Study Shows Sasquatch Intelligence Impossible Without Fire.

[Guest]

This pretty much sums it up...cooking wasn't the only factor.albeit an important one. I don't think that it was a key factor with mental development though.

Fire was extremely useful. It provided early men/women with a means of warmth and defense -- the wild animals were frightened of the fire and avoided the campsites -- and allowed them to settle in previously inhospitable areas. Before the use of fire, men/women could only eat raw foods -- meats, fruits and berries. Now cooking softened the food, allowing an expansion of the diet that helped the men/women to grow stronger. One hidden benefit of the use of fire is the effect that it had on social groups. Sitting around the warmth of the fire, men and women developed communication skills that helped their mental development.

Edited December 9, 2012 by ronn1

[Guest]

The brain could have grown larger without fire and technology. All it required was the selection for it to happen.

And to add some levity to the situation, if the PNW is some of the best habitat for the sasquatch, do you KNOW how hard it is to light a fire in our 8 months of RAIN outdoors without shelter, with wet wood??? If you can't eat raw, you don't eat maybe....there's your natural selection.

Yeah, they might have needed a Plan B.

Edited December 9, 2012 by madison5716

[Guest]

And to add some levity to the situation, if the PNW is some of the best habitat for the sasquatch, do you KNOW how hard it is to light a fire in our 8 months of RAIN outdoors without shelter, with wet wood??? If you can't eat raw, you don't eat maybe....there's your natural selection.

Yeah, they might have needed a Plan B.

Fire would have been their demise.

We (early man) would have found them easily a long time ago..hunted them down and killed them.

They are no match against an organized hunter.

Stealth means..no fire. There is prolly no creature more stealthy that this one.

Edited December 9, 2012 by ronn1

[Guest ajciani]

The study is based on multiple assumptions, and extending the implications for humans to bigfoots may not even be valid.

1. Cooking does not mean more calories. Cooking makes food easier to digest, which allows a reduction in the size of the intestines. If the same amount of food is consumed, the reduction in intestines can become an increase in brains. Body shrinks, brain grows, and we go from 7% brain to 20% brain, but it is unlikely such a large change was from cooking.
   
2. Most food does not benefit from cooking. For most fleshy fruits cooking is unnecessary (their caloric value is in easily extracted sugars and proteins). Most of the leafy vegetables are, even today, rarely cooked. Nuts are high in calories and about the same raw or roasted. Meat and animal fat are super-simple to digest, require no cooking, and are high in calories. Grains also require little cooking, but did not really exist until about 10,000 years ago. The short and simple of it seems to be that cooking has little impact on the ease with which we digest most of our foods.
   
3. Eating meat was the key. The move from intestines to brains seems to have coincided with increased consumption of animals. As human predecessors moved from being herbivores to omnivores, and the amount of meat consumption increased, the amount of brains increased. Meat consumption predated fire by a lot, as did the increase in brain size predate fire. Brains begot cooking, not the other way around.
   
4. Meat gave us brains, brains let us move back to veg. It is true that processing can transform some foods into a viable source of energy for our small guts. Now that we have brains, gained by eating meat, we can enjoy the luxury of processing plants into a nutritive substance.
   
5. Bigfoots have much larger bodies. The body mass of an 8 foot tall bigfoot is easily 2.5 times that of a 6 foot tall person. Keeping the brain exactly the same size, this means that a bigfoot's brain uses about 9.1% of their total calories. This is much more in line with our herbaceous cousins. Bigfoots could easily power that on a diet of meat, fruits and berries, nuts, and fleshy leafy plants.
   

[Guest]

The study is based on multiple assumptions, and extending the implications for humans to bigfoots may not even be valid.

1. Cooking does not mean more calories. Cooking makes food easier to digest, which allows a reduction in the size of the intestines. If the same amount of food is consumed, the reduction in intestines can become an increase in brains. Body shrinks, brain grows, and we go from 7% brain to 20% brain, but it is unlikely such a large change was from cooking.
   
2. Most food does not benefit from cooking. For most fleshy fruits cooking is unnecessary (their caloric value is in easily extracted sugars and proteins). Most of the leafy vegetables are, even today, rarely cooked. Nuts are high in calories and about the same raw or roasted. Meat and animal fat are super-simple to digest, require no cooking, and are high in calories. Grains also require little cooking, but did not really exist until about 10,000 years ago. The short and simple of it seems to be that cooking has little impact on the ease with which we digest most of our foods.
   
