Why Is Bigfoot So... Big?

[Guest ajciani]

The Susquehannock (or Sasquesahanough) indians were about the size of a typical bigfoot, 7 to 7.5 feet in height, but not 'beanpole' tall. They had the girth to match. The Susquehannock lived near the top of the Chesapeake.

What made the Susquehannock big? Probably genetics. The real question is, what environmental condition was promoting the large size? One thing is certain, they must have had the food to support their stature.

BTW; humans and other mammals can range a lot in size, just by the availability of food during their formative years.

[Guest]

I have heard that a species will survive to the degree that it can adapt itself to the environment. If it can't, then it goes extinct. so, with that information. The BF has been able to adapt itself to the environment. Be it, its vision, food gathering skills, camoflauge, etc. Must be pretty good at it. Us as humans have been able to do this by building homes, using fire, making tools etc. Just what I heard though. And I don't remember where.

[salubrious]

This is a thread about bigfoot morphology. My point was made to reinforce OntarioSquatch's point, which I quoted, but you omitted. Perhaps I was too concise to be clear. My point is that if a relatively small and hairless great ape (a human) were subject to the same limitations that a huge and hairy great ape (a bigfoot) is -- no tools, no clothing, no shelter, and no fire -- the relatiively small and hairless great ape would not survive long: at least in the PNW. I doubt that any of the other, documented, extant great apes -- chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or orangs -- could survive long in the PNW. as they are not large enough to maintain body heat in the wet cool climate. I believe humans were only able to emigrate out of the African savannahs after mastering tool. clothing, shelter, and fire making. If bigfoots exist, they were able to exploit non-tropical or non-subtropical environs because of their size and hairiness.

Do you have one of Tom Brown's knives? If so, how do you like it?

His knives have always been too expensive (+$300) for me, although they can double pretty well as a small hatchet. I understand that Scorpion has something almost identical.

Humans have surprising abilities at body control- including regulating body heat in adverse conditions. Has to do with how you look at things. There is a recent book 'Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself' (which I can recommend to anyone) that shows that our ability to imagine is so powerful that our bodies literally do not know the difference between the imagined and physical reality. The same hormones are produced, the same neurochemistry and same neuropeptides. Interesting stuff and fits neatly with Tom Brown Jr.'s claims that one does not really need the clothes to feel warm even in the snow. I've done a lot with survival, but I have yet to take it that far !

This all comes out of our brain though and we have that adaptation for a reason, certainly survival is a possible explanation. So while I can understand how someone might think a human could not survive, I'm not sure that it would be accurate to assume that. We have proven pretty adaptable. Seems to me Joseph Campbell has a photo in one of his books of some Inuit people that are nearly nude, but it could be they were just posing for the photo...

[Guest BFSleuth]

Humans have surprising abilities at body control- including regulating body heat in adverse conditions. Has to do with how you look at things. There is a recent book 'Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself' (which I can recommend to anyone) that shows that our ability to imagine is so powerful that our bodies literally do not know the difference between the imagined and physical reality. The same hormones are produced, the same neurochemistry and same neuropeptides. Interesting stuff and fits neatly with Tom Brown Jr.'s claims that one does not really need the clothes to feel warm even in the snow. I've done a lot with survival, but I have yet to take it that far !

This all comes out of our brain though and we have that adaptation for a reason, certainly survival is a possible explanation. So while I can understand how someone might think a human could not survive, I'm not sure that it would be accurate to assume that. We have proven pretty adaptable. Seems to me Joseph Campbell has a photo in one of his books of some Inuit people that are nearly nude, but it could be they were just posing for the photo...

From my experience ice and alpine climbing there is mental adaption and physical adaption to cold. Remember Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all the highest peaks in the world with no oxygen? He trained by taking ice water baths and had studied how this increases the number of capillaries in the extremities. With more capillaries per square inch your extremities feel warmer. I trained for climbing Denali with ice baths and would sit for an hour or so watching TV with my hands and feet in ice water. This works! It takes about 6-8 weeks to increase the number of capillaries.

