Why I’m a skeptic (with apologies for the length).

Dear fellow sasquatch enthusiasts,

Here’s a little something for folks to gather around. I am an academic in a relevant field (vertebrate ecology) who maintains an open mind about the sasquatch phenomenon, but I just can’t shake my skepticism. This little essay will explain my position. I’m not out to tick anyone off or even change anyone’s mind – these are just my thoughts explaining why I’m not ready to believe – but I think they pretty well sum up why “mainstream” scientists dismiss anything to do with sasquatch. I decided to post here because I am impressed with the healthy skepticism I’ve seen displayed by some members of this forum regarding stories that I also concluded were utter nonsense.

I’ve been enjoying the discussions on this forum for some time now, and this is my first post. I don’t know when I first became interested in the subject, but I do recall seeing The Legend of Boggy Creek from the “way back” of a Ford LTD station wagon at an upstate NY drive-in theatre in the 1970s. I’ve also read a few sasquatch books and have been checking out the latest sightings and discussions on boards such as this. So I guess you could say I’ve nurtured a roughly 30-year interest in bigfoot. The subject is fascinating to me, despite the fact that in those 30 years, nothing has really changed. Sure, more people claim to have seen these creatures, more plaster casts have been made – even the Skookum cast – and the reports now come in from across the continent, but still no conclusive, physical remains have emerged to allow taxonomists to catalogue these alleged creatures.

I hate to sound like a typical “show me a body skeptic,” but I am, and I want to carefully explain why. To all who do claim sightings, I am in no position to tell you that you didn’t see what you saw; this is just my explanation of why I am not able to make the leap from non-believer to believer.

Because my training is in wildlife ecology, biogeography, and evolution, it is on these grounds that I approach the sasquatch phenomenon as a living, breathing, creature that has not yet been described taxonomically. I’m not talking about spirit beings, shape shifters, or interdimensional travelers. The idea is to work from the assumption that we have a small (2000 individuals?) population of large, nomadic, intelligent, apelike mammals roaming most of the North American continent, right now, as you are reading this. All right, if that’s the case, what are they, how did they get here, and why can we not seem to produce a biological specimen?

What are they? Despite eyewitness accounts of sasquatch “human-ness,” we are most likely not dealing with a human animal here. Modern Homo sapiens, while somewhat less robust than archaic forms, is still the largest species in the genus. Certainly there were exceptionally large individuals of “Cro Magnon” men and the earlier Homo erectus that would have been larger than a man of average size today, but, on average, we are probably as big as humans have gotten to date. In contrast, most sasquatch reports describe creatures as big as Shaquille O’Neal (7’ tall, 300+ lbs), or even substantially larger. Sasquatch may be a close relative, but they are not human. If sasquatch is a real animal, then it is some kind of ape.

If sasquatch is an ape, then it is unique, to say the least. Unlike all known apes, sasquatch is North American (if not worldwide) in distribution, bipedal, truly enormous, arguably nocturnal, nomadic, cold-adapted, and capable of surviving in a wide variety of habitat types. These habitats include river bottoms and cypress swamps, broadleaf forest in the Eastern US, farmland, grasslands, boreal forest, and remote mountain ranges. Sasquatch isn’t hanging around your local suburban park, but he is quite the habitat generalist, at least while dispersing.

Some propose Gigantopithecus as the type genus for sasquatch. They maintain that this species must have been bipedal and migrated to North America across the Bering Land Bridge about the same time that other Pleistocene megafauna were doing likewise. Gigantopithecus is an ape known from fossil deposits of middle Pleistocene age from southern Asia, with earlier members of the genus apparently documented from at least one location in India. Gigantopithecus was in the size range of modern sasquatch reports, and is thought to have survived primarily on a diet of bamboo, much like pandas. Apart from its size, however, Gigantopithecus actually offers little as a likely sasquatch suspect. Claims of bipedalism are completely speculative, and are not congruous with a large animal adapted to eating vast quantities of low quality forage like bamboo. Gigantopithecus was probably rather sedentary, and spent long hours each day resting while its digestive system processed many pounds of vegetation. This doesn’t strike me as a recipe for an active, nomadic, bipedal animal.

Gigantopithecus is known to science from at least 1000 teeth and jaw fragments. Many thousands more were likely uncovered down through the ages and used for medicinal purposes in ancient China. Despite the fact that no complete skeleton has been unearthed, Gigantopithecus is relatively well represented in the fossil record. We have no evidence whatsoever that Gigantopithecus was particularly widespread, and certainly no evidence that it (1) survived to recent time or (2) ever dispersed to North America via a land bridge.