3. Eating meat was the key. The move from intestines to brains seems to have coincided with increased consumption of animals. As human predecessors moved from being herbivores to omnivores, and the amount of meat consumption increased, the amount of brains increased. Meat consumption predated fire by a lot, as did the increase in brain size predate fire. Brains begot cooking, not the other way around.
   
4. Meat gave us brains, brains let us move back to veg. It is true that processing can transform some foods into a viable source of energy for our small guts. Now that we have brains, gained by eating meat, we can enjoy the luxury of processing plants into a nutritive substance.
   
5. Bigfoots have much larger bodies. The body mass of an 8 foot tall bigfoot is easily 2.5 times that of a 6 foot tall person. Keeping the brain exactly the same size, this means that a bigfoot's brain uses about 9.1% of their total calories. This is much more in line with our herbaceous cousins. Bigfoots could easily power that on a diet of meat, fruits and berries, nuts, and fleshy leafy plants.
   

Very good points.

What astounds me is that, given their *supposed intelligence*...they haven't evolved the finer skills of tool making ...prolly don't have the need?

They also seem capable of vocalizing...yet.. there doesn't appear to be any real *language*?

Edited December 9, 2012 by ronn1

[Guest]

1) That depends on whether you accept or reject reports that they have used some from of language.

2) There is a disconnect between the ability to understand language (a function of intelligence) and the ability to utilize speech in a number of the higher primates (gorillas, chimps, etc). The lack of spoken language in those species is due to physiological deficit, not mental. When provided with an alternate means of symbolic expression, apes have demonstrated the ability to utilize abstract language.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/08/six-talking-apes/

[Oonjerah]

Study Shows Homo Sap Intelligence Impossible Even with Fire, Light and TV.

[Guest]

1) That depends on whether you accept or reject reports that they have used some from of language.

2) There is a disconnect between the ability to understand language (a function of intelligence) and the ability to utilize speech in a number of the higher primates (gorillas, chimps, etc). The lack of spoken language in those species is due to physiological deficit, not mental. When provided with an alternate means of symbolic expression, apes have demonstrated the ability to utilize abstract language.

http://blogs.smithso...x-talking-apes/

Yes..but Squatch can vocalize...yet there doesn't appear to be a language. Apes and chimps cannot vocalize...just make sounds. Vocalization requires a special anatomy...Squatch has this.

Edited December 9, 2012 by ronn1

[Oonjerah]

Communication?

I know Scott Nelson links have been posted before; likely this is one of them.

Bigfoot Recordings

http://www.bigfootsounds.com/experts-point-of-view/r-scott-nelson/

"We have verified that these creatures use language by the human

definition of it. The months of hard work that we have put into the

study of the Berry/Morehead tapes is finally coming to fruition.

The analysis is finished, although I am still working on parts of the

final write-up such as frequency count tables, morpheme lists, etc."

[Guest]

Communication?

I know Scott Nelson links have been posted before; likely this is one of them.

Bigfoot Recordings

http://www.bigfootso...r-scott-nelson/

"We have verified that these creatures use language by the human

definition of it. The months of hard work that we have put into the

study of the Berry/Morehead tapes is finally coming to fruition.

The analysis is finished, although I am still working on parts of the

final write-up such as frequency count tables, morpheme lists, etc."

So when did this come out and what has been published since?

I don't know how in the world this guy had enough recorded vocalizations to accomplish this. They are very scarce and those that are *out there* are fairly faint and brief.

[Guest]

This pretty much sums it up...cooking wasn't the only factor.albeit an important one. I don't think that it was a key factor with mental development though.

Fire was extremely useful. It provided early men/women with a means of warmth and defense -- the wild animals were frightened of the fire and avoided the campsites -- and allowed them to settle in previously inhospitable areas. Before the use of fire, men/women could only eat raw foods -- meats, fruits and berries. Now cooking softened the food, allowing an expansion of the diet that helped the men/women to grow stronger. One hidden benefit of the use of fire is the effect that it had on social groups. Sitting around the warmth of the fire, men and women developed communication skills that helped their mental development.

