To start things off, I will say that my numbers may be a little off due to a lot of guesstimating, so I apologize and I'm open for correction.

Q:Why can't we gain hard evidence that tells us sasquatch is real?

A: Simple, they are able to stay hidden from humans very easily, they have a low population, and are extremely intellegent, and are more active in the night. Dead bodies are hard to find with such a low population, especialy when they are predators. Duh! everyone knew that.

That is the common answer for that question, it is a good one too, but if you apply that to the numbers and use some bit of logic and reasoning, it should be easier to see (at least for those of you like me who need to see a drawing, graph or
somehting visual to get the idea of something) how BFs can stay hidden so well.


According to a website (cant find it), there are 663 designated wilderness areas, and are 105,764,330 acres of wilderness in the U.S.

*NOTE: This dosen't include large plots of privately owned land, so I am underestimating* on these numbers (you'll see what I mean by this later)

So I needed to convert 105,764,330 acres to miles, and I got 165,257 square miles of wilderness. PLZ correct me if I'm wrong.

Then, I needed to find the amount of wilderness in canada, But I couldn't seem to find it on google, ask, or wikipedia.
So I tried my own little math equation to figure it out the square miles of wilderness in Canada.

I used this information:

3,701,422.6 square miles total area in US
3,838,107.148 square miles total area in Canada

8.55 pop. density in Canada
31.172 pop. density in US

Pop. Of US=300,165,500
Pop. Of Canada=32,805,041

I got the ratio of density/population for each country--

2.61e-7 ratio of density to pop. in Canada
1.038e-7 ratio of density to pop. in U.S.

I cross-multiplied and divided the two ratios by the wilderness area in U.S. to get the wilderness area of Canada.

2.61e-7 1.038e-7
x 165,257

2.61e-7 * 165,257 / 1.038e-7 =x

x=415,530.61

415,530.61 square miles of wilderness in Canada

Add that to the U.S. area and get---580,787.61 square miles of total wilderness area in Canda and North America

This doesn't include large landowners where BFs can easily hide too. This is where I underestimated*

So if we take the population of Canada and the U.S. of BFs to be 2000, then that means thatr in the wilderness, there is 290 square miles per ONE BF.....that is one huge piece of land for one individual.

581 square miles per 2 bigfoots

So now, take the answer above, and put it to these numbers: If they are so intellegent, mostly night prowlers, very few of them, and can most of the time hear us and see us before we see them.... then that means its very rare to see a BF in the middle of nowhere, unless they want you to know they are there (scare away by stalking, throwing objects, screaming).

When they cross a road, it's more probable that you will see one here than in the wilderness. Even then It's rare to see one on the road because they can hear cars coming most of the time. Of course many encounters are on the roads, these are probably the easiest to hoax.

On another thread, I noticed someone ask why no one sees juvenille BFs casuing trouble and getting spotted a lot. because he said that they need to learn the "avoid human" behavior on their own.

well, if there is only 2000 individuals, which is one extremely low population, and they are still living fine (I think so at least).
My opinion, is that the juvenilles stay with their moms and learn from their moms until they know enough to stay away from humans. That way they are able to keep the population low, without having to loose their young. So instead of having many young and hoping that at least a few will survive, (IMO) BFs have one young at a time, and protecting them dearly.

That's how, I think, that the population can stay so low, but be so fruitful. Plus it doesn't hurt that they are the top of the forest and don't need to worry about us hunting them.... at least not yet.

So if someone asks why there isn't more evidence gathered, or dead bodies lying around. Feel free to use my stats if you find them to be decently correct.

This thread may be totally useless, but hey, I was bored. I basically wanted to see how many square miles per BF.

Great math! Where do you get your number 2000 as the number of sasquatch - just a guess?

My hubby and I were watching a Travel Channel show about BF last night and he again went spouting off about how BF is "impossible" - he's a statistics guy, though, so this kind of information/speculation is something I might share with him. Thanks for posting.

I got it from BFRO, on one of the FAQs. Thanks for the encouragement, The number of square miles per BF is most likely higher, but since I used a math proportion to find Canada's wilderness area, and since I didn't include all the privately owned "wilderness." That ratio of square miles/BF could be off a bit, but still, even if it's significantly lower, let's say 200 square miles per BF, That's still a huge chunk of area. So nevertheless, BFs have many wilderness areas where they can easily find food, water, shelter, and have much more territory to themselves and still be rarely seen by humans.

