Moon Phases

[Guest insanity42]

As is raiding crops, where other Primates are concerned anyway Yuchi..

I found this early this week.

This is how Chimpanzee's do things and when they do things in a part of Uganda that a study was undertaken in 2013, where they were raiding crop fields at specific times.

image.jpg

I am unable to view the image, but from the date and place you mention, I suspect this is the article.

Krief S, Cibot M, Bortolamiol S, Seguya A, Krief J-M, Masi S (2014) Wild Chimpanzees on the Edge: Nocturnal Activities in Croplands. PLoS ONE 9(10): e109925. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109925

I thought it was interesting as it shows that a primate species that is habitually diurnal can be flexible in their activity and raid crops during the night.

[FarArcher]

I'm going to irritate most everyone here, but that's not my intent - as some really good folks have done a lot of work on this, and of course it would be great if a correlation on bigfoot activity could be connected to phases of the moon.

 

Here goes nothing:  There is zero neutral basis to measure increase or decrease in bigfoot activity.

 

If this is based on sightings - you have yet another population of independent biologicals to account for.  And THAT is going to be an immense task - accounting for this additional subset of data that must be accumulated and accounted for.

 

Here's what I'm saying.  Are there more sightings on evenings with a light breeze, strong winds, or no winds.  Does wind chill enter into the activity level of the observers.  Is it a workday, worknight, or weekend that the observers had more observations.  At the time of observation, what activities were they engaged in, and where, and under what conditions?

 

I mean, there may be more people out on cool evenings on weekends - regardless of the moon phase - which could skew results obtained just by examining moon phase.

 

If folks are up to their butts in snow and high winds, there's a greater likelihood that few observations will be made regardless of the moon phase.

 

Were the observations made from vehicles?  What type of road - surface, width, straight or curved - had the local football team just finished and more cars were on the road?  Or were conditions icy, and thus fewer cars were out and about.  And THEN, what time of day for each of these incidents?  Temperature and relative humidity affect the ability or preference of folks to be outside, as evidence by what we call the Heat Index.

 

It's just that we humans have so many variable that affect our own activities - which in turn may result in more sightings - which may or may not be affected by moon phase.

 

But I've been wrong something before.

[gigantor]

Of course, you have a point.

 

Should we not bother looking into this then?

 

There are too many variables folks, lets forget all about it, you're wasting your time.

Edited September 4, 2015 by gigantor

[BobbyO]

Like I've said previously, what we are doing with the SSR can be broken down, broken down again, then again and then again until out heart's content.

There are a tonne of different parameters that we can utilise and dive in to where analysis is concerned, including all that you've mentioned Far.

But the reality is we are volunteers doing this stuff and when you add the fact that we are still adding our own data ourselves and also have lives and families etc to deal with, time becomes an issue fir pretty much anything and everything.

My personal belief is that our moon data when it's time to actually analyse properly and we feel that we've really added the vast majority of data available to us, will be second to none due to the fantastic moon phase data software that we have built in to the database that Gigantor done for us.

To have the ability to automatically detect at what time of the night a sighting was compared to if the moon was or wasn't visible on a particular date is something I don't believe anybody else is doing right now ( not publicly anyway ) and that can only benefit Sasquatch research in the long run if we are to establish certain behavioural patterns of these animals in certain seasons and geographical areas etc.

That's where my head is anyway.

[Trogluddite]

FarArcher,

 

That's a good summary for people, like yourself, new to the forums and perhaps new to critical thinking about stuff.  NS² to most of the serious members, but it is probably good to repeat it every so often to make it available to those who have recently joined and who are unfamiliar w/topics that have been discussed in the past. 

[BobbyO]

As is raiding crops, where other Primates are concerned anyway Yuchi..

I found this early this week.

