Bigfoot And Fire Question?

[Guest]

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031918

this is the article on the Red Deer People, just out...and some comments about fire use....interesting and recent prehistory.

[Guest]

I must confess that I didn't read all of the posts on this topic. However, I was struck by Art1972's post about the bigfoot dragging a horse into the woods. Years ago, when I lived in northern Idaho, I heard about a local rancher who found one of his steers dead in his stock-pond. He returned with his tractor to remove it but, it was gone. There were bigfoot prints going into the pond and bigfoot prints going out of the pond. Apparently, it just picked up the steer and walked away with it.

[bipedalist]

In such a case there should have been some fairly heavy embedded prints to follow to the BBQ pit.

[Guest]

Do they like NC, Texas, SC, or Kansas City style? ;P

Interesting story, jon larson! Thanks for sharing. Shame the evidence on that wasn't documented. There would have been a hella difference in print depth, one would think, which if documented would have added heavily (waka waka)to the believability. Dang. Good stuff.

[Guest]

The idea of these creatures somehow using fire has absolutely puzzled me because I read the same thing and few others there were not posted here. I mentioned this in a BF Fire, Weapons, Tools & other Oddities thread a while back. There were not a lot of these reports but the posting wasn’t the only time it was mentioned either.

[guyzonthropus]

Interesting film of the bonobo making fire..while i haven't heard or read much about them in captivity, much less in a private owners care, it has been observed that they take a different approach to conflict resolution than the regular chimps. Despite that, they are large powerful primates capible of outburst, then add to this the ability to make fire? So, there they are, out camping in the woods, the creature rips off her face and various other parts, makes a fire, cooks the bits up, and leaves...authorities eventually scope the scene, blame on a psychopath, for while there are numerous prints attributed to the"chimp" , everyone knows they cant make fire...the perfect pri.ate crime....

I do recall reading accounts by those who have spoken(telepathic)with some of the big guys, where the creature(s) state they know how to make/use fire, but dont due to the desire not to draw attention to themselves or their location. Of course, they may have just been saying that so as not to be teased by the hairless dwarf.........

[Guest DTRobers]

In addition to the vintage newspaper article posted in this thread I believe that in either the classic Bauman story

told by Roosevelt or the Ostman kidnapping tale one of the early indications of BF activity was the scattering of the

ashes of a campfire while the human camper was away. Whether this behavior was prompted by an interest in the fire itself

or just the investigation of remnant cooking odors is debatable.

Something that I do not find debatable is the wisdom of teaching a chimpanzee to set a fire. Who would consider this

even within a stone's throw of a good idea?

[Guest]

They trained chimps to ''fly'' space capsules, remember, and use ak-47's

Chimps can do lots of fun things:

 

[gigantor]

Monkey see, monkey do...  plus it didn't "make a fire",  it was shown how to use a lighter to make a fire...

Edited May 25, 2015 by gigantor

[Bonehead74]

They trained chimps to ''fly'' space capsules, remember, and use ak-47's

Chimps can do lots of fun things:

Fake. That video was part of a viral marketing campaign for one of the 'Planet of the Apes' movies.

[Guest insanity42]

This got me to thinking how do great apes deal with fire. I ran across this interesting article. Note the "dance" is really a swaying by the alpha male, maybe similar to the swaying that is often described in encounters with BF:

http://www.physorg.com/news183101385.html- Chimps Dance in the Face of Fire

... and this video of a chimp trained to make and use fire...

*removed youtube video from quote*

Dr. Jill Pruetz did get an article published regarding the chimpanzee behavior towards fire and shows that they have a calm understanding of wildfires and usually do not react with fear as well as being experts predicting where the fire would go.

Jill D. Pruetz and Thomas C. LaDuke. Brief communication: Reaction to fire by savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Senegal: Conceptualization of "fire behavior" and the case for a chimpanzee model. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 141:4 pages 646-650, April 2010.

In their paper, the researchers wrote that the control of fire by humans involves the acquisition of these three cognitive stages:

1. Conceptualization of fire. An understanding of the behavior under varying conditions that would allow one to predict its movement, thus permitting activity in close proximity to the fire.

2. The ability to control fire. Involving containment, providing or depriving the fire of fuel and perhaps the ability to put it out.

3. The ability to start a fire.

Dr. Pruetz says the chimpanzees have mastered the first step and believes that cognitively, they are able to control it (step 2). Dexterity is likely a primary reason why they don't make it using natural tools.

I did like how the chimpanzee broke some of the branches using his foot, not too different than what I have done myself.

I think it is the same chimpanzee who is at the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary. There was a broadcast on the BBC in the UK, however, the same broadcast was not or has not been license to show in the US.

http://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/04/an_ape_builds_fire_and_toasts.html#incart_river_default

I would think that Sasquatch would probably know what fire is, understand how it behaves and maybe have ability to control it, but making a fire might be the difficult part.

[Guest]

I have my doubts that they have the dexterity to create fire from scratch. I am also intrigued that in addition to fire use, the many 19th century and some early 20th newspaper account make far more mention of fire, clubs, animal skins etc. Which things turn up very rarely today. 

 

However, in keeping with my theory that the BF population took a huge hit with the virtual wiping out of all game sources by overhunting and overlogging in the 19th and early 20th centuries, I regard this period in putative BF history as a period when they may also have lost "culture". Knowledge of how to do things. Those that were left were too focussed on minute to minute survival to sit down and show the kiddies how to do things, maybe they weren't having that many kids. With the improval of the game situation in the decades following WWII, I believe the population began to boom again, and at the same time, BF became a little less cryptic, there was a BF baby boom and not enough mom and pop time to go round, and no extended aunts/uncles/grandparents, well very few, the result we see as coming of age BF learning from scratch how to be BF, and making a lot of errors, vis a vis, causing a disproportionate amount of sightings in that era. 

 

This would explain also why in certain areas, deeper woods, less hunted out ones, the BF can be a little "different" in behaviour, and also may occasionally be reported using clubs etc. They were less pressed by the game rarity and preserved some culture.

 

Anyway, it would appear that BF does not find fire essential as does sapiens. I believe they may be wary of it.  

 

I have suspicions though that native american forest management practices, using burns to regen undergrowth for more plentiful deer, and using it in hunting drives, may have had the intentional or not effect of driving BF out of those areas, thus I consider it possible that BF was relatively sparse in the coastal areas of the East coast when Europeans began to arrive. And when expanding westward the colonists had a tendency to drive the native americans before them, it's possible that they in turn, drove BF away. A BF as we envision it, may be quite flammable in dry weather, due to amount of hair, so healthy respect for it in the hands of a species that might weaponise it should be expected. 

[Woodslore]

 I have often wondered if Sasquatch uses fire or tools. I know the Russian Almasty (sorry for spelling) is said to use tools, make fire and I have even heard of them wearing animal skin. So it is an interesting theory. 

[Guest insanity42]

In addition to dexterity, humans have an anatomical feature in the hands called the third metacarpal styloid process, which allows the hand bones to lock to the wrist bones.  This is what allows us to apply greater amounts of pressure with grasping fingers and thumb, and permits us to make and use complex tools.  It is a feature apes or other non-human primates do not possess.

[Guest diana swampbooger]

That's interesting, insanity.

I always thought that for some reason our thumbs rotated on the trapezium bone. The median nerve innervates the lower neck vertebrae on the proximal end & thumb/1st/2nd fingers on the distal end. Which begs the question, did our ancestors stand up first, causing the head to shift back & allowing the vertebrae more room to evolve to it's current position & rest of the anatomical magic happened?