The Ketchum Report

[Guest MikeG]

In Africa you can always tell whether you are in an area where poaching is prevalent. All, and I mean all, the animals are skittish, and run away at the first sign of humans. In other areas, not blighted by poaching, you can drive right up to the same species of animals, who won't bat an eyelid until you get within a few yards. It is a very quickly learned response to human activity, and doesn't rely on generations, or the action of evolution.

Mike

[Guest Shaun]

Hi Mike. That's true in just about all animals. Pigeons are a prime example. Go into any town in the UK and the blighters will strut up as bold as brass to nibble on your baps. Drive ten minutes out of town, and you've no chance of gettin near one.

[Guest Peter O.]

In my experience, there is an absence of bears in areas where a family group of squatch are staying. I agree that any habitat that supports bears can support squatch and vice versa, but why would squatch tolerate the risk of bears in an area where they have a family group?

Are you sure it's not vice-versa?

Off topic, but as for bear predation, IIRC (from Stephen Herrero's Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance) most black bear fatalities are the result of predation behavior. It's rare that black bears prey on humans, but it does occur. I think Herrero's position on why it's rare is the same as Saskeptic's--our predation. But, we should also consider relative risk. Bears eat small animals. Just because a larger animal can be captured and killed, it does not make it safe to do so, and being injured is not a good idea for a bear. For the same reason, I think Sasquatch would have nothing to fear from the small eastern black bear's I'm familiar with.

On topic, as for habitat, (and I haven't read the paper), just because a species is cohabitating does it mean they are going to be using the same resources? e.g. Bears eat a lot of insects and small animals, maybe BF does not? IMO it's just a correlation.

[bipedalist]

....In my experience, there is an absence of bears in areas where a family group of squatch are staying.

I agree that any habitat that supports bears can support squatch and vice versa, but why would squatch tolerate the risk of bears in an area where they have a family group? If they'll run humans out of such an area, they'll certainly run bears out.

I think they overlap territory cyclically and oftentimes conflict-free in my experience. I know there has been some offset noted in a territory I monitor seems 30-45 days one or the other is cycling through. Don't have alot of hard data on that but I think there are times of the year where there is coexistence.

I would imagine aggressive defense of a waterhole in drought conditions and defense of a nursery would be exceptions to a conflict free arrangement. I think Sasquatch and Bear in the southern appalachians use similar food sources such as mast, roots (such as the black bears favorite squaw root), larvae, salamanders, insects in downed rotten logs and under rocks, etc. I often wonder if Sasq.-bear conflict over things like bee larvae in bee trees, honey and such.

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

This might have been asked before, but why doesn't Dr. Ketchum give a release date for the paper?

[Guest BFSleuth]

She doesn't have control of the release date. The journal has control of that. Even when the author has the release date they can't really reveal that until the date of the release of the embargo for journalists, usually the day of publication.

[JDL]

An adult squatch is much more powerful than the average blackbear. Add in greater intelligence, speed and agility and it's even more of a mismatch. Include the ability to throw objects with deadly force and cooperative behavior between squatch and it's no contest at all.

I've never seen any evidence of conflict or coexistence/toleration, but I've never observed both in the same area in the same timeframe.

[Guest Transformer]

Bears are very powerful and fast and have great agility. Bears also are quite smart being able to figure out how to open and break into pretty well anything. I am not trying to be argumentative but what makes you think that sasquatches outclass them in all these areas?

[Guest]

An adult squatch is much more powerful than the average blackbear. Add in greater intelligence, speed and agility and it's even more of a mismatch. Include the ability to throw objects with deadly force and cooperative behavior between squatch and it's no contest at all.

I think you are giving an unclassified, undocumented animal a lot of credit. I am afraid I need a bit more documented interaction from a bigfoot and a bear to be able to make the conclusions you make.

I've never seen any evidence of conflict or coexistence/toleration, but I've never observed both in the same area in the same timeframe.

Oh,.....never mind.

[Guest]

This has been the most backwards way of proving they exist as could possibly be. You have samples. You have DNA. You have the hair, flesh, teeth, bones, blood, of the creature. You have Erickson's videos. You have apparently access to a habituation with a family of them. Call a huge news conference, show the vids and pictures, then present the samples. Then distribute samples to various labs and universities to test for themselves. All results come back as the same critter, a new critter and boom. Done. No secrecy. No need for a financier. No NDA's. No added drama. HD video with 3 separate DNA sources would do it. If that didn't, a body is needed. After all, the public will decide if they believe it or not.

[JDL]

I think you are giving an unclassified, undocumented animal a lot of credit. I am afraid I need a bit more documented interaction from a bigfoot and a bear to be able to make the conclusions you make.

Oh,.....never mind.

I have seen both. The comparison between the two is pretty easy to make.

[Guest Transformer]

Can you give some examples please as to what and how you were able to compare?

[Drew]

In my experience, there is an absence of bears in areas where a family group of squatch are staying.

I agree that any habitat that supports bears can support squatch and vice versa, but why would squatch tolerate the risk of bears in an area where they have a family group? If they'll run humans out of such an area, they'll certainly run bears out. A few well-placed rocks flung on a flat trajectory and you've either got bear for dinner, or a smarter bear.

Are you saying Bigfoot kills the bears? and eats them, to clear a space for it's bigfoot family? The bear hunters wouldn't like that, or the researchers studying bear mortality, and probably the local PEOPLE would not take kindly to a sudden drop in their local bear populations. Humans hunt bears with guns and bows, every year, they kill a certain percentage of bears in a given area, and every year the bear populations come back, and they get hunted again the next year. That is called a sustainable resource, and the DNR officials here in Michigan would NOT take kindly to some GIANT hairy monster coming into their management areas and destroying a valuable and sustainable resource.

Maybe we seldom find dead bears in the woods because the squatch are eating them.

Maybe we seldom find dead bears in the woods beause:

A. They die in their dens overwinter

B. A hunter takes his dead bear with them

C. When a bear gets hit by a car, the bear is not in the woods, it is on a road.

D. We aren't looking hard enough http://www.flickr.co...ian/1959124979/

E. There are no (zero) studies showing that the cause of just one dead bear is sasquatch predation. Search google for "Bear mortality causes" you will not find one journal article that says 'eaten by unknown animal', or 'eaten by bigfoot'.

Edited May 8, 2012 by Drew

[southernyahoo]

This has been the most backwards way of proving they exist as could possibly be. You have samples. You have DNA. You have the hair, flesh, teeth, bones, blood, of the creature. You have Erickson's videos. You have apparently access to a habituation with a family of them. Call a huge news conference, show the vids and pictures, then present the samples. Then distribute samples to various labs and universities to test for themselves. All results come back as the same critter, a new critter and boom. Done. No secrecy. No need for a financier. No NDA's. No added drama. HD video with 3 separate DNA sources would do it. If that didn't, a body is needed. After all, the public will decide if they believe it or not.

I'm honestly not following, if HD video with 3 separate DNA sources would do it, then whats backwards? No need for a financier? DNA is done for free these days? Where? You are forgetting that scientists take their claims very seriously, they are and would do exactly what you are hearing about, "peer review"-"before" calling any press conference. It would be totally irresponsible to do that backwards as you would have it.

Oh, and since you do know about all this, there is no secrecy.

[Guest]

Here it is again. International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. The Secretariat and Commissioners are all listed there with photos and contact information. Here's what they do:

*snip for space*

Anyone can quote off of a website, Sas...the question I asked was not for a recitation of some website or CV. I asked who these people are. Under what authority do they claim the franchise to "determine" what exists and what doesn't? What professional standards are used to judge whether those doing the "determining" are qualified, and who reviews their work? Are they answerable to any outside authority?

Your quotes tell me nothing about these critical issues.

What I am seeing is a self-appointed group that has claimed without basis the authority to determine if an animal exists or not based on standards that they themselves have devised and that they themselves administer. They are accountable to no one, answerable to no one. There is no mechanism for appealing their verdict or having it overturned. There is no outside oversight to check their power.

Please do visit the site and, if nothing else, scroll through the FAQ section. There are some great explanations there of issues we discuss here rather frequently. (Just beware Mulder: if you follow the link, you will come in contact with facts, and the more we know you know the more your biases will be on display.)

"Fact" = what you agree with.

"My biases" = you don't agree with me, so I'm automatically wrong.

This is exactly what I am getting at above. On what legal or moral grounds is your judgement so superior to mine or anyone else's that it should be automatically and unquestioningly accepted as truth?

No need to. You will find no such species as bigfoot listed among animals described and cataloged in the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature. This means that no such creature as bigfoot has ever been described in the scientific literature.

That does not mean (as is continually implied) that they do not exist, or that there is not a strong body of evidence to demonstrate that they do. Arguing that if BF existed, it would be recognized is classic argument from acceptance.

If you would specifically like to know about published papers that analyzed putative bigfoot evidence and found it to not be from bigfoots, then it sounds to me like you're willfully trying to mislead with your statements. I've provided information on these three papers at least twice in this very thread:

*snip for space*

If you're looking for peer-reviewed papers to specifically prove the negative that bigfoot doesn't exist, then I submit that I believe you know that there are no such papers.

So you admit there is no evidence BF does not exist. Therefore your claim that:

There IS evidence against the existence of bigfoot.

Is basic Skeptical hokum.

Edited May 8, 2012 by BFSleuth
Correct attribution of quote