Why Is It Easier To Find Large Animals In Third World Jungles Compared To North American Forests?

[Guest Darrell]

^ yes and Ivan Sanderson also stated there was a giant 3 toed penguin walking around the beaches of Florida and staked his reputation on the Minnesota Iceman being real. 

[BobbyO]

Sure. The point was made earlier in the thread that many forest habitats elsewhere have been hunted out and that human pressure was more intense than in NA. My friends' experiences with birds in some parts of Asia supports this: there are some areas which are essentially birdless as everything's been hunted and eaten.

I lived on an Island in SE Asia for 6 or 7 years recently.

In the time since 1990 it was calculated by officials ( who generally skew things in their favour anyway ) that between 80%-90% of indigenous wildlife had disappeared due to the hunting of Island immigrants such as construction workers etc who came to the island for work.

[Guest]

Everyone keeps saying American forests are less explored than jungles.

This doesn't feel right to me but I can't find any data supporting either statement.

^Well yes back 100 yrs ago. Does anyone think there are unknown species of bear, elk, deer, wolf, ect that exit here in N. America that hasnt been discovered?

yeah this was my original point with the question.

[Guest Darrell]

Well, Im not sure the "lost world" concept can work here. Are there pockets of terrain here in NA that can produce a distinct species of cat, deer, or bear and support a breading population? And can that "lost world" really stay undetected?

[Guest JiggyPotamus]

I do not think it is either. If this question were posed in a veiled attempt at calling into question the veracity of the existence of sasquatch, the person who asked it must necessarily fail in their attempt. What large animals would we be talking about to begin with? Large animals in North America are not that hard to find, for the most part, and I would bet the same is true for any other place in the world.

 

It is not so much about where one is looking, but about the intelligence and willingness to avoid detection that plays the main role. If someone wanted to go out and locate a bear in NA, their chances of success would not be all that different for a person who went out to find a gorilla in the jungles of some other country. Of course the two main factors in this comparison would be the population of both animals, as well as the distribution area.

 

But those factors can be estimated. So honestly, saying that finding any one animal as compared with another only really has credibility because of the size of the population and the area through which that population is dispersed. This is dealing with known animals. With sasquatch however, this is the first animal I know of who actively avoids detection. Some animals, for instance deer, don't like to be around people in the wild, but their ability to avoid humans is based entirely off of instinct. This is the case with the majority of animals as well, but is not the case when it comes to sasquatch, at least not in my opinion.

 

 

[Guest]

Gorillas, hippos, etc. have distinct shapes that make them easy to spot.  Sasquatch is a blurry creature that is easily missed. 

[Guest]

What goes wrong in the forest?

Edited August 28, 2013 by Ginger
To Remove Offensive Content

[Guest DWA]

^Well yes back 100 yrs ago. Does anyone think there are unknown species of bear, elk, deer, wolf, ect that exit here in N. America that hasnt been discovered?

It's not only possible, it's likely; and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't spent much time around the field of taxonomy lately.

 

That's not the question.  The reason that only taxonomic hair-splitting would reveal a "new" species of those animals is that WE ACCEPT THEM.  We deny sasquatch; which is why more people see them in a year than see wolverines or cougars (bet on it) and they still aren't confirmed.

 

It's not about remote or smart or elusive.  It's about nature's ultimate camouflage:  denial.

[Old Dog]

Part of it could also be not only the protocols involved, but the money expended for the search.  I tried to find the cost for a Nat Geo expedition for an average, but could only find the cost for a seven man expedition to Everest.  The cost to do that expedition is the $250,000 range.  I wonder if any better results could be achieved in a Bigfoot search if given that kind of funding.  Imagine that funding and the backing of an outfit like Nat Geo or a major university.  It would be nice.

[Guest]

has anyone ever tried a kickstarter? I know there was a successful one to look for dinosaurs in Africa.

[Guest Darrell]

It's not only possible, it's likely; and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't spent much time around the field of taxonomy lately.

 

That's not the question.  The reason that only taxonomic hair-splitting would reveal a "new" species of those animals is that WE ACCEPT THEM.  We deny sasquatch; which is why more people see them in a year than see wolverines or cougars (bet on it) and they still aren't confirmed.

 

It's not about remote or smart or elusive.  It's about nature's ultimate camouflage:  denial.

