What Does Bigfoot Eat?

[Henry Stevens]

If we could get a handle on what bigfoot actually eats, maybe we could walk out there and touch him.  Bigfoot is alleged to be a hunter.  I am sure he eats meat when he can but there must be something else in his diet.

 

If an active human male weighing 150 pound needs 3000 calories a day, ramp that up to three or four times the bulk for bigfoot and we see the problem.  Let's say 6000 calories a day.  Primates eat food from a variety of sources.  Hunting is just not going to provide food every day.  So, let's set hunting aside for a moment and talk about vegetative foods bigfoot might eat.  Cattails have been suggested and bigfoot has been seen eating cattails.  I think Spanish moss was suggested but it does not grow everywhere in bigfoot's range.  Dental tartar on Australopithicine teeth shows they ate water plants, cattails or papryus, I forget which.  Can a creature that big, with those big hands process and eat pine nuts?

 

Chimps are eat fruit as well as some greens and meat. Gorillas eat leaves and a lot of vegetable matter.  But they have bacteria in their guts which allow the digestion of cellulose.  We cannot digest cellulose.  We call it "fiber" and it just passes out.  Can bigfoot digest cellulose?  If so, it would explain a lot.

 

What do you think?

 

 

[gigantor]

22 minutes ago, Henry Stevens said:

Can bigfoot digest cellulose?

 

You mean, does Bigfoot have a hindgut fermenter?

 

Dr. Krantz thought so.

 

 

[Believer57]

1 hour ago, Henry Stevens said:

I am sure he eats meat when he can but there must be something else in his diet.

Sure, they have been known to eat berries, mushrooms, apples, and corn. On several reports, they seemed to eat salmon and clams. Probably everything a bear eats. Hopefully, they don't cannibalize like bears can.

   

[OnlyASize12]

I go with they are an omnivore like a black or brown bear.  I suspect they eat a wide range of things depending upon what is available.  

[MIB]

1 hour ago, gigantor said:

You mean, does Bigfoot have a hindgut fermenter?

 

Dr. Krantz thought so.

 

I would respectfully disagree with Dr Krantz on this one.    Critters with the hindgut fermenter do not have ripped abs, rather, they have a "pus gut" like a gorilla, like the suit from Letters to the Big Man depicts ... inaccurately.      Patty, though bulky does not have the distribution of bulk appropriate to that gut structure.   The two I saw .. the littler one was built like a tight end, the bigger one like a beast of a fullback, neither like a sumo wrestler.     I'm going to say, with as much confidence as you can have short of dissecting one, that Dr Krantz was mistaken.

 

I'm going to say omnivore.   Everything suggests whatever bears eat, bigfoots eat, and vice versa.    To beat a dead horse further, omnivores like bears do not have that hindgut fermenter.   What they eat is what is available .. and lots of it.   Since the areas where I've seen bigfoots (not many, don't read too much into that) were not torn to shreds as they'd have been had a strict herbivore like gorillas had lived there, I believe the meat component of the diet may be well over 50%.

 

MIB

[hiflier]

Might they be quick enough and strong enough to not have to eat carrion like bears? Given enough hunger, or in the case of a family with not enough food to go around, would carrion be on the menu?

 

 

Could this be why some creatures have been said to have such foul odors? Because of being in contact with, or feeding on, dead animals, or passing them through the digestive system with, shall we say, highly unsocial results? What about being hungry after fleeing a forest fire and coming across a meal of burnt animal? BTW, no way to answer any of these musings so it's okay to just let them ride. That said, the list of foodstuffs the creatures have been reported to eat is quite large.

Edited March 2, 2021 by hiflier

[spacemonkeymafia]

Evidently they like donuts and peanut butter watching researcher videos.

[Twist]

^** Dont forget the Zagnut bars!

[BlackRockBigfoot]

14 minutes ago, Twist said:

^** Dont forget the Zagnut bars!

Lol.  Just came to post this! 

 

The Outpost next to the Uwharrie probably sells them by the thousands.

[BlackRockBigfoot]

6 hours ago, MIB said:

 

I would respectfully disagree with Dr Krantz on this one.    Critters with the hindgut fermenter do not have ripped abs, rather, they have a "pus gut" like a gorilla, like the suit from Letters to the Big Man depicts ... inaccurately.      Patty, though bulky does not have the distribution of bulk appropriate to that gut structure.   The two I saw .. the littler one was built like a tight end, the bigger one like a beast of a fullback, neither like a sumo wrestler.     I'm going to say, with as much confidence as you can have short of dissecting one, that Dr Krantz was mistaken.

 

I'm going to say omnivore.   Everything suggests whatever bears eat, bigfoots eat, and vice versa.    To beat a dead horse further, omnivores like bears do not have that hindgut fermenter.   What they eat is what is available .. and lots of it.   Since the areas where I've seen bigfoots (not many, don't read too much into that) were not torn to shreds as they'd have been had a strict herbivore like gorillas had lived there, I believe the meat component of the diet may be well over 50%.

 

MIB

Great post.  

 

Chimpanzees can be vicious and often seem to hunt for meat as a social bonding mechanism as well as to determine hierarchy/social standing in their troop.  Their diet usually only consists of about 3% meat.

 

IF Sasquatch is an undiscovered ape of some sort...and if meat makes up over 50% of their diet like you estimate...it would be interesting to see how their social structure relates to their hunting and if there are any other similarities between Sasquatch and other carnivorous primates...such as a tendency towards violence or the propensity towards internecine warfare.

 

 

[hiflier]

Let's face it, predation is violent. Even a Robin getting a worm is a violent act. And as humanely as we try to hunt, or science collects a species, they are violent acts. It's the way of the world. We cannot all be Jainists who practice Ahimsa.

[BlackRockBigfoot]

28 minutes ago, hiflier said:

Let's face it, predation is violent. Even a Robin getting a worm is a violent act. And as humanely as we try to hunt, or science collects a species, they are violent acts. It's the way of the world. We cannot all be Jainists who practice Ahimsa.

There's a difference between the violence inherent to normal predation and the cruelty that some meat eating primates like chimpanzees display.  

 

Murder comes naturally to chimpanzees

 

 

[norseman]

7 hours ago, MIB said:

 

I would respectfully disagree with Dr Krantz on this one.    Critters with the hindgut fermenter do not have ripped abs, rather, they have a "pus gut" like a gorilla, like the suit from Letters to the Big Man depicts ... inaccurately.      Patty, though bulky does not have the distribution of bulk appropriate to that gut structure.   The two I saw .. the littler one was built like a tight end, the bigger one like a beast of a fullback, neither like a sumo wrestler.     I'm going to say, with as much confidence as you can have short of dissecting one, that Dr Krantz was mistaken.

 

I'm going to say omnivore.   Everything suggests whatever bears eat, bigfoots eat, and vice versa.    To beat a dead horse further, omnivores like bears do not have that hindgut fermenter.   What they eat is what is available .. and lots of it.   Since the areas where I've seen bigfoots (not many, don't read too much into that) were not torn to shreds as they'd have been had a strict herbivore like gorillas had lived there, I believe the meat component of the diet may be well over 50%.

 

MIB

But Bears like Gorillas have elongated intestinal tracts. And Bears don’t come close to hitting a 50% annual diet of meat. Many Humans do not hit that mark either. Leaving out cultural meat eaters like say the Inuit. Most meat is consumed by richer nations. While many third world countries get very little in their diet.

 

No disrespect, but roving families of 800 lbs hunters eating half their diet in meat? I don’t think that’s going to go unnoticed in the woods. And as Magnaesir has pointed out? You would be having lots of conflicts with ranchers. Because something with that much appetite for flesh isn’t going to pass up a juicy cow or sheep. It wouldn’t be like dealing with something like a Bear at all. It would be more like dealing with a Cougar or Wolf. 
 

And most importantly? Primates do not hibernate. So this thing is out actively hunting in winter. So we should be cutting Bigfoot tracks as often as Cougar tracks. But we don’t see that. They are rare by comparison.

 

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but something is off.

[BlackRockBigfoot]

49 minutes ago, norseman said:

But Bears like Gorillas have elongated intestinal tracts. And Bears don’t come close to hitting a 50% annual diet of meat. Many Humans do not hit that mark either. Leaving out cultural meat eaters like say the Inuit. Most meat is consumed by richer nations. While many third world countries get very little in their diet.

 

No disrespect, but roving families of 800 lbs hunters eating half their diet in meat? I don’t think that’s going to go unnoticed in the woods. And as Magnaesir has pointed out? You would be having lots of conflicts with ranchers. Because something with that much appetite for flesh isn’t going to pass up a juicy cow or sheep. It wouldn’t be like dealing with something like a Bear at all. It would be more like dealing with a Cougar or Wolf. 
 

And most importantly? Primates do not hibernate. So this thing is out actively hunting in winter. So we should be cutting Bigfoot tracks as often as Cougar tracks. But we don’t see that. They are rare by comparison.

 

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but something is off.

There was some speculation that Neanderthals may have hibernated, but that theory never really went anywhere. 

 

I agree with you though... something is off with this phenomenon.

[MIB]

10 hours ago, norseman said:

Because something with that much appetite for flesh isn’t going to pass up a juicy cow or sheep.

 

That's where we disagree.   A sapient species seeking to avoid conflict with humans absolutely would pass up a cow or sheep except in times of great desperation.   We ran 40-60 head on national forest year around.   Since we never knew exactly how many we had we would have never noticed one missing unless we found the carcass.  

 

10 hours ago, norseman said:

But Bears like Gorillas have elongated intestinal tracts. And Bears don’t come close to hitting a 50% annual diet of meat. Many Humans do not hit that mark either. Leaving out cultural meat eaters like say the Inuit. Most meat is consumed by richer nations. While many third world countries get very little in their diet.

 

Right, but bigfoot is not bears or gorillas.   Regarding humans, that is true today.   I'm doing some reading.   That doesn't appear to be true for hunter-gatherer humans, pre-agriculture, which would seem to be the correct case for comparison with bigfoot.

 

.. but you are right, or at least seem to be, in one thing .. something IS off.    Lot of things don't add up to match our assumptions.    There may be one correction to all of those assumptions which could account for all aspects of that difference: what if there are a lot fewer than we think but we see them more often because they're not as constantly sneaky as we imagine?   What if the total population is smaller but they travel farther, faster, and are exposed more often than we imagine?  

 

MIB