This is how Chimpanzee's do things and when they do things in a part of Uganda that a study was undertaken in 2013, where they were raiding crop fields at specific times.image.jpg

I am unable to view the image, but from the date and place you mention, I suspect this is the article.Krief S, Cibot M, Bortolamiol S, Seguya A, Krief J-M, Masi S (2014) Wild Chimpanzees on the Edge: Nocturnal Activities in Croplands. PLoS ONE 9(10): e109925. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109925

I thought it was interesting as it shows that a primate species that is habitually diurnal can be flexible in their activity and raid crops during the night.

Yes Sir, you got it.

[FarArcher]

FarArcher,

 

That's a good summary for people, like yourself, new to the forums and perhaps new to critical thinking about stuff.  NS² to most of the serious members, but it is probably good to repeat it every so often to make it available to those who have recently joined and who are unfamiliar w/topics that have been discussed in the past. 

 

Yeah, I can see where that critical thinking for folks such as yourself might come in real handy.  I like that word, too.  Critical thinking.  I'll have to look that up and see what that's all about.  Right now I only get like a post a day, so I'm very limited here, so that will give me time to investigate this critical thinking, and I appreciate you pointing out what I'm lacking here.  I have so much to learn.

 

Offhand, I'd guess that it's some of that stuff we had called "Intelligence."  The Intelligence folks I was familiar with a tiny bit were numerous.  They had more gadgets - expensive ones too - that they would place out and about to blanket an area. Why you wouldn't believe some of them - a few technologies that all by themselves,  sounded like they were definitive without question. 

 

Super sensitive acoustic devices, IR temperature differentiation detectors, super sensitive seismic detectors, super powerful overhead cameras on aircraft - yep.  Software to differentiate motion, speed, size, weight, and other software to determined direction.  They measured temperature, rainfall, humidity, ambient light - it was a full bag of tricks.

 

To more thoroughly complete their intelligence enabling critical thinking, they were actually doing that long before I arrived - and of course, that time in previous discussions during critical thinking made them much more serious than me.  I wasn't nearly as serious as they were.

 

I was also at a distinct disadvantage, I was also unfamiliar with the previous discussions that occurred prior to my arrival.

 

I guess I was just luckier than they were.  That's the only explanation, as I lacked critical thinking, gadgets, technology, and missed all those discussions.

 

But what I did that they couldn't - was find the bad guys.  Every single time.  One time, even found what those intelligence fellows called, "The Lost Regiment," a notorious regiment that even participated in the first large fight with US soldiers.  Sneaked up past their sentries, discovered a couple dozen bathing, and opened up - the party.

 

I never engaged in those large, mega-million dollar discussions, where I guess they critically thinked - thunked - whatever.

 

I just considered two, single elements, and went to them.  And everyone was amazed, and everyone asked me how I could do that?  I never said.

 

I just kept it simple.  Simple rarely fails or breaks.  Simple is rarely subject to misinterpretation.

 

Simple just works.

[Trogluddite]

Yep, sounds like your experiences are similar to many here who did the same thing in many different lines of work.  That's likely why many already take into account all of the things you pointed out.  I truly doubt that you walked into your first unit fresh out of boot and told Top he ran a screwed up unit, not sure why you would post in a way that sounds like telling a lot of folks (myself excluded) who put in a lot of work in the SSR that they were proceeding based on a fundamentally flawed basis.  Amusing, but hardly irritating.  Can't think of the last person to do that w/in their first 10 posts or so. (Hide the mirrors!)

 

By the by, I'll be offline a few days, so I'm not ignoring any follow-up posts. 

[gigantor]

Far Archer,

 

It's all good, man. One thing we should mention is that most of us do this as a hobby, it's educational and it's fun. 

 

I've learned a lot of things from this project, some that have nothing to do with BF. From how to write PhP code, generate KML files from scratch, to how to calculate the moon phases, the position of the moon relative to a set time and coordinates, etc. The project involves BF, but the real motivation is to learn.

 

So, even if there are no patterns and it's a complete waste of time, some of us are still gonna look at it, just because.

