Cascades Carnivore Project - How Do They Miss The Bigfoots?

[Guest BFSleuth]

^ Yes, I revealed the location. However, due to concerns of the witnesses the BFRO researchers requested we remove the information and the sighting report has been removed from their public database.

[Guest Tontar]

“Our research is aimed at shedding light on wolverine presence in the South Cascades.†Cascades Carnivore Project

BF is not their focus.

“why do all the efforts of wildlife biologists and other professionals labouring long and hard to detect and survey rare and elusive carnivores in the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges fail to turn up an evidence at all of what would be one of the largest and certainly most important species there?†Kit

It’s really not a big mystery why BF has not shown up on the “camera traps.â€

1. The Cascades Carnivore project is focusing on filming wolverines and foxes and not BFs. The cameras are not set up to capture BFs that have different habits and paths.

Seriously? Camera traps are not configured to filter out all but the desired animals being surveyed. They don't have filters in place to prevent them from snapping off shots of a bigfoot passing by, or an unlikely elephant or python. They detect motion, and snap away. Regardless of what the cameras are hoping to photograph, they end up photographing whatever breaks their beams. And just how do we know how different the habits and paths are between wolves, wolverines and bigfoots?

2. BFs and wolverines may be equally as rare. However BF is probably 100 times more intelligent and wary of humans which makes them 100 times harder to trap with cameras.

Perhaps. I saw a dead wolverine on the road. Never saw a dead bigfoot on the road. It seems nobody else has either. Perhaps bigfoot is even more rare than the wolverine. I fail to see how bigfoot could be considered 100 times more wary of humans in the same thread that is mentioning dumpster diving bigfoots. Considering the vast number of sightings in the BFRO database, I'd say they aren't exactly wary of human contact at all. Care to compare the BFRO database with wolverine sightings? What special evolutionary magic would allow a bigfoot to avoid cameras, yet not avoid rather constant visual sightings?

3. Are the cameras set up at eye level where they can be easily seen by BF? Yes, look at the pictures posted.

Easily seen by bigfoots? Again, refer to the BFRO sighting database for some of the most amazing encounters that would seem to suggest that bigfoots don't have such specialized and miraculous sensitivity to humans nor their technology.

4. Are the cameras camoflauged with real vegetation, insulated for sound and wiped down with natural scents designed to mask human scents? Doubt it.

So you're suggesting that bigfoots have a better sense of smell than wolverines, coyotes, wolves, cougars, deer, elk, chimps, gorillas, virtually every other form of animal that has been able to be captured by automatic cameras over the years? This is the sort of thing that stretches the imagination a tad bit, extraordinary sensitivities to human presence, and extraordinary wariness of human contact, or rather contact with cameras (since they seem to constantly be observed almost everywhere).

5. How many cameras are in operation and set up wrong? 100, 300, 1000? Are they top of the line silent cameras?

The cameras work on pretty much every other animal known. The only animals that they don't seem to work on are bigfoots. How can a bigfoot have some special ability to sense and avoid cameras when no other animal seems to be able to?

6. Are primate biologist leading this operation? No

Bob Dingethal

Executive Director

• email: bob@gptaskforce.org
  

Bob recently served as president of Stinger Consulting, a public affairs/public relations and communications consultancy based in Vancouver, Washington. Preceding that, Bob served as the SW Washington regional director for US Senator Maria Cantwell. Bob’s previous career included twenty years as a senior executive in the telecommunications

industry and co-founder/co-owner of SandHill Winery and Red Mountain Vineyards.

So, since the guys aren't primate biologists, they must be pretty dumb about the big, hairy, upright, beastly things that get snapped by the trail cams and brush them aside because they aren't wolverines, cougars, and wolves?

7. I don’t want to demean the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, but the staff is not composed of primate biologist but good Americans who have taken on the logging industry. Their goal is not to find BF. Their history page lists a noble effort to stop timber harvest from destroying the forest ecosystem. Hats off to them. Read about their real focus and it’s not capturing BF on film.

http://www.gptaskfor...g/about/history

Whether their goal is to find bigfoot or not, they are documenting the activities of wildlife in the forests where bigfoot is supposed to live. Anybody checking the images snapped by trail cams would instantly recognize a "primate" that ought not be showing up on the cameras, and would likely not simply brush the images off because they weren't looking for the habits and presence of bigfoot, but rather would only pay attention to images of the known carnivores like wolves, cougars and wolverines. Trail cams are not selective, the snap what walks into view.

[Guest Tontar]

A series of trail cam photos from Parks Canada sequenced into a video and posted on this forum shows the wolves looking at the camera consistently. If a wolf "makes" the camera, why can't a sasquatch do the same, possibly before being photographed?

