Speculating Sasquatch Intelligence And Behavioural Reasoning

[BobbyO]

I agree that if they exist, they are highly intelligent and would want to avoid us. What I struggle with, though, is why they would make us aware of their presence if they didn't want us to know about them? The wood knocks, the howls, the tree structures, the coming in to your camp and knocking on the vehicle. I don't get it. Yes, the wood knocks, howls and tree structures might be ways of communicating with each other, but they are also ways of bringing our attention to them. If they are that intelligent that they can hide so well and remain largely undetected, are they intelligent enough to know that by howling and leaving structures they are encouraging us to look for them?

Do they ever consciously make themselves visible to us? I think that a lot of the sighting people have are perhaps accidental, on both the parts of the witness and the Bigfoot itself. Who knows.

Best.,

Lee

Who knows exactly Lee.

I'll start and remember we're speculating here Guys and Girls and we're not trying to prove anything to the world on this one thread.

I think they consciously show themselves to us the vast majority of the time, i really don't think that we sneak up on them that much and i'm all for for the old saying that " You don't find BF, BF finds you " if you get my drift.

However, to contradict myself completely, i believe my sighting had to have been purely accidental and in that situation, i believe i found BF and BF didn't find me, it was impossible for the Animal to do so in that specific situation i think.

With regards to their intelligence, where camo is concerned, i believe they're second to none and we talked extensively about the " why's " of this in a recent fabulous thread.

I'm not sure that they do things to encourage us to look for them, if they done that they'd be showing a serious weakness and my bet is that they are not in the habit of slipping up and showing weaknesses, hell i'm even one that believe they must be aware not to expose their tracks as a Human would, they can't do.

I'm not sure that they would be aware that howls and stick structures, if they leave them, would encourage us to look for them either, i'm not sure if they'd associate their behaviour with us acknowledging that it was them that was responsible for it.

All this kind of stuff is a big reason why i'm not so sure if traditional researching methods are the way forward where this Animal is concerned and i'm afraid if anyone has an issue with me saying that, they just have to see the wood through the tree's where " evidence " that has ( or hasn't in this case ) been obtained in the past 50 or so years is concerned, and that's not a lot at all.

[bipedalist]

My guess is that they are smarter and stronger in their domain, and they are competitors by definition; they enjoy a good contest. They like to "play" with humans and the minds of humans, in particular. The odds are stacked in their favor somehow. I don't know enough about their full range of capabilities to explicate further, I just know that if we are chasing a swamp monkey, or wood ape, it is one lucky and talented sob.

Edited August 22, 2012 by bipedalist

[gigantor]

I'll just point out that high intelligence is not necessary to have excellent hiding abilities.

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

^That's true gigantor, but I think it would be necessary if they are to avoid civilized humans the way they have.

[bipedalist]

Heck, even according to Smeja, he didn't bring his prize home. What more really needs to be said? What was it about this incident that REALLY kept him from stuffing the "monkey"? I rather think that the illustration provided is not the one you are going to see in the book, if there ever is a book.

Edited August 23, 2012 by bipedalist

[Guest ajciani]

Here's something to add to the musings.

I had a likely encounter where a BF visited my cabin on two consecutive nights. On the first night, I heard it run around the cabin, right in line with a game cam I had left hidden in the wheel well of my car. I marked the time, and the camera did take a picture, but at a 1/5 second exposure time, the running visitor was nothing more than a streak. So try two: I propped the game cam up against a log, hidden in some tall grass, with a view of the rear of the cabin. The visitor came onto the back porch, and sat there all night long, into the early morning, giving me the occasional raspberry. I sat still and quiet in the cabin, for fear of chasing away my visitor while the camera did its job. In the morning, after chasing away my visitor, I discovered that the log had been moved and the camera lay on its back. No pictures.

So the questions: Did the visitor think to drop the camera on its back by moving the log? Was it giving the raspberry as an expression of victory, or rubbing it in?

Humans learn a lot by being taught. We learn how to use a faucet, a door knob or a video camera because someone shows us. If you came up to a door with no concept of how the whole thing worked, but had seen that it could be swung open, and this was usually done by holding the knob, then you might try the same thing. What do you do with the knob? Do you push on it? Nothing. Pull on it? Nothing. Try to turn it? It doesn't turn (because it is locked). Maybe some day you try again. Maybe this time the door is unlocked, maybe not.

Bigfoots could be quite intelligent, but without the addition of knowledge, they will have very little means to show it.

[gigantor]

True, but if you apply Occam's razor...

[Guest]

AJ, your post made me howl! Yes, the the sound of rasberries were victory trumpets LOL....Bobbie, chimps in the wild are aware AND take measures to hide their tracks! So yah, why not sasquatch?

