http://mb-soft.com/public/phys05.html

I posted this in another thread, but decided to put it in it's own thread for more discussion.

This article (and I have seen this stated in other articles as well) seems to indicated that there is a maximum height potential for any living creature. It is interesting that in order for a BF to reach a height of nearly 15 ft as suggested by some recent sightings, the animal would have to have undergone some serious changes in it's circulatory system (along the lines of a giraffe!).

Certainly others have seen and read better articles, and I would love to see them as well..............

What say you? :popcorn2:

Thanks,
WmRoy

This is information I've seen referred to in other debates on a different topic on a different board. Thanks for posting it. There may well have been some substantial changes. We're not dealing with humans here, though, we're dealing with an unidentified hominid. It's pretty clear the Patterson figure has thick legs. The bone could be denser than human bone.

I don't know enough about this, but I'd certainly like to hear from someone who does.

Ciochon, et al, didn't seem to have any problem with Gigantopithecus being 10' tall.

Click to view attachment

http://www.uiowa.edu/~bioanth/giganto.html

We don't actually know that Sasquatch is a hominid - an ape yes, but a hominid? That remains to be seen.

The limits explained in the article would apply to any animal and not just primates in general.

I read somewhere that bigfoot could get up to fourteen feet tall..most reports I've seen describes the animal as being between seven and eight feet tall, sometimes nine feet..I think Patty was put at being 7 feet three inches tall and weighing 529 lbs..still that's a big animal if you ask me...

15 feet tall is like the hieght of a house, I would find that a bit unlikely. I think you could hear it in the woods moving around a long way away. What would it weigh 3000lbs? Yikes! I think the shock of seeing one makes peoples estimates a little off.

How can anyone make a claim that it is a primate or a hominid with any conviction? I could say bi-ped and probably get away with it. Perhaps it is not even of this earth.

My estimate would be 7-9 feet. Anything bigger and you are talking about something that would show up on radar. and be unable to hide if a helicopter went over.

Re: Ciochon.....

I just "love" seeing the mock-ups .......interesting because I have yet to see that he has ever admitted that Gigantopithicus blacki was bipedal.......Anybody here see that admission?.....Doesn't believe that they exist today unless he's changed up his mind......

Interesting also because I have yet to see a sasquach with a hairless chest.......OK, Ciochon didn't actually make the mock-up.....

Re: Weight of tallest sasquatches....

It seems to me that many folks get the image of Patty stuck in their brains and can't seem to be able to visualize any sasquatch with body proportions that are not the same as Patty's.....Many sasquatches are tall and slim.....

Re: What to call it?....Bipedal primate...ape.....not hominid if hominid is defined as of our line......of this earth....not from the planet Zibyderex.......

"The hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.

This classification has been revised several times in the last few decades. Originally, the group was restricted to humans and their extinct relatives, with the other great apes being placed in a separate family, the Pongidae. This definition is still used by many anthropologists and by lay people. However, that definition makes Pongidae paraphyletic, whereas most taxonomists nowadays encourage monophyletic groups. Thus many biologists consider Hominidae to include Pongidae as the subfamily Ponginae, or restrict the latter to the orangutans and their extinct relatives like Gigantopithecus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae




Like in dense forest?

Did you know a 400' waterfall was "discovered" last year in northern California?

Drew Drew Drew, where did you come from?!?! I don't mean to pick on your or anything, but RADAR?!?! :doh:

Looking at the page that WmRoy linked to, regarding proportions, we should use his formula to see if it really does prove true. According to him, a person who is 5 foot tall, in the same proportions should weigh 116 pounds and person 7 foot tall 320, approximately. He gets these figures by multiplying his own size as a reference point. For the person 7 foot tall, he uses 7/6, which breaks down to about 1.17 for each dimension. (1.17*1.17*1.17)*200=proportional weight. 1.60*200=320.32 pounds. Using this same formula a person 9 foot tall would be (1.5*1.5*1.5)*200=proportional weight. 3.375*200=675 pounds. Does that hold true? Well luckily we have had a person who was pretty close to 9 feet tall, and measured by doctors, so we know it's accurate. Robert Pershing Wadlow of Alton, IL was 8 feet 11.1 inches tall when he died of an infection in his foot in 1940, and weighed 439 pounds. Seems like there is almost a 250 pound difference in his figures there, or an error of about 37 percent. Using that as a basis a 12 foot human could weigh as little as 1008 pounds.