It's not whether the animals "makes" the camera, it's what it "makes of it" that matters. If the animal enters the area, the camera pops a shot off, and the animal notices the sound, looks at the camera or in the general area at least, and continues to forage around with little concern, then why is it that a bigfoot would react any differently. What exactly would make a bigfoot so amazingly shy of cameras? How would it know what it was, what it was doing, what the consequences be of such a device? Instinctive or inherited memory must have some sort of impetus, wouldn't it? If bigfoots are not the prey of people, why would it have developed such a surreal ability to avoid cameras, yet not be able to avoid detection visually. Why would it make noises, make obvious prints, produce detectable bits of evidence all along, yet somehow have an amazing ability to avoid cameras?

[Guest LAL]

Maybe they are not carnivores, animals which are the target of the study, they are using meat as bait.

Diet

The jaws of Gigantopithecus are deep and very thick. The molars are low crowned and flat and exhibit heavy enamel suitable for tough grinding.^[10] The premolars are broad and flat and configured similarly to the molars. The canine teeth are neither pointed nor sharp, while the incisors are small, peglike and closely aligned. The features of teeth and jaws suggested that the animal was adapted to chewing tough, fibrous food by cutting, crushing and grinding it. Gigantopithecus teeth also have a large number of cavities, similar to those found in giant pandas, whose diet, which includes a large amount of bamboo, may be similar to that of Gigantopithecus.^[11]

In addition to bamboo, Gigantopithecus consumed other vegetable foods, as suggested by the analysis of the phytoliths adhering to its teeth. An examination of the microscopic scratches and gritty plant remains embedded in Gigantopithecus teeth suggests that they ingested seeds and fruit as well as bamboo.^[12]

"Ciochon describes looking for phytoliths on the teeth as evidence of diet. When the fossil teeth of Gigantopithecus were examined with scanning electron microscopy, dozens of phytoliths were found:

More than half of the phytoliths we observed were long and needlelike and could be attributed to the vegetative part of grasses, possibly bamboo. The rest were conical or hat shaped, attributable to the fruits and seeds of dicotyledons. Piperno tentatively identified them as fruits from a tree of the family Moraceae, quite possibly durian or jackfruit, both of which are common throughout tropical Southeast Asia. This proved that

Gigantopithecus

had a varied diet, although we still suspect that bamboo was its staple food.

This work is described in

Ciochon et al. (1990) in PNAS, which includes scanning electron micrographs of the phytoliths.

Of course the relative quantities of phytoliths do not directly address dietary composition, since different plants have different phytolith abundances. Likewise, one might speculate that the phytoliths on fossil teeth represent foods eaten near the time of death -- a "last meal" effect. This might explain the apparent evidence for one kind of fruit in the Gigantopithecus data: the individual died at the time that fruit was in season. In any event, Ciochon and colleagues (1990) conclude it likely that Gigantopithecus had a very broad diet, that nonetheless included bamboo as a staple. In support of this, they cite an examination of tooth wear by Daegling and Grine (1989 in abstract; later published in 1994 in SAJS) that found Gigantopithecus microwear to be similar to chimpanzees. Chimpanzees themselves eat a majority of fruit, with smaller proportions of leaves, insects, and meat."

http://johnhawks.net/explainer/fossil-primates/gigantopithecus-diet

[Guest Tontar]

Aren't too many bamboo forests in the PNW.

[Guest BFSleuth]

There may not be bamboo, but there is plenty of other vegetation. One recurring element of sighting reports is that they eat leaves. If you google "BFRO eating leaves" you will get a lot of reports of them eating leaves. Also try googling "BFRO eating bark" or "BFRO eating roots".

[Guest Tontar]

True. However, I give more credibility to bigfoot being a real species and eating a varied diet than I do the connection between bigfoot and gigantopithecus. I think the only reason anyone links them together is because of giganto's supposed size. We don't even know if real bigfoots would come close to giganto's size, they may be only the same size as us, ala Patty at around 6 feet tall. So linking to giganto seems more consistent with painting bigfoot as a massive forest giant, as opposed to something a lot more in our own human range and therefore much more likelly to have descended from something we have more in common with, as well as a better fossil record of.

[georgerm]

Tontar thanks for taking the time to answer my theory on why BF is so hard to photograph. Some of your points are strong. Others miss the mark. We are all searcihing for the truth and BF is making it difficult for us. Could it be that BF wants to maintain the upper hand in the forest and needs to be in control of the situation? Is DOMINANCE, and CONTROL important to BF when dealing with humans? Are humans the only animal that pose a threat to BF's control over the upper regions of the forest? Has BF relinquished CONTROL of the low lands to humans?

