When A Bear Looks Like A Bigfoot…
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 9th, 2010
At least from a distance, this three-legged bear could appear to be a Bigfoot.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I’ll be damned! I never thought I’d ever see a bear do that. (No they don’t. Not if they have four legs they don’t.)
But I can recall no sasquatch sighting report I have read that could be explained by a bear – any bear – walking upright. As more than one researcher has taken pains to point out, there are many differences between bigfoot and bears (the shoulders being a very prominent one, the extreme muscularity of the former being another).
Cool to see, though. This one obviously came up with an excellent compensation for a missing limb. We don’t give animals – and not just the sasquatch – enough credit.
Buzzz, buzzz, buzzz.
lol It did look a bigfoot. I was surprised at how humanlike it’s stride was. I figured it would’ve been more clumsy.
Damn, we can find 3 legged bears but not one bigfoot! Kahhhhhhhhnnnn!
Although the shape is all wrong for a Bigfoot, it’s still pretty remarkable how the little guy gets around, so smoothly, on his hind legs. Life finds a way, it seems.
I guess a one-legged Sasquatch would really be a sight to see!
(Sorry, just my warped sense of humor – I don’t really wish infirmities on anyone/anything.)
Nice Jurassic Park reference arewethereyeti;
That clip is AWESOME!
From a distance, yeah, I’d be thinking “what the heck is that?” Great clip.
I’d hate to meet up with one of those. It would be an unbearably grizzly situation. Then again, they could be completely armless.
What a time for my “h” key to go bad.
I like this footage for a variety of reasons…
It does point out that, at a distance AND for a short timed sighting, yes, someone could mistake a bear for a BF…especially if they’re jumping to conclusions and just seeing a dark shape in the woods walking upright.
On the other hand, I’ve gotta agree with DWA. In this particular case, I do believe that bear is much more agile on its hind feet because it is missing one foot. Bears as a rule, are not strutting around on two legs for long periods of time.
Which leads me into my next thought. This footage is also exactly why all sightings of BF are not bears. Of the accounts of people seeing BF that I’ve read, the details do NOT speak of the walking biped having short stubby legs. IT’s usually a large biped walking, and there are often details about longer arms, which the bear certainly does not have.
And usually the movement described is quick–which the bear is not–in a lot of the accounts, BF’s are described as really being able to move across rough terrain, which this bear was not…it was on its hind legs in an open area, which a bear is not going to do in the brush–the ground’s too uneven and the bear is going to be able to traverse the terrain a whole lot quicker on all fours than it would ever be able to do on two legs.
Like I said, if you had a fleeting glimpse of a large dark shape, at a distance, standing tall, and did not get any more details than that, and you’re not familiar with a lot of wild life, I’d say maybe you could mistake a bear for a BF.
BUT, this footage helps to show that most sightings of BF are certainly not bears.
My last thought echoes MountDesertIslander.
Get a clear shot of a 3-legged bear, and walking upright no less, but give me blobsquatches to decipher…c’mon people.
Extraordinary, fascinating and most surprising that a bear has the flexibility to walk upright in this fluid and accomplished way. Sad it is in this condition and how did it get like it? I guess the other front paw is painful and that is why the bear is driven to this feat! Its survival and that of its slim looking cub must be in doubt and they appear to be in unsalubrious circumstances among rubbish.
I hear a big crash as wavering Saquatch believers all over the world, who see this film, jump with both feet back into scepticism and for some permanently and indeed some of the reported sightings and drawings of bigfoot will now be suspect. It is of course handy for those who just want comfirmation of their (IMO) incorrect views
There is no reason why the case for Sasquatch, objectively based on real evidence and reason, should be destroyed by this film and if more people look objectively at the evidence that will be welcome and in the end lead to the mystery of Sasquatch being solved!
MDI: “Damn, we can find 3 legged bears but not one bigfoot! …”
Not really. We find a lot more bigfoot; the sighting reports say so. It’s just that the a priori kneejerk response to any sasquatch sighting is negative; you have a better chance of getting people to believe you saw a 3-legged bear than a sasquatch.
No good reason for that, other than unreasoning bias combined with an ignorance of evidence.
norman-uk: “Its survival and that of its slim looking cub must be in doubt and they appear to be in unsalubrious circumstances among rubbish.”
Not to worry. I’ve seen many wild bears, young and adult, and these two look in excellent shape. Given the time of year, they also look to stay that way.
