increase of data on reports, there is also a large increase in the number of reports that include "woo-woo" aspects. Now, I know that Cliff Barrackman flat out rejects any notion that there is ANY "woo-woo" aspect to Bigfoot and that those instances are the result of human error in observation or some other rational explanation. I find that incredibly hypocritical that someone who absolutely believes in Bigfoot, routinely rejects eye-witness accounts that involve supernatural behavior while he himself asks the doubting public to believe his eye-witness accounts. I think what made me think that there is something to the supernatural aspect is an account on one of the podcasts in which the witness was driving along at night and talking to his girlfriend on the cellphone when a sasquatch ran into the road with a racoon in it's mouth. He didn't have time to react and hit the sasquatch at 60 mph. He felt the impact and his girlfriend heard the impact over the phone. The man said he saw a weird flash of light at the time of impact. He pulled over to inspect his vehicle and see what he had hit. No damage to his vehicle. No dead or injured sasquatch. But one side of his car was covered in blood. It was like the creature was teleported at the instant time of impact. Then the host said that he had heard multiple other reports of the same thing happening to other people. Either when shooting at one, or almost hitting one with a vehicle. Weird flash of light and the creature disappears. And that's just one strange phenomenon associated with multiple reports. Then there are the dozens of UFO sightings associated with sasquatch sightings, orbs, mind speak, infrasound, etc, etc. All of those very credible accounts have me believing that we are never going to capture a sasquatch. We might kill one, but the body will never be collected. I used to want to interact with one, as it was a mammal that was native to the woods, and it was fascinating. Now, I don't know what the hell they are, but they surely aren't merely an undiscovered primate or human-hybrid, or else we would have a body by now. So, per the title of the thread, how have the "woo-woo" accounts and sightings affected your opinion of what sasquatch is? Or have you decided to discount them like Barrackman and Meldrum?

Hello all! I'm new to the forum, but have been interested in the Bigfoot topic for many years. I live in Georgia and I thank you all for welcoming me!

Hi, my name is Leanne. I'm a former public school teacher turned psychotherapist from California. I don't think I saw the Patterson-Gimlin film until I was in high school, but I remember being fascinated by it. I don't think I gave it much thought initially but years later, I was watching a documentary (probably a rerun of the old In Search Of series) and an interest in the subject took hold. I, myself, have never had any type of encounter but my life experiences have given me a strong sense of when people are not being honest. I've seen far too many witness interviews on film where I have felt these people were telling the truth.

Hi fellow BFers. My name is Rick and I'm 68 tears young. I'm an avid fisherman, hot rod builder, and outdoors columnist from Priest River, Idaho. I believe a few years ago, I had a Sasquatch encounter that I will be telling you all about later. Just wanted to check out the group and see what it is all about first.

In regards to the question of why would sasquatch need to develop cloaking or effective camouflage or invisibilty, when it is the apex predator of its environment? It's because adaptation is always a step behind the the causative factors. Sasquatch weren't always the alpha predator in North america. Figuring they came over the Bering straight land bridge in time to get swept up in the "megafication" of the North American megafauna, and thus became Pleistocene mega-hominids, they were still dealing with a large variety of megapredators more specialized for predation than they were. And while their heightened cognition probably lent itself well to cooperative hunting/foraging as well as cooperative defence, individually they were still pretty vulnerable to predation. That and I'm sure they didn't start off with as refined cooperative behaviors as they ended that era with. In light of that, it's pretty easy to see how the camouflage/concealment abilities would arise, perhaps even sentiently directed or guided, as we must keep in mind these are not mere apes nor displaced giganthopithicus looking for a bamboo substitute, these were increasing larger hominids capable of strategy, contextual analysis, and a growing awareness of just what groups of such creatures might be capable of(which could well prove quite the advantage, especially as the climate began to shift and things began getting desperate for the more specialized predators as the shifting plant communities killed off much of their prey) So the abilities for concealment and camouflage could well be adaptations to conditions no longer quite so pressing, yet they still prove useful, and so therefore are retained.

Sorry, late to the discussion...I just wanted to point out that "infrared vision" in reptiles isn't a function of eye-based vision. And most reptiles don't "see" in the infrared spectrum. Infrared sensory perception is seen in the pit vipers and certain species of boas and pythons. The pit vipers(including all the U.S. venomous species aside from the coral snakes, as well as numerous asian, African and neotropical species) are characterized by a pair of facial pits(one on each side) between the eyes and nostrils, hence the name "pit vipers"(as opposed to the other viper groups that have no infrared sensory organs) The boas and pythons that have these organs tend to have these heat sensing pits arranged along both the upper and lower labial scales(essentially "lip scales") in various configurations, with some species displaying a prodigious number. Generally speaking those along the front half of the upper jaw/lips tend to be more pronounced, while those of the lower jaw are usually positioned further back, starting about half way back. Interestingly enough, boas have their pits located between their labial scales, while pythons have their pits in the center of each scale. Good example of the boa pits may be seen in the emerald tree boa, and the Madagascar tree boa shows just how extensive these pits can be. Facial shots of a reticulated python will show the mid scale placement of python pits. While not a part of the ocular vision system, these pits do provide a sort of infrared imagery that can distinguish thermal differences of either 1.0 or 0.1 °C(it's been a long time since I reviewed this topic) but either way it presents a surprisingly distinct map of heat signatures, allowing these creatures to hunt warm blooded prey in relative darkness.