Which we have to ask, could a human weighing over 1008 pounds exist, or would his bone structure collapse and be unable to support his weight as the author suggests? Again we can go to the record books and find another gentleman from Illinois, Robert Earl Hughes. I'll admit that Mr. Hughes was no track star, but pictures show evidence that he wasn't bed ridden either. His height was 6 feet and 1/2 inch, and the maximum weight he hit before his death was 1069 pounds. According to the author a human 12 foot tall couldn't support a mass equal to 1600 pounds, yet here we have a person who is only half that tall supporting 67% of that much weight. Mr. Hughes and the author probably about the same bone structure since they both measure around 6 foot tall. So if a 6 foot man could support a mass of 1069 pounds I would think one of 12 foot could support twice that much or 2138 pounds and be in no worse shape than Mr. Hughes. At 1008 pounds he should be a track star.

It appears that many times when someone uses physics in the absolute sense as this author has, without using variables that nature herself has the ability to produce, it makes the whole scientific field look a bit silly. IMHO...

The purpose of the article to me anyway is to stimulate conversation. I would point out that neither Mr. Hughes or Mr. Wadlow were in any kind of condition to survive in the great outdoors. Mr. Wadlow had serious health issues and besides his condition was caused by an over active pituitary gland and he in fact was still growing at the time of his death from infection. :new_lmaosmiley: Mr. Hughes is an extreme as well and while perhaps mobile certainly unable to do anything remotely stressful for fear of falling down or causing his heart to errupt :new_weirdsmiley: ........ I think the author of the article was trying to find a happy medium to use for his calculations. He is certainly being a little overly simple, since most 'small' folks carry a higher weight to height ratio than most 'tall' folks.... there lies one of the faults with the body weight charts used these days. BF would have to be pretty 'trim' if he is anything near 12-15 ft tall...........

To me the biggest problem would be the circulatory system. The ability of it's heart and vascular system to withstand the pressures required to pump blood through such a tall creature (even without considering the body weight). Also I once heard it said that every pound of body weight requires a mile of capillaries and blood vessels to support it......... :ohmy:

If the size of the heart and circulatory system were that of a normal sized human, than yes, but they would be larger proportionally as well. I know they use to say taller people couldn't live as long as shorter people, and expressed the same concern you are here, that due to the height it created a larger stress on the heart and circulatory system. My great uncle Frank, was a tall man, just under 7 foot, and he worked seven days a week up until the day he died. He suffered an apparent heart attack while preparing breakfast before he headed off to work. So yep, his heart did give out eventually, and maybe even due to his height. But for pete's sake how much more time would he have had, he was 94 when he died.

:icon_bang_flip:

Seven foot is one thing........... 14 is another................ in the article he states that 7 foot up and 7 foot down is about all a heart made of flesh and blood can handle............. due to the pressure involved in pushing the blood that high and back around in the circulatory system.

The size of the heart really has nothing to do with it............. it's how much stress can the system as a whole stand!


edit due to poor spelling.....

Great thread and intriguing link. Just a few random thoughts.

Thanks for checking some things out Moregon. Excellent addition to the discussion.

I don't know much physics and math has always been a handicap, but I think the BIOmechanical shortcoming in the link is that the author has failed to account for allometry, the study of the correlation between form and size. If something basically human-shaped attained an astonishing height, why assume that its bones all thicken at the same rate throughout its body? Perhaps the legs and pelvis become stout at a faster rate that the arms and shoulders. If that was the case, a huge sasquatch might not be as heavy as one might expect, and its legs would be better able to support its weight than one might predict. (Just another reason I'd love to have one on the proverbial slab!) A big sas like this might not be advised to do cartwheels, but could certainly get around just fine.

