Bigfoot: I want to believe

[SoCalCoug]

We don't put rapists away on zero evidence. There is not a single piece of irrefutable, smoking-gun evidence for Sasquatch. Not one. Which is the exact same case for unicorns and leprechauns, by the way.

If you ignore the Patterson-Gimlin film.

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[clackamascoug]

[clackamascoug]

I can sleep better tonight.... and I'll say a prayer that Daisy can get feeling better.

Good Job SoCal... we would have had a blast being missionary companions.

[mUUser]

Or Gold plates

[Jeff Lebowski]

The religion comparisons were inevitable. Speaks volumes.

I tuned into the Bigfoot show last night for a few minutes. Turns out that there has been a ton of Bigfoot sightings in Australia. LOL.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Do you know when the first fossil chimpanzee was discovered? 2005, when 500,000 year old fossil chimpanzee teeth were discovered in East Africa. So absent the three fossil teeth that were unexpectedly discovered 7 1/2 years ago, there would have been no fossil record of a well-known primate, with a current world population of approximately 300,000. Why was the discovery unexpected? Because they were discovered in a much more arid location than chimps generally inhabit.

Chimpanzees live in jungles - areas with lots of rain (that's "moisture" if you're from Utah). That type of environment doesn't lend itself to fossilization. You find fossils from animals (and proto-humans) that lived in arid places - like the savannah, where bones are much less likely to rot. And where are bigfoot alleged to reside? In forests, with high moisture content. So you wouldn't expect to find a lot (if any) fossils. In 2004, you would have said there was no evidence that chimpanzees existed prior to the modern times. Does that mean they didn't exist then? It certainly doesn't mean they don't exist now.

Also, if what has been leaked from the Ketchum report is accurate, it may not be accurate to say that no fossil bigfoot have been found. It is apparently a conclusion of the report that bigfoot is descended in part from a known relic hominid - i.e., from one of the fossil proto-humans that has already been discovered, and in part from Homo sapiens, for which there are numerous fossils. There are also unidentifiable hominoid fossils - can you say that none of these are definitively not bigfoot?

As for the alleged lack of physical bigfoot evidence - how do you know? Have you been able to positively identify every tuft of hair or piece of crap you've come across in the wild? Where do you do your hiking? Are you in areas where bigfoot sightings have been reported? Do you even know where they're supposed to live?

Maybe it's a bit like the existence of God. I've heard church members say everytime they go outside, they see evidence of God and his creations. Others, who are not religious, see no such evidence. Are the ones who say there is no physical evidence of God right? Or do they just not recognize it as such?

You say you've done a lot of hiking and haven't seen any evidence of bigfoot. If I'm not mistaken, you live in the bay area. So I can assume you've seen physical evidence of mountain lions (don't say you've only seen footprints - footprints can't be physical evidence because there's lots of alleged bigfoot footprints around and you say there's no physical evidence)? You've surely seen physical evidence of a Northern rubber boa? Or a California alligator lizard? Maybe larger animals? Surely you've seen evidence of Tule elk, bobcats, ringtails, American badgers, and gray foxes.

It's likely you've seen evidence of some of these, but it's unlikely that if I showed you a list of every species of animal living in the bay area, that you've seen evidence of every one of them.

According to BFRO, which has the most comprehensive collection of alleged bigfoot sightings, there is a total of 1 reported possible bigfoot contact, in 2000, and all it consisted of was screams heard in the distance. As for surrounding counties, there are no reports in San Mateo county, 5 in Santa Cruz County (as early as 1958, and most recently in 2004), none in Santa Clara county, 1 in Alameda County (in 1963), none in Solano county, none in Sacramento county, none in San Joaquin county, 3 in Stanislaus county (1870, 1962, and 2007), none in Yolo county. In total, BFRO has a total of 426 reports of potential bigfoot encounters in California - they're just not in the areas near where you live, which means you really shouldn't be expecting to find any evidence, anyway.

