Bigfoot And Trees

[Guest BFSleuth]

I think their anatomy is ideal for climbing, whether climbing rock cliffs or trees. I think most people think they would be too heavy as adults for trees, but there are reports of BF using trees for vantage points for hunting, even preparing ambushes by leaving garbage on the ground under a large branch in rest areas.

Check out this report:

http://www.alabamabigfoot.com/bigfoot/reports/RFPreport16.htm

BF have been observed to jump from cliffs and in this instance from quite high up in a tree.

I think BF climb trees pretty much whenever they want to.... for food, ambush, getting away from bugs close to the ground, hiding, etc.

I think their anatomy is ideal for climbing, whether climbing rock cliffs or trees. I think most people think they would be too heavy as adults for trees, but there are reports of BF using trees for vantage points for hunting, even preparing ambushes by leaving garbage on the ground under a large branch in rest areas.

Check out this report:

http://www.alabamabigfoot.com/bigfoot/reports/RFPreport16.htm

BF have been observed to jump from cliffs and in this instance from quite high up in a tree.

I think BF climb trees pretty much whenever they want to.... for food, ambush, getting away from bugs close to the ground, hiding, etc.

[Guest StankApe]

BFsleuth, look at animals designed for life in the trees, they are light, long armed, prehensile tailed and built to move swiftly through the cover. a 8 foot tall critter, is one of these things.............

[Guest BuzzardEater]

I am sure going on all fours offers significant advantages in the brush. This makes too much sense to dismiss.

Let me refine my point a bit further by observing that the fauna these creatures are adapted to might have just blinked out of existence recently. In another area of interest I came upon an account of "river recovered wood". This is raw logs chopped down two hundred years ago that were so ancient and thier wood so dense, that they sank. They nested on the bottom of the river, coated in mud until they began to have value. What's interesting and related to the topic, is that these logs are mostly comprised of vanished species like Heart Pine or Giant Cypress. My understanding is that these types of tree were utterly consumed in the timber framed building era.

They were "First Growth" trees native to the environment. They were giants by today's standards, hundreds of feet tall, up to twelve feet in diameter. They took hundreds of years to grow.

What if BFs were an upper strata nest builder? How would we know this now? Thier natural environment might have been cut down in the 1800s.

Just supposin' here...

Edited November 29, 2011 by BuzzardEater

[Sasfooty]

Here's a crop of an "accidental picture" I got of a couple of my watchers, one afternoon when I was taking a picture of Hubby & a friend on their horses. They don't seem to worry about cameras as much if they aren't pointed directly at them.

Yes, I realize it's a blobsquatch, & not worthy of the valuable time some will waste looking at it...however, those blobs are there sometimes & not there other times, & only when there are leaves on the trees.

[JDL]

I look at them as All-Terrain Hominids. Based on reports, there isn't much, perhaps any, terrain that they can't traverse. They go from bipedal to quadrupedal at will and can achieve impressive speeds in both modes. They climb cliffs well and don't seem to be phased enough by them to go a mile out of their way to avoid them. They swim significant distances and can remain submerged for minutes (I'm going to start a thread on lung capacity). They're not even deterred by small trees and underbrush, it seems, in several reports where they come crashing through the brush in a beeline.

I think it unlikely that their young are not significantly arboreal. There are too many rational advantages to this mode and no good reason for them not to be so. I also think it unlikely that adults brachiate much given their size, but brachiation or tree-nesting is not the same as climbing a tree for various purposes and remaining near the trunk where branches can support their weight. There are advantages to this: avoidance of predators, avoidance of humans (effectively disappearing because, despite the fact that every squirrel in the park does this, few of us think of large creatures moving in three dimensions), gaining a camouflaged vantage point for observation, ambush hunting, etc. Heck, bears climb trees for some of these reasons and so do we. If we use tree stands for hunting, why can't they use trees for the same reason?

From an engineer's perspective, their arms are notably different than those of gorillas. A gorilla's arms are proportionally long, but to me seem proportionally bulkier. The outward bend suggests that they function more as supports and shock absorbers during locomotion and are used more to pull vegetation to the gorilla, rather than to pull the gorilla up into the vegetation. By contrast, a bigfoot's arms seem more suited for reach and agility. They seem more suited to pulling the bigfoot's weight, either horizontally in a high speed run, or vertically in a climb.

I think we have to assume that they can use trees to their advantage at will.

[indiefoot]

BFsleuth, look at animals designed for life in the trees, they are light, long armed, prehensile tailed and built to move swiftly through the cover. a 8 foot tall critter, is one of these things.............

[Guest Biggie]

Yes, I realize it's a blobsquatch, & not worthy of the valuable time some will waste looking at it...

I don't even see the blobs.

[Sasfooty]

I don't even see the blobs.

Yes. I knew you wouldn't.

[Sunflower]

I see the blobs and if I look very, very closely I might even recognize one or two of those blobs from previous pictures. YES they climb trees, I've seen videos of them in trees. Lots of little ones it seems, but larger ones as well.

I've been on the phone with a friend while she described how a little kid was up high in a tree with adults at the bottom trying to coax it down. Sooo, whatever their build or capabilities, it's a fact. We do not know every single detail of their lives but I'd bet my next retirement check that jumps and leaps of twenty feet are not out of the question. My sis and bro (in 1978) had one jump over the hood of their '69 Pontiac (full size car)and it had lots of air as it cleared the car.

[Sasfooty]

Thanks Sunflower. That darkest one does look kinda familiar, doesn't he?

[Guest FuriousGeorge]

If there is such an animal, I doubt it climbs trees, or at least it avoids it when possible. Most importantly, It would be too dangerous with risk of injury with little benefits. Has anyone seen signs? A huge tree dwelling animal would leave behind signs like damage to the bark and not to mention footprints at the base, especially if it jumped down. If it climbed to spot prey, it would make too much noise climbing down and spook the prey. Even the stealthiest leopard makes noise climbing trees. Trees are not like the ground, they make crackle and snap noises. That's no way to catch prey. They also don't really need to eat up in a tree to avoid larger predators. They don't need to climb anything to get fruit when their reach is a dozen feet.

My best guess would be it's similar to bears. They do it when they are young, and they can do it as an adult but don't because the risks outweigh the benefits.

[Guest BFSleuth]

BFsleuth, look at animals designed for life in the trees, they are light, long armed, prehensile tailed and built to move swiftly through the cover. a 8 foot tall critter, is one of these things.............

... or the Bonobo chimpanzee (human size)... without a tail?

Or bears? Gorillas? Even big silverbacks will climb trees to build nests a small percentage of the time and will definitely climb to get fruit or choice leaves.

There are too many credible reports of their climbing abilities to ignore. If your problem is that large adult BF's are too heavy to climb trees because the trees would break, well I would say that I can certainly climb very small trees without breaking them and did so frequently as part of my job pruning trees and shrubs. It's all about weight distribution.

Their midtarsal break and long arms create great leverage for the classic "layback" position of climbing:

[Guest FuriousGeorge]

To me it's not a question if they can or not? It's a question of why? Chimps climb trees for food and protection. The tree fruit as well as the predators in Africa are not similar to the PNW.

[Guest StankApe]

Really? That's not a primate is it?

[Guest vilnoori]

This technique? Some humans do it very well, so why not BF?