We don't see big-time graviportal (weight-bearing) features in vertebrate skeletons in animals much less than 2000 lbs. It's above that weight that creatures like elephants, the extinct giant rhino Indricotherium (giraffe high at the shoulder and much bulkier), and sauropod dinosaurs had limbs modified to bear weight. But even though you don't get too many elephants playing hopscotch, those suckers can really move when they want to.

Great comparison: A few weeks ago, the Saskeptic family went to see Sue the T. rex at a Natural History museum. (She was awesome!) In the adjoining hall was an imperial mammoth skeleton. The mammoth and the T. rex were about the same size in terms of height, skeletal mass, etc. So how could T. rex get around on TWO limbs without obvious graviportal adaptations (e.g., FOUR columnar legs) like the mammoth? Simple. The T. rex was beautifully counterbalanced. The giant head was about 16 feet in front of the hips while the tip of the tail was about 20 feet behind them.

Sorry..... ........ this info is actually in the link inside the link........ the one about dinosaurs.......... Sorry :doh:



Obviously, a BF's brian wouldn't be 7 foot above it's heart...... but at 14 or 15 foot it's feet would be much farther away than 7 foot! And if the author of the article is correct at all the blood pressure in BF's lower extremities would be incredible!! He'd literally have blood gushing out of his toes! :new_weirdsmiley:

I'm not sure this guy's calculations were on the up and up there. I didn't see any references to the tensile strength of arteries or veins. Sure would like to have the pleistocence giraffe-camel, Altimcamelus, on the slab too.

But, even if he's right, would a 14-foot sasquatch's heart be 7 feet below its head?

No but it's feet would likely be 10 ft BELOW it's heart!!! And it would take a whale of alot of pressure to get the blood 'back' up to the heart..............

Aren't there any medical doctors or animal vet's in the house??? It would be great to hear from someone who actually works in the medical field :eek3dance:

How about this one, 18 at the shoulder.
Listed as the biggest land mammal ever.
Indricotherium

The blood pressure might not be as high as you'd think. Giraffes, which have reached a height of 20 feet, have a blood pressure of 240/160 to maintain blood flow to the brain. That's only about twice the pressure slated as normal for a human. There are people that have what's known as Malignant Hypertension, which is a blood pressure reading in excess of >200/>130 and they don't have blood gushing out of their toes. I think what may be even more pertinent, is the strange thing about giraffes. Logically you'd think when they bent over, the blood pressure would increase enough in their heads to cause brain damage. HOWEVER.. once again Mother Nature steps in and throws a monkey wrench into the mixture. Giraffes have special one way valves built into the blood vessels going into the brain, which constrict when the giraffe bends over to get a drink for instance, keeping the blood pressure to the brain constant, and then open back up with the giraffe returns to the normal standing posture. We already have similar valves like this in our own legs, which when they fail is why people get varicose veins and the blood pools.

Since the valves would keep the blood from flowing backwards, the heart only needs to pump the blood a short distance, not a constant column from the foot back to the heart, or from the heart to the brain. We don't know many of these valves might exist within the circulatory system of any biped that could reach 12 feet in height. Maybe the heart would only have to push the blood six inches, then in a domino fashion the blood would be moved in six inch increments back to the heart with the opening and closing of multiple valves between heartbeats. So any high pressure at all could only be exerted along a small section of vein at any time and it would only be for a fraction of a second.

Varicose Veins and Little Valves Info
Giraffe Blood Pressure Info
Malignant Hypertension
Giraffe Neck Valve Info

A 400ft tall stationary waterfall does not equate to any better chance of 10 plus foot tall unknown non-stationary primates running about in the deep woods...

Sorry, but really, that's grasping at some already short straws...

Edited to remove duplicate posts due to busy or broken server problems. (I don't usually repeat myself that often.)

Not grasping at all. If a 400' waterfall could be overlooked for all these years (it showed up on an aerial, as I recall), why would Sasquatches necessarily be spotted by helicopter, regardless of height? Flown over a conifer canopy lately? Some trackways have been spotted by helicopter (Powder Mountain, for one) but the trackmaker wasn't. I vaguely recall an aerial sighting, though, of one crossing a road. There was a tree break for the road, of course.