So, even giving the bigfooters the assumption that there are bigfoot, you shouldn't expect to come across any evidence near where you live, nor should you expect any fossils identifiable as bigfoot to be found. The lack of such does not really add to the argument against the existence of bigfoot, any more than the lack of evidence of great white sharks in Arizona means they don't exist.

Funny that you would use chimps as an example. Big difference between chimps and Bigfoot: chimps have actually been seen, captured, studied, etc.

Also, why the focus on fossils? Let's just talk skeletons, carcases, etc. If you go into the forest you will find animal bones everywhere. Why have no Bigfoot skeletons been located (definitively)?

There is a reason you have thousands of sightings and zero evidence. Part of those are hoaxes but the majority are imagined.

[Indy Coug]

I really, really, really, really, really hope they are able some day to prove the existence of bigfoot. Witnessing that many brains exploding will be pure freaking gold.

[Jeff Lebowski]

If you ignore the Patterson-Gimlin film.

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If you call that hard evidence, then I guess we have hard evidence for:

fairies:


unicorns:


mermaids:



sea monsters:


aliens:

[SoCalCoug]

If you call that hard evidence, then I guess we have hard evidence for:

fairies:


unicorns:


mermaids:



sea monsters:


aliens:

Okay, with 1967 technology, how did they fake Patterson-Gimlin? Keep in mind, the state of the art for man-sized primate costumes at the time was Planet of the Apes.

[Indy Coug]

Okay, with 1967 technology, how did they fake Patterson-Gimlin? Keep in mind, the state of the art for man-sized primate costumes at the time was Planet of the Apes.

I thought they admitted this was a hoax?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Okay, with 1967 technology, how did they fake Patterson-Gimlin? Keep in mind, the state of the art for man-sized primate costumes at the time was Planet of the Apes.

So a guy sets out to film a Bigfoot documentary and (surprise!) he encounters a Bigfoot in the wild. How about that? I remember going to the theater as a kid to see this documentary. I thought it was totally cool.

Here is what a Hollywood costume designer said about the film:

Multiple Academy Award winner Stan Winston, after viewing the PGF, summed it up simply as "it's a guy in a bad fur suit, sorry!" He went on to comment that the suit in the film could have been made today for "a couple hundred dollars" or "under a thousand, in that day". He also added that "if one of my colleagues created this for a movie, he would be out of business."

Several people later confessed to having helped produce the fake film (Philip Morris, Bob Heironimus, Ray Wallace).

[Uncle Ted]

I thought they admitted this was a hoax?

Charlotte costumer claims to have made gorilla suit for Paterson

Morris says the Patterson-Gimlin film depicts a man wearing a gorilla suit, which had been hand-sewn in the basement of his Kistler Avenue home.

When he started his costume business more than 40 years ago, Morris, a Michigan native, was a touring magician who recruited his wife and her friends to help make gorilla suits from their Charlotte house.

In 1967, a man called, identified himself as Roger Patterson and said he was a rodeo cowboy who wanted to buy a gorilla suit for a gag, Morris recalled.

Morris Costumes was one of the few companies making relatively inexpensive gorilla suits. The suits were in demand because of the popular carnival trick in which a woman morphed into a crazed gorilla and sent patrons screaming from fair tents. Patterson paid $435 plus shipping and handling for the suit.

"I didn't think it was a real big deal," said Morris. "It was just another sale."

Patterson later called asking how to make it more realistic, Morris said. Use a stick to extend the arms, brush the fur to cover the zipper and wear football pads to make the shoulders bigger, Morris told him.

He never heard from Patterson again.

Sometime in October 1967, Morris was in his living room when he saw the now-famous Bigfoot footage on TV.

Even after what would become known as the Patterson-Gimlin film became a disputed piece of Bigfoot evidence, Morris said he never heard from Patterson. Morris told friends and relatives that the creature shot with a 16 mm camera was actually someone wearing his gorilla suit.

He says he refrained from going public because he didn't want to undermine the still-popular girl-to-gorilla trick, or expose a fellow illusionist.

"In my mind it was a magic trick," he said.

