I wonder how many times people actually have come upon Sasquatch remains in the forest and dismissed them as from a known animal? Let's face it, not everyone that hits the woods are experts in anatomy. And if the remains have turned putrid, would anyone not looking for BF remains actually perform an up-close examination? How many times has the evidence been right there, ready for the taking, and it was just passed on by? Frustrating, but also amusing!

Good points Wildman.

An example (though not dealing with remains) is the report I submitted to the BFRO two years ago. While on a hunting trip, before actively researching Bigfoot, my partner and I didn’t connect several odd vocalizations the night before with dark fur disappering into the forest the next day; we thought it was a bear, but footprints were found the following afternoon.

Here is the link to the report: BFRO Report 5251

If you aren’t looking for it, or expecting it, anyone/thing can almost hide in plain sight.

I still wonder if perhaps there are some bones, locked up and stored away in some museum's basement, and remain unknown simply because no one has gotten to them yet. I understand the New York Museum of Natural History has some items going back decades that simply haven't been examined yet due to the sheer volume of their colletions. Seems like I've heard the same about the Smithsonian.

I'd have to think that the sheer size of a carcass would draw attention from most anyone who encountered it. Folks familiar with the outdoors would be familiar with the animal life in their area and probably be interested in a dead anything in the woods, much less an 800 pound mound of decomposing something. Folks with little outdoor experience would probably be interested since it's something they aren't used to seeing. I think it's more likely that someone has simply not even SEEN some remains that were there because they were looking up and around and not down. Look down in the woods, you see some interesting things!

I've also heard the Smithsonian has tons of items in the archives that haven't even been looked at.......reminds me of the end of Indiana Jones when they put the ark in the warehouse.......maybe there's a BF skeleton sitting in the box beside it!!!

<cue closing credits of Raider's...>


</cue closing credits of Raider's...>

What a monumental brain fart when I can't remember "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and just call it Indiana Jones................................................

While I think that is true for the most part, I know quite a few outdoor enthusiasts who would never approach a rotting carcass in the woods. I asked a long-time hunter friend of mine about it, and he said that unless he saw antlers somewhere, he wouldn't investigate. It depends on the state of decay, too. It there is quite a bit of it still there, then it may indeed look unusual to someone who knows the usual types of critters that live out there. However, if it is just a few stray bones here and there, I'm not sure the average outdoors person could tell a 'squatch bone from an elk, bear, moose, etc.

Daniel Simons did some great research about this. He found that people will overlook a big change in the environment just because they are not paying attention to it, this is called change-blindness. Now perhaps some of you may be allready familiar with the next experiment, but it is a funny video anyway. The instruction that goes with it is: "Take a look at this video. What I want you to do is count the number of times the ball changes hands". The video uses Java and may take some time to load, but it is worth it!

video


Now while you were looking at the video did you notice something? I will give the clue in my next post in this thread?

P.S. How many ball changes did you count?

To find a body of Sheer Size, one would have to be there when the Animal has just died. Most critters of the forest would be there having a feast, not to mention the blow flies that shown up right at death.

Belle

That's true Belle, I was somewhat confining my example to a recently deceased animal. My thinking was that most people wouldn't even notice a half covered chunk of bone unless specifically looking for it, regardless of the type to even be able to try to identify it.

Ever have a good thought in your head only to have it read like you're an idiot when it's on paper? That's me great mind, idiot hands!

The most asked question when I am discussing Bigfoot with someone is "Why isn't there a corpse?"

Well, having been raised in various mountain ranges like the Rockies and Cascades, I can tell you that I have come across deer and elk remains and 3 months later there's nothing remaining, or a couple slivers of bone, if even that.

Also, there's that tendency that animals have, when they are sick, to go hole up someplace until they get well or die.

Did you notice the gorilla walking through the scene of the video? Most people miss it the first time they see the video. So if people do not expect to see this gorilla, they just don't see it. I could therefore well imagine that a person walking in the woods might overlook a corpse of a sasquath, like Belle and BigCountry suggested. Maybe if they are concentrating on something else they would even not see a living sasquath walking by and waving at them. In theory it could happen as is demonstrated by the gorilla-video.