Fire is indeed multi-purpose which is why we use it so much. Our ancestors may have eaten cooked food before we domesticated fire though. FFire happen naturally on the savannah and many carnivores follow them to catch prey that is flushed out. Sometimes animals get caught in a fire or their bodies do and get cooked. Nuts and roots can also be cooked depending on exposure. Our ancestors may have started following fires like other predators do. This would make taming the flames more natural as they would have learned a few things before trying trying to catch it.

[Guest]

intelligence and instinct are two different things.

[Guest]

The study is based on multiple assumptions, and extending the implications for humans to bigfoots may not even be valid.

[*]Cooking does not mean more calories. Cooking makes food easier to digest, which allows a reduction in the size of the intestines. If the same amount of food is consumed, the reduction in intestines can become an increase in brains. Body shrinks, brain grows, and we go from 7% brain to 20% brain, but it is unlikely such a large change was from cooking.

Cooking does not increase the calorie content of food but makes more of these calories available by increasing their absorption by a smaller gut. Cooking releases more calories for absorption. This is an increase in calories in the net result. Then too there is reduction in needs by the digestive tract which are then also free to be used by a growing brain.

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

The study doesn't say anything about Sasquatch. The thread title is misleading.

Edited December 28, 2012 by OntarioSquatch

[Guest]

[*]Most food does not benefit from cooking. For most fleshy fruits cooking is unnecessary (their caloric value is in easily extracted sugars and proteins). Most of the leafy vegetables are, even today, rarely cooked. Nuts are high in calories and about the same raw or roasted. Meat and animal fat are super-simple to digest, require no cooking, and are high in calories. Grains also require little cooking, but did not really exist until about 10,000 years ago. The short and simple of it seems to be that cooking has little impact on the ease with which we digest most of our foods.

Do not be fooled by the fruits in your local supermarket. Our ancestors did not eat them or any fruits like them. Wild fruits are small and hard plus fibrous and less nutritious. Fruits and nuts are also seasonal in most parts of the world and hence not particularly staples in the diet for most savannah species. True there are exceptions to my description of fruits and nuts but they are exceptions nothing more. Grains were also likely nonstaple items in early human diets due to their seasonal nature and a lack of storage possibilities among our early ancestors.

[*]Eating meat was the key. The move from intestines to brains seems to have coincided with increased consumption of animals. As human predecessors moved from being herbivores to omnivores, and the amount of meat consumption increased, the amount of brains increased. Meat consumption predated fire by a lot, as did the increase in brain size predate fire. Brains begot cooking, not the other way around.

Chimps eat meat and likely our last common ancestors with chimps also ate meat. Apes in the bush and grasslands likely ate more meat than chimps do as there are fewer options out there than in the forest. However, lions and hyenas also eat meat (exclusively in fact) and do not have our increased brain matter much less more than we have. If our meat-eating ways led to an increase in brains then the lions and hyenas would have to be smarter since they eat much more meat than we do. But they aren't. Meat contributed to our increased brains yes but they were not the only thing to do so. Meat likley contributed first but cooking likely contributed as well later when the brains got a little bigger.

[*]Bigfoots have much larger bodies. The body mass of an 8 foot tall bigfoot is easily 2.5 times that of a 6 foot tall person. Keeping the brain exactly the same size, this means that a bigfoot's brain uses about 9.1% of their total calories. This is much more in line with our herbaceous cousins. Bigfoots could easily power that on a diet of meat, fruits and berries, nuts, and fleshy leafy plants.

You make assumptions about bigfoot physiology and metabolism that aren't supported much. If bigfoot is an herbivore, then its jaws will be larger and stronger to chew foliage and its gut will be large to absorb as much nutrition as possible before the food mass is evacuated. If bigfoot is a carnivore, then their gut will be shorter but their jaws will be stronger and larger and their denitition will be sharper to cut off the meat. Both options demand a lot of nutrients and energy. This will limit the energy and resource availability for brain growth. An omnivorous diet will not really make matters and better. Our brains require much, much more energy from food than muscles do. If this was not so then more animals would have huge brains and humans wouldn't be so different.

The study doesn't say anything about Sasquatch. The thread title is misleading.

It's about bipedal apes and the thread does bring the matter to bear on what kind of brain squatches might have.