Forget a fresh body, I remain a skeptic primarily because there is no sasquatch fossil record. Yes, fossilization is a rare process and the record is not complete. Yes, we’re talking about an animal that was never really abundant. But as any first-year ecology student will tell you, top predators are the least abundant members of any animal community. Well, top predators abound in the North American fossil record from Pleistocene to recent time. I’m not just talking about sabre-toothed and related cats that may have lived in groups like modern lions, even the solitary short-faced bear is well represented in the fossil record. Why not sasquatch?

How about habitats? I see a preponderance of sasquatch sightings reported from creeks, rivers, lakes, swamps, etc. If these animals exist, they tend to be riparian. Well, riparian habitats are among the most fossil-conducive around. It’s the animals that die in areas where their bodies are rapidly covered in sediments that hold the most promise for fossilization. I just don’t see how several hundred thousand years of Gigantopithecus survival, dispersal across Asia, dispersal to a new continent, and frequent use of riparian habitats could be completely unrecorded in the fossil record. When I say there is no conclusive evidence for sasquatch, this is what I mean.

While on the subject of distribution and the fossil record, recall that the North American sasquatch is not the only creature that fits the description of a large, hairy, bipedal apelike creature unknown to science and unrepresented in the fossil record. There are similar creatures reported from Russia, eastern Europe, the Himalayas, and – the one that really gets me – the Australian “yowie.” The eyewitness reports and footprints are no less convincing than any story out of Bluff Creek. So if sasquatch is real, then it currently occupies an enormous range, spanning the entire Nearctic, Palearctic, Oriental, and even the Australian zoogeographic realms – all without a shred of fossil evidence in any of these places in the last 300,000 years. Can someone please explain to me how Gigantopithecus or anything like it managed to disperse to Australia?

Finally, and with respect to obtaining a recent (non-fossilized) specimen, many people write about how wary and secretive sasquatches are, yet I don’t see this borne out in the eyewitness accounts. There are plenty of broad daylight encounters, stories of sasquatches approaching homes and farms, and other conspicuous elements of these creatures like their legendary odor and loud vocalizations. How many reports are there of encounters with people in cars, multiple witnesses talking or partying around campfires, or even kids on dirt bikes? Any self-respecting wary animal can detect humans - especially humans using motor vehicles – a long way off, and take steps to go un-noticed. This is why I rarely encounter bears in the field. But sasquatches seem to rather often be surprised by people, and they certainly take few pains to hide themselves from us if that’s really them out there “whooping” and screaming in the night.

The real surprising thing about how unwary the reports make them seem is the number of encounters along roads. If anything, sasquatches are attracted to roads where some say they are scavenging roadkill. But think of how many accounts you’ve read of one of these things almost getting hit by the motorist that sees it, or how the beast just saunters away unconcerned about traffic. Turkey vultures, coyotes, ravens – these scavengers really are wary, and they frequently get taken out by cars. Yet still no sasquatch.

So what do we have in sasquatch? We have many convincing reports of eyewitness accounts, plaster casts of big footprints, ambiguous vocalizations – these things keep me interested just like all of you. But we don’t have a road-killed specimen, despite the fact that for decades folks have claimed near misses with them on lonely roads in the dark. We don’t have a scrap of fossil evidence, despite the fact that reliable witness claim encounters over more than half the globe and the species should date back to at least the middle Pleistocene. We don’t have a similar known creature anywhere in the world today – all other apes are quadrapedal (gibbons are a special case), at least partly arboreal, more or less sedentary, occupy specialized habitats, and are equatorial/subtropical in distribution.

If you ask the “scientific community” to accept sasquatch as real, you are betting that not every report could have been faked, hoaxed, misidentified, or be the result of some complex psychological phenomenon. But you are also asking scientists to reconsider so much of what is known and demonstrable in the fields of evolution, biogeography, ecology, and probability theory. This is why mainstream science is completely disinterested in anecdotal sightings, sound recordings, and plaster casts – you could pile a million of the same on the steps of some hallowed hall for scientific research and your argument would carry no more weight than it does right now. Can you think of a single example of another species described and “known to science” without some kind of a type specimen (e.g., skin, jaw fragment) cataloged in a museum somewhere? I cannot – that’s just not how it works. Until someone produces a body (or part thereof), we have no scientific evidence that sasquatch exists, and therefore, neither reason nor means to study it.

If you want to convince me that sasquatch exists, forget night vision video, audio recordings, dermal ridges, and twisted saplings. Instead, find me a Gigantopithecus molar in some British Columbian alluvial deposit that dates back about 14,000 years. Then find something similar in Australia. When bigfoot researchers produce something like this, I guarantee the scientific world will take notice. Until then, I remain skeptically yours,

~The Saskeptic

Great first post.

Welcome to the forums.....


Why should "We" change your mind? If you want Sass to be proven real, then you need to find that Molar.... Or stay the Skeptic...


Belle

Nice first post, welcome to the BFF...