Note Gill's findings:

"Attention to the Bigfoot reports led to the discovery of what was thought to be a clinal pattern within them regarding body size. Reports of both the tracks and the eyewitness sightings seemed to characterize a larger creature in the northern part of the hypothetical species range.

Subsequent compilation of data in 1973 (both track measurements and estimated statures) from the collections of reports available at that time, strongly reinforced this hypothesis (see Table 1). The particular reports utilized in that preliminary study were all of those listed by Napier10, a few others collected and published by Roger Patterson and not included by Napier11, additional Canadian reports compiled by John Green 12, and some 1973 Canadian newspaper accounts. The Sasquatch File, a more complete compilation of reports than the earlier ones, was not available at the time of preliminary analysis, but it has since been screened for pertinent information about both tracks and estimated statures. Also, additional files of more recent reports, from 1974 to the present, have since been offered for study. Comments concerning recent findings will be made at the end of this section.

The results of the preliminary investigation, listed in Table 1, show that the average length of tracks (n = 44) vary gradually in a south-north direction from an average of 15" in California to 18.5" in Canada. Corresponding to this is a gradual increase in average stature, as estimated by alleged eyewitness observers (n = 47), from 7'4" in California to 8'8" in western Canada.

A statistical test of the Table 1 data shows that the clines are in all probability quite real and not the product of chance sampling bias. By plotting track lengths and estimated statures against latitude, regression lines were produced, and the t-test was applied to the slope estimates 13. Application of the t-test to the slope estimate of the track-length regression lines shows that if the true slope were zero, then the slope of .12 inches/degree of latitude shown in Figure 1 would have less than a 15 per cent chance of being produced. Application of the same test to the slope estimate of the stature regression(.0746 feet/degree of latitude) shows less than a 10 per cent chance that such a slope would exist in face of an actual slope of zero. The two regression lines, then, appear to be showing actual clines and not sampling bias. This is not to say that the Sasquatch itself has to be real, only that the reported size variations are real and apparently regular from south to north.

All of this is of particular scientific interest because the suggested increase in body size from south to north within the hypothetical species range is exactly what one would predict in nature according to the well-known ecogeographical principle, Bergmann's Rule. Bergmann's Rule states that, among many species and genera of homeotherm vertebrates, those populations closer to the equator tend to have a smaller mean body size than those toward the poles at cooler latitudes. The size differences are thought to exist because of the relationship of body mass to exposed surface area. A large body simply has a smaller surface area per unit volume than does a small one, thus heat conservation is promoted in the cooler regions and heat loss in warmer regions."

http://home.clara.net/rfthomas/papers/gill.html"

Greater height in more northerly and denser forests wouldn't make for difficulty in concealment, IMO. Some of those trees are really huge, the canopy dense, and helicopters at a minimum. I doubt natural selection would weed out taller individuals because of helicopter pressure. :wink:

Good Point............. wonder how that one worked it out? Likely similar to a Giraffe.



moregon

Good Post, the original article does mention the giraffe's particular adaptions. I haven't time to look at the links you provided, but will look at them tonight.

I sure would like to hear from someone in the medical field on this one? :popcorn2:

First of all- the point about the radar was satire- I was inferring that a 15 ft. tall creature running around in the woods would attract a lot more attention than a 9' being. 15' tall is 150% taller than a six foot person a 9 footer is only 50% bigger. Now, whether they are being tracked by helicopters is irrelevent, simply because it is going to be ALOT easier to hide at 9' than it is at 15' tall.

And as far as the 'not of this world' statement, I was simply pointing out that calling them a hominid or a mammal or a primate is premature based on the feeble evidence that we have. I think that someone calling them an alien or inter-dimensional life force has as much to back them up as someone calling them a primate.

Well, not quite Drew... We do have positive proof that primates, mammals and hominids exist. Aliens and/or inter-dimensional life is still theoretical.

Feeble evidence? Doesn't the cast collection owned by a certain specialist in primate foot anatomy impress you at all?

Aren't You leaving out a few important things in this equation, such as food resources for a 10ft plus behemothic creature?...Sufficent territory for a breeding stock/casual day to day living for these supposed 10ft plus leviathans?...