For the very reason that this animal walks in such an accomplished fashion in a way you will never see from a bear with four legs, it’s reasonable to believe – and backed by the video – that they’ve faced down the more routine challenges of a bear’s life very well.
SHJ: as you say, the walk alone would rule out a bigfoot, if you’ve read a lot of sighting reports. The long legs and flowing, smooth athletic gait reported over and over, across the continent, are simply not there.
Something that strikes me when watching this is that this bear is very comfortable walking upright. So if a bear can master upright locomotion due to an injury, why do those who deny Bigfoot outright sometimes question if an upright walking ape could exist?
It would seem that terrain (in the case of Bigfoot/Yeti) might very well require an adaptation in locomotion.
DWA–and the reverse is true also…the gait of a bear does not come close to matching the descriptions of BF sightings where it “walks” or even leaps across a road.
PErsonal Q, DWA–have you seen a BF or just being swayed by the onslaught of the evidence…just curiousity.
As for me, no, I haven’t yet, but have an aunt who did and a brother…and both in Iowa. But I hope to join the ranks.
I coulda of swore that bear said “c’mom BooBoo, lets get’em while there hot-hot-hot…” lol.
Wow, that’s something to see. In a clear view the profile’s completely different but I can see how you’d walk away thinking you had a sasquatch sighting under less than clear conditions.
I’ve seen alot of bears in the woods, but only a few standing and none of them walking on two legs. If I caught a glimpse of something big and hairy walking through the woods on two legs I’d sure think sasquatch before I’d think 3-legged bear.
SHJ – never seen one.
But neither have Green, Meldrum, nor Krantz. Nor has Bindernagel.
They all have become proponents on the weight of the evidence – which has such as me and George Schaller in the reserving-judgment-but-advocating-investigation camp. (in other words, the TRUE skeptics. Not the True Believers in Nonexistence.)
I saw tracks in a very remote part of northern CA in 1986. My soon-to-be-wife (at the time), the other witness, isn’t hesitant: they were bigfoot tracks. Me? Not sure. But if they were tracks – and I never saw anything like it that wasn’t – a biped, bigger than us, a lot heavier, with a similar gait – made them. (No toes showed, but a humanlike shape, and BIG.)
Thanks DWA, I was curious. And yes, there is the distinction–skeptic but worth spending the time and effort to look to see what is being seen.
The body of evidence that I’ve sifted through is more than enough to convince me that there is something out there that is defying normal explanation…as in it’s not all bears and misidentifications and hallucinations and hoaxes and so on. And enough to get me to spend my own time building a database and trying to come up with patterns to, in turn investigate (as I’ve said, USO’s are my favorite, but for now, those are a little sparse in my area of the country, so I’m contenting myself with the BF cryptozoological front).
Again, this footage was good evidence for me to rule out the idea that many of the sightings of BF are actually misidentifications of bears walking on hind legs. The video of this bear vs. say, the P/G footage or the mass of witness sightings makes a very distinct difference against BF sightings–in how bears walk on hind legs and how they appear when on hind legs.
Let’s not forget that not only do bears not fulfill all criteria for the physical appearance and gait of Sasquatch, but the first response for many people who see something anomalous out in the woods, or in any situation in general for that matter, is to rationalize what they have seen within the context of what is known.
So for instance, if someone sees a large, bipedal hulking form that they can’t quite wrap their head around, it seems more likely that that person will look back at that and think “it must have been a bear,” rather than “it was a Bigfoot.” Even a three legged bear would be a more rational explanation in many people’s minds rather than a Bigfoot. In the case of unexplained events, denial of what one has seen can be strong.
An eyewtiness would surely rationalize their sighting in this fashion before going public with their story and being perhaps ridiculed for their sighting, would they not?
In short, in my opinion it is more likely for a genuine Sasquatch sighting to be written off as a bear rather than for a sighting of a bear to be misidenified as a Sasquatch.
Now I am fairly critical of cryptids. I want to know what is really going on without any need to “believe” they are one thing or the other. I value science immensely in this regard and my approach tends to mirror that. With Sasquatch, there is a phenomena here where we have something weird going on and it is worth trying to dig around for the root cause. Is it a bipedal ape? I don’t know. With regards to the volume and often the quality of sighting reports, I can’t say for sure what this is indicative of but something is going on whether Sasquatch are in fact real or not.