Excellent post, and welcome to the BFF! It is great to see someone representing the skeptic's side, and in a way that doesn't disrespect the pro-squatchers.

I agree with everything you said. I won't be convinced until one is either in front of me, or a body is found. Something is making those footprints, and the P/G film still fascinates me enough to occasionally lean to the "yeah, it's out there" side of the fence, but as of yet I am not convinced.

Again, great post! Hopefully it becomes a regular thing!

You do indeed make some strong arguments, and point out some weak ones (the giganto=bigfoot one). As Wildman said, the phenomenon itself is quite real. The root of that phenomenon remains a mystery to many of us.

Saskeptic,

Great first post, this will not be the proper dissertation that it deserves. Being a student of paloeontology with special interest in fossil anomolies, mesozic paleo-ecology and the fossilzation process, I understand your skeptcism.

First things first. Not speaking for others around here, but I have serious doubts that Gigantopithecus is the sasquatch, not because of evolutionary conclusions, but logical deduction. Not enough time to explain, just suffice it to say paleontology is the most zealous field of science. No one can possibly think for one moment that an entire skeleton can be based off of teeth and a jaw (anyone remember Nebraska Man?). From your post, you seem to make reference to this point.

Secondly and more importantly, I can name you dozens (actually hundreds) of extant mammals that have little or no representation in the fossil record. Going with this theme, the world isn't exactly bursting at the seems with vertebrate fossils. They are the rarest fossils, with human and ape fossils being the creme de la creme (only a select few can actually be permitted to view or hold these fossils, most are casts). In fact many of the most recent large mammals to be recognized by science have no fossil record. To my knowledge (admit havn't checked this one in 2 years), the Okapi has no fossil record. Okapi like animals, that resemble strange giraffe-like animals with deer like appendages are known, but know Okapi. Have you ever hear of a Lowland Mountain Gorilla fossil being found either? I havn't. Doesn't mean it hasn't been found and miss identified.

Knowing the fossil record as I do, I am perfectly comfortable accepting Bigfoot as a living flesh and blood creature, based off of the circumstantial and actual evidence that has been presented. Lastly, I seriously doubt a tooth in BC would impact mainstream sciences view of Bigfoot. There have been odder finds than this that have yet to shake the scientific community.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to the forums. Great first post. You bring up some great points. However I do not believe Sasquatch evolved into or from anything. He was created along with every other animal species on the palnet living or exstinct. BTW great post Dinosourman

Great post.

Remember when I was a skeptic, ten years ago.....

Great first post, but I think you are making a couple of assumptions also.

There isn't enough evidence that Sasquatch (if they exist) are carnivores, herbivores or omnivores, so marking them as a top predator is a bit presumptuous.

Or maybe that's where the people were that encountered them, after all waterways are an area of high human activity. All mammals require water, that doesn't make all animals riparian.

Again thanks for posting, I hope you post more often.

Welcome to the posting side of the forum.

Sasquatchers,

Thanks for the kind words regarding my first post. I knew you folks were a good bunch. Here are a couple of (brief!) points of clarification.


Black Dog - You're right, we have no good idea of sasquatch diets, and I'm not suggesting they are carnivores. My point is that we have some pretty good fossil information about certain carnivores (e.g., short-faced bear) that definitely were carnivorous, and therefore, probably far less abundant than sasquatches.

Dinosaurman - Thanks for your insights. I'd go so far as to say that there are literally thousands of recognized vertebrate species that are unknown from the fossil record: big ones like okapis and gorillas, but mostly little ones like songbirds, rodents, bats. Each and every one of these, though, exists somewhere in a museum as a type specimen (skin, non-fossilized skeleton, etc), that allows taxonomists to put a name to it. I can't show you an okapi fossil, but I bet we could find a skeleton at the Smithsonian or any number of other places. (Heck, I know where we could find one munching hay in a zoo!)

We have neither fossil precedent nor a recent specimen for sasquatch - taxonomists need one or the other before it can be recognized. Me too.

Thanks again folks - I look forward to many stimulating conversations here.
~Saskeptic

Me three!
I am looking forward to your posts and the debate that will follow.

Saskeptic:

Very pleased to see the "other" point of view here. You make some very good points. I tend to agree with Blackdog regarding your assumption about BF being riparian. People congregate near water probably more than any other animal as we do not simply consume it, we recreate in it. That is not to say that other animals don't recreate in H2O, but certainly far less than humans.

I personally do not believe BF is Giganto...I suppose BF may be related to Giganto, but no one knows yet. Aside from teeth and jawbone fragments (as you pointed out), we know very little about Giganto...it's bipedalism, diet, etc are just theories based on those few fragments.