I, personally, believe bears may keep a very close diet to these creatures (i.e. mainly plants, berries, ect. with meat/protein when the situation arises to allow for such), and bears, even the large ones, often end up becoming nuisances once or twice a year per the states they live in, due to not being able to find enough food to properly sustain them...But You're telling me a number of 14ft Bigfoot isn't gonna have the same problems, cause the canopy is thick, and could hide em?...

Sorry, but thick woods doesn't cover the rest of the equation...

So once more I reiterate -

A 400ft tall stationary waterfall does not equate to any better chance of 10 plus foot tall unknown non-stationary primates running about in the deep woods...

Oh I agree Randy. I find the notion of 10-15' sasquatches highly dubious, and much more so than the notion of 6 - 8' sasquatches. But then guys like Jon Larsen will tell you that he's personally seen them in that size range on multiple occasions. So what do you do? I could tell him from the warm confines of my office that he hasn't seen any such thing, but if I was him and I had seen them, I wouldn't believe me either. So it's one of those bigfoot impasses: People see bigfoot. Some people see huge bigfoots. I don't have to put much stock in their accounts without corroborating evidence, and they don't have to put much stock in the opinion of a pontificating pencil-neck like me who wasn't there to (potentially) witness the same thing.

SO, what I liked about this thread was that it wasn't focused on whether or not 15' sasquatches exist, but rather if, biomechanically, they even could.

While biomechanics are certainly a constraint on a 15' sasquatch, I don't see how they'd render the existence of such a creature impossible.

~saskeptic

I agree whereas it seems it is not 'completely' impossible........... it seems it is even more unlikely then I had previously believed....

I'd still love to see more info however............... :popcorn2:

I think you missed my point. Drew said 10' animals would be more likely to be spotted by helicopters and I pointed out a 400' waterfall was missed. Thick canopies tend to hide just about everything from the air. I'm not telling you "a number of 14ft Bigfoot isn't gonna have the same problems, cause the canopy is thick, and could hide em?" I'm saying a 10' Sasquatch would be no more likely to be spotted by helicopter under a dense canopy than one 4'2".

Gigantopithecus apparently was able to make a living.

The apparently huge territories would tend to get around problems of competition and the large stride would allow them to cover quite a bit of ground with a low expenditure of energy (I doubt they actually "run around" much), but it seems Sasquatches can become nuisances too. Read Bitter Monk's account of the Elkins Creek incidents, the Chapman story, etc.

There are some reports of 15', for whatever that's worth. 7-8' Seems to be more the norm. Who was the primatologist who discounted Toba Inlet because there wasn't enough food? He based his opinion on what Orangutans eat.

Since Randy brought up the food issue again, I happened to catch something on The National Geographic Channel the other day that I thought was interesting. They were talking about Hippos, and quite a bit about their habits, needs etc. In one segment of the show, they were talking about a villager who had gone down to the river early one day to do some fishing. To get there he had to travel through a dense forest, and came across a path, following that to the river. When he finished, he decided to take the path back into the forest, not realizing that he was on a hippo trail. The narrator went on to say that hippos will walk inland something like ten miles or more to feed at night, which I thought was an incredible amount of distance for an animal that large, who's habitat of water seems to help support it's great weight. What happens later is that a hippo comes down the path heading towards the water, while the villager is walking away from the water. According to the Ranger that was interviewed on the show, the most dangerous situation you can put yourself into, when it comes to hippos, is to get between them and the water. Evidently they feel you are trying to cut off their escape route, so they charge. Well the man ends up, gored and dead, with one tusk mark going completely through one thigh.
They mention that a Hippo's legs are only twelve inches long. So of course I think the guy must have been a real slow runner to get run down by something with legs that are only a foot long. Then they add that hippos are capable of reaching speeds in excess of twenty miles per hour on those short little legs!

