Bigfoot Research – Still No Evidence, But Plenty Of Excuses To Explain Why There’S No Evidence

[Guest]

You could say that alot of bigfoot sightings have an "urban bias" or a bias toward populated areas.

Bigfoot sightings represent encroachment onto human habitat. More people, more sightings, simple stats. Otherwise, your maps don't imply an "urban bias" towards bigfoot. We also don't know what % of sightings are true or false. We need to study the sighting databases and estimate the % hoaxing via a cluster analysis, then see what the corrected map looks like.

[Guest]

We need to study the sighting databases and estimate the % hoaxing via a cluster analysis, then see what the corrected map looks like.

The map comes from the BFRO, who most likely put up the sightings they deemed most creditable.

[WSA]

Valid point of inquiry Wildman, I say. Despite claiming Seattle as my birth town 54 years b.p.e. (I wanted to be close to my mother) and a few backcountry tramps around Rainier, I'll confess to not being an expert on that one. Then again, we're surely not the first to speculate on that answer.

I do feel pretty confident in saying this though: No matter what you might find to eat in the Hoh rain forest, the Big Man will find more. Some of which, I'm sure, tastes like crap.

[Guest DWA]

Some general comments on a recent theme here - what sasquatch eat and how the heck they can possibly find it:

1. There is plenty of food. Beyond plenty, and for reasons several have stated. (Hint: most food in forests doesn't even get eaten; that's how they become, and stay, forests. Hint2: remember all those Indians who were living, in large groups, off the same land?)

2. No presumptions can be made about what and how sasquatch can eat/digest stuff, until we've studied the animal, which won't happen before scientific acceptance.

3. That said, there is ample encounter literature to suggest that whatever animal a sasquatch wants to eat, it can get. (Bears, not so much, a major reason why they sleep away most of the winter.) Actual prey captures of deer and wild pig have been witnessed. Quick and neat. Let's eat.

4. As Oonjerah put it better than me: people who haven't thought about this much don't know that there's no reason that sasquatch can't live in country where bear, puma, bobcat, coyote and wolf make it too. Eyewitness testimony there is no particular reason to doubt suggests that they more than have the tools.

Something should be said about this:

"If this BF is a hominid..(and it's certainly a primate), it's digestive system *should* be very much like ours. They certainly cannot eat the wide variety of vegetation that cattle (moose example in previuos post) can with multiple stomachs (ruminators)."

That's a passage full of assumptions. It's not "certainly" anything until scientists have examined one (although one would be foolish to bet and not bet primate, it's no certainty). Gorillas and chimps eat much we wouldn't touch. And that last "certainly" is no more certain than the first. Cattle and moose have one way of dealing with their food. We can't presume what evolution afforded the sasquatch.

Besides which: bears, not moose and cattle, are the ecological analogues at which we should be looking. Sasquatch can get a lot more food than bears can, the evidence indicates. So how the heck are the bears making it? is the real question.

And WSA is right on about why sightings seem to happen "right on our doorsteps" only, no, they don't. Your suburban neighborhood is a jungle after dark. Don't believe me? Do what I do.

Take a walk.

Edited January 1, 2013 by DWA

[Guest]

Besides which: bears, not moose and cattle, are the ecological analogues at which we should be looking. Sasquatch can get a lot more food than bears can, the evidence indicates. So how the heck are the bears making it? is the real question

I agree that moose and cattle are not in the same category as the bear...and that bear is a reasonable comparison to a BFas far as food sources go. However, there are several key features of bear that BF is lacking. Bears hybernate in winter..they have sunstantial *hardware* for predation...and we KNOW they can run in excess of 35 MPH (there is a lot of debate as to the speed of a BF). Several of you have made some good points on this issue, but I still have a hard time seeing how these creatures can survive harsh winters ...arses and elbows in the snow...keeping warm and finding food. I guess I'll do some more research on my own and report back here when I find something convincing for me. Appreciate all the info given here.

[Guest DWA]

I find that a lot of the problem with seeing BF as plausible comes from the current template of primates on offer, very few of which are either nocturnal or in the temperate zone, and none of those few "higher" primates.

Even the current template, however, shows a huge range of characteristics, to which the sasquatch would not add much, really.

I'd consider the encounter literature pretty conclusive on the speed and stealth of sasquatch. And while we are on hardware, there is speculation - founded in some evidence - that they may even occasionally prey upon black bears; and reports from AK indicate that grizzlies and coastal browns give them wide berth. As to keeping warm: their mechanisms are likely similar to those of known animals. If you showed me a cardinal, and I knew nothing about birds, I'd give it little chance outside a hothouse. Well, surprise.

[Guest RayG]

And, if you showed us a bigfoot, I'd be surprised too.

RayG

[Guest DWA]

I'm leaving that to the people who want to do it. The evidence is enough for me.

[Guest RayG]

And ultimately that's where you and I differ. I don't find the evidence convincing, given the history of hoaxing and mischief that has plagued bigfootery for the past five or six decades.

RayG

[Guest DWA]

And ultimately that's where you and I differ. I don't find the evidence convincing, given the history of hoaxing and mischief that has plagued bigfootery for the past five or six decades.

RayG

And that's where you and I differ.

There are too many records over too long a time in too many places that are too consistent for me to believe that it's either (the most likely possibility) a concerted conspiracy of experts or (almost impossible to conceive) a random concatenation of all kinds of false positives that conform to what one would expect if the reports were authentic encounters with an animal.

[Guest RayG]

That's pretty much the viewpoint I had shortly after I started following this mystery some 40 years ago.

RayG

[Guest]

.....a random concatenation of all kinds of false positives that conform to what one would expect if the reports were authentic encounters with an animal.

Or a cultural icon.

[Guest DWA]

Nope. Name another cultural icon that has this going on.

For one thing, it is a "cultural icon," according to the evidence, with equal power among both Europeans and Native Americans. Name another. There isn't one. Icons don't jump cultures.

To dismiss this that way is not to deal with the evidence in the way a scientist must.

[Guest]

Dragons, sea monsters, ghosts, aliens....... And cultures can influence other cultures.

Edited January 1, 2013 by Jerrymanderer

[Guest DWA]

I gotta go with the foraging. That's been reported by a person/people who thought they

saw a bigfoot.

They say it takes 1 acre of land under cultivation to feed 1 person or 1 head of livestock.

Land under cultivation may produce 10 times as much food (wild guess) for a human as

uncultivated land. The production ratio to support livestock is much lower. Why? 'Cause

horses can eat stuff I can't.

Common sense tells me that Bigfoot is eating a lot of stuff that I can't eat, and because my

reality is so narrow, I assume that he can't eat it either.

I know I'd die before I tried to live on acorns. The taste -- Yuck-ptooie!!

Bigfoot walks thru the woods, sees a banquet where I am starving. (Yet he still loves

human garbage also. Flexible he is.)

As long as I assume that Bf doesn't/can't exist, then I also have to assume/imagine a lot

of reasons why he can't exist ... and the further I am from his habitat, the more fanciful and

inaccurate my reasoning will be.

I had to bring this down here despite mentioning it, just to say: Great post. That's the "skeptical argument," right there, last paragraph. Assume it's not real...then assume the entire world that would have to exist for that to be true.

Dragons, sea monsters, ghosts, aliens....... And cultures can influence other cultures.

Nope, not the same thing. Quick, what do you think about all those things?

They aren't real.

Quick. What do Native American cultures and European eyewitnesses both agree on about sasquatch?

They are.