Skeptics and Sasquatches

I always think back to the two thousand and eight Georgia Bigfoot hoax, particularly because that was my I was I pretty much just started at how stuff works. So my life suddenly had a lot more science in it than than ever before because it wasn't just stuff I was reading on the side. It was my job. And uh, until you know, immersed in science is suddenly the all over the internet and on the TVs. It was like

a slow newsweek. I think, um, they're they're all these stories out of Georgia, the state we are in um where apparently a car salesman by the name of Rick Dyer and a then police officer by the name of Matt Wouldn't claimed to have a big foot corps on ice and a cooler, and it was and it just escalated from there. It because there was a news conference in California, and for a brief little sliver of time there it was it was kind of to be cliche.

It was an amazing time to be alive, because because it seemed possible that we might be about to know for sure that there are sasquatches out there, that there are bigfoots, skunk gates, whatever we want we want to call them, and uh, and even though I doubted it, I was, I gave into the temptation to really want to believe. And of course then we found out that it was just a sasquatch costume stuff with possum road kill and slaughter house leftovers. But but for just a

little while, Catrick our imagination. You know, to what degree did they think they were going to pull that off? That's what I'm wondering, Like, why go through the trouble of stuffing the innerds with with leftover meats? And well, I was reading about it. I've I've read interpretations where it's just kind of like a joke that got out of control um and quickly was just out of hand.

I've also read some criticisms to say that one of the individuals involved was really hoping to get some more business for sort of wilderness tours in the area, so you know, a little column and a little calm by and maybe they themselves were kind of given into the

lust for sasquat reality as well. Well. I think of the beginnings, at least in terms of the of arresting the public's imagination on this topic, is being that I think it's sixty four sixteen millimeter footage that was shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gillan excuse me, it was the nineteen six seven and everybody is probably familiar with

his grainy black and white footage. Yeah, And but you know the thing is, if you're looking for it on YouTube, there's so many different versions of its CG to to to lose track of the original, which I'll be sure to to share when this publishes. But the original is really haunting because like the first several minutes of it are just dudes riding around on horseback. You're just looking at the woods, and there's that click click click click

click click click. Uh, you know kind of sound is that the film processes through and then you see this creature sort of you know, doing that that saunter across the clearing in the woods and uh. And it's been parodied so many times that it tends to lose any kind of impact on a modern viewer. But I find going back to that original film and watching it from the beginning and then having the the the mysterious creature gradually appear, you recapture perhaps some of the original excitement

people found in that footage. Yeah, I mean, because what you're talking about is that half human, half ape like creature just ambling out of a stream bed in the Six Rivers National Forests in northern californ On As you say, it's not you know, they're just kind of moving along there on horseback. It's the footage is just sort of oh care nature. Although they are going after the sasquatch, that is what they're into, was when they were actually

filming this. If that's certainly worth noting. It's not just a matter of out and then there's a sasquatch and we happen to see the sasquatch. So of course, there's there's much debate about this film whether or not it's actually someone in a guerrilla suit um, and we we're not going to get into all of these sort of whether or not this film is um real or not, because people are still analyzing it and making arguments in

both directions. I do want to say real quick, the term sasquatch is a Silish word from the Salish people in other Native American people's of the Alaskan, Yukon and parts of British Columbia, and it essentially means wild man. But they're also like over a hundred and fifty different local names for this shaggy bipedal creature. And in the original myths they would also say that it could be

fift high. Nowadays, when people were talking about seth Watch, they couldn't make an argument more and they're like the seven to nine foot range. Yeah, and this has been reported all over the world. Yeah, you have some variation of it for Antarctica, Wellarica, but so you have you have you have the eddies in the Himalayas, the skunk apes in Arkansas and Mississippi, you have the Siberian almasty, you have the Chinese year in or wild man um.

You have the Cherokee suel calu anywhere you look. And when you get into the wild man myths to the idea that they're wild men in the forest, you go back to thirteen through sixteenth century Europeans. They believed in wild men in the woods. Uh. And then there's a you can find a compelling argument that essentially the big foot myth takes over for us as we as we

encounter Darwin's theory of evolution. Uh, the idea that we couldn't possibly be werewolves anymore, that with the werewolf, can no longer be go to representation of our be steel shadows cell. Instead we need this other form. Okay, So Darwin came online and people are like, all right, here's the deal. Were wolves they're out yet he's in, Yeah, we're not. Really, we're not descended from wolves. We're descended from apes. And so therefore an ape is a better

avatar for a be steel self. But then again, like I said, people were we're seeing uh reporting wild men in the woods long before Darwin came around. So I don't think it's the most compelling argument, but it's interesting to think about. So the idea of a sasquatch is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One as I feel like it's really come to symbolize humans pension for logical fallacies. So, you know, believers in Bigfoot would claim that the absence of hard evidence of Bigfoot is

not evidence that Bigfoot does not exist. This is the argument, right, And this is all kind of created this cottage industry of sincerely earnest people trying to ferret out the truth among pranksters and hoaxes. So it sort of money is all the water here. You have people that really want to believe Eve and want to find actual proof and prove it. You have people who want to believe and are willing to just cling to whatever. You have people

who just want to make a hoax. And then you have people who really want to apply the rigors of science to it or are already of the opinion that we've already done that, and they're more pressing things to consider right in the absence again of any body essentially um And then I think you can't help to think that somehow and all of this it sort of stirs that childlike wonder, right, and that you know, there's somewhere

inside of us. There's just an iota of hope that this nine to twelve foot harry mammal, you know, peaceably roams the hinterlands, right, And I think about it as being sort of a mash up between Chewbacca and where the wild things are. These are these are things from my youth and from my memory, my imagination, all embodied in what Bigfoot is. Yeah, because the idea is that

there is this almost magical creature. I mean, most no one out there that's you know, a sasquattion just saying it's a magical creature, the saying it's a natural creature.

But there's something magical about the idea that there is this uh, this cousin of humanity that still lives wild and naked and furry in portions of the world that we haven't turned into a parking lot yet, and that they're so good at what they're doing that we have really no proof that they're there, that they're they're almost

like a forest god living in the woods. And while there are stories out there of of of a sasquatch or a Bigfoot or what have you being aggressive towards humans, most of the encounters, you seem to come across their more mundane, they're more peaceful. And you see these representations, for instance, the Melbourne Catchum Global Sasquatch Foundation. We'll discuss that a little later on. But their emblem is is

this wonderful cheesey emblem of the planet Earth. And then there's the outline of a sasquatch on there, and the sasquatch is raising one hand, kind of like the figure on the Voyager, that sort of I come in peace sort of thing, and I I laughed the image, but it does sum up I feel like a lot of the hopes uh and and dreams out there when it comes to belief or the desire to believe in a sasquatch. It's a little bit of a Kauaii hangover, you know.

I was just thinking about the World Wildlife Fund, and I believe their logo is a panda, which is super and cuddly, but if you go up to a panda, it will mally you. Right. So again, these are ideas about things that exist that don't exist, perhaps exist, And for me, what is again interesting about all of this is that it kind of brings up this question of could there be a species of primate behind these legends. So not necessarily sasquatch or YETI as we we think

of it, but maybe something to this. That's the question that that is interesting about this. Yeah, and it is a reasonable question. It's it's easy to get distracted by all of the nonsense out there. You lose sight of the fact that, Okay, nine foot gigantopithecus creature did exist. Uh, you know in prehistoric times that we do have guerrillas

to this day. So, and there are portions of the world that that are there are more of a wilderness, particularly you're looking in like northern North America or a Siberian region. Uh, certainly parts of the Himalayas. Uh, you know, deep jungles. There are places where you could conceivably have a species, even a nine foot tall eight man species living outside of a human understanding. Doubtful, but possible. Doubt

but possible. Yeah, you're not arguing of flying unicorns. You're arguing something that tends to make sense, uh, based on what we know about the natural world. In two thousand and two, the world's perhaps the most famous primatologist, Jane Goodall, came out as a I guess you could say bigfoot enthusiast. Yes, if not someone who really hopes that this is the case.

And uh so she does admit to being a romantic and having very much a heartfelt feeling about she She said during the interview with Ira Flatau of MPR Science Friday that she was sure of it. Now she's just kind of talking off the cuff here in this interview. Yeah, she's not presenting a paper on it. She's just he said, he said that happening. She was like, oh, hey, um, and so this is what she she said. She said, I've talked to so many Native Americans who all described

the same sounds to who have seen them. I've probably got about oh thirty books that have come from different parts of the world, from China, from all over the place. And there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper just last last week which says that British scientists have found what they believed to be a yetty hair and that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal. So we'll discuss

more about DNA in a little bit. But she goes, as you say, on to say that she is a romantic. She she um. She also says it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or hair of the big Foot, So she is acknowledging in a skeptical way like we don't really have the evidence. But at the heart of this, again, I think, is that childlike

wonder of like maybe it could be. So. Now, another individual that that came up when we were looking at actual, legitimate, learned individual scientists who are interested in the possible existence of Bigfoot is Jeff Meldrum. Now, Jeff Meldrum is Associate Professor of anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University UH. He's a research associate at the I have A Museum of Natural History, and he's his areas of research are

primate functional morphography, paleontology, but also crypto zoology as well. Now, um, crypto zoology for anyone who isn't familiar with the term, we have zoology, which is that dealing with actual, UH creatures that are known to exist documented. Cryptozoo Zoology is concerned with creatures that we do not know actually exist. There, you know, you're things like your locknoest monsters, you're your

your Bigfoot, monster, what have you? So Meldrum is interest in cryptozoology, he's interested in big Foot, but he is also he also has the science shops to back it up. He he is well informed about how the body of a large primate works and would work if it were

in the form of the sasquash. That's right, because he knows all about primate locomotion, human look emotion, and so he has analyzed the footprints and he thinks that the way that that the foot seems to be uh designed, is that it's very well maybe a divergent species, and so that's that's interesting. Um. He gets a lot of flak for this, by the way, Yeah, as I imagine he would. Yeah. Um, But you know he's out there on the record saying, look, it's not just the footprints.

I've examined that footage um from nineteen sixty seven. He says, you can see muscle movements, you can see the shoulder blade slide under the skin, you can see tendons attaching to joints and so forth. He says, the already is really much better than most people have acknowledged in the past.

So again he's talking about that iconic film footage, which which I do after researching this podcast, I do agree that that we tend to just dismiss that footage these days because it has been lampooned so much, and it is has been ridicule and I've really become a joke. And I'm not saying if you look back at it,

it's definitely going to convince you or anything. But if you if you just put all that aside, all your all these preconceived notions, and you watch the footage, fake or not, it's it's far more effective than we often give it credit. I agree. I also wanted to point out it's a gigantapithecus, the giant ape that you had discussed. This is this kind of gives us a clue about

the limits of primate morphology. Right, so there is the possibility that you could have a nine foot tall mammal by three ft wide that you can't say that's not a possibility. It's we know that this is a kind

of morphology that has exists it in the past. However, Michael Schermer will talk about these these different animals that we have discovered, and he'll will say that the reason cryptods merit our attention is that enough successful discoveries have been made by scientists based on local anecdotes and folklore that we cannot dismiss all claims a priori. So he says, the most famous examples include the gorilla. Actually in um we see the old copy that was a short necked

relative of the draft commodo dragon in nineteen twelve, the bonobo. Uh. He goes on and on and on, but he says, there is one thing that is common, a common thread in all these discoveries. They have a body. It Yeah, like like another one. He mentions, of course, this cryptosol just loved to point at the ninety eight the discovery of a sila can that's in a species of archaic looking fish, and that we used to think it had gone extinct in the pitatious period, and then here it is.

But to his point, we had a sela can to show off. Here's a gorilla, here's a sela can, here's a panda. And as Shermer points out in a two thousand three essay for Scientific American, uh, that's the big thing. Here show me the body. Where is the body? Because anytime we were classifying a new species, we need a holotype. We need the body of the creature. We need a specimen by which to go on to say here's what

we found and here's another one. Oh, we can can we can compare uh the d n A here, we can compare the morphology of these two species and say this is this and it's not these other specimens. Okay, so we've discussed a bit about the case for the existence of bigfoot sasquatch yetti. Let's take a quick break, and when we get back we will talk about the

case against it. All Right, we're back, you know, and I want to mention real quick, but Melvioun when he's talking about the tracks and prints and and even the uh that famous bit of footage, he's really all about the sasquatch, and he even admits that the case for the yetti in the Himalays is far less impressive. Yeah, and we'll get a bit into the Eddie and the Himalays and the reasons why that is problematic in a moment.

But let's go back to this idea of you know, show us the body, or show us some sort of evidence that that gives us an idea that this species exists. Yeah, to uh to Jane Goodall's point, it is incredible that if this creature were to actually exists, that we don't have any proof of it, that we don't have bodies

and we don't have a significant samples of their anatomy. Uh. Now, the the that would have in my mind, that tends to lead to the answer, well, that's because they don't exist, and or they did exist, they have not existed in a very long time. But uh but yeah, what are we what are we to make of that? Because it's because especially now, it's one thing to say, you know, early twenty century, but now this is the twenty one century. There are more humans round than ever before, and just

about all of them have a camera on them. Because I said the other that's a whole other issue that the camera footage. But just about everyone has a camera. Where we're out all over the place. Why haven't we

discovered a body? Well, I will play Devil's advocate for just one second and say that, you know, every once in a while you get the undiscovered tribe, right, so you know that there are pockets of people out there, maybe even a new species that just has not been discovered yet in the rainforest in the Amazon between two thousand and ten and two thousand and thirteen, there were four d forty one species of plants and animals that were discovered. How many of them were nine ft tall?

That's the problem. Yeah, we're talking about a big creature that would would need a larger area in which to roam. Uh And and we just haven't seen it. We have not seen it happen. Again, not saying it it's impossible for it to exist. But when you start looking at the details, the size of the creature, how much space it would need and uh and in the various parts of the world in which it's reported to have been anist, then I feel like the case just grows less and

less impressive. But then you have someone like Melba Ketchum who is saying, hey, here is some possible proof, or

even saying there is proof species exists. Yes, tex And veterinarian Dr. Melba s Ketchum uh contends that her research teams five year genome sequencing study of a hundred and twenty to alleged bigfoot DNA samples because they are tufts of hair and whatnot that have been collected by by bigfoot hair hunters out there in the wild Anyway, she says that she claims that their findings point to a hybrid species that split from Homo sapiens and an unknown

hominid species some thirteen thousand years ago. Now she published her results. Yes, now you you probably have not heard of the scientific journal that published them, uh DiNovo Scientific Journalists what is called because it did not exist before publishing this study, and her catch them study is the only study that it has ever published. Um So it was not pure reviewed. It did not show up in any of the normal scientific journals that we would mention

on this this podcast. So this kind of a red flag. And critics have charged that her samples were likely contaminated because you have inexperienced evidence gatherers out there that are end up introducing their own DNA onto the animal samples that they bring in. There sneezing, their coughing, they're breathing heavily, what have you. They So they bring in a contaminated sample which then wants is analyze. You end up with

confusing and misleading results. So again, the problem with this is starting at the assumption that, um, that the animal exists right right, and and that's clear from the get go just by you know, just go to her website, looks at the logo, look at the mission statement of the organization, and you see that that they have they have an intention in mind. Yeah. Daniel Laxon, he's a co author of the book A Vulnerable Science Origins of

the Yetti NeSSI and other famous criptis, says quote. A scientist generally starts with a conservative working assumption that proposed new idea are not true. This is so important, right, We've talked about it so over and over again, or that hypothetical new entities do not exist, and then revises her probability estimate upwards only when the evidence forces her

to do so, he says. A pseudo scientist, on the other hand, typically starts with the assumption that a novel pro puzzle seems to be true, and then revises her probability downward as the evidence leaves her no choice if she is willing to surrender the possibility to do to any degree at all. So we've talked about cognitive bias all the time. This idea that we continue to sort of add weight to this argument that we really want to be true, and we begin to assemble patterns where

sometimes there are none exactly. So yeah, as you go into into this kind of study with the cryptozologist mindset, with the idea that I really want the big foot to be to exist, then that ends up I mean that that's the mission statement for the study, that ends up skewing the entire study. So no much, no matter how much science you throw in after the fact, you've already turned the steering wheel off the road. All right, So we've talked about the you know, things that have

existed been discovered. The body showed up, Um, what if what if the species is? It does exist but it's not what we think it is. There's another explanation, yes, and this, uh, this explanation just recently came out in the news and it has to do with Oxford University geneticist Brian Sykes. Now Sykes his investigations are going to

be featured in an upcoming Channel four documentary series. He's writing a book, um called the Yetie Enigma at DNA Detective Story And basically, uh, he put out the call and said, all right, you have samples of your yetis, your sasquatches, what have you? Send them to me and we and we will analyze them. We will look at the DNA evidence here and and and then you can stop complaining about scientists not listening to your bigfoot stories, because I'm here to listen. Just send me the stuff, right.

So they took two of the more promising samples of what we're supposed to be uh, you know, supposed to be yetty hair yetti yet yettie materials. Uh, and they analyzed them and what they found was pretty incredible, though not incredible in the way that cryptozoologists would want it to be. No, because again, here's the thing about sciences that in the scientific method sometimes it yields results that

you never imagined, completely different than what you thought would happen. So, yeah, he called through the gen Bank database and he found that two samples were a match with the DNA of an ancient polar bear from small Bard, Norway, and that polar bear lifts some one to forty thousand years ago, just when the brown bear and the polar bear were diverging as a separate species. So there you go, one possible,

one possible explanation for the belief in the yetti. Yeah, perhaps what what people were experiencing all these uh these years and seeing into sharing stories about passing down from generation generation. It actually had to do with a bear that lived up, a species of polar bear that lived in the region. Yeah. Now, he said that we shouldn't take these results and assume the ancient polar bears are

wandering around the Himalayas. Um. But he did say that perhaps the yet he could be this hybrid of polar bear and brown bear, essentially a new species of animal. Um. He has not published his research yet. It's up for peer review, and there are some people who are criticizing it only because of the logistics, saying that what we know of polar bears, we know that they would have a hard time surviving in the Himalayas, right, and Small Bard is a long ways away from the Himalayas, right.

So there there are aspects to it that I think need to be sussed out. But it's interesting. Well, I have a theory here. The Yeties existed and they used polar bears imported from Small Bard if their steeds, so they wrote around on them and you know, wage war and intended their mountain farms. I was just thinking maybe they use him as pelts and made little coats put over their own hairy bodies. Well maybe they were they had naked bodies, or it may be clever, and maybe

they were actually short, more human size. Maybe they were just they were just dudes, like two of them, so they were like one once on the other shoulders and then they had a little polar bear suit that they pulled over it. It sounds pretty good to me. Peer reviewed, my friend. Yeah, it's officially peer reviewed, all right. So there you have it. A brief entry into the world of the sasquatch, the big Foot, the yetie, etcetera. Obviously, this is a topic that one can spend a lot

of time on. You can spend a lot of time on it just on the scientific side of things, and if you want to wander over into the the non scientific side of things, uh, there's even more time to be wasted. So if you want to spend more time with this topic, I would recommend you check out our sister podcast and UH and video series stuff. They don't

want you to know. They frequently come back to the big foot issue and they're going to approach it from a less skeptic standpoint, but but not like a completely nutty standpoint either, No, and I think they will bring up some very interesting ideas actually point in caterpoint ideas. So check it out. Yeah, all right, and if you want to talk to us about Bigfoot, we would love to hear from you, seriously if you have I mean a lot of the Bigfoot story, a lot of the

the Eddy story. It a lot of it comes down to personal encounters. And you know, we've talked before in the past about the flawed nature of memory, the flawed nature of paranormal experience. Uh. Michael Sherman that we mentioned earlier, who was talking about, you know, his skepticism regarding the Big Smith. I mean, he himself and had a paranormal experience during a bike marathon and which he saw extraterrestrials and that kind of that led to his examination of

why did I see that? What led to that experience? Because I know it wasn't aliens and and and so his entire career as a skeptic author has has risen from that. So because he was under extreme physical extreme physical physical arrest, and he had that cultural script already in mind. So if you have a story about big Foot, send it to us. We're not going to pick it to pieces on the air. We're not gonna call you foolish or anything, because again, I really want, I would

really wish that this were true. And and even if there is no such things, is a big foot. Experiences of the big Foot are are real. Those do occur like we do have paranormal experiences, even if the reason for the occurring lies entirely within the natural world. So share your stories with us. We'd love to hear from. You can find us on steppable in your Mind dot com.

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