So you're probably sitting there wondering, what the hell this has to do with food! First of all I'm not so hungry I could eat a hippo! The point is, Hippos get up to 8,000 pounds in weight, they do a lot of floating around in the water all day, however at night they travel inland to eat, that's up to twenty miles or more a day walking onshore just to eat. That's a lot of energy to expend to move 8,000 pounds up to twenty miles or more per day, and if it comes to running to hit over twenty miles per hour. The thing is, hippos don't eat that much food. They estimated an 8,000 pound hippo eats about a hundred pounds of food per day, why so little? From what they said Mother Nature again stepped in and made it so that's all they require. A search online shows that the big hippos at the Smithsonian National Zoo, eat one bale of hay at forty pounds, two pounds of fresh kale, and fourteen pounds of herbivore pellets. National Zoo Hippo Info That's only fifty six pounds of food for an eight thousand pound animal. We don't know what kind of metabolism sasquatch might have, or what his requirements are to sustain life. We don't even know how active he is or isn't to even start to guess what his requirements might be. IF, his metabolism is even close to a hippo, a one thousand pound sasquatch, which is one eighth the size of the hippo, at the high end might be able to get by on as little as twelve pounds of food per day. That's not a lot of food that would need to be supplied, and many many areas of the country have plenty of areas that could easily support at least a small population of sasquatch with these kinds of dietary needs.

You know, I've always said to those who tried to calculate and "decide" what a Sasquatch needs to eat to survive, that the reality is it all boils down to one thing...

"metabolism"...

Also, do they hibernate? If not they are going to burn up alot of energy keeping warm.......... if they do then they will have to store up body fat like a bear.............

If they are in fact a primate, then do any other primates hibernate??? I'm not aware of any......

A Bigfoot living up in Canada is going to be burning alot more energy to keep warm then a hippo is living in Africa.............. especially if it's up and running around all winter.

:popcorn2:

I seem to remember a thread about 15 foot specimens in Africa. They had heavy legs and thin arms/shoulders., like a giraffe. Yet they were so huge and strong they could easily knock down a native hut. I have been looking for that thread without success. King Kong could be real.

They don't seem to hibernate, but people living in Alaska get so acclimated they wear sweaters in temps that would freeze me solid. If Gill is correct, greater size further north could be a cold adaptation. Again, I don't think they "run around" much. There are areas near the coast, e.g., in Canada that are pretty temperate. I wintered in a summer camping tent in western Washington and got to where I couldn't stand being in people's houses with all that heat. The area had the highest sighting rate in the country (BFRO figures), BTW.

Thick hair even over chests and breasts would be quite insulating. There's a possibility they migrate to some extent. How do moose survive?

Mixed thoughts reading this thread.

You people have me going back and forth. One minute I'm saying to myself "yeah" and the next I'm going "No".

For one, it wouldnt make a difference if the thing was 9 ft. or 15 ft. It would still be as hard to find as it wanted to. Yes, they do have brains. It is not a 400ft. waterfall that stays there all day, I'll give you that but it also doesnt tromp around in the sunlight hours, under canopy or not, waving its hands and hollering "look at me, here I am!".

You're the type that wants to classify it into a specific genus? How can you? What do you know? I'll tell you, not enough to even think about classification.

I'll tell you what I think, hear it or not. No one knows these things about BF: Their physical capabilities, thier mind capacity, their metabolism, their diet; homnivore, herbivore, carnivore....their genus, their habits, their preferred habitat, their level of self-awareness, ...etc.....need I go on?

My point is, we dont know. A lot more info needs to be gathered before you can start saying what BF is capable of and what it is not. Sorry to tell ya, doesnt look like science is gonna help you out too much. At least not in the near future.

One thing you should think about though is that the limitations that you put on BF, because of what you think they can and cant do or what they can and cant be, well, it doesnt inhibit them at all. They will still do what they do and be what they are. Nothing that you think you know will change that.

My rampage is over, sorry if I offended anyone. Am now retreating back under my rock.

Ang

Angie come back out from under your rock for a few more minutes. I agree with what you're saying, and sometimes people forget to look at other possibilities when they get too focused on one idea. They don't allow themselves to really contemplate solutions for imagined limitations. I have no more of an idea regarding absolutes about bigfoot than anyone else has, but I do see all kinds of possibilities.