[bipedalist]

Heck, throw one of these guys Occam's razor and he'll shave his initials in your lawn over night, err rather a few nice

X's.

Funny AJ, but when they imitate your snoring outside the screened windows, that's when you know you got the reddest of raspberries, hah.

Edited August 23, 2012 by bipedalist

[Guest]

I agree gigantor...no knowledge, but observing campers opening and closing a cabin door? You get the picture...

[JanV]

OK. This is pure speculation but here goes...

I am not an expert on what exactly intelligence is, but if it is the ability to learn and apply that learning to successfully manipulate its environment, then BF would have to be intelligent. It has demonstrated the ability to survive in remote areas and remain undetected by all except a small number of humans.

It has to be of the Family Hominidae which includes humans and great apes. It could be a relict hominid that will fall in the primate classification if and when it could be studied.

It seems to have been able to perfectly adapt to rugged environments without the tools that modern humans would require.

It has a strong family based social structure. I suspect that they dispose of their dead.

It is exceptionally curious about but very wary of humans. The avoidance of humans is a survival trait.

It may be primarily nocturnal but some groups in very very remote areas my be diurnal.

I personally think it is smarter than chimps or gorillas as I suspect that it has developed a proto-

language capability- present tense only.

I never thought it could or would sit at a back door and give raspberries to anyone inside. That takes a sense of humor!

I

Edited August 23, 2012 by JanV

[Guest]

We're intelligent but we continue to smoke even tho mountains of data says its not good and we wake up hacking and choking?

We're intelligent but we drink lots of alcohol to the point where we miss work or yell at people we supposedly love?

We're intelligent but we do lots of nasty stuff to each other that I won't mention.....Does that make us intelligent?

[Guest VioletX]

Thanks for starting the thread Bobby O. I can only speculate here, but I wonder if some of the tree peeking videos are almost like teasing and they are allowing us to catch just a glimpse.'Cheeky monkeys!"

[Rockape]

I agree gigantor...no knowledge, but observing campers opening and closing a cabin door? You get the picture...

A case of "monkey see, monkey do" so to speak.

Even dogs and cats learn the way in and out is the door. I've had both dogs and cats that would reach up to a door knob with their paws. I even had a dog that learned how to open the latch on a chain link gate. I couldn't figure out how she kept getting out even after I was sure it wasn't due to me leaving the gate open (she loved to get out and chase the mailman) so I watched through the window one day only to see her use her nose to flip up the U shaped latch, stick her paw in the chainlink and open the gate. So it would be no stretch that a BF would learn to open a door through observation.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Kudo's for starting this thread BobbyO (and thanks for posting to the prior thread regarding hiding in plain sight).

ajciani, that was a very very funny encounter you related! Many different Native Americans/First Nations People have noted that BF has a sense of humor and likes to trick humans.

I've often thought about this report, in the follow up report MM talks about the Ohio hunter who found a row of deer legs arranged side by side "like pencils" in the back of a cave in Ohio. At one point in the interview the witness "grabbed my hands and said with a most powerful and disarming sincerity "They are a superior intelligence". " There is a link in the follow up report that references this encounter:

"He said that while he was out hunting in the fall, he followed some paths back into the more remote uninhabited hollows of the Wills Creek area, a few miles from his cabin. He followed a deer trail to a cave like overhang. Inside the overhang, he found a collection of severed deer legs. The rest of the remains were not present. The deer legs on the floor of the cave were neatly arranged side by side.

He sat down and rested and was there for a while before it happened -- the sasquatch returned to the cave. The old guy was paralyzed with terror as he sat there staring at this hair covered thing which stood motionless, staring back at him from a few yards away, at the lip of the overhang. Eventually the old man stood up and slowly climbed out the other side of the cave's wide mouth. The sasquatch didn't chase after him."

So I'm thinking that although there isn't any verbal exchange, there had to be something that would create the kind of intensity of statement that the man thought they had a superior intelligence. To me it seems he is pretty well indicating their intelligence is superior to ours.

I think if we start approaching our research with this in mind it may help us rethink our efforts. If they really are more intelligent or at least within the same range of intelligence as HSS, then (putting myself in their "shoes") it would follow that much of what we do is pretty insulting to their intelligence. Imagine if you had a neighbor that came over and kept interrupting your conversations with your family by yelling gibberish or blasting recordings of something your cousin said 20 years ago and you didn't think it was all that funny back then? I'd rather my neighbor enter my home with some level of respect.

That's why I'm not such a big fan of the "gone wackabout" method of research. Perhaps it is good for an overall survey to see if anyone's home, but not for really getting to the conversation.