norseman Posted August 23, 2016 Admin Author Posted August 23, 2016 1 hour ago, MIB said: No agreement from me. At least at certain times of year and in certain locations, they are moving in groups and living in groups. Size may vary with time of year and location but you truly should not count on the one you find being alone. MIB Then explain to me how they are sustaining themselves with no one noticing. 80 lbs of vegetation per day or 13-14 lbs of meat. 21 minutes ago, JKH said: Perhaps "usually in small family groups" is more or less accurate, but I've heard of reports of many more together than that. I've thought about foods, and from looking at a lot of data think we can assume great variety in their diets. I visited a native museum that had a nice exhibit about traditional foods with a list of nearly 300 separate plant and animal species. I'd guess they would use those and maybe more. Awhile ago, I started a list of unusual plants observed in reports, and there were examples of quite a few leaves and barks that we could not digest. Relative metabolic rate decreases with size which means you don't have to eat as much food per gram of your own tissue. It's more efficient to be big, this means you can eat more abundant low energy-dense foods, like trees, leaves and grass. According to many reports, they take out mesopredators such as coyotes and housepets when available, along with the ungulates. They probably get a lot more livestock than is realized, as well. Marine/freshwater foraging could be another whole topic in itself. I don't think they're operating in terms of scarcity in most places. But that's not the question. The question is how do you remove 8800 calories per individual out of a Eco system without anyone noticing? How much fecal matter does 8800 calories produce? You get 10 of these together? They are going to do some damage to the local flora and fauna.
MIB Posted August 23, 2016 Moderator Posted August 23, 2016 Norseman - I don't think you're adequately considering deliberate avoidance. My great grandfather was a subsistence poacher during the depression. I never practiced but I listened when he talked. One thing he told me ... don't poach near home because that draws attention. I assume the BFs that are grouped up and staying put are hunting at some distance and packing what they kill back to wherever the group is. The bigger the "haul radius" is, the more area they're hunting and the less noticeable the absence of a single animal is to us. Go back and look at the report literature. Consider "The Creature" by Jan Klement .. Kong buried his turds, right? Consider Albert Ostman, Ape Canyon, Muchalat Harry .. all bigfoots in groups, right? MIB
Guest DWA Posted August 23, 2016 Posted August 23, 2016 (edited) A few things worth remembering: 1) lots of large herbivores and omnivores live in NA. They leave little evidence, because the vegetation is different. You can tell they've been by more by what isn't there than by what is. And you'd have to really look close, and probably know what the place looked like last week. 2) any ecological model that doesn't include a species that lives there is gonna be quite off. 3) These animals, if sightings and trackways can be taken seriously which they can, rarely pair up, let alone group up like gorillas. (Orangutan - and yeti, if the evidence can be taken seriously which it can - are better models.) 4) Many carcasses have been found - and not just by Big Tree Walker - bearing marks of something other than attack/consumption by known predators. And even given that, I don't think many carcasses of animals taken by sasquatch would be found. Edited August 23, 2016 by DWA
norseman Posted August 23, 2016 Admin Author Posted August 23, 2016 1 hour ago, MIB said: Norseman - I don't think you're adequately considering deliberate avoidance. My great grandfather was a subsistence poacher during the depression. I never practiced but I listened when he talked. One thing he told me ... don't poach near home because that draws attention. I assume the BFs that are grouped up and staying put are hunting at some distance and packing what they kill back to wherever the group is. The bigger the "haul radius" is, the more area they're hunting and the less noticeable the absence of a single animal is to us. Go back and look at the report literature. Consider "The Creature" by Jan Klement .. Kong buried his turds, right? Consider Albert Ostman, Ape Canyon, Muchalat Harry .. all bigfoots in groups, right? MIB Deliberate avoidance cannot account for things like grazed vegetation and piles of bones. Early hunter gatherers lived in caves, and 50,000 years later we excavate them and find evidence of their existence. Why find SOME sign of Sasquatch if we are looking very hard.......but nothing like we should be if they are living in large groups. I know what the old stories read, but the pieces of the puzzle don't fit.