Morris never met Patterson, Gimlin or Bob Heironimus, the man identified in Long's book as the wearer of the suit.

"I wasn't there when they shot the film," Morris said. "I didn't know they were going to do that."
[...]

[SoCalCoug]

Funny that you would use chimps as an example. Big difference between chimps and Bigfoot: chimps have actually been seen, captured, studied, etc.

Also, why the focus on fossils? Let's just talk skeletons, carcases, etc. If you go into the forest you will find animal bones everywhere. Why have no Bigfoot skeletons been located (definitively)?

There is a reason you have thousands of sightings and zero evidence. Part of those are hoaxes but the majority are imagined.

You're a moving target. You're using the absence of fossil Bigfoot as an argument for their nonexistence. I brought up the lack of fossil evidence of a well-known primate to demonstrate why the lack of fossil evidence does not support your position. I know chimps have been seen, captured and studied - that's the point of the analogy. There are good reasons for the lack of fossil evidence of chimps, which potentially also apply to the lack of Bigfoot fossils. Had I pointed to the lack of fossil evidence of unicorns, it wouldn't have supported my argument, would it?

I focused on fossils because you brought it up. "If you go into the forest you will find animal bones everywhere." What forests do you go into? I saw a video once showing a deer carcass decomposing in about a week. If you happen to come upon a recently-killed animal, you may find some bones. But how often have you come across the remains of an apex predator, such as a mountain lion or a bear? For what would be an apex predator which is far rarer than mountain lions or bears, it's not surprising that there aren't a lot of bones around. If you also consider that Bigfoot reportedly live primarily in the more remote parts of the forest, it's really not that surprising people aren't stumbling on bigfoot bones.

By pointing out that chimps are seen, you're implying that Bigfoot aren't. Which is true if you discount the thousands of witness reports, as you have in your last sentence. They are either hoaxes or imagined. There are some questions raised by that, however. Why aren't there thousands of reported sightings of unicorns? Or mermaids? Or fairies? Why the disproportionate number of bigfoot sightings?

Also, BFRO has maps of their recorded witness encounters. They're not random. They are most frequent in areas of thick or remote forest. Keep in mind, there are a lot of roadside encounters - but primarily in heavily-forested areas. Are there more delusional people near forests?

If you take the time to actually read some of the witness statements, you find that many of them come across as regular people who never believed in bigfoot before (of course, I'm sure you'd point out that they could be bigfoot believers in disguise).

Yeah, there are crazies who believe in bigfoot. But there are also quite a few intelligent, successful, sane people who do as well. Not people who seem to be prone to imagining seeing big, hairy monsters in the woods.

If you really want to see a scientific approach to bigfoot, look up Dr. Jeff Meldrum's studies on bigfoot footprints. He's an expert in foot morphology and locomotion in primates, and he's published articles and papers on why he believes some of the alleged bigfoot footprints cannot be faked.

[SoCalCoug]

So a guy sets out to film a Bigfoot documentary and (surprise!) he encounters a Bigfoot in the wild. How about that? I remember going to the theater as a kid to see this documentary. I thought it was totally cool.

Here is what a Hollywood costume designer said about the film:



Several people later confessed to having helped produce the fake film (Philip Morris, Bob Heironimus, Ray Wallace).

On BFRO, there's a substantial article addressing this very question. Rather than try to paraphrase it here, I'll link it: http://bfro.net/news/korff_scam.asp

Reader's digest version: Heironimus and Morris were trying to cash in on the P-G film. All efforts to produce or reproduce the "costume" have failed. And there are basic morphological differences that strongly indicate that Patty could not have been a human in a costume. But that doesn't fit with most people's paradigm, so they discount it and give all the weight to Heironimus.

I don't think Wallace was ever involved in the P-G film. He was a footprint hoaxer, and while his footprint-maker was consistent with some alleged bigfoot prints, it was not consistent with most of them.

[SoCalCoug]

Charlotte costumer claims to have made gorilla suit for Paterson

The actual suit has never been produced. By using Lebowski's logic, how can you reasonably believe it ever existed?