Are Sasquatch really behind these sightings? Depending on the case, I am either intrigued or have serious doubts. There are a large variety of factors to consider and each case should stand on its own merit. Perhaps in some cases where an individual is very biased towards Sasquatch, a bear could be misidentified, but I would say this would not be prevalent to the point where we would have as many Sasquatch sightings as we do. It is not a satisfactory blanket explanation for what is obviously a deeper phenomenon.
Sightings reports are an enigma that warrant investigation to one degree or another. They may not be caused by actual bipedal apes, or maybe they do. I don’t know. However one thing I can say is for reasons stated here, I have a hard time believing that all sightings and therefore the whole sighting phenomenon could all be caused by misrepresentations of bears. That just defies reason to me.
As for this video, all I can say is wow. There is something you sure don’t see everyday.
Holy cr*p! You might not think so, Loren, but you have now debunked Bigfoot forever and all time, and your name will be immortal for having done so! Ok, slight hyperbole, but still. WOW.
DWA – the plural of anecdotes is not evidence. From about 50 sec on, if I saw that through the trees, I’d be thinking “OMG! Bigfoot!” And I’d post about it here, and I’d be saying “I know what I saw, and it wasn’t a bear!” and you’d be defending me, saying as you always do that whatever anyone says they saw is what they saw. But we’d both be wrong. Mystery_man almost hit the nail on the head. We filter our experience through our belief systems and “mental maps”. In fact, I can show you several optical illusions where our subconscious brains will fill in what it “expects” to see in an image. M_M, people don’t filter things in terms of what is known. They filter things in terms of what their mind BELIEVES about the world, and, perhaps sadly (perhaps not), those are often two different things. We don’t “know” about Gods or aliens, but people still think they see spaceships and the Blessed Virgin Mary on their English muffin.
“An eyewtiness would surely rationalize their sighting in this fashion before going public with their story and being perhaps ridiculed for their sighting, would they not?”
I’ve never disagreed with you and I’m an M_M groupie, but… I think you have it backwards. If what you’re saying is true, then why did John Downes cast his “giant eel” footage upon the world without even seriously reviewing it first, much less getting other opinions? Because he saw WHAT HE WANTED TO SEE. You’re right about cognitive dissonance, but you’re assuming the average mind is as rational and informed as yours is. 🙂
“In short, in my opinion it is more likely for a genuine Sasquatch sighting to be written off as a bear rather than for a sighting of a bear to be misidenified as a Sasquatch.”
Don’t make me burn my M_M fanclub card!!! 🙂 🙂 This doesn’t explain the “mystery beasts” that are water-bloated or mangy animals, the people who deny a plane hit the Pentagon, Doyle believing in paper fairies, um… gnomes, elves, leprechauns, gods on mount olympus, unicorns, and basically every other thing humans have ever claimed to have seen/have knowledge of but really didn’t. People look for things that conform to their existing belief systems (or cultural belief systems). I just read this morning about a “skeptic” in England who thought while walking his dog he saw a “spaceship” hovering and a “white form” that might have been an alien. Did he attempt to investigate or rationalize it as a prank or a lighted balloon or something? No, he screamed and ran for his life! 🙂 I don’t know about what he really saw, but despite his own internal beliefs, he was still swayed by our culture into thinking a vague white shape and a bunch of lights on a smooth object was an alien ship come to abduct him, and had no problem telling the press about it.
” I have a hard time believing that all sightings and therefore the whole sighting phenomenon could all be caused by misrepresentations of bears. That just defies reason to me.”
Why not? They can be Bigfoot-like. Chalk the crazy stories up to tall tales, and you can call it a day. 🙂 Unless you’re saying that this creature has existed ever since it split with some ancestor of ours (500,000? One million years or more?) and not one skeleton has ever been found, nor skeletons of its own ancestors that trace back to our common ancestors. And I don’t mean the found in the woods type of skeleton debate – I mean digging in the ground. Can anything that large go all this time without any hard evidence turning up? Can we really find bones of creatures that died out millions of years before humanity existed, but not one skeleton of a Sasquatch, much less a clear photo or piece of DNA? Whatever theory one has of Bigfoots has to account for that gap which would REALLY defy reason if it were just chance/coincidence. I don’t care if Bigfoot buries its dead; so did Neolithic man but we’ve found them. Dinosaurs didn’t, but we found them too. I have a much less difficult time believing in mistaken identification (which happens all the time, and can be demonstrated in the lab how bad our observational skills and particularly our recall can be) and hoaxes/tall tales then that something so big, that interacts with man enough that we have all these sightings and stories, can somehow have not left one single piece of firm evidence throughout all of recorded human history.