Regarding mental outlook and and "resistance" to cold, one needs to get rid of the "resistance" part. Many a time when I have found myself tensed up trying to fight the cold I would simply relax and let it flow through me and stop fighting it. It is calming to remember this when you are shivering and the effect is almost like you become warmer. This may be all in the brain, but I can say that in tough survival situations this can be a big advantage. It is amazing how much mental and physical energy is lost to fighting against the cold, instead of just accepting it and getting on with whatever you are doing.

[PBeaton]

Bergmann's rule ?

Pat...

[Guest]

Bergman's rule: You tend to find big critters in colder climates, and smaller critters in warmer climates.

[Guest]

Tom Brown Jr.'s claims that one does not really need the clothes to feel warm even in the snow.

One who feels warm in the snow without clothing, shelter, fire, and tools is in the latter stages of hypothermia! I recall one sunny day in January where I and two friends caught our limits of rainbow on Georgetown Lake in MT, above 6,000ft. We spent most of our time comfortably sitting on the ice (directly) in shirtsleeves. I was an awesome day. But, we had on clothing, had hooks and line (tools), fire (a lighter in my pocket with a pack of smokes), and a vehicle 100yd away (shelter). Plus, we were only on the ice for maybe 4 hours.

Tell you what -- to get back on topic, how about an experiment to test your hypothesis? We round up 30 randomly selected bigfoots and 30 randomly selected humans and place them somewhere randomly on the Olympic Peninusla at a random time -- no clothing, no tools, no shelter, no fire -- and check every 24 hr to see how many in each group are still alive. Given that it might be hard to round up 30 bigfoots, and we might run into legal problems rounding up 30 humans, perhaps we should confine this to a thought experiment?

Edited May 16, 2012 by Pteronarcyd

[Guest BlurryMonster]

Interesting stuff and fits neatly with Tom Brown Jr.'s claims that one does not really need the clothes to feel warm even in the snow.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Tom Brown is a pretty well known fraud. His claims about Native American wisdom and training are all made up, and he has a pretty bad reputation for running what a lot of peple basically consider to be a cult. If you don't believe me, do some googling on the matter. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously.

This all comes out of our brain though and we have that adaptation for a reason, certainly survival is a possible explanation. So while I can understand how someone might think a human could not survive, I'm not sure that it would be accurate to assume that. We have proven pretty adaptable. Seems to me Joseph Campbell has a photo in one of his books of some Inuit people that are nearly nude, but it could be they were just posing for the photo...

People are adaptable because we have culture. If we go somewhere cold, we can make clothes; if we need to cut something, we can make a knife; if we need to cook, we build a fire; if we need to cross water, we built a boat. That's just how people work - culture is an infinitely valuable and maleable tool. It's also a LOT faster than biological adaptations, which is why I'm really doubtful of all these claims about bigfoot evolving to be bigger to handle cold. If something was living an an evironment that was harsh enough that they would need to undergo biological changes as drastic as doubling in size, they would probably all die out before that happened. Remember, mutations are random, and something can't just wish to be bigger, stronger, or whatever else. To put it in simple terms, if a group of human-like primates were to go out in the cold, they would have to make clothes and build fire, something that would take a matter of hours, to stay alive. If they didn't, they would either die off because they're so unsuitable or wait a few tens of thousands of years to maybe fit the environment better. Without culture in a completely foreign and hostile environment, the most likely option is non-surivival.

[salubrious]

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Tom Brown is a pretty well known fraud. His claims about Native American wisdom and training are all made up, and he has a pretty bad reputation for running what a lot of peple basically consider to be a cult. If you don't believe me, do some googling on the matter. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously.

I have often wondered if that was the case, but I have also taken a good number of classes. He's not running a cult- that's pretty obvious. The classes work; he is in fact running a school. I can certainly understand why some people might see it as a cult or something, there is a fair amount of, for lack of a better word, 'worship' (mostly of his awareness skills) that I have seen. A lot of people in the school/classes acknowledge that he can be pretty arrogant. That is something you won't see in a cult: independent thinking. If the classes didn't work I would be inclined to agree with you on this, but they do so I am always left wondering, 'did Rick and Grandfather really exist?' or if not, 'where did he get this stuff??'. Its true that the 'net is not kind to him but we can safely chalk that up to his 'arrogance' and his ill temper.