Well I dont know about that. If you are saying the reason we cannot find a new species of 4 legged hoofed animal in NA is because we deny there can be a new species I just dont think that holds water. But if you are saying we cant find bigfoot because everybody just denies that it exists despite any proof then ok I buy that.

[Drew]

Problem I see with this:

 

1. Bigfoot is seen in semi-urban areas, on highways, in parking lots, behind garages etc... , Most of the sightings in the databases are near trails, in campgrounds, around fire pits, looking in windows and things.  Why would you need to go into the deep deep remote woods to find an animal that is clearly, based on the sighting record, typically seen in well-traversed areas?

 

2. Wildlife surveyors can count with extreme accuracy, large mammals by using a FLIR camera and a Cessna.  Why is Bigfoot immune to that surveying method?

[Guest DWA]

Well I dont know about that. If you are saying the reason we cannot find a new species of 4 legged hoofed animal in NA is because we deny there can be a new species I just dont think that holds water. But if you are saying we cant find bigfoot because everybody just denies that it exists despite any proof then ok I buy that.

 

 

No, what I'm saying is that I would have expected us to find any species of the other kinds you mention precisely because we expect those animals here and we know they're here.

 

As we've accepted them for centuries now, any "new" species would pretty much have to be a taxonomical decision (e.g., the "spirit bear" of British Columbia, or even the western "cinnamon bear," being declared a "new" species, based on new genetic evidence, instead of color phases of Ursus americanus).

 

As genetics seems the fastest-moving area of zoology at the moment, that seems to be where many if not most "new" species are coming from:  something that was thought to be part of species x being separated by genes.

 

With sasquatch, though, every eyewitness is picked apart; all footprints are presumed by many to be hoaxes, with no reference to the opinions of those experts who disagree; and there just doesn't seem, yet, to be any kind of cultural groundswell of:  why is it that we don't trust these people?

 

I can't figure out another explanation, particularly since the volume and consistency of the evidence don't seem likely to me to indicate a universal false positive.

[Drew]

has anyone ever tried a kickstarter? I know there was a successful one to look for dinosaurs in Africa.

I believe they reached their funding goal, but I would deem it as unsuccessful with regards to fulfilling obligations and actually doing the expedition

http://www.guerrillaexplorer.com/cryptozoology/the-dinosaur-expedition-goes-extinct/

[Guest DWA]

Problem I see with this:

 

1. Bigfoot is seen in semi-urban areas, on highways, in parking lots, behind garages etc... , Most of the sightings in the databases are near trails, in campgrounds, around fire pits, looking in windows and things.  Why would you need to go into the deep deep remote woods to find an animal that is clearly, based on the sighting record, typically seen in well-traversed areas?

 

2. Wildlife surveyors can count with extreme accuracy, large mammals by using a FLIR camera and a Cessna.  Why is Bigfoot immune to that surveying method?

 

1.  The sightings in those kinds of places tend to be right on the edges of either large contiguous tracts of what appears to be good habitat or of corridors that either do, or conceivably could, facilitate the travel of a large mobile carnivore or omnivore.  Not only this, but a number of such encounters almost certainly had multiple witnesses (in some cases. others at the scene gave the reporting witness evidence they'd seen it too).  We're lucky that one of them reported it, because none of the others did.  (I believe I have read one, maybe two, cases in which two people filing reports may have seen the same animal.)

 

I don't know about "most" of the sightings being the kind you're saying.  Motorists on remote roads, and people either working or recreating in wild areas, seem to have the bulk of the encounters to me.  But this has always been my major problem with the attitude that this has to be a deep-wilderness animal:  how then are all these people seeing them?  I choose to go with what the evidence seems to be telling me:  that they do what a lot of animals like them (omnivores like raccoons and bears; primates like apes and monkeys) do.  They hang around the edges of human activtity, because food frequently happens there, and then some of them are just curious about what else is there.  They're not spending most of their time there; but they do go there.

 

2.  Wildlife surveyors could possibly be seeing the occasional bigfoot on those overflights.  Think their colleagues would ever find out about that?  I'd love to see that I'm wrong, but I'm not so sure I am.  The scientists I have seen reporting sightings have all done so anonymously on bigfoot databases.  I have seen reports of overflight sightings but none using FLIR; that may be because it's a young technology, and people frequently wait years to report a sighting.

Edited August 28, 2013 by DWA