All that said, this is the most awesome footage I have EVER seen on YouTube! This is better than the skateboarding bulldog, dramatic prairie dog, and surprised kitty put together! Plus, now I can edit the footage around the 50 sec mark, show it to people, and tell them it’s not fake – what do you think it is? I’m betting 90% will say “Bigfoot”. I know that’s what I would have thought it was. Even seeing the bear beforehand in the footage, I was saying to myself around 50 sec, “there’s NO WAY that turns out to be a bear!”
Alcalde- You raise very valid points, and I can’t really argue with anything you’ve said. Your analogies seem pretty sound to me.
You’re right in that I’m probably giving too much credit in the average person’s ability to exercise critical thinking skills. Perhaps I was in an overly optimistic mood when I posted that.
As far as sightings reports go, remember that I stated I don’t think they necessarily point to Sasquatch as being real. I’ve long had a problem with the idea of something being seen so often yet leaving a disproportionately scant amount of physical evidence. I’m actually fairly critical of sightings reports, so no, I don’t take them as any sort of definitive evidence of Sasquatch. I do find problems with them.
I mostly wanted to illustrate my opinion that I do not think they are all caused by bear misidentifications. I think there are most likely a lot of factors at work such as hoaxes, pure flight of fancy, or even yes a real animal. Who knows? I don’t know. But the incredible amount of sightings, some made by seemingly reliable witnesses such as biologists, forestry officials, and police officers, is intriguing to me. Whatever is causing them, sightings of this nature seem an curious thing to me.
I find myself wondering what is going on here. I don’t think they all point to a real animal necessarily, but I do think the amount of sightings makes for an interesting phenomenon, whether it is the result of real bipedal apes or exists merely as a purely cultural construct, or both.
I want real answers, I’m curious, and a blanket “misidentified bears” is just not satisfactory to me at this point considering the nature of some of the sightings that have been made and the sightings made by those who know darn well what a bear looks like or have nothing to gain by lying. The accounts could all be made up, but that is still different than saying all sightings are misidentified bears. I think there is some investigation warranted as to just what is going on.
As far as the question of remains, well, I share your criticism of that and it is something that has long bothered me as well. I’ve gone on at length about it here before. At the risk of turning this thread into a discussion on Bigfoot remains, I’ll just say that although it doesn’t drive home nails in the coffin of a case for Bigfoot, it is certainly a curious absence for me.
I think I take a fairly critical approach to these things and trust me, I have no need or desire to believe one way or the other. My approach is mostly skeptical as you know, but I will look at this from all angles. I’m just here for the same reason you are, to discuss these things and find answers.
Anyway, don’t go burning that fan club card just yet! 😉 I don’t give to many of those out. (mostly because no one wants them! ha!)
Seriously, I’m honored that you respect my input here. Thank you.
alcalde:
“DWA – the plural of anecdotes is not evidence.” Um, sure is, guy! This just bespeaks the classic bigfoot skeptic’s misunderstanding of the difference between evidence and proof. The anecdotal evidence for the sasquatch is truly compelling, industrial grade, scientifically valid EVIDENCE. If you don’t understand that, you need to take your complaint to the scientists who have agreed with me. Because we’re right.
“if I saw that through the trees, I’d be thinking “OMG! Bigfoot!” And I’d post about it here, and I’d be saying “I know what I saw, and it wasn’t a bear!” and you’d be defending me, saying as you always do that whatever anyone says they saw is what they saw.”
Spoken like someone who never reads sighting reports! Well done there! If you described that, I’d be telling you, whatever you saw, it sure doesn’t sound like a bigfoot to me. Or if it was one, could you tell me what tied its legs together so it could hardly do better than a hobble? 😉
“People look for things that conform to their existing belief systems (or cultural belief systems).”
Spoken like someone who never reads sighting reports! Well done there! They sure do look for conformance with what they know; and when they’ve seen a sasquatch, that search utterly FAILS, and it’s obvious in the report; they tried to make what they saw fit everything they are aware of, and because they saw a sasquatch, it didn’t.
“We filter our experience through our belief systems and “mental maps”. In fact, I can show you several optical illusions where our subconscious brains will fill in what it “expects” to see in an image.”
Same thing. That effort to do that filtering comes back TILTTILTTILTTILT when the person saw a sasquatch; the mental map gets burned, because the effort to fill in doesn’t work. They’ve never seen anything like this; they didn’t know anything like this existed; and they finally have to admit that.