Combine that Area/BF ratio to their behaviors (night prowlers, intellegent, avoid humans), and you practically have a nonexsistant animal.

I think this is a great topic and one of my favorite questions to ponder. As well as their scarecity, I think we are prone to underestimate their sense acuity just as we over-estimate our human senses.

I also think that one reason we are more likely to see 'em in forest habitat, when we see them at all (presumably by surprise) is because I suspect their senses evolved for the kind of landscape and lifestyle that was most prominent and productive during the pleistocene. When we see wilderness today we see lots of trees but they are relatively recent having but recently encroached onto the landscape following the recession at the beginning of the holocene of the continental and piedmont glaciers which served as weather generators for cold dry weather systems, more favorable for the mammoth steppe and beringia landscapes that today exist as almost curious remnants in places where forests and wet tundra either have not or can not yet become the dominant kind of habitat.

good work Smiles, I've read elsewhere that some of the experts arrive at a population in north America in the 2-5,000 range. Tho some think it could be signifigantly higher. But 2,000 is a good conservative starting point. Speaking of numbers, I think it was Jeff Meldrum that used a common equation, (I don't remember the exact data details) but it had to do with probability statistics. Weighing the known data and allowing for error and fraud, the result indicated that BF must exist.

That sounds interesting, I'll look into that.

The more I read about BFs, the more I come to realize that they are extrememly intellegent. All our info that we have on these creatures are merely on scraps of footage, eyewitness accounts, and other not-so-hard evidence. They have managed to avoid hunters, getting hit by cars (not too hard to avoid), most pictures and footage, and they seem to know what's dangerous or not. For instance, no one can capture one of them on a trail cam at a bait station, as if they "know" that a camera is there or they "smell" trouble. Plus, they have a very low population, even if it is up to 5,000, that is still low.

116 square miles per BF, if they have a pop. as high as 5000.

extreme intellegence+low population=near invisible animal

You also have the tabloids advertising that BF is a fake after the PGF came out, and you have small amounts of evidence, it's no wonder most of the public believe BF is a joke.

I believe that if there wasn't such a steryotype that BF is fake, more people would come to study these creatures and accept the possibility. But most are too busy, narrow-minded, and/or under pressure of being called crazy to even accept the possibility.

If you wiegh the odds, use a bit of logic, and forget the steryotypes, you may come to realize that it is very possible that BF exists.

This is one of my favorite musings concerning this stuff. Why can't we find them? Why can't we get decent photo evidence, Why can't we get consistant footprints? Why can't we find (and analyze) a dead one?

The short answere is because the thing dosen't exist! But I wouldn't be sitting here on my keyboard bangang away if I was comfortable with the short answer. I'm also not comfortable that the big smelly thing comes and goes like a willow the whisp. Yet at least for the now it is more whisp than willow

I maintain that one of the biggest shortcommings of its reality is the lack of a dead body. It is possible to find hard evidence of rare things in unusual circumstance. For instance a number of years ago I was walking a trail through some deep woods in Upstate NY and happend on the flight feather of an Osprey. There was ONE Osprey nest near a lake located 2 miles away. I knew about the nest having spent time observing it. But here I was miles away from the lake and on a trail that had a dense canopy of trees over it. Yet one lone Osprey feather managed to filter down through the trees and land on a remote trail for me to happen along and find it. What are the odds of that?

Now let's consider Sasquatch in the Northwest region. We like to think of the great forest there was wild and untamed and they are to a large extent but they are not unknown. When people go missing way more often than not they are found and or bodies recovered, even if it takes the Spring thaw to expose them. Sasquatch just so happens to inhabit the domain of a huge industry, namely the timber industry. With all of the thousands of acres of forest that have been cut down with thousands of Timberjacks and forsters plying their trade day in and day out nobody has while surveying a stand of Sitka Spruce or preparing to cut it down ever stumbled onto an expired Sasquatch. Sasquatch may be able to hide well when he's alive but once he's dead the game is up he's going to lay where he falls. Unless Sasquatch bury thier dead in which case they are not primates they are human and that's streching it even further.