It boils down to the question is BF real or not? If real, then there most be reasons for rare camera trap pictures, yet BF is seen and vidoed on other occasions. One theory is BF like humans wants to be in control of the situation. BF wants to see humans but not be seen. BF wants to select the time and place to be observed. On occasion it makes mistakes and BF fails to control the situation and is seen.

"So you're suggesting that bigfoots have a better sense of smell than wolverines, coyotes, wolves, cougars, deer, elk, chimps, gorillas, virtually every other form of animal that has been able to be captured by automatic cameras over the years?"

Equal senses but add the intelligence factor along with being in control and we have a difficult animal to trap with cameras. Trap is a word that implies loss of control and lack of intelligence. Now add the RARE factor, and we have an animal that is more difficult to camera trap than the wolverine. Let's give the camera trap project more time before we jump on the band wagon and proclaim BF nonexistant. BF will eventually mess up.

Now if we are impatient, set descented quiet cameras high in the trees in areas where BF has been recently reported then camoflauge them with vegetation and we might see results sooner.

Edited June 19, 2012 by georgerm

[Guest Tontar]

Georgerm, my pleasure. If bigfoot wants to maintain control and dominance of the upper regions of the forest then I think they are failing miserably. They are essentially invisible to all but a few observers (without cameras). They are completely ineffective at dominating their environment, as anyone who gets out hiking, climbing, flying or even by pulling up the region on Google Earth can see, the humans are dominating the heck out of the forested lands. Old growth forests are being logged still, patchwork grids of land stripped of all trees cover this region. Bigfoots are supposedly found in all areas, from the far reaches that have been touched the least, to the suburban and even urban areas right among us. They don't seem to be dominating anything at all, just being invisible.

I have a hard time seeing bigfoot as keenly intelligent as you suggest. Make a list of all known primates and none come close to what you describe. Not a one. The combination of Spiderman-like senses and intuition, combined with a wisdom that exceeds possible experiences either directly as individuals or as a species, combined with a level of intelligence that should lead it to a much better, more comfortable life elsewhere, just doesn't fit with our understanding of any other Earthly creature known. It's as if yo are describing an alien for a sci-fi story, as opposed to describing a real flesh and blood animal that has the same biological vulnerabilities all other animals have.

I doubt that bigfoots recognize the irony in the words "camera trap". How could they know what it was, what it did? If it makes noise, or emits a light, how are they to know what the purpose is. How are they to know we refer to them as traps, as for all they could possibly conclude they do nothing other than possibly emit an infrared light, make a faint clicking sound, and possibly smell like something they are unfamiliar with. "Trap" is our word, and not used all that much. "Game cam" is a more frequent term, and so how could that term be found offensive to a bigfoot, even if they ever had the opportunity to hear it?

Gorillas and chimps are smart cookies, yet we can find and photograph them almost at will. Indigenous tribes have been found that are in fact as intelligent as humans, because they are humans, and they too have been found, photographed, and documented, even when they don't want to be. And that's in jungles or on islands in hard to reach corners of the world. BF is supposed to be as close as my very own backyard, yet somehow they go undetected by virtually everyone but a small few. Hard for me to draft a good reason for that.

[Guest]

It IS an interesting question, but some of the reasoning in this thread is lacking in the same critical thinking that the skeptics bash the believers for. The camera traps that catch carnivores may not appeal to BF if he exists. Maybe he doesn't like chicken, or perhaps he sees the obvious nature of the bait station and avoids it. Do you think that they would have captured the images of the wolverine had they not set out bait that appealed to it? Posting pictures of non-carnivores like elk doesn't really help your argument either as they are not rare at all. 42 cameras in areas that are easy for researchers to access in a wilderness area covering over 3 million acres isn't exactly saturated.

And consider Eric Rudolph. He was in a smaller area and had hundreds of law enforcement agencies looking for him for five years.

[Guest Tontar]

How tall was Eric? How hairy was he? How conspicuous would he be walking into a Safeway store to buy bread? People hide out in plain sight all the time, because they look like people. Bigfoots are a bit bigger and more conspicuous. If they can run across the road in front of cars, waiting long enough to be fully in the headlights, if they can stand on a shore for half an hour while boaters shine a spotlight on them, if they can raid a chicken coop, steal pigs, eat pancakes, hop trains to better pastures, be caught off guard in broad daylight by a couple of cowboys on stomping, snorting, rearing horses, then I kind of think that a game cam might go unnoticed at least often enough for one to get their photo taken. If bigfoots are as opportunistic of eaters as their lifestyle should indicate, and reports should confirm, then they ought to be looking at the bait with watering mouths. If the can dumpster dive with impunity, why would they get all squeamish over some chicken tied to a tree?