Quite a bit can be deduced, actually.

Seems they're omnivores. They're bipedal. They're primates that migrated over the Bering land bridge, they're more often seen at night, they tend to prefer areas with over 20" annual rainfall. They prefer forests and swamps. They can swim. They're large.

Krantz thought there was enough to classify them and proposed a name.

I don't believe the average size of a bigfoot - if such a creature exists - could be much larger than 7 feet...again on the average. Sightings are notorious for estimating the size as huge, but then many is the experienced hunter of deer who takes the first huge bear they see, only to realize it's a 150 pound youngster. Plus, for an animal to remain relatively secret, unusual size would be a continual detriment. I don't mention that as an observation that has anything to do with the animal's evolution, but rather because I believe it supports the contention that a bigfoot type creature needs to remain secretive.

But as for heart size, blood pressure and vessle strength, we would have to consider that as size increases in certain species across the board, evolution would have to deal with that. Our arteries and veins actually have pretty thick layers of muscle cells that assist in vasodilation and vasoconstriction, and our veins and capillaries have valves that keep the blood flowing in the right direction. Our muscles assist in moving the blood as well. If the human race began to increase in size anatomically, we would have to assume that our cardiovascular system would keep pace, and our circulatory system would adapt as well.

Dan

There's a report of a sighting of a tall individual where tracks were found in snow with a stride length of almost 5'. What kind of height would that indicate?

Well my first reaction would be to assume normal height for an individual of the species Homo sapiens, taking bounding leaps through the snow to make the "bigfoot's" stride appear really big. When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite games to play in fresh snow; I just didn't do it with foot-shaped cut outs strapped to my boots . . .

{Oops! Sorry Lu, I read too fast and overlooked the part about the sighting coincident with the track find. My bad.}

OK, well the SAskeptic is 6' 2" on a good day, and he relies on an accurate pace for field work. That means I'm often measuring my stride in the field to make sure I can use it for a rough approximation of distance traveled. My pace is pretty well dead-on at 2m, which means that my stride length is about 1 m. So that's a little over 3'. My inseam is 34"; kinda long but not for the average pro basketballer. I'll leave it to folks who know how to use math to figure out how tall someone with my proportions would need to be to achieve a 5-foot stride, but I assume not that much taller than me - especially in snow. I'd bet a 7-8' squatch could have a stride that long in snow without looking like it was "bounding".

Ed McClarney is 6'4" and had to jump to equal the distance between prints in the double trackway he and a friend discovered north of his farm in Carson, Wa.. The Cox sighting that spring was of an individual thought to be 8', but I've just read 8-10' for that sighting. The print found by the river was 22" (Sheriff Closner kept a cast on his desk for years) and by Fahrenbach's estimates, that would put the individual at 9'1".

http://home.clara.net/rfthomas/papers/size2.html

The double trackway was in snow, BTW.

The validity of the conclusion is based upon the accuracy of the information you deduced, "GIGO". Nothing of what you've listed above are proven facts, it's all assumptions. Some I agree with, and some I don't, but I always remember they are assumptions and subject to change. Don't restrict yourself by only looking in areas, or for creatures that fit the above profiles you've created.

Dr Farenbach's research indicates that the average sasquatch "step length" is about 4-5 feet.

Here are the percentages I calculated:

2-3 feet 3.6%
3-4 feet 24.3%
4-5 feet 29.7%
5-6 feet 19.8%
6-7 feet 17%
7-8 feet 6.3%
8-9 feet 1.8%
9-10 feet 0.9%
10-11 feet 0.5%
11-12 feet 0.5%

This is just a very rough approximation, because I'am getting my numbers from a bar chart, which may not be accurate. If you're wondering why they total over 100%, that is either because the total number isn't accurate or the scale is off.

Take it for what its worth.

WMRoy, how would you back up the statement that a Canadian Sasquatch would burn up more energy running around in winter? Wouldn't witness reports statistically tell you that Sasquatch tends to walk away more so than be a runner?

Neanderthal's nose helped regulate their body heat, now add in type/density of fur in animals, we don't know what is under that hair next to the skin in a Sasquatch or the color of it's skin, for example, polar bears with their two layers which protect them from cold and are basically waterproof as well as the heat absorbing dark color of their skin. Moose are much the same, they have duel coats and their large body size reduces heat loss because of the low surface-area-to-volume ratio (and in bears). In reality, animals in winter either hibernate, migrate or adapt. A bear is not a true hibernator. You can Google some key words to read about Primates/Humans and Thermoregulation to get an understanding of the basics, there is very little understanding of primate thermoregulation.

We can't really assume that other animals have the key to how a Sasquatch lives in it's environment because good ole Mother Nature gave it the basics and time gave it the variability to adapt if this be the case (as with all, assumption). We don't know if a Sasquatch pants or sweats to regulate its body heat or even if it hibernates/migrates..... We don't know anything about them scientifically/categorically.



Angie said it best, we make assumptions based on trying to understand, yet we truly don't know what a Sasquatch is so in turn we can't base animal or human models on their behaviors or characteristics. It's great to ask the questions and to discuss what others think, yet, we have NO absolute known facts to support theory.

Well, I plotted myself on those charts and I hate to say it, I'm a sasquatch!!

Alex

(not really, but pretty close!)

Well................. by saying he was out 'running around' in winter I didn't mean he was 'literally running'........

Just that he/she would be out and about............ and not hibernating.............. logic tells one that it requires more energy to stay warm in winter................. calories = heat

I am assuming that he is implying that Patty is over 7.5 feet tall since she had a 14.5" track. That should be adjusted to at most 6.5 feet as the only evidence that is quantifiable that I know of.(IMO) I would suspect as was implied in the writing that foot size would increase much faster than height but his slope or scaling factor doesn't seem to have any data to support a slope, only one point. Assuming that his slope is correct, that would make a 24" foot closer to 8' tall individual. That is the biggest footprint I ever heard of. That would make me tend to put the maximum height at maybe about 8.5 feet based on known footprints. I don't have any idea how reliable those 24" tracks are but for the sake of argument, I assumed they were real.

Okay Moregon, I'll come from 'neath my rock for a couple minutes.

I do appreciate what you all are doing. Trying to figure out BFs, that is. But, I just get tired of the "Well, that is not possible." and "No known species does that" and "It has to be an ape (Gawd I love that one)"...We're not apes but BF is...wait a minute, we are apes, but only occasionally. Depends on who you're talking to. What is an ape, anyway? Are men apes or are we not? I'll never know. My latest frustration is "They cant be that tall cuz then their heart would burst and they'd be bleeding from their toes."

Anywho, enough of the funnin'.

I think that it is great that we try to understand BFs. I just think that there is a much better way of doing it. Instead of saying "That's not possible." based on the deductions that we make from the possibles that we're given, why dont we do the opposite? Say, we take what we have dedueced from our info and make a BF. We have some prabables to go on. Example: We make a 12 ft. tall BF that weighs 800 lbs, lives in the great state of Michigan, is mostly seen at night and has only been seen 10 times by the human race over a period of 50 years. Now, what would it take to be that BF? What physical make-up would it have to have? What food sources to keep it in such good physical condition? What kind of brain must it have to avoid us? What kind of fur/hair/muscle mass and/or fat for insulation? What metabolism? What food sources and what habitat does it prefer?...based on the area that it has been seen most frequently. What patterns does it have? Again, based on the sightings.

My point is, why are we saying that it is not possible for a BF to do or be what we dont believe is possible? Why not try to conform our minds to understand what it takes to be a BF? That is one thing that I have always done since my sighting. I've opened my mind and in the process, have realized that life is bigger and much more complicated than I thought. Science and the books dont have all the answers. In fact, they not only dont have the answers but they also tell you that it is impossible.....Again, for the, literally, at least 15th time since I've been in the BF field, I'll say it again....Science be damned! .....I'll figure it out on my own.

Okay, my rock is calling my name....Moregon, dont call me out again, its nice and comfy under here and warm too. I'm kinda feeling like my name should be Patrick. HeeHee, Thats from Spongebob :new_whistle: