Is Bigfoot real?

Fox Hound

I watched this documentary about bigfoot last night, it was about this guy called Todd Standing. He genuinely believes that Bigfoot is real,

I am just wondering does anybody on boards share the same passion. Todd believes in Bigfoot and has no problem fighting his case to scientist and scholars who flat out just say "no" to his claims,

If its all bulls**t, then why dedicate his life to the lie?

NIMAN

I think its nonsense...but thats my opinion.

I also think that all the clergy who spend their entire life dedicated to a God that doesn't exist are wasting their time too, but again, my opinion. They believe what they are doing, as does this Todd bloke.

artanevilla

Possibly yes, but at the same time, possibly no.

Hector Bellend

Bigtwot

WoollyRedHat

Yeah he lives in my village, call him the FTSE 100.

Professor Moriarty

Fox Hound wrote: »

I watched this documentary about bigfoot last night, it was about this guy called Todd Standing. He genuinely believes that Bigfoot is real,

I am just wondering does anybody on boards share the same passion. Todd believes in Bigfoot and has no problem fighting his case to scientist and scholars who flat out just say "no" to his claims,

If its all bulls**t, then why dedicate his life to the lie?

Because Todd is off his game.

Professor Moriarty

artanevilla wrote: »

Possibly yes, but at the same time, possibly no.

Schrodinger's Bigfoot.

Are Am Eye

Believers always say that big foot/sasquatch is "secretive and shy" that's why we never see them around.
Their bones and remains are also secretive and shy because no one's ever found any.

RobertKK

Most likely someone saw a bear from a distance standing on its feet and thought it was Bigfoot.

Sephiroth_dude

About as real as Jack Frost.

Father Hernandez

Fox Hound

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Fox Hound wrote: »

I watched this documentary about bigfoot last night, it was about this guy called Todd Standing. He genuinely believes that Bigfoot is real,

I am just wondering does anybody on boards share the same passion. Todd believes in Bigfoot and has no problem fighting his case to scientist and scholars who flat out just say "no" to his claims,

If its all bulls**t, then why dedicate his life to the lie?

Because Todd is off his game.

I agree with you that he is probably nuts, and here are some of the pictures he has taken... but he cant do this his whole life and expect people to believe,  this is clearly him in a mask!

.

jamesbere

Finding bigfoot, watch it you'll get a laugh. Every episode starts off with them being skeptical of the stories someone tells them, then they somehow manage to believe there real and go out in the middle of nowhere and start shouting like bigfoot and that's it. No evidence at all

Wibbs

Has a bipedal great ape other than ourselves made it into the present? Possibly. I'd not hold much truck with Bigfoot in the Americas. The only great ape that made it there(as far as we know) was ourselves about 20,000 years ago. Now there were a tiny few isolated bones found in Mexico IIRC that look like much older hominid species(Erectus) and it's odd that Erectus and species like Neandertals and similar made it everywhere but the Americas(and Australia).

I'd hold out much more hope in Asia. For example the Orang Pendek(sp) of the jungles of south east Asia. Descriptions hold that it's an upright walking slimmer version of the Orang Utan. The footprints when found don't look like ours, they look more ape like, but unlike normal Orangs. Which itself would suggest a secondary evolution of upright walking as our feet and those of our ancestors going back millions of years look very similar.

What might be going on - and it's a personal take - is that these are very deep "race" memories of wild men of the deep forest. From a time when there was more than one hominid species running around. Today we're the only ones left, but that's on outlier. Most times in prehistory there were a few different (sub) species of people about.

When modern humans first left Africa it's easy to forget that they weren't moving into empty landscapes. There were other species of humans already there. It's interesting to note that at first and for a good while we kept to the coasts and moved along them. We seemed to stay away from the interiors. Maybe from fear and maybe for good reason? The original inhabitants may have not taken kindly to these weird looking interlopers(Neandertals for example seem to be extremely family group orientated and xenophobic).

So maybe this deep fear and idea of wild men stems from that? That the deep forests are to be feared, as that's where the wild men live. Interestingly in Africa which has other great apes, tribal folks have no such fear nor too many particular stories of wild men of the forests. Africa had fewer "original" subspecies knocking about either.

In Europe folk tales of trolls could well be references to Neandertals. They're described as people of the wld places and deep forests, huge noses and "ugly", with quite high pitched strange voices*, slow witted, but curious, very physically powerful and will generally leave you alone if you don't intrude on them. The Yeti could be the Denisovans who once lived there before we came along. Interestingly the genes that help modern people's of those high altitude areas survive have come from the same Denisovans.

I would not be too surprised that it is discovered that other humans lived on until much more recently. The last of the mammoths held out when the pyramids were built. The date I'd generally put to that for other people would be around 15,000 years ago. The dawn of agriculture.

Bigfoot? Going by the above maybe the original native Americans coming from Eurasia peopled with "others", brought that memory and warnings with them and that's where the legends come from?


*because of the shape of Neandertal throats it seems they had odd voices and more high in pitch than ours.

VonLuck

odyssey06

Sadly no - I say that as a child hood fan of shows like Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious Universe.

We couldn't have just missed one solitary Bigfoot - there would have to be a viable breeding population in the thousands for the species to have survived into at least the 20th century... even in a slow die off where the species is dropping to the hundreds now... Given those numbers, I can't envisage a realistic scenario where they would not have been detected on a frequent basis over the last 400 years.

As to why the guy believes in it... he's found a quest hobby, gets him out of the house, onto TV, seems like a nice gig exploring the wilderness...

Don Kiddick

I remember a thread on here a few years ago and Christ almighty, there were a few who truly believe in Bigfoot and yeti's..it takes all sorts I guess

The_Valeyard

Am I real,?

Atoms for Peace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6df6wOCZJE

odyssey06

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Am I real,?

You might be. Please send one bottle of whiskey so that I can validate your existence.

Ally Dick

Brought to the cinema when I was 10 to see this. The worst film ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078203/

odyssey06

Ally Dick wrote: »

Brought to the cinema when I was 10 to see this. The worst film ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078203/

And since that traumatic event you have hunted down every last remaining bigfoot and cremated the remains so there is no evidence?

Wibbs

Oh and that Orang Pendek I mentioned above, a woman who has been observing and rescuing Orang Utans in Borneo(IIRC), as such the Orang Jane Goodall was herself a witness, albeit briefly to one of these creatures. She described it as about 4feet tall, of much slimmer build than an Orang, but with a similar face and colouring, but walking on two legs. I'd tend to believe an expert witness like her over some American hiker who saw a bear at a distance.

There have been other fairly credible witnesses to this SE Asian "wild man". There have been some similar witnessed events in places like Siberia, Mongolia and Russia. Only these were more like "Bigfoot" in that they were taller, though not nearly as tall as the tales of Bigfoot, about human height or slightly above/ below. They were also described as more human in general appearance and body shape, only more powerful with ape like faces. One local name for the type was "Alma(s)". This was for a time taken so seriously in the former Soviet Union that a couple of university depts. were tasked with collecting all the stories and evidence that could. Many of the researchers became believers after hearing credible accounts and descriptions from natives of those remote areas, men and women who knew every creature in their world.

Another interesting tale with actual real world evidence to it concerned a "wild woman" later called Zana, captured in a remote region in the Caucuses mountains in the mid 19th century. Zana was described as over six feet tall, covered in "dark hair", much stronger than any man, could outrun a decent horse and could swim huge rivers in flood. She hated the heat of an indoor fire and preferred to walk about naked, even in the harshest of weather. She was initially very aggressive(you would be after being captured :rolleyes:), but "tamed" over time. Never took to speaking anything beyond grunts(though understood people). Took to drinking wine apparently and also had kids with at least one local man(the two may not be unrelated...). A few of these kids survived childhood and went on to have families of their own. For years she was thought of as one of these "Alma", maybe even a relict Neandertal(Highly unlikely, even ridiculous to suggest. Neandertals would be very noticeable in a landscape. They used fire for a start and had culture. "Apemen" they were not).

Her grave is long lost so we have no way to examine her remains. However her son's skeleton has been found and examined. As has his DNA. Photos of his skull had some claiming he was a Neandertal hybrid. Which again is a nonsense. These "experts" have clearly never held a Neandertal skull cast in their hands and looked at the differences. They're very different to us and obviously so. They're right at the very edge of any feature set of any archaic peoples*. He had a robust face alright and outside the local range, but he also had a chin, swept forward cheekbones, the rounded brain case of Sapiens and while heavily enough browed, not even close to Neandertals.

Where it gets real interesting is the DNA inherited from his ma. It's African. When this came out it was mused that she might have been an escaped African slave from the Turkish empire. To very isolated, majority illiterate locals a tall Black woman may well have been seen as "wild". They may have seen her skin colour, so odd to them, as "hair" and her natural fear and aggressive behaviour from being captured and shackled as "wild" too. OK, she was likely an escaped African woman. Only... Her African DNA doesn't match any known modern African lines. And it's old One conclusion some actually qualified researchers have come to is that her genetic heritage, her people, may have been a pocket of very early Out of Africa folks from 80-100,000 years ago, who stayed in that area in even more remote spots and lasted all that time. There is precedence for this kinda thing too. QV the Andaman islanders to the Far East from the coast of India and more Asia than Africa.



Those folks look nothing like Indians, or Asians, they're clearly Africans. One of the first waves of African's who strode out and took over the world.

So it is at least possible that this Zana woman was among the last of her isolated "African" tribe left into modern times. Maybe this is why she was alone and wandering through the deep forest when hunters came upon her.

Fascinating stuff though. At least for me.



*the idea current today - especially after we've learned that non African folks carry up to four odd % of Neandertal DNA - is that you could dress one up in a business suit and he or she would pass unnoticed on the bus. Nope. Not even close. They would stand out like a sore thumb among modern peoples.

Your Face

Im not saying its aliens...

tonycascarino

I would like to think that Bigfoot, Yeti, Orange Pendek, Chupacabra, Mokele-mbembe, Emela-ntouka and other such cryptozoological creatures exist... but how come in this day and age that none have been filmed and none have been captured. Are they really that elusive?

Wibbs

Ally Dick wrote: »

Brought to the cinema when I was 10 to see this. The worst film ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078203/

Oh god it was. Though when I was a kid I saw "The Legend of Boggy Creek"(1972) on the telly with my da and was freaked the hell out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9V44D9xZ70

Total and complete hokey exploitation nonsense of course :pac: but when you're 8 or 10 and you don't have the interwebs, jaysus... :eek::D

Wibbs

tonycascarino wrote: »

I would like to think that Bigfoot, Yeti, Orange Pendek, Chupacabra, Mokele-mbembe, Emela-ntouka and other such cryptozoological creatures exist... but how come in this day and age that none have been filmed and none have been captured. Are they really that elusive?

That's certainly a consideration TC, though I think we can often forget that even though we live in a smart phone connected world there are still wild places out there where our feet rarely thread. The oceans an obvious one. One scientist has described going down in a bathyscaphe looking for new life as akin to being suspended from a rope on a helicopter over a rainforest. At night. Hoping to see something new. Even on dry land there are places on this earth that are rarely walked by humans and even more rarely settled and studied by humans. There are still mysteries out there TC. Bigfoot? Likely not, but we may both be surprised. And I hope we continue to be.

Dakota Dan

Fox Hound wrote: »

I watched this documentary about bigfoot last night, it was about this guy called Todd Standing. He genuinely believes that Bigfoot is real,

I am just wondering does anybody on boards share the same passion. Todd believes in Bigfoot and has no problem fighting his case to scientist and scholars who flat out just say "no" to his claims,

If its all bulls**t, then why dedicate his life to the lie?

He's as real as Santa Claus.