Tell you what -- to get back on topic, how about an experiment to test your hypothesis? We round up 30 randomly selected bigfoots and 30 randomly selected humans and place them somewhere randomly on the Olympic Peninusla at a random time -- no clothing, no tools, no shelter, no fire -- and check every 24 hr to see how many in each group are still alive. Given that it might be hard to round up 30 bigfoots, and we might run into legal problems rounding up 30 humans, perhaps we should confine this to a thought experiment?

OK. So- for the purposes of this thought experiment (which maybe should have its own thread), do the humans have survival skills or not? Are they allowed to learn them? Blurry makes a good point in the latter portion of his post above (the part that I did not quote).

[Guest]

OK. So- for the purposes of this thought experiment (which maybe should have its own thread), do the humans have survival skills or not? Are they allowed to learn them? Blurry makes a good point in the latter portion of his post above (the part that I did not quote).

Given that the question is "Why is bigfoot so big?", that it has been suggested that his size allows him to support a wide niche otherwise not exploited by documented great apes, and no one disputes that humans with tools, clothing, shelter, and fire can survive in a wide variety of habitats, the humans must be handicapped like bigfoots are and cannot use their cultural survival skills -- no tools (other than sticks), no clothing, no shelter, and no fire.

How about we run the experiment for 1 full year, placing both groups into a single, very large enclosure from which escape is impossible (it was designed and constructed by LongtabberPE), and use the metric of LED-50 -- the lethal exposure duration (in days) that it takes to kill off 50% of a given group.

If you agree to these parameters, what do you predict the LED-50 to be for the bigfoots and for the humans?

Edited May 17, 2012 by Pteronarcyd

[Guest]

I tend to think that there size is overestimated by witnesses due to the hair and maybe the differently portioned arm and leg lenths. I know apes and humans try make themselves look bigger when threatened. I am sure bf would do the same.

[salubrious]

the humans must be handicapped like bigfoots are and cannot use their cultural survival skills -- no tools (other than sticks), no clothing, no shelter, and no fire.

Community is easily the most important human invention and is something humans do automatically. Could we really separate that out? That's the 'pretty dumb human' I referred to earlier.

So we can't rocks then?? BF does...

But if we can use rocks, we can make stone tools and kill a bear, make clothes... that's what humans do. If you separate humans from that, yes, certainly in many environments with such restrictions human lifespan would be measured in days or hours, perhaps only minutes.

[Guest MikeG]

Community is a human invention?

Really?

You seriously don't need me linking to pictures of wolf packs, or hippo pods, or lion prides, or gaggles of penguins, or killer whale pods or the like, do you?

Mike

[salubrious]

Community is a human invention?

Really?

You seriously don't need me linking to pictures of wolf packs, or hippo pods, or lion prides, or gaggles of penguins, or killer whale pods or the like, do you?

Mike

Animals of course have community. What humans bring to it is one guy is better at making bows and arrows, another guy is better at using them, someone else makes the best baskets, still others are better at knowing what plants are edible and where to find them. This is at a tribal level, hunter/gatherer behavior, something we have done for 10s or maybe 100s of thousands of years.

[Guest BlurryMonster]

You're a little confused on the terms you're using. You say "community," but what you really mean is culture. Culture is behavior that is learned and shared, which results in things like making tools. It happens in societies, which are made of communities, but the words mean very different things.

Also, your description of hunter/gatherer behavior is kind of flawed. In H/G societies, pretty much every skill is known by everyone in the community, and labor is split evenly. It might be divided along gender or age lines, but generally speaking, most people do the same kinds of work and have the same skills. Everyone can make a bow and arrow, everyone can use them, everyone can make baskets, and everyone knows what's edible and where to find it (it's a requirement to survive). Some people do have things they're better at than others, but the society doesn't treat them any differently because of it, other than giving them some extra respect. You described something that sounds more like specialization of labor, which only started popping up in agricultural societies.