“In short, in my opinion it is more likely for a genuine Sasquatch sighting to be written off as a bear rather than for a sighting of a bear to be misidenified as a Sasquatch.”
m_m: you are absolument correctomundo. And alcalde: thanks for confirming it, man! (Bigfoot skeptics get me in stitches sometimes!) Why is m_m correct? Let alcalde tell you, better than I can. They see a sasquatch, and think bear, precisely because, wait for it now:
“”People look for things that conform to their existing belief systems (or cultural belief systems).”
AND
“We filter our experience through our belief systems and “mental maps”. In fact, I can show you several optical illusions where our subconscious brains will fill in what it “expects” to see in an image.”
While alcalde attempts to think his way out of THAT cell, let me just point out that if skeptics and scoffers could agree more often like this, we’d have confirmed the sasquatch by now. 😉
alcalde explains, precisely, why the Manitoba hunter in 1941 killed, with one shot, a bigfoot that he identified, immediately on seeing it, as a COW MOOSE he had wounded, as seen from behind. Classic. Nice job!
I agree that one should not assume a large number of bigfoot sightings are attributable to folks seeing bears. On the other hand, bigfoot sightings are too often accepted as literal as literally recounted. I think this is a mistake too.
If we remove the literalism from some bigfoot sightings, we might indeed find bears lurking there.
I exhibit one of the most famous bigfoot sightings ever, the sighting that forced John Green to take the subject of bigfoot seriously.
It is the Ruby Creek (BC) 1941 sighting (investigated by Green over a decade later) and it is generally considered in advocate lore as a solid bigfoot account. I’ll give the highlights.
Jeannie Chapman, a First Peoples descendant, on a sunny afternoon was informed by her child
that an animal was approaching their cabin.
She looked and saw some hairy animal lurking in the bushes beyond the field by their home. She called her two children to come to her.
The creature came out of the brush and, according to I.T. Sanderson’s retelling, Mrs. Chapman “saw to her horror that it was a gigantic man covered with hair, not fur.”
The animal advanced and the woman took her children and fled into nearby brush. Later, it was found that the animal had scattered salted salmon and/or busted a 55-gallon barrel of salted fish in the Chapman’s shed.
Investigation by local authorities found huge tracks around and about.
OK, so why is this an account of a bear?
I left out some details. The child who saw the animal first claimed there was a “big cow” or just a “cow” (depending on sources) coming down the mountainside. This, of course, makes the creature advancing on four legs and we could reasonably accept a child mistaking a bear for a cow (and we do not know if the child was familiar with bears at all). It is less likely that a bipedal giant ape or huge hair covered man would inspire such a cow sighting.
Mrs. Chapman was apparently familiar with local First Peoples “sasquatch” lore and had a superstitious reaction to the sighting. She believed it was bad luck and she would be haunted by it.
Her testimony changed over time. The first investigation by a local newsman revealed that
she claimed she “got one glimpse” of the manlike being before she retreated to hide. Over a decade later she told Sanderson she had “much too much time to look at it” before she hid.
According to Green, while he accepted the account as a saquatch sighting, “I did not consider her story reliable as to detail” because it was not always consistent, and “I have since read accounts in which she is quoted as having said things that do not agree with some of the things she said to me.”
Authorities who first responded to the event thought it was a large bear event. They believed the tracks were bear tracks, even though the tracks seemed two legged and whatever made them seemed to have stepped over a four foot fence.
A tracing of the track was later shown by Green to a BC zoologist who recognised it as representing a bear spoor, with front paw and back paw overlapped.
The behaviour of the animal in question is known bear behaviour. The animal was apparently hungry and broke into a stash of salted fish, in broad daylight and with people mulling about. This type of event is almost common in certain locations, for bears, and if equally representative of sasquatch, would have eliminated sasquatch as a cryptid long ago.
One can read between the lines here. A bear approaches a cabin in search of food and is spied approaching by a child, who mistakes it for a cow. The child tells his/her mother who looks outside a cabin to see a hairy animal moving about in the brush. Alarmed, she calls
her children together. The bear hears human activity and stands on its hind legs to get a better take on the cabin and the humans moving about.
Mrs. Chapman looks out again and is totally freaked by a very large animal standing on two legs looking directly at her and her children. She remembers all the “sasquatch” stories she has heard over the years, relating to giant hairy humans and thinks she sees one in the flesh.
Advocates interview her years later and her description of the animal