[ShadowBorn]

We have placed cameras ,camo , scent block them , and everything you can think of minus the sound proofing. No luck , Tontar makes a good argument . We can photograph every other rare animal on earth except these creatures and the ones who say that they videod these creature have either been hoaxed or did the hoaxing them selves. The PGF is the closes to these creatures that have been captured. So what makes them so different? Why are they not photographed like other animals. I have a my own theory but no one is ready to accept so silent I stay.

But what if they are like us and do have understanding would that not explain why. What if they also had knowledge that if they were ever captured or photographed that they would have to live by our rules.now this is speculation on my part. But what if it was true of what I have said. There is no special powers there is there but just the knowledge that we are not a good people.

The way the live now is perfect so why would they want to have us change that way of life. We all have free will and so do the animals but these creatures just might not be animals like we perceive animals to be.

[Guest]

How tall was Eric? How hairy was he? How conspicuous would he be walking into a Safeway store to buy bread? People hide out in plain sight all the time, because they look like people. Bigfoots are a bit bigger and more conspicuous. If they can run across the road in front of cars, waiting long enough to be fully in the headlights, if they can stand on a shore for half an hour while boaters shine a spotlight on them, if they can raid a chicken coop, steal pigs, eat pancakes, hop trains to better pastures, be caught off guard in broad daylight by a couple of cowboys on stomping, snorting, rearing horses, then I kind of think that a game cam might go unnoticed at least often enough for one to get their photo taken. If bigfoots are as opportunistic of eaters as their lifestyle should indicate, and reports should confirm, then they ought to be looking at the bait with watering mouths. If the can dumpster dive with impunity, why would they get all squeamish over some chicken tied to a tree?

As I said, it's an interesting question. One would assume that they would have to be fairly intelligent in order to make decisions like "this dumpster is safe, but that weird spiked bait station is not." In fact, if they're not smarter than every other animal in the woods (perhaps other than us) I see no way that they could have stayed hidden this long. Also, we don't know that they haven't been captured on a game camera, only that no one has come forward with that sort of evidence.

[georgerm]

.........................

I doubt that bigfoots recognize the irony in the words "camera trap". How could they know what it was, what it did? If it makes noise, or emits a light, how are they to know what the purpose is. How are they to know we refer to them as traps, as for all they could possibly conclude they do nothing other than possibly emit an infrared light, make a faint clicking sound, and possibly smell like something they are unfamiliar with. "Trap" is our word, and not used all that much. "Game cam" is a more frequent term, and so how could that term be found offensive to a bigfoot, even if they ever had the opportunity to hear it?

YOU ARE BRINGING UP SOME EXCELLANT POINTS..........A FEW MISS THE MARK BUT SOME ARE BULL'S EYES. AND THANKS AGAIN FOR CARRYING ON A LOGICAL DIALOGUE. ALL I CAN DO IS THEORIZE. BFS PROBABLY RECOGNIZE FOREIGN OBJECTS THAT DON'T BELONG IN THE WOODS. THEY PROBABLY HAVE GREAT OBSERVATION AND DETECTION SKILLS...............YES.......MUCH LIKE A LOW LEVEL ALIEN! HA HA....WHEN THEY SEE A SMELLY BOX WITH AN EYE, MAYBE IT SCARES THEM AND THEY BACK OFF. MY NEW DOG THAT IS 14 MONTHS OLD IS EASILY SCARED BY SOME COMMON HOUSE HOLD CONTRAPTIONS THAT SHE THINKS MIGHT BE ALIVE AND POSES A DANGER. SHE IS SCARED SPITLESS OF THE VACUUM CLEANER..........................BF WILL MESS UP AND GET FILMED.

MAYBE BF IS MANY TIMES MORE RARE THAN A WOLVERINE AND ALL WE SEE IS THE SAME BF CLAN THAT GETS SPOTTED ALL OVER PARTS.............

AGAIN LET'S GIVE THE CAMERA TRAPS....OOPS ........GAME CAMERAS TIME, AND WE MIGHT SEE SOME GOOD BF PICTURES..............IF NOT THEN BF IS NOT OUT THERE OR SOME KIND OF ALIEN.............

[Guest Tontar]

Well, I suppose we all keep hoping for something to materialize, eh? I hope one or more do pop up, and are found to be thriving and not falling into extinction. It'd be super cool if they were real, I think everyone here would agree with that. Ape people living wild in NA? How cool. But until that time, we still have to wait on all the other research projects to materialize and be finalized! More waiting! At least while waiting some of us get to do a lot of good forest hiking, and not a lot can beat that. :-)