Your doing just find there!




Belle

I have hunted the Pacific Northwest for over 30 years now and other than deer, elk, coyote and other small forest animals I have never come across any remains I couldn't identify.

For the longest time nobody had seen elephant remains in the wild and look how big they are.

There used to be a persistent legend about elephants. The story went that when an elephant got old, one-day it would leave the herd and walk off into the woods to die. It would make its way by instinct to the elephant graveyard—a hidden place, carpeted with the tusks and bones of generations of elephants—and there it would lie down and breathe its last. All the famous African expeditions of the 1800s had it on their To-Do lists: "find elephant graveyard." None ever found one.

There were even stories that elephants would carry off the remains of dead elephants and take them to a secret location.

I have read several stories of Bigfoot bodies that have been shot only to turn up missing. The story about Ape Canyon as told by Fred Beck stated they had shot several during the night and one the following day that fell into a gorge and when they returned with additional men they could find no remains.

Could Bigfoot carry off their dead like the elephant are claimed to do or are they even closer related to man and bury their dead?

Its something to think about.

The chances of one dieing on a trail are practically nil and most people stick to the trails which are a very, very small part of the forest. Those of us that do leave the trails can’t possibly cover a fraction of the area that they are purported to inhabit. Add the assumed small size of the population to that and the chances of finding a body is almost zero.
Pretty basic stuff, but just a reminder.

I think we will never find a body. If we find remains we will find generations of them. My guess is there is a cave somewhere with family's of dead BF's and either they go there to die or they would be put there when they die. Those are my thoughts not yours I'm night Goat.

Yep..that is difficult to count how many times the ball changes hands..HOWEVER..I couldn't help but notice the ape walking thru the middle of it all!

I saw this on TV a while back and me and the other 3 people in room counted the proper number of passes (can't remember how many, it was a while ago) and each one of us spotted the quite obvious guy in a gorilla suit walking through. This video IMO is not a good example. But on the same TV program another video done by the same researcher (I think) Involved a desk clerk. The changes in this one were much more blatent but alot less obvious (funny how that works?) and none of us in the room got it. Perhaps you could find that video?

PS I don't want to describe the video any more than that because it will give it away to those that ahve not seen it.

I'm sorry I don't remember this too well but perhaps somebody knows this story better than I and can share their knowledge.
I think it would have been at least 50 years ago maybe 100. A mule in the high Sierras stepped in a bog and large human bones were exposed. The guy thought it might be murder or at least they were too large so he took them to a local museum. They were classified as a freak giant Indian. When someone went to research it years later the bones were misplaced. The possibility of Bigfoot wasn't even considered because I guess the guy was a "Scientist".

If you plug in some estimated numbers, the chance of coming across a body is quite rare. I estimated a North American population of 2000 on the low end and 5,000 at the high end. Estimated life expectancy of 20 years on the low end, and 40 years on the high end. Estimated body decay rate of 2 weeks on the low end, and 6 weeks on the high end.

High chance of BF body in the woods: 5000 animals with a life expectancy of 20 years gives you 250 BF deaths a year. If the bodies lasted 6 weeks before total decay, there would be an average of roughly 29 BF bodies in various states of decay at any one time in N. America.

Low chance of BF body in the woods: 2000 animals with a life expectancy of 40 years gives you 50 BF deaths a year. If the bodies lasted 2 weeks before total decay, there would be an average of roughly 2 BF bodies in various states of decay at any one time in N. America.

N. America is 9,355,000 square miles. If BF were evenly distributed across N. America, there would be 1 body per 322,586 square miles on the high end, and 1 body per 4,677,500 square miles on the low end.

I punched in some more numbers using the estimates I made above to humanize the numbers a bit. A person owns a 40-acre lot in N. America with average BF population densities. If that person surveys that 40 acres with enough regularity to notice a BF body with 100% accuracy, that person would find a BF body on that property an estimated once per 598,720 years on the high estimate, and once per 2,993,600 years with the low estimate. The number get rather astronomical without even adding in the other factors that would decrease the 100% BF body finding accuracy.

