Is It Implausible For Bigfoot To Survive In This Cold?

[JDL]

It occurs to me that a bigfoot den, unless very well insulated, would have a heat signature.  Has anyone seen anything that might be an indicator of a den using thermal?

Edited February 8, 2014 by JDL

[hiflier]

Hello JDL,

 

By den would you also be including a cave situation? I won't insult your intelligence because you know where this is going LOL. So no need for dialogue. The cave idea has already been broached.

[JDL]

I recall seeing a link to a video here at one time of a crude teepee-like log shelter, covered in melting snow, that had a pure white steam plume rising from its top, but no smoke.  I thought that it might be due to thawing snow, which had previously served as insulation, dripping onto a midden and vaporizing due to the heat of the midden. 

 

Now a heavily insulated shelter with a warm midden in it may not be visible by thermal, but a warm midden may be detectable by thermal during a thaw.  Sounds like a job for a thermal surveillance drone.

[the parkie]

JDL

Thanks for the additional thoughts. The potential link between a fecal matter driven midden and the gut wrenching odour often associated with sasquatches is rather obvious. Presumably there may be less need for such middens in the warmer southern states - are fewer foul odours reported alongside sightings from there I wonder?

[Shelly]

Eh here in Florida he's called Skunk Ape for a reason... 

[Guest DWA]

The likely circumstance surrounding L'Odeur is likely what it is for gorillas:  a fear/agitation based emission.

 

I would doubt that a "heat midden" would smell particularly bad, actually.

[hiflier]

Hello All,

^ Well, there's one way to find out......Oh, was I being indelicate?

[Guest]

I too think they are quite comfortable in a cold climate and probably stress more where/when it is hot. Living in a rural part of a rural state known for it's cold winters, seeing how animals get along well in our winters still after all these years amazes me.  Where our game has the most stress & the most winter mortality is if cold/heavy snow stretches past mid-March...

[Shelly]

WIldlife is much more acclimated to weather than people.  Especially if its a species that has lived in an area for hundreds if not thousands of years. 

[Guest]

Saw a timely example of my last post on this thread when I drove into town at 0820 this this morning. 

 

It was clear, no wind (unusual up here but most likely at first & last light), and my truck's weather station read a balmy 24 degrees below zero.  A couple miles south of my farmstead probably 95% of the deer in this part of the county are yarded up in a couple standing corn fields that had too high of moisture content to harvest last Fall.  Across the road from one of the corn fields are a couple sections of harvested & plowed beans which they have been feeding on since the first snow.  I don't know if the leftover beans are easier to get at or maybe a higher energy source, but the deer move out of the corn in the evenings, spend the night feeding on beans, then move back into the security of the corn the next morning.  They don't seem interested in eating the corn much until every scrap of beans are uncovered & eaten.

 

Rather than moving back into the corn to bed in cover at first light, probably 100 head of deer were all bedded out in that pool table flat open field, soaking up warmth the rising sun reflecting off the snow was providing.  They were calm and obviously quite comfortable despite what those unfamiliar with living in these conditions might think...

[hiflier]

Hello NDT,

You paint quite a picture there. The corn too is probably too shady until the sun gets a bit higher. As it warms the air the wind can then pick up in which the animals will use the corn as a windbreak. Also the sun at higher angles will penetrate the the stalks and bedding down will be more comfortable, snow and all.

Edited February 10, 2014 by hiflier

[SWWASAS]

It cold!  really, really cold!

 

If Bigfoot were to exist, how could it survive these temperatures without clothing, shelter or fire?

 

Not plausible IMO.

 

That's one of the reasons why I'm surprised to find the existence of a southern skunk ape more plausible than a northern sasquatch.

 

What do you think?  Do you have a plausible hypothesis that explains how Bigfoot survives extreme weather?

Ummm. Your profile does not say where you live, but since you say it is cold, I would suspect you live somewhere in the Northern US. Modern man and its ancestors made it through the last ice age when where you live was probably covered with a thousand feet of ice. If man made it through the ice age by using caves (lots of evidence of that), migration (evidence of that), improvised shelters (evidence of that), I see no reason why BF does not do the same thing in the relatively mild winter environment of present day North America. They do not need to hibernate, they just need to shelter through the severe weather periods, just as ancient and modern man, for that matter, does every time a blizzard hits. Natural caves, lava tubes, dug out shelters, pine or fur bough lean to's, all have a reported BF association. They have had 10+ thousand years to find them all and know where they are. I suspect that most of them are unknown to newcomers like us. Randy

[Doc Holliday]

re: the deer & corn vs beans..........i suspect the beans have a higher protein content and digest better........ if one were to construct the midden as previously mentioned i'd wager you may see where / how corn will end up ....at least while mixing  one of the main "ingredients".  

 

 

in some of what you read about wildlife management and deer herds i recall something about corn not being a great supplement for deer in cold weather.

 

although they love it  it can create digestive problems, especially in large quantity.   http://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/feeding-deer-corn-is-not-the-best-thing-to-do/14293.html

 

makes you think though, with all those deer yarded up  any BF ought to be near by leaving tracks in the snow with such a plentiful food supply ...venison, beans , corn..what more could a creature want ?

[hiflier]

Hello NDT,

Doc has a point. Are you close to or in an active area?

[southernyahoo]

Parkie,

 

It would be harder to establish a heat-generating midden as the temperature drops.  Most bacteria and fungi shut down and go into spore form to protect themselves from the cold.  When they do this, they don't generate heat.  So the midden would either need to be initiated when it is warm enough to do so, or would have to be heated to a warm enough temperature until the micro-organisms begin to generate enough heat to sustain themselves.  Some of the necessary heat would come from fecal matter and urine, but insulation, in part from the added vegetative matter would be required, and body heat provided at close proximity would also be necessary to sustain a viable temperature until the bacteria in the midden begin to evolve heat.  The actual temperature required to initiate the midden would depend on the mix of organisms, but there are plenty of studies that discuss this in detail, with varying heats recorded and varying recommendations offered.

 

In the thread about bigfoot that have been shot, hiflier posted a summary of accounts, and one of them caught my attention.  A hunter noticed that a large amount of moss had been removed from some rock faces and investigated.  He explored in that direction and was surprised by a squatch that suddenly stood up from behind a fallen tree.  After shooting at the squatch, which took off, he found that it was in the act of covering a large amount of fecal matter with moss.  It was unclear whether or not it was matter from a single defecation, or from more than one, perhaps from multiple individuals, but the account indicates that it was a significant amount of moss that had been harvested, indicating that the pile may have been pretty large.  Now the squatch, if it simply wanted to cover feces, could have just buried them without harvesting moss from one area and carrying it to the location of the fecal matter, so I postulate that this may be an account of a squatch establishing a midden in a sheltered spot around which a shelter could be constructed.  The sheltered location makes sense, both from the perspective of nurturing the midden and from the perspective of being a good place to build a shelter.  The combination of moss and fecal matter also makes sense as starter material which would contain both bacteria and fuel necessary to establish a midden.

 

Great post, I've pondered this before as a means to generate heat in a bed like a hot compost pile. This could also certainly explain the horrible stench that is sometimes reported.