Great topic Smiles, I still think its hard to say how many are out there no matter what experts think, but your numbers sounds good, also my thought about the patterson one is that maby she just finished burying one of her own maby a child, and went down to the creek to wash up and thats when they came upon her, she walked right down the middle of the sandy area to lead them away from what she was doing over there, also I belive there was more around and not just her, I think she knew if anything happend to her, they would come out and finish them off, I also think they bury there dead, if there is no underground caverns, or tunnels around, For none belivers here is a pic of what I saw and it looks like a female, because of the wide hips and butt, it was going down the steep cliff area, and I was shaky and nervous so the pic is not perfect but you can see it, its not a bear walking on its hind legs thats for sure, way to much hair for a bear, Click to view attachment

Actually, I believe we can't find Sasquatch because they are smarter than we are. We can find a single human who is hiding from the law, but we can't document a single example of a being that is found all over the world and is sighted thousands of times? Yes, it is smarter than we are.--ufo

I've seen one, so maybe it's just smarter than you are.

We can find a single human who is hiding from the law, Well............what happened to D.B. Cooper??

Okay, I admit it............... I am D.B. Cooper...............

Ok, so what happens when they are in the middle of a thick wooded area in a cave? IMO It would be easier to find a human in a thick wooded area than a BF. Sasquatches have an innate sense of stealth, how do I know this? simple: lack of solid evidence to support them as being a dumb animal. It's rare to see one before it sees you. Most of the time, you hear them, and most of the time, they WANT to been heard. Why we can't see them in open fields on satelight? ok you try to get the best satelight images you can get, and tell me if you see anything. Besides you said the LAW, the law doesn't give a crap what BF is doing, they have more important things to do. And the satelight images that they use are restricted from you and me, and the rest of the public. Good luck geting them. The only clear areas on google earth are of cities, and you may see cars easily, but you can't see the details on humans. What makes you think someone can find a BF on those, except for the law, but we already went over that. The military have more important stuff to do too.

Osama bin Laden? Spy satellites 500,000 troops, UAV, CIA, NSA, billions of dollars and he remains unfound....

Actually, we know where he is (approximately), we just can't go in and get him.

If you had found a dead Osprey, then that would make more sense. Hard evidence of a feather is great, if you have a type specimen. Without one, that feather is of unknown origin without it being attached to a body. Another problem I see with the "Crow Logic", is you seem to assume so many people go in the wilderness. Well, in what way are they venturing out? How many people go off trail? How many get to higher elevations with steep inclines? The workers you speak of make a hell of a racket. You'd have to be a wilderness moron to be caught off guard by those guys.

As for population counts, what is the obsession with the number 2000 give or take? This number has been floating around for a while on yes, the BFRO site. I think Krantz first postulated this sum. Given the amount of wilderness areas you've brought up Smiles, would it not also make sense to postulate a higher count hypothesis?

A timber cutting crew for sure makes a lit of noise and wild life flees the area. But dead Sasquatch can't run and yet no bodies? Are the made of a substance that instantly evaporates upon death? When I was doing field research I never saw a Bobcat except for tracks. That is until I found the decomposing body of one.

IMO I think they bury thier dead. Have you ever come upon a dead bear in the woods? I also think they are extremely smart.

I forget where I read the story but I read a story about 2 adult Bf's picking up an injured smaller BF off the side of a road and carrying it off. The witness's saw the scene upfold infront of thier headlights.

kat

yes, I agree, I did post how many square miles/BF there would be with a pop. size of 5000, when curiousj asked me. It came up to 116 square miles per BF.

Its not terribly hard to avoid hunters, if your not colorblind: Look for the bright orange shape sitting on a log or in a tree. However, bow hunters can wear camoflauge (here at least), so if they have cover scent and are incredible still then they could be difficult to elude. But hunters (I am one so I know) aren't looking for bigfoot, their looking for their quarry (Deer, moose, bear, elk, etc...). So if they come across bigfoot, it's pure chance (unless they really are looking for bigfoot).

Which is why Sasquatch is probably not colorblind.

(Again different states have different laws)

Which is why you never catch bigfoot on those game cameras. It can probably smell or see it from far enough off to avoid them.

Good math Smiles, looks sensible.

Who hunts with a bow nowadays?

As hunting is no longer a necessity it has become a sport. Hence the black powder and bowhunting seasons in addition to the Fudds.

I do.

I do too. I hunt with a Howard Hill longbow as a matter of fact

I am a traditional/primitive archer as well . I hunt year round.

Depending on what your hunting, I think thats illegal.

Greetings all, just joined.

I'd add a factor that isn't discussed much (ha ha pun intended), that of human psychology. The short answer being,

WE DO SEE THEM.

For all we know, All the time. Perhaps even Frequently sighted by loggers, hunters, outdoorsmen. In short, people who have ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to report them.

What are we taught? If you report a sasquatch, the media, the police, and your friends will ridicule you.

So where is the incentive to report?

Only people like ourselves, with open minds and a lack of concern about what other people think, and a genuine desire to get to the bottom of the mystery, will actually report the event.

Through my experience during the filming of this Bigfoot documentary (this is the trailer):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EeWhm6CSfY

I have come to believe that the species is capable of 'dissapearing'. I believe I have actually filmed them doing this,and I have placed this footage in the trailer so that people can witness the phenomena without having to actually go out and see the movie.

I won't go on about my findings cuz y'all will think I'm a nutball - but I know what I know, and that's what counts.

Where's the footage of the disappearing bigfoot?

I would say that what you are seeing (or not, as the case may be) is the animal's ability to hide very effectively. They do this by suddenly darting behind trees, standing absolutely motionless, and lying down. This has all been documented extensively.

These are real, physical and from Earth, not a Venusian zoo. Moving the discussion from the possible to the bizarre only re-enforces the nutball stereotype portrayed in the media when they discuss people who search for this undiscovered animal.

Agreed. Unfortunately it's the nutball stereotype that also tends to seek out the media for attention.

And the media would rather seek out the nutball stereotype, than the calm, reserved, researcher. So they go together like a hand in a glove.

The disapearing bigfoot is the one in the middle. Maybe it's just turning it's body, but what it looked like was dissappearing. My colleague who was driving saw the creatures. (while I filmed). She said that she saw two on the left side of the road. This was outside of Cougar WA.

Are you referencing the part of the video of the woods that occurs at about the 35 second mark?

Exactly. And my partner got a good look at them. By her description and what I see in the film, I kinda think that they use the reflective qualities of their long oily hair. at 35 sec, to the left of the shot is the 'dissappearing' one.

I think maybe they bring their hair out in such a way that the surroundings are reflected against the vangage point of any observer they wish to hide from. The hair rises like the hair on a dogs back does when they feel threatened and this hides them. I think they can use their hair to camoflauge themselves in other ways as well, like standing in front of trees motionless as you drive by filming the wilderness.

I am convinced that the creatures in this film were waiting for us to go by so they could cross the street. By my partners account, she saw them on the other side of the road, so I think we drove through a group of them that were going somwhere.

And yes, there was a foul smell in that area - something between an armpit and a volcano.

Hate to say it, but I was basing a Bigfoot being there on what you had replied to earlier. I can't honestly see anything there that I would remotely call one. There just isn't enough there to go on. Between what little is shown in the clip and the speed of the vehicle , most of it doesn't even qualify as "blobsquatch" status. I also think you're making a a lot of speculation regarding their abilities based on very little to go by.

But that's me and I'm very critical of my own eyes, let alone what others may or may not see.

The Patterson footage clearly shows the light reflective qualities of Sasquatch hair, as do a couple of the other bigfoot films that I believe are (or might be) real.

It has also been put forth that Sasquatch hair has no medulla:

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/hair.htm

and the hair samples were too thick to be human. Human: another animal which often has no hair medulla.

Simply put, Bigfoot hair is a big mystery, and speculating that Bigfoot use their hair to camoflauge themselves is as viable as saying that Bigfoot hair even exists.

Also of note on the patterson film is a frame toward the end that shows rear-end fur wear (I'm sure you're familiar with this frame). To me this looks like reflecting light - and other parts of the film don't show much of a bald patch, so it could very well be reflected light.

or matted and mixed with dung. I personally believe they roll in their own dung to keep away insects, this also explains the smell.

I agree with Jimf, your jumping to some pretty wild conclusions based on basically no evidence.

I can accept that these creatures are extremely crafty and good at camoflage and hiding.

What I cannot at this time accept is that their hair is any more special than that of a mountain gorilla's, ie, thick and course and warm, ideal for an animal sleeping outside.

Its hard enough and at times impossible to find someone that is lost in the bush and these people want to be found, whats the chances of finding something that doesn't want to be found.

If you simply use logic, there is no doubt that there is a BIG possibility, if not evidence in itself to determine that BFs roam our woods. If you study how smart other animals are in N. America, you can only imagine how well a very well-adapted ape will do in thick pine swamps in the middle of nowhere in terms of hiding form people. People go to and fro every day, doing their business, and when someone sees one, it's least expected. IMO the statement that "you can't rely on human eyewitness reports for the BF phenomenon because humans tend to overspeculate" is totally ignorant, because first off everybody's different, some people are avid outdoorsmen, some are office dwellers. Most reports are by people who have experience in the woods, and know what they see. If I were to be driving along at 60 mph at midnight, with tunnel vision on a highway, and a BF were to cross the road 80 yards in front of me, Because of my experience with animals in the north woods, I would know that no wild animal walks upright 99%(random estimate) of the time. They are much smarter than we think or thought, there's evidence in the lack of evidence. If the BF phenomenon was a big hoaxing underground cult, then there would be more people coming with fake dead bodies, fake pictures, or fake footage, and there really is, but it doesn't look at all like the real deal, and people see that without any investigation, because it's hard to make it look real. That's was so great about the patterson/gimlin, becasue it hasn't been debunked, and with all the technology now, we can't come up with the same thing.

And with real confessions (actually boasts), after they'd fooled investigators into swallowing their hoaxes. The paucity of such confessions, or anyway of believable confessions, is a subtle bit of indirect evidence on the "Real" side of the scales. Out of 4000 sighting reports, maybe twenty ape-suit hoaxers have claimed responsibility with a believable tale. And yet such after-the-fact boasting would be irresistible to 100 participants in them, if thousands of sightings had been hoaxed. There'd be no legal risk in confessing, a few years after the event (and the expiration of any statute of limitations), and very little social stigma.

I have a hunting recurve and hope to be hunting deer this fall.

As for the topic,

I recently got back from a trip from Victoria, BC, to Penticton, BC.

During the drive, you will cross a vast variety of territory, from urban, to coastal, islands, major urban, river delta flatlands/cornfields, then there's the IDEAL sasquatch territory, which I identify as very steep sided hills and mountains, heavily forested, completely deserted. This terrain is all around Harrison, BC. If you look at some hills and find yourself thinking 'Virunga Volcanoes - Congo' your in the right spot. Then there's fertile river valley, then alpine glacial mountain, then we get into desert scrubland as we approach Hedley, and finally urban lake front resort at Scaha and Okanagan lakes.

It struck me that in some of these areas, urban, and desert scrubland, I wouldn't waste 5 seconds sasquatch hunting, and in others, I could practically feel them watching and was itching to go tramping into the woods for weeks to find them.

So you have to include those factors into your calculations, namely:

remove all urban areas and desert areas from your area calculations.

Factor in that in most areas of Canada and the US, populations are clustered around dense urban centers that are located mainly on the coast, then up rivers, then around large lakes. In BC for example, I think 90% of us live in a very small area down on the coast and over on Vancouver island. The rest of the province, which is HUGE, is basically uninhabited, from a large overall population percentage.

Excellent comparison of that BC landscape with the Virunga Volacano bio-geologic province. But looks can be decieving. Note that the tropical jungles of the congo are very ancient and their biodiversity reflects this with their high productivity as a result of intense solar radiation over very long time-spans in which species are able to increase the complexity of the system (and so it's effeciency) and adapt to niches as they do. The area we now call BC, like most of the northern zones of the super-continent of Pliesotcene Laurentia, mere 12,000 years ago was much different and the community of plants and animals we see now are relatively new and their diversity is actually very low and not very productive as forests go (unless you're only considering board feet of lumber) I don't doubt that the forests and mountains of BC are excellent places for BF to find refuge but it would seem the best way to for a large meat eating creature to get enough food might be to husband itself to grazing/browsing animals that, like the BF, use the forest as refuge but seek out meadows and forest edges or re-growing areas of disturbance to benefit from the diverse communities of plants which like the original pleistocene landscape is diverse and productive for herbivores and their dependent communities.
It's worth noting that where ever one is when in the mountains of the west, one is never really very far from small but significant bits of open lands if one thinks vertically. Those braided glacial streams and rivers are always generating meadows after floods and other disturbances scour the valleys...and a few thousand feet above them, the treeline gives way to alpine tundra; another great little pocket of diversity and productivity and the type of place that attract grazers and browsers.

As BC Cryptid says, if you report a sighting you risk being ridiculed. In the TV documentary, Giganto: The Real King Kong, a scientist recalls how he came to believe in BF. He said while camping in a remote area of Colorado (?) he woke up during the night and saw the silouhette a large hand pass in front of his tent. He got out of his tent, lit a fire and he said something threw pine cones at him for the next 30 minutes. True story? Can't say, but it was believable. And I thought “Wow, this guy has a lot to lose in terms of credibility by going public with this story.” My point is: how may other intelligent people have had encounters with a BF, encounters that are so unbelievable that they prefer not to go public? A minor sighting or a vocalisation is one thing - an actual encounter is something different altogether. Albert Ostman’s story in 1924 is incredibly detailed (spent 6 days with a BF family) but I think one of relatives said it was a hoax. Was the family embarrased by his story? We will never know…

In any case, I hope that we find something in the next 10 years – if not in NA it could be in Asia – ‘would prefer not be here in 30 years’ time going over another dodgy video.

Albert Ostmann did speak about the ridicule, he didn't tell anyone for a while, actually. But he was the type of cantankerous anti-social redneck who really didn't give a damn what people thought of him, so eventually Green heard of the story and tracked him down.

As for statistical distributions of population in BC, here it is, hot off the presses:

"85 per cent of B.C.'s population now lives on 16 per cent of the land base in either the Lower Mainland, Okanagan or southern Vancouver Island."


Just released today after a study of electoral boundaries.

That leaves 84% of the province for the sasquatches. More than enough territory!

Plenty indeed but I wonder how much is actually suitable habitat. I don't know if this is done in BC but in the eastern provinces, in Quebec anyway, logging companies usually leave a strip of forest on each side of the road so people think they are driving through pristine forests when in fact beyond the strip lies a wasteland. Now I know there still remain vast expanses of forest and a lot of trees are replanted but I wonder what % of forest has been cleared.

Yes, we do that too, we call it the 'scenic fringe'.

But if you fly BC by airplane, you will drone on for hours over miles and miles of unbroken dense forest, it's unreal just how big the place is and how uninhabited it is. Even where I live, on Vancouver island, you can drive for hours through backroads and never see anyone, through mile after mile of dense westcoast rainforest covered in moss. Some places you expect a T-rex to come lumbering from around a tree.

As for suitable terrain, I consider suitable terrain anywhere where there is dense forest and lots of hills/mountains, as well as sub-alpine mountainous regions. I'd roughly guess that makes up 3/4 of all terrain in BC.

A google earth flyover from Tofino to Penticton at 25 thousand feet is about the best I can do right now and that is very beautiful and interesting. Most areas outside of the the provincial parks seem to have seen a bit of clear cutting and some places look heavily cut, but in the provincial parks you can see a bit of meadow at elevation and of course the river bottoms, old burn scars, landslide scars. In other words, despite what seems like "unbroken forest" there is a mosaic of habitats and the general ecological wisdom (and my contention) is that these areas are big contributors to the overall productive potential of the forests and that these areas are where grazing forest ungulates like elk yard-up to eat the young plants which are kinda scarce in the shaded forests. And even for browsing, it is the fringes of these areas where sunlight is adequate for an abundance of young growth which draws them in as well as provide cover for their predators as witnessed in the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction process. Maybe when field research becomes more atuned to the nocturnal activity of the presumed prey of the creature we're seeking, we'd see some interesting evidence.

I am very pleased to see this thread take off, thank you all for your participation. As for those factors, I left some variance by not including all the "non-wilderness" habitats. So any territory that's not considered "wilderness," but is excellent habitat for BFs, I didn't include because of what you said about parts of the wildernesses that isn't habitable. So give or take a few dozen square miles per BF in my calculations, they are basically rough. I would really like this thread to produce good points supporting the BF phenomenon in a good light. Anyone, please feel free to post anything you think is vital to this topic, I believe the wilderness statistics holds great potential in the answer to the mystery.