I agree it is very hard to imagine (or believe in ) a creature as large a BF wandering around for who knows how long without leaving much evidence, but I am not ready to discount all of the eyewitness accounts as wishfull thinking or mistakes or fabrications. I cannot discount all of the track evidence, sounds, photos, or videos. Certainly, some or perhaps a large portion has been hoaxed, but not all. I guess I find the thought of a massive, long term hoax by thousands of people all over the world harder to believe than Sasquatch itself.

Anyway, glad you are here, keep posting those great thoughts.

It is because they are smarter, that's the reason they are not found, way too smart to leave their bones hanging around. They know what would happen should they ever be found. I don't think they care to be carbon dated.

Care to back those statements up with some facts?

Except for the riperian stuff...I cannot disagree with any of your points!

Well done!
It will be very interesting hearing your thoughts!

One in 50,000 folks! 1 in 50.000!

Great stuff!

Wildman,

Have they been caught? Fact or no?

Do they exist? Fact or no?

Wildman,

I think you think they do; I think they do. A pure fact is, existent or not -- they've not been caught.

To me, that would be due to the fact they either don't exist, or they're smarter than people -- too smart to get caught, too smart to leave their bones and molars about.

I definitely agree that I am open to the possibility. I just don't think we should be making definite statements about their intelligence, when there are plenty of other factors that can explain the lack of a body, most of which have already been discussed here ad nauseum.

Agreed, that was a great introductory post! Welcome, and please do keep posting.

I too, enjoyed your post, skeptic. I can't imagine that anything would convince me of BF's existence had I not seen one. I definately do not have a problem with anyone who does not believe that they are out there. But, they are.
BSF

But I am still mystified....

I agree in every word

More intelligent than Humans ....No. Better at woods craft absolutely.

Very true Saskeptic, yet my references to these two animals, the gorilla and the okapi are because of their size and because they were two of the last 'big' mammals discovered. Africans (and some missionaries) had told scientists for years about these two animals. They told of their tracks, sounds, eating habits, habitat and behavior, yet they had no body or fossil evidence. I agree that gorillas and okapis exist- The OKC zoo has 6 okapis that are beautiful, so I think you missed my point. Not having fossil evidence does not insinuate for a moment that a creature doesn't exist.

Just thought of another- the platypus, not known to science until the early 1900's had no fossil record. Most everyone understands that this poor mixed up little critter is amazing, yet imagine doing post -graduate work in down under and having an aboriginie tell you about it. You'd think they were crazy; bill like a duck, lays eggs, hair like a bear, no nipples, etc... Yet after it was a recognized as a living, albight odd, animal fossil evidence did appear, in Brazil (try to explain that one).

Bigfoot seems to fit into the category of the gorilla, okapi, platypus- no fossil evidence, strange stories from natives, eye witness accounts from missionaries and no body. This is what makes science so fun, the pursuit of knowledge cuppled with the discovery of the unknown.

Nonetheless, welcome. Would be happy to chat with you any day, that is if we disagree you are content with agreeing to disagree.

J.C.

Great thread Saskeptic, welcome. I too am a skeptic in the sense that I don’t ‘believe’ BF exists from a scientific standpoint, but it is intriguing because it’s not easy to refute, plus the fact that I’ve heard and seen some weird things in the forest, but not an actual sighting. I think it might exist but it’s far from proven.

The reason I find it fascinating, is because, unlike other odd phenomenon, it’s hard to dismiss with good old Occam’s Razor (The simplest explanation is usually correct). With BF, no explanation is simple. They’re all equally hard to belive. Such as paranormal explanations (those take so many assumptions it’s incredible). Then there’s the possibility that it could be mass hysteria, or ‘memes’ spread through culture. I’m sure that does account for some stories, but not all, that would be a stretch. Same goes for footprints. Also misidentification accounts for a lot of it. There was the famous story of Jimmy Carter spotting the UFO that turned out to be the planet Venus. I’ve read that airline pilots have actually taken evasive maneuvers to avoid hitting something that later turned out to be the moon. They just had their brain miscalibrated to what they were seeing.

Anyway, a few thoughts on trying to build a hypothesis that it is a real animal. I think people use Gigantopithecus as a mental model that such a big creature ‘could’ exist. But Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium claims that speciation can occur in a very short time (1,000 years or less) in the case of a population that becomes geographically isolated from the main population long enough that a new species can emerge. At that point the new species doesn’t look that much different but it then can continue to evolve rapidly to adapt to the new conditions.

So (I’m just spinning a possible hypothesis), it’s possible that either an ape or hominid split off fairly recently (hundreds of thousands of years) and due to some environmental pressure quickly evolved to become BF. So statistically, if it hasn’t been around all that long, and they have small populations, the odds of finding fossils would be slim. I personally can not imagine what evolutionary pressures would drive something to wind up like BF is purported to be like. But that would be an interesting line of thought.

The problem is, this type of hypothesis is also not simple per Occam’s Razor. None of the hypotheses are simple so it keeps it fascinating.

Great post Saskeptic, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

I agree, excellent post. And while I agree your reasons for being skeptical are 'valid', just like many of us have done at times, you use several 'broad assumptions' and/or a dogma that appears to be 'fact' - and may or may not be - but not substantiated enough to be considered 'true fact'. More importantly, using such assumptions that way will skew your own point-of-view unwittingly. And the following is not meant as anything more than 'my humble opinion'.

With that statement I would totally agree.

I think a decent portion of 'us here' are of the 'show us a body' type.

Thus a very prominent reason this very forum exists.

I don't think you'll find a large amount of opposition here on that point either.

Not to rain on the party but the 'what is known' you express about Gigantopithecus proper is no more 'fact' than 'what is known' (mostly) about Sasquatch. And we even have a film of a sasquatch. Despite the apparent widespread 'acceptance' of it, I don't personally subscribe to the notion that one can discern a lot of anything (especially an ultimate size) of a prehistoric ANYTHING by evaluating only fragments of its jaw and some teeth. And surely whatever can be 'discerned' cannot be said to be 'absolute fact'.

Well, logic says that if one is 'truly convinced' the sole reason there's no (apparent?) fossil record is because the 'entity' never existed, they would by default be discrediting and discarding the entire and complete 'evidence record' of Sasquatch's existence. And no I don't think you entirely believe that...just making a point.

I think this is a case of trying to make the 'supposed facts' fit the answer. If you mean 'riparian' the same way us humans are 'riparian', well, okay. If you mean it literally, I think you're off base. Keeping onself within 'access' to water isn't riparian.

Give ya that one too. Good question.

I agree in that I'm not truly sure why one or more haven't been taken out by motor vehicles. I do think the reported 'unwariness' is not as 'real' as it's perceived though. When 'living things' know what they're doing, whatever IT may be, they often 'make it look easy'. And I don't think Sasquatch is on the roads looking for road kill. Ironically, to any intelligent being, it seems road kill would be the ultimate 'self evident' indication (if one's motivation is self preservation) of what motor vehicles can do to a 'life'...and thus why they, and not so much the roads, need to be avoided - and seemingly have been. And I know the 'road kill' thang was not your real argument. Regardless, I'd speculate they use roads like we do. For travel. At least for 'safe' distances. Excluding freeways (and even some of them are dead late at night), most roads in every town everywhere (with obvious exceptions) are essentially 'void of cars' late in the night, most 'country roads' even more so. Being seemingly nocturnal, I'm willing to bet they use such 'lonely roads' late at night far more than we think. And the 'idea' they can, astoundingly sometimes, negotiate essentially ANY kind of terrain certainly does not preclude them from wanting and using 'more desireable terrain' whenever possible.

I'll speak for myself only but at present I couldn't care less if the 'scientific community' EVER 'does anything about it' - even if/when a REAL specimen is brought forth. Given the nature of the chase so far, 'in science' is not the salvation of Bigfoot.

I'll gleefully add "or show us a body". And welcome to the forum.

"Harry"

I think we should say "show us a body or shut up! We are not interested in speculation or antedotal evidence." That ought to cut down on bandwidth, if anyone listens.
BSF

The methodology of science depends on speculation. That leads to hypotheses. How do you propose to move forward with no speculation?

I was being sarcastic, FNW. But, seriously, I think some of the people who come here to talk about an encounter they have had, do so for therapeutic reasons. I know it made me feel better to talk about my sighting in a setting where some at least believe the creature exists. I did not originally come here for research. Somehow, it felt good to let it out. Not that I ever thought I was halucinating, or losing it. But I did somehow feel isolated whenever I thought about what I had seen. Sometimes they need a little time before they feel their every word is being pounced upon in hopes of someone finding some inconsistency. These people are volunteering their accounts, not suspects in a crime. Childishly trying to get the person emotionally charged in hopes of catching them in a lie may be fun for some, but you are likely to get a different response. They will leave and never talk about it again. Possibly, it is not the most productive method of research in this particular area. Witness:"I saw a bigfoot" Researcher:"I don't believe you, prove it!" "Convince me!" Witness: "later" 'click'. If it truly is undeniably BS, call it so. If it might be BS, let's see what the person has to say. Then call it BS once you are sure.
BSF

AWESOME POST!!!

Saskeptic, I like you already! You're post is going to take me at least a week, maybe two to digest and respond to. I definitely want to pick this one apart. It covers so much of what I contemplate in this BF thing that its scary. Funny thing is, I'm an actual BF witness. I saw one, and I know what I saw. So much of your post is full of questions that I have after having already seen one and know that they exist. I guess I want to know what they are. At this point I am torn between neanderthal and gigantopithecus. If either is the case then our science is wrong. Acutually, I must tell you, I am leaning heavily toward Giganto but I am positive that science just doesnt have enough info about it and what they do, they have misinterpreted. Just makes the most sense.

Anyway, I for sure will get back to your post. Sorry I cant tonight. It's 3 A.M. here and I have to work both jobs tomorrow. First one starts at 10:30 A.M. Then I'm leaving to do some squatchin' til monday night.

I promise to get back to your post.

Here's to hoping you'll still be here to when I get the tiime to respond again.

Saskeptic,

Welcome aboard. Your views, tolerance, and well articulated arguments are welcome. I think you've already seen that we are a mix of firm believers, complete skeptics, and every range of gray in between. Plenty of members will try to change your mind on certain aspects, but the openmindedness of even being here is enough to make most of the forum happy.

With that, I'm actually a little surprised that so many people basically said "great/awesome post" because, with all due respect, you really haven't said anything that most of us haven't said or heard before. But, at the same time, I commend you for putting it all together with no nonsense and explaining things fully, clearly, and concisely. Those qualities will go a long way here.

I'm also at least a partial academic, general skeptic, and share many of your thoughts. Those which I don't share I've had in the past and have more or less "overcome" by learning more and more about the subject, much of it here in this forum. I'm one of those who thinks the preponderence of evidence is best explained by a real animal, yet hold firm to my general skepticism of everything.

Without further ado, here are my comments on your post:

In the big regards this is perhaps true but one could argue that a lot HAS changed. Some groups have become quite organized, are collecting data and arguably developing protocols that seem to be working (e.g. call blasting). Physical evidence is now being properly collected and analyzed (e.g. hair and scat for DNA analysis). Some very prominent scientists have expressed at least open minds about the possibility that these animals exists. A growing number of academics and scientists are quietly but diligently working behind the proverbial scenes on a vast number of projects (and surely much more than I am aware of). And the Skookum cast and dermal ridge evidence (even under the recent increased scrutiny) have swayed many minds. Analysis of the Patterson film is STILL uncovering new bits that continue to build the case for it's authenticity.

But alas, you are right in the final count, no bones, no body, no conclusive DNA evidence, no great new film, and most astoundingly to me, STILL not even a single convincing photograph.

You're assuming a lot of things, but in the end, so what if they/we are the biggest we know of? That doesn't rule out the possiblity of an undiscovered group does it? Until recently we might have thought that Homo x (I'm not an anthropologist or paeleontologist) was the smallest, but then "Hobbitman" was discovered, right?

No one can of course answer this question, but in the end it will depend on how you define human. There is a lot of discussion on this subject throughout this forum by lots of people better versed than I.

Which doesn't rule out humans who are also apes by a strict definition. But from hereon I'll accept that you mean to imply non-human apes.

Hmmmm, what a great niche for an animal to evolve into??? What does your training teach you about that possibility?

Says who and why not? I'm not disagreeing but this is the sort of statement that needs to be backed up a little.

This might be someone's best theory but is actually unknown and pretty meaningless in the end isn't it?

Again, you are assuming sasquatch (if they exist) are 'active.' Maybe they sleep 20 hours a day?

And, likewise, we have no evidence to the contrary. Granted a very weak argument but science only recently 'discovered' how and when bears migrated via that same route. And GP was spread from N. India to E. China, so it's range was actually a lot more widespread than any modern species of nonhuman ape.

I don't personally think that sasquatch (if they exist) are descendents of GP but it's awfully hard to rule that out with almost no data on either species.

I'm willing bet that there are many examples of this exact scenario in other species but am not well informed on this subject. And, if it is GP, then it IS recorded in the fossil record.

The difference is that Bluff Creek also boasts a film and cast(ed?) tracks. Personally I think most reports from around the world are bunk.

Um, no it doesn't. Not necessarily. We can't make this assumption and you clearly understand the flaws of anecdotal reports and eyewitness testimony.

And while you're at it please remind us how aboriginal people got there and how H. floriensis got to the their islands. Actually, I'm also unclear on how the tortoises and iguana's managed to swim to the Galapagos or how elephants and rhino's evolved in Sumatra. But I'm also not convinced that there is a Yowie in the first place.

Except the naked ape again. I also would not classify chimpanzees as sedentary.

With all due respect, give me a break! We both know that if Yosemite Sam hauled in a dead body tomorrow, that most these same scientists would be scrambling to propose theories explaining every single one of these things. The bias will always fall towards the side with (or in this case without) the evidence. It's that simple.

I'd have to verify this but I'm pretty sure that at least one species of South American monkey has been recently catalogued/classified based on photos alone. It may just be a sub-species, and I know this is a TOTALLY different ballgame but one must be careful making this argument. I'll try to verify the story even though I fully agree that it really has no relevance.

I tend to steer away from conspiracy theories but often hear the sentiment that these sort of things may have been found but never properly identified. I have a hard time swallowing that but would love to hear what those who have experience in this arena have to say. We hear often enough about some new species being discovered in a museum archive so this may not be as far fetched as I tend to imagine?

Respectfully, and again welcome to you,
Apeman

This story has been mentioned elsewhere in the Forum but I'm not sure anyone pointed out that there was no type specimen, it's all just photos. It is surely the best recent example of a newly discovered primate species being named, catalogued, published and accepted by the scientific community without nary a shred of physical evidence.

Here's the popular account again:BBC story link

Here's the citation, I think anyone can get free access if they sign-up on the Science website.
Jones et al., The Highland Mangabey Lophocebus kipunji: A New Species of African Monkey, Science 2005 308: 1161-1164

And here's my attempt to upload the full PDF reference.....

I have no problem with a lack of bones or fossils. Outside of John Day, what fossil beds are there in the PNW? I know from sad experience what happened to the carcass of a 16-hand mare in a forest in the Columbia Gorge in less than a year. The scavenger system is extremely efficient in the PNW and the wet, acid soils do not preserve anything. And there aren't many people out there even looking for bones, let alone trying to collect any.

Gigantopithecus shows us how big primates can get, but don't overlook the possibility of an overgrown Australopith. The Russian Kaptar (there's quite a bit of evidence for them) seems to be very like the American Sasquatch. They may be a living Asiatic relative or even the same species.

I think any archaic human species is out of the question on basis of the mid-tarsal bend alone. There's no evidence of any Sasquatch toolmaking.

The lack of bones or fossils only indictates a lack of bones or fossils found so far, not a lack of a species. Look how many hominid fossils have been found in the last decade. Homo georgicus destroyed the idea early humans needed a sophisticated toolkit to migrate out of Africa. The human family tree has been uprooted a number of times with the discovery of several new species of bipedal primates.......the Ardipiths, Orrorin tugenesis, Kenyanthropus platyops, "Toumai", more Australopiths, and even a bipedal ape in Italy with a weird tripod foot.

And science had no idea they were there.

Ditto that.

It's good to see intelligent scepticism instead of the kind we usually see.

You do make many valid points. I'm not totally convinced of sasquatch existance either. However, the point and philosophy that I keep coming back to it simple to the extreme. If sasquatches don't exist...what are people seeing? Occum's Razor...the simplest answer is the correct one.

Probably 90% or even greater of the sightings and anecdotal evidence can be dismissed as hoaxes, mis-identifications or outright lies, let's even say 99% just for the sake of this post. There have been at least 10,000 reports again for the sake of simplicity and round numbers. That's still 100 reports that must be accurate. And that's the extreme. I agree that the paranormal stuff is total non-sense, if there is a sasquatch-type "thing" out there than it's a flesh and blood animal.

So the question is now, what are these people seeing? What is responsible for these accurate reports? Is it even worth considering that every single sighting, every single report is false? Indeed with the number of reports is it even possible? Is assuming that every single report is false harder to believe than a large hominid/primate being as of yet undiscovered?

I think you're replying to me. I think we agree. I did say:



So I agree, I think it's plausible that 1% or 10% or maybe even 30% of sightings are the real deal.

I'm curious about that too. What environmental pressure could result in a creature like BF? Of course it's not always environmental pressure, there is sexual selection etc., but BF seems to be best at traversing rugged environments.

I'm also curious that this creature could be an 'outlier' of normal scientific discovery. Just like Pluto was discovered many years after the other planets, the could be a creature way out at the edge of the bell curve that simply hasn't been discovered.

Also, a little tangent, but I said in an eariler post that, again way out on the edge of the bell curve, rapid evolution could take place in a relatively short time (hundreds of thousands of years). So perhaps the mystery is simply an outlier, statistical anomaly, of this creature.

Along those lines is the Toba Volcano, 73,000 years ago that produced a genetic bottleneck. Any number of events like this could result in rapid change and adaptation. Just a line of thought.

Toba Volcano and Evolution

Saskeptic: First, FYI, Here’s a link to my annotated list of reasons to be skeptical of Bigfoot: http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=1855&st=0&#

Here’s a link to a longer, non-annotated list I provided, with Steamrunner’s brief ripostes. http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?sho...=50&#entry94790

There’s also a good list of scientific skeptical reasons in Richard Beeson’s [U. Idaho] “The Improbably Primate and Modern Myth,” in The Scientist Looks at the Sasquatch, 1979. And Daegling makes a good theoretical case too.

But I think many of us here, as Former Northwester said a few months ago, aren’t trying to convince skeptics or scientists to become Believers, but to concede that the matter is worthy of a serious mainstream look-see. I posted this a few months ago:



And recently I urged LAL, whose been almost single-handedly fighting the good fight over at JREF (Randi’s site), to make that point:


A serious mainstream look requires funding. Would you oppose funding a look-see, as Daegling does? What do you think are the odds against Bigfoot being real? 1000-1? 100-1? 10-1? 3-1? 1-1?

Yep, I think it's worthy of a mainstream look. The thing is, life forms have continually suprised scientists.

As recently as 20 years ago, most scientists believed the earth's crust was lifeless, too hot and removed from sunlight for any lifeform.

That viewpoint has changed through research:




As the Jeff Goldblum character said in "Jurassic Park", "Life will find a way".

I'm not putting down scientists at all, it seems logical that life couldn't exist at those temperatures. It just took some curious brave scientists to shatter the existing viewpoint.

Dear Sasquatchers,

I think there is an important difference (for me) when comparing the possibility of sasquatch to that of other animals previously unknown to western scientists. Namely, once western scientists did explore the areas where the local people told them these animals occurred, the evidence for their existence was collected in rather short order. There was not a protracted (decades-long) period during which westerners were in the right places looking for them that confirmatory (is that a word?) evidence of their existence was elusive.

If the sasquatch phenomenon really was confined to the Pacific Northwest, I'd be more inclined to see it as a potential case of a particulalrly elusive animal that has evaded real study due to rugged terrain, its own ability to willfully hide, lack of well-funded expeditions to "bag" one, etc. But as an outsider, I read the reports from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Indiana - take your pick - the stories from these regions sound every bit as credible as the stories I read from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. So, having never seen one myself, I'm left to work from the assumption that if this creature exists, it occupies the whole of continental North America. Then when I read other similarly intriguing reports from Russia, China, Europe, Australia, etc., I'm left to conclude that we have an alleged large mammal with an enormous range that occupies a tremendous variety of habitats. Sasquatch is not some elusive mountain dweller of limited range. It may be rare and elusive, but it must be a really successful and adaptable species (or mutiple successful and adaptable species in the same genus).

Isn't there a dude on another website who organizes roughly monthly expeditions to remote areas where a lot of "recent sasquatch activity" has been reported? Well, he may wish he had more night vision goggles or something, but his approach seems just as likely to succeed as anything any of us academic wildlifers could put together. If you had the kind of support that the Arkansas Ivorybill expedition had, do you think some team of bigfoot researchers could really do it - return from the field with sasquatch evidence at least as convincing as that from the Ivorybill expedition?
If so, where would you go? How would you choose your team? These sorts of questions would have to be worked out before pitching a grant application.

Anyway, this is a fun thread, and I'm learning a lot from you folks. Fight the good fight. I may be a skeptic, but I keep coming back to read what you good people have to say.

~Saskeptic

Great first post! Welcome to the BFF and to my side of the fence!

Edited to say that you now put yourself in the position of trying to explain away all of the sightings and tracks...AND the fact that some folks here have seen a bf! That's the tough one for me...they could not ALL be wrong or ALL hoaxes. Of course there COULD be a conspiracy and you and I aren't in on it!

t.

DITTO!

yeah - what he said!

But really, this thread is what this site is really about!
Saskeptic makes some very valid points, ones I cannot disagree with. Gotta have that physical evidence. Without it, all the sightings, recordings, etc don't mean a thing.

Thanks Saskeptic.

You make some very good points supporting your skepticism.



No. Find your own, or remain skeptical.

I'm quite happy that they remain unknown, and I hope it will continue.



Oh, no doubt about that. That's exactly what I expect.

Very good post! Itelligent skepticism at its best. Now we can have a discussion with merit.

Gigantopithecus did not just eat bamboo. The teeth found from these animals show other food used just as much.

Gigantopithecus could have been as rare as the Giant Panda is today. It shares a common history, habitat and ecological niche. Even with proper guides in search of the Giant Panda, it can take months to actually see one. How many Giant Pandas do you think exist in the wild today? How big do you think their range is right now?

Grover Krantz worked with a lot of people in the Bigfoot scene and he always told people to look for teeth... unfortunately the west at least, had a gold rush and many paners were scouring areas for the yellow nuggets and dust. If they found a tooth, what do you think they would do with it? Toss it? Sell it to the Asian communities who lived nearby?

Skeptic:

Could Bigfoot find you hiding in the middle of Manhattan?

Could Bigfoot dig your bones from Arlington National Cemetary?

However painful it may be to the pompousness of Science, these beasts are smarter than people and that's why they're not getting caught.

And heightened woodcraft is a definite function of heightened intelligence.

It's painful to be outsmarted, but that's just what they've done to Almighty Science, and that's just why Almighty Science shivers to consider them.

May they continue to do so.