Edited September 4, 2015 by gigantor

[gigantor]

 

Do the illumination values you're using when comparing BF activity take into account whether the moon is above the horizon and visible or not at the the time of the activity or only the moon phase?

 

MIB

 

MIB, 

 

We did add code to the SSR to determine whether the moon was visible (above the horizon) during the time of the sighting.

 

Thank You for your wise observation. I think it has improved it a lot.

Edited September 4, 2015 by gigantor

[hiflier]

Hello FarArcher,

 

Hey, first things first, welcome to the BFF!. Your post is relevant. Critical thinking is a potential many have. When using it in a given subject for some it takes time for others not. We are not all the same. When it comes to Sasquatch some come here with knowledge, others come here to learn. Critical thinking may be a quality both have but applying it to the subject sometimes requires building a knowledge base on what reports contain of which they themselves possess a wide range of details. Organizing it all is tedious at best. 

 

A point we've all arrived at is that a small sampling will not give a generality and errors in thinking will therefore compound and result in a skewed view of things. The SSR had been an idea for a long time- something many have thought about- but past thoughts usually had the rude awakening once the daunting size of the task became reality. But folks jumped in anyway. As it is, with hard work and time, it's been over two years that I know of gradually compiling the data into one body of searchable, researchable work. And there's a long way to go and probably more variables to add in fine tuning it to being able to target a specific search criteria.

 

You seem intelligent just from reading your list of the many factors for why the SSR may be missing the mark but maybe over the next few weeks or months you could take a gander at it and offer some assistance in widening it's scope? There are a couple of threads on the subject of the SSR you could look at to see how far it's come from it's beginnings but, more importantly, you will understand better perhaps not only the scope of the work ahead but also the amazing pile of work that's already been accomplished to get the thing off the ground. It's actually pretty impressive; and yes, as said in the beginning, daunting.     

Edited September 4, 2015 by hiflier

[Guest insanity42]

Do the illumination values you're using when comparing BF activity take into account whether the moon is above the horizon and visible or not at the the time of the activity or only the moon phase?

MIB

MIB,

We did add code to the SSR to determine whether the moon was visible (above the horizon) during the time of the sighting.

Thank You for your wise observation. I think it has improved it a lot.

If you need moon phase, rise/set, and visibility tables, I can help. I have the Redshift astronomy software and it can generate this for any coordinates and time. I believe a year is the longest for a single table, but can just generate multiple tables. Doesn't take a great deal of time.

[gigantor]

Thanks insanity42.

 

Tables were my first thought, but then I found actual formulas that will calculate the necessary parameters and included them in the SSR.

[norseman]

Of course, you have a point.

 

Should we not bother looking into this then?

 

There are too many variables folks, lets forget all about it, you're wasting your time.

There are plenty of variables in human activity absolutely. But within those variables there are constants, such as a recreational berry picker vs a Logger. The Logger goes to work rain or shine 12 months out of the year. Miners same thing and so on.

Another interesting observation is that reports drop significantly in non populated areas. Less people around means less people to see animals and make reports.

Lastly I think the next major step in your guys research is trying to corelate regions. When in winter in Washington do sightings go down, but in California do sightings go up? Are we dealing with an animal that stays within a hundred miles of its birthplace for life? 20 miles? Or are we dealing with a creature that will walk the spine of the cascades on a yearly basis? Maybe both being gender dependent? Or?

You guys are doing great work!

[BobbyO]

Far Archer,

 

It's all good, man. One thing we should mention is that most of us do this as a hobby, it's educational and it's fun. 

 

I've learned a lot of things from this project, some that have nothing to do with BF. From how to write PhP code, generate KML files from scratch, to how to calculate the moon phases, the position of the moon relative to a set time and coordinates, etc. The project involves BF, but the real motivation is to learn.

 

So, even if there are no patterns and it's a complete waste of time, some of us are still gonna look at it, just because.

Spot on G.

I'm looking forward to reading more of FarArcher too.