P.S. - I think I went a little overboard on the numbers, but I was having so much fun punching in different numbers to different scenarios.

Still learning the ins and outs of posting on this site.

This is in response to BobZenor comment.

I am currently looking for the article you are thinking of. A skull and several other bones were found in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Bishop CA I believe. They were sent to UCLA for analyses and later boxed up and sent to a warehouse were they were lost. You are right that Bigfoot was not considered at that time and when it was suggested that the remains could possible be that of a Bigfoot, the bones could not be located.

Paparup

The skull that Paparup and Bob Zenor are referring to was described in the 1970s as a Native American calvarium (braincase) that showed signs of being worn in a way suggesting it had been used as a scoop or shovel. This mechanical damage was what led some to suggest it was unnaturally thin in some places and had an odd occipital region. Some researchers have siezed on the odd morphology to suggest it was a non-human primate, but there's nothing at all to support that contention. The skull fragment was kicked up by a mule and was described in Slate and Berry's piss-poor book...Hope this helps.

Great post RabidMonkey; your numbers place a rather different perspective on this type of search!

Mind if I PM you when I take my statistics class?! :help:

just kidding)

We call that find the Minaret skull. I did quite a bit of work trying to find that sucker. Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) all museums or universities that receive federal money had to inventory their human remains, grave goods, etc. Since my Forest had collections down at UCLA and the Minaret skull supposedly was found on FS lands above Fresno (on the Sierra National Forest), I contacted UCLA by phone and letter to find out what they had. I specifically told them I had information about a skull found and asked them to hunt it down.

They had no record of such an artifact ever being received, cataloged, or stored by them. They said that there were a few things that could have happened: if it was non-human and not of interest, it could have been thrown out or transferred to the biological section (I checked with them as well) OR it is there, but no "records" of who/what/when/where etc. are with it so they can not identify it as being what I was looking for. However, they were still required to list all those items for federal agencies and tribes and there is NO description of any skull that comes even close to matching the Minaret skull. Either it was just human and now noted as such or it was animal and either thrown out or whatever. There is always the chance that another university/museum has it, but again, they were required to provide federal agencies with a list of what they had and I have never noted anything of interest.

As a side note, the NAGPRA webpage is http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/ and you can view all the lists filed.

Are you an anthropologist by any chance?

I found the story BobZenor was referring too.

Here's the link

http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/MJM/minaret.htm

But:
1. It wasn't just "researchers" (Bigfoot Buffs) but the physician who found it, the coroner (who'd seen many skulls) who examined it, and even the anthropologists who thought it was odd. The coroner thought it was very odd.
2. It wasn't just thinness, but thickness, and "apelike" thickness (in the "nuchal ridge"), that was unusual.
3. It was unnaturally large (long).


For more info here on the BFF, search for "minaret".

Your calculations are interesting, but don't mean much. If Bigfoot is real they are not evenly dispersed throughout the available (and even ideal) area.

We are told that Bigfoot is territorial. This means that they should be living in social groups within the relative vicinity of any signs or evidence of presence. Even if the territory is large, it changes your analysis by orders of magnitude. It means that Bigfoot should be findable, dead or alive! In so many of the areas that BF is recorded there are frequent hikers, campers, skiers, hunters, fishermen, loggers, utility crewmen, government employees, etc. etc. None of them have found a dead Bigfoot. Think of the large organized search parties for lost hikers. They never found a Bigfoot.

One could create a similar analysis in which you used the number of miles traversed and observed by humans in BF country for the past few hundred years - plotted against standard population dynamics models for territorial apes (or even foraging modern human tribes). You might come up with a mirror image result that suggests a BF body should be found every 3-5 years.

Further, considering the tremendous amount of logging in American forests in the 19th century, one seriously has to wonder why the heck a carcass or body part has never been found. There is meaningful human presence in areas where BF has been sighted.

RM, you suggested a body would be available for discovery for about 2 weeks. Even past decomposition a BF body should apparently be something quite unique to an observer. And certainly the skull or jaw (or even many of the other bones such as pelvis) would immediately draw attention.

Indians saved (and often worshipped or used as totems) parts from just about any creature they could get their hands on (including other humans). It's quite curious that they did not collect BF parts which we would now possibly possess as artifacts.

I think that if you want to propose that a real population of BF is out there but has never been confirmed, then statistics are not your friend.

Baboon Extra Head, I think you are being a little harsh for a quickie 15-minute job of estimating based on a few estimated and averaged numbers. First, I realize there are innumerable variables to deal with and I realize they change the numbers. The amount of time to include all these variables would not be worth the effort. There are also very little hard numbers that can be used. Trying to come up with population estimates, life expectancy, and other variables are all just educated guesses. In short, I think you have some valid objections, but that they cannot be practically applied.

You mentioned that BF is not evenly dispersed throughout areas, which is true. That is why I set up a hypothetically average area. It would be practically impossible to predict specific rates for specific areas.

You also mentioned that

The communal structure and territorialness (I know territorialness is not a real word, but I am using it anyways) of BF is something that I do not believe there is enough information to justify either way. I also fail to see the connection between territorialness and living in social groups. Orangutans for example are territorial, but do not live in social groups, at least not with my definition of a social group. Also, if BF is territorial, it is likely that they would be more evenly dispersed than if not territorial. Non-territorial animals may tend to congregate to a greater degree in areas with better food/shelter resources.

To make an analysis to find the ideal rate of BF body discovery based on human activity would be a gargantuan undertaking. I would welcome you do deal with all the variables and show something otherwise. You are right that it might come up with the mirror opposite, but it also might not. Both results are possible without doing the analysis you proposed.

About body decomposition, I did not suggest a body would only be discoverable for 2 weeks. The two week number was one of my two extremes and I think it is a conservative number for the fastest rate of skeletalization. Some of the bigger variables for decomposition rates are temperature, humidity, carnivore and insect access, and body size. BF's environment and size aid in the speed of decomposition. Larger sizes increase rates. Higher humidity increases rates, which the PNW has. Also the areas BFs are in probably have high rates of carnivore and insect access. Here is a body decomposition model that lets you play around with a few variables. I stand by the two week claim to skeletalization for the fastest rate of decomposition. Also, while a skull may still draw attention, fragmented skeletal pieces are not anywhere near as easy casually spot than a complete body.

Finally, I think your statement of is overstating any intentions I had. I find it hard to construe that posting a couple of simple numbers equals trying to propose a real population of BFs or suggesting that it can be done. You are right that BF is not very statistics friendly. Statistics are calculated from a sample, of which there is very little in regards to BF. What I did was not statistics and I never claimed them to be, I only tossed out a quick estimate.

Who's to say a carcass hasn't been found? Who's to say said carcass wasn't misidentified and left to rot where it lay. "Hey Frank, look at that big dead thing! Probably a bear. It stinks. Let's leave it."



If you know anything about the anatomical distinctions between bear, moose, elk, sasquatch, etc. And like I mentioned before, if you aren't looking for sasquatch bones, you probably won't see sasquatch bones. Not everyone knows about or believes that sasquatch exists. So how could a large pile of bones be a sasquatch to an observer if sasquatch isn't even in their head? Does the average person know the difference between a bear skull and a bf skull?



Are you sure that they didn't collect these artifacts? Sasquatch may have been just as elusive then as they are now. Artifacts from these creatures may not have been easy to come by, especially since it seems many native cultures feared the creatures. Whatever they had may very well have been lost or destroyed in the annihilation of the tribes of America. Who knows? It is all speculation. All of it.

[Edit]

Whether it's confortable to consider or not, BEH is making a very good point.
Verifiable, objective physical evidence for BF's existence (independent of tracks and some anomalous hairs) is nonexistent at this time.
All the excuses and caveats and wishing won't make it so. All the stories of lost bones do not a bone make.
All the speculation about statistics (and I give you credit for a worthy try RM) does not a statistic make.
Unfortunately.
Jan

I agree, but statistics is a science, and science requires factual data of which, pertaining to bf, none exist. Speculatory science, as long as disclaimed to be as such as it was by RM, is just that--speculation. There is nothing wrong with making educated guesses with respect to the demographics of a species of which nothing is known of.

I think both sides present legitimate arguments. On one hand, yes, the odds of finding a decaying body (or even a live one) per given area are small. On the other hand, when considering that sightings have been reported for hundreds of years with any physical evidence yet to be found, one can see that using statistical "data" can act as a double-edged sword.

Obviously, without even one of the inumerable variables becoming a known, playing the guessing game will yield just as many possibilities. We simply do not know.

I think we all understand that point. What I understand is that no one can prove that bf remains have been found unless they've been brought forth, and nobody can prove they haven't been found at some point and ignored, lost, etc. Like I said before, it is all speculation. And this is just conversation.

WM:
You might be interested in reading this:
http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/burden.html
Your statement is a classic "shifting the burden of truth" argument, although you say it is just conversation and speculation. The same definitions still apply, IMHO.
Judaculla posted a really neat guide...you might want to read the whole thing. I found it worthwhile. If you don't have time for the whole thing read the "fallacies and non-rational persuasion" part.
It is pinned at the top of the general discussion forum.
Jan

The whole point of this is that we aren't trying to prove anything in this conversation. This just a simple "what if...?" conversation. Nobody has stated that BF evidence has been found, or not been found, etc. We're just people tossing ideas around, not scientists. Relax a little. Sit back, grab a cup of coffee or something. I don't think you're getting it. You're trying to make points that don't need to be made. Nobody here is making any definitive statements. Man, what's the world coming to when you can't open up a "what if..." or a "maybe" conversation on a forum for what could very well be an imaginary beast? IMO, anybody who hasn't actually seen a bf should not at all take any of this seriously. No more than one would a forum about the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, anyway. This entire forum is pretty much base on speculation, plain and simple.

spec·u·la·tion: Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; conjecture or supposition.

OK.
I disagree with your premise
I like to think this forum offers a little more than purposeless speculation but maybe I am alone in this, WM.
I like to read posts that have substance and are supported by rational argument.
Just my bias...
Now I will finish my latte and surf around for posts that are more my cup o' tea.
Jan

See, we totally and completely disagree about these forums, and that's why they rock! Every subject here has pretty much been beat to death, and in the six months I've been here, there really hasn't been a lot new happening in the world of 'squatch. Because of that, I'm starting to enjoy more and more just water-cooler type discussions. There are no new facts coming out, so I'm starting to dig on the speculation part. Now, I understand your side, too. I understand the attitude that speculation can be harmful to serious research. However, I don't think that applies to this discussion. No one is stating anything here is a fact. We're just chatting. I just think that it is pretty damn funny to imagine that if this creature truly exists, how often the proof may have been in front of someone's face without them even knowing. Nobody can say if it's happened or not, but I thought that it was an interesting point of discussion. Sorry you didn't!

Now while i was prentending i was working today i was thinking about mine shafts and a BF falling into one, now lets say they do recover their dead and take them into deep words or the BF graveyard or what ever a mine shaft would prevent any of that from happening. I can only speak of personal experince but i know there are tons of shafts all over in colorado back country espiclly around some of the still remaning boom towns like woodland park and back towards where Deckers used to be. A searh of the shafts cold esaly be done with a camera and some time. just an idea to see what could be found.

Wildman, I totally agree. Obviously there's nothing wrong with debating or being in disagreement with the opinions of others. And not to say that that I take this matter any less seriously than the next guy or gal that posts. We all are probably passionate (albeit to varying degrees) about a strange entity we like to call bigfoot. But some people do need to lighten up a bit with respect to threads like this. There is no textbook answer on such matters. There isnt even a textbook.