MIB Posted August 23, 2016 Moderator Posted August 23, 2016 (edited) Lets stick with the puzzle analogy for a sec. The pieces don't fit for you, fine. They do fit very well for me. What does that say about which one of has it wrong? You're looking at the wrong puzzle box. I don't have it completely filled out but the pieces ARE fitting into a framework. You are stuck and will STAY stuck 'til you abandon the ape-camp paradigm because of one simple little thing: it is wrong. Stop thinking in absolutes. There is a (vast) gray area between dumb monkey and going to the moon. We spent some millions of years going through it. It's entirely irrational and illogical to expect them to be any different. MIB Edited August 23, 2016 by MIB 1
norseman Posted August 23, 2016 Admin Author Posted August 23, 2016 It has nothing to do with an ape vs human belief. 10......800 lbs humans are still going to need VAST amounts of groceries as well. There is no fundamental difference. We can say that they are really really smart in avoiding us. But large groups are not stealthy, and the longer your in one spot the more sign you leave behind. 5 individuals go through 1 deer every 3 days. 10 would be almost every day. Imagine a deer camp that had butchered 365 deer in one year..... We know what this looks like based on fossil digs of our early ancestors. We don't see this with Bigfoot, so I think the evidence points to something way more solitary.
MIB Posted August 23, 2016 Moderator Posted August 23, 2016 I think you're ducking to avoid acknowledging that you're losing the debate. You were talking about gorillas and signs of food gathering, now you're squirting out to the side talking about remains. "Nice." I think you've been studying scoftic debate tactics too long, you're acting like them. For grins, I'll try to address both because the answers are a bit different. Remember what I said, traveling out from the group to gather meat food sources, then returning with what they've killed? It's simple geometry. Whatever the group size is, it is, and the calorie requirement is a constant as long as the group size is constant. It's gathered from whatever amount of area they're hunting. area of a circle is computed as pi times the radius squared. If they go out 2 miles, that's 12.x square miles to extract N calories from, if they go out 3 miles, that's 27, almost 28 square miles to extract the same N calories from. If a deer represents some number of calories, the farther they travel, the fewer missing deer there are per unit area. Simple 10th grade math. Any argument with this part? Plant sources ... I doubt they're carrying plant foods very far. How far are you going to pack huckleberries without a container? So there should be signs of foraging for plants, at least that's my expectation. It may be though that there ARE, we're just not seeing them for what they are because bears are foraging for some of the same, elk for others, etc and the bigfoot "signs" are obscured by the more normal critters. Regarding remains ... yes. I have to agree with you there. I don't think they're packing off the bones and scattering them randomly to make it look like something else did the eating. Could be, but I haven't found any evidence of that. SOMEWHERE there should be some pretty substantial bone piles if they are using and reusing the same locations for groups over periods of years even if that use is only seasonal. On the other hand ... just thinking aloud ... we should have bigfoot bones and if we do, we haven't identified them as such. Maybe one answer will solve both puzzles. I'm still looking for one of those bigfoot "core areas", one I'm sure of. Perhaps when I find that, I'll find those bone concentrations. Expecting to find one without the other seems a mistake, at least on the surface. I don't think there are as many of them out there as some people suggest. I don't think they're evenly distributed, though. I think they do indeed move in groups, at least at times, for some activities. That means there are some big places without any at all most of the time. That, too, jibes with what I've observed so far. Would you agree that exchanges of vocalizations requires more than one individual? MIB
WSA Posted August 23, 2016 Posted August 23, 2016 (edited) I have one lens I bring to bear to view all theories about BF. It is one that I hope helps to see what a super-adapted bi-pedal animal is capable of doing in its native environment. The gold standard for comparison are the skills and habits of the N. A. Native cultures. We know some how these peoples earned a living and defended themselves from aggressors, but I'm assuming large amounts of information were lost, given the limitations of an oral tradition and catastrophic disruptions to their cultures. As well, we have to assume there is information to this day that is not shared with members of the dominant culture. Even based on what we think we know about their abilities, there is a common agreement the N.A. Indians were supremely adapted at exploiting their environment to sustain themselves and avoid dangers. Just their ability to resist everything the continent could throw at them for 13,000 + years is proof of that. That they could not withstand the onslaught of microbes and guns just makes the case of their specialized adaption. My assumption regarding BF is they are exponentially better at living where they live than even the pre-Columbian natives. One reason being, I believe, is they don't have the burden of sustaining a complex social order or maintaining even a rudimentary, albeit portable, shelter. It is exactly this pure nomadic adaptability where they do the N.A. Indian one better. As far as I can tell, for a BF, home is where the food is. When there is no food, "home" goes looking for more food. And over how big a range is this foraging area? "Frickin' huge", is about the only way to describe it that gets the point across. How good are they at locating and securing food? At a level that defies human comprehension and belief, probably. So, on the topic of the OP, your are left to consider one more area of behavior for which we really don't have a known model. As I said before, you can tilt over into making the case for BF exceptional-ism, and open yourself up to cheap shots from those opposed to the very premise. Fair enough. But...if you proceed from the premise they are living, breathing, eating, crapping, breeding, fighting, sleeping, walking organisms, you've got to hypothesize how they keep on doing all of those things more often than not. For lack of a better, more detailed explanation, I just have to conclude they are just very good at what they do, on a level I probably couldn't comprehend even if I witnessed it up close and personal. At a certain point, supreme adaptation looks like magic, and plenty of cultures are guilty of that misunderstanding. Not a very satisfactory explanation, but one the evidence is telling us to consider. Edited August 23, 2016 by WSA 1
norseman Posted August 23, 2016 Admin Author Posted August 23, 2016 1 hour ago, MIB said: I think you're ducking to avoid acknowledging that you're losing the debate. You were talking about gorillas and signs of food gathering, now you're squirting out to the side talking about remains. "Nice." I think you've been studying scoftic debate tactics too long, you're acting like them. For grins, I'll try to address both because the answers are a bit different. Remember what I said, traveling out from the group to gather meat food sources, then returning with what they've killed? It's simple geometry. Whatever the group size is, it is, and the calorie requirement is a constant as long as the group size is constant. It's gathered from whatever amount of area they're hunting. area of a circle is computed as pi times the radius squared. If they go out 2 miles, that's 12.x square miles to extract N calories from, if they go out 3 miles, that's 27, almost 28 square miles to extract the same N calories from. If a deer represents some number of calories, the farther they travel, the fewer missing deer there are per unit area. Simple 10th grade math. Any argument with this part? Plant sources ... I doubt they're carrying plant foods very far. How far are you going to pack huckleberries without a container? So there should be signs of foraging for plants, at least that's my expectation. It may be though that there ARE, we're just not seeing them for what they are because bears are foraging for some of the same, elk for others, etc and the bigfoot "signs" are obscured by the more normal critters. Regarding remains ... yes. I have to agree with you there. I don't think they're packing off the bones and scattering them randomly to make it look like something else did the eating. Could be, but I haven't found any evidence of that. SOMEWHERE there should be some pretty substantial bone piles if they are using and reusing the same locations for groups over periods of years even if that use is only seasonal. On the other hand ... just thinking aloud ... we should have bigfoot bones and if we do, we haven't identified them as such. Maybe one answer will solve both puzzles. I'm still looking for one of those bigfoot "core areas", one I'm sure of. Perhaps when I find that, I'll find those bone concentrations. Expecting to find one without the other seems a mistake, at least on the surface. I don't think there are as many of them out there as some people suggest. I don't think they're evenly distributed, though. I think they do indeed move in groups, at least at times, for some activities. That means there are some big places without any at all most of the time. That, too, jibes with what I've observed so far. Would you agree that exchanges of vocalizations requires more than one individual? MIB Maybe Im not being concise. I'm not talking about remains of Hominoids....... I'm talking about the pile of prey species bones found at a Neanderthal dig. And I'm including Gorillas because we can extrapolate data on vegetation from them. But I've also included data on deer. Because I understand they are omnivorous. Vocalizations, yes....more than one. But ten? Twenty? It could be a mating call between two individuals or a distress call between mother and child. I just don't see the evidence that they can sustain them selves in large groups. I'm going to ignore the scoftic comment.....
Guest DWA Posted August 23, 2016 Posted August 23, 2016 4 minutes ago, norseman said: Regarding remains ... yes. I have to agree with you there. I don't think they're packing off the bones and scattering them randomly to make it look like something else did the eating. Could be, but I haven't found any evidence of that. SOMEWHERE there should be some pretty substantial bone piles if they are using and reusing the same locations for groups over periods of years even if that use is only seasonal. BTW's research in Washington seems to support that they don't live or forage in groups, I'd think. So does the encounter literature. Orangutan (and, yes, yeti) are my analogues.
WSA Posted August 23, 2016 Posted August 23, 2016 Norse, occasional bone piles are documented, as BigTreeWalker and others have done. What you are hypothesizing though (some sort of bone midden, maybe?) just doesn't fit with the observed traits of the animal. Far more likely a BF walks along stripping meat from bone and tossing them left, right, behind and down. Squirrels and packrats do the rest. In the morning, he is miles away, looking for the next meal. The evidence says so.
norseman Posted August 23, 2016 Admin Author Posted August 23, 2016 I sent a femur to BTW, so I'm aware we are finding anomalies in bone. But I agree we haven't found a "ghost and the darkness" lair yet that could be attributed to a Hominoid.
MIB Posted August 23, 2016 Moderator Posted August 23, 2016 (edited) I think you're reading things into BTW's work that is not there. Did they not find indications of more than one individual because there were separate, distinct, bite widths? (I don't recall if that was within a single bone stack or at different stacks. Hopefully he will chime in.) The important thing to remember is that finding a "single kill" does not preclude multiple-kill finds. For instance, if I catch one fish and eat it myself, it does not preclude catching a second and bringing it home. His finds, if valid (and I assume they are), support existence and suggest "sometimes" behavior. Not absolute or always behavior. Vocalizations ... I've heard several combinations. Last September I had at least 3 "somethings" yelling unintelligible gibberish back and forth from different locations which eventually converged and passed me about 75 yards away, then turned away and dispersed while still yelling. (Kind of weird.) In October I heard a different kind, a single multi-syllable yell in a canyon, no response. I assume the first was some kind of group coordination, the second was an attempt to locate others of whatever kind. In Sept 2012 I had a different thing yet, what seemed to be a single individual whooping others seeming to stay in ear shot but, with one exception, which was multi-syllabled instead of a whoop, not responding that I could hear. There's a lot of variation going on out there ... tendencies exist, absolutes seem not to. Trying to force exact uniformity of data or behavior seems predestined to fail. That's to be expected with a real live species. MIB Edited August 23, 2016 by MIB
Guest DWA Posted August 23, 2016 Posted August 23, 2016 (edited) I'm not talking about "there's no way." I'm talking about "don't search for something for which there's no evidence." There isn't anything that should lead us to think we'll come across a Bigfoot Feed Trove. Burials? Non-starter. If you find one, cool; the game starts then, not when you're speculating over "why we haven't confirmed them THEY BURY THEIR DEAD...!!!" Which is how I sense a lot of this gets started. Feed middens? Same thing. (The encounter literature only infrequently lists a sighting of two of these, much less three or more, although yeah the latter has happened.) Tool use? pretty much not, so no use looking for them. Paranormal? I've never read a report in which something anomalous happened for which there wasn't a ready non-para explanation that didn't involve the animal. Etc. If a researcher is himself personally aware of something I am not? Then, if he can pursue it, he should. But I'm certainly not looking for Bigfeet Tribes at this point given what I have seen. Edited August 23, 2016 by DWA
norseman Posted August 23, 2016 Admin Author Posted August 23, 2016 2 hours ago, MIB said: I think you're reading things into BTW's work that is not there. Did they not find indications of more than one individual because there were separate, distinct, bite widths? (I don't recall if that was within a single bone stack or at different stacks. Hopefully he will chime in.) The important thing to remember is that finding a "single kill" does not preclude multiple-kill finds. For instance, if I catch one fish and eat it myself, it does not preclude catching a second and bringing it home. His finds, if valid (and I assume they are), support existence and suggest "sometimes" behavior. Not absolute or always behavior. Vocalizations ... I've heard several combinations. Last September I had at least 3 "somethings" yelling unintelligible gibberish back and forth from different locations which eventually converged and passed me about 75 yards away, then turned away and dispersed while still yelling. (Kind of weird.) In October I heard a different kind, a single multi-syllable yell in a canyon, no response. I assume the first was some kind of group coordination, the second was an attempt to locate others of whatever kind. In Sept 2012 I had a different thing yet, what seemed to be a single individual whooping others seeming to stay in ear shot but, with one exception, which was multi-syllabled instead of a whoop, not responding that I could hear. There's a lot of variation going on out there ... tendencies exist, absolutes seem not to. Trying to force exact uniformity of data or behavior seems predestined to fail. That's to be expected with a real live species. MIB Right. But where is home? How many mouths to feed are there at home? I get that you may eat one fish and take the other home to share. But after several fishing trips "home" starts to look like a fish cannery. We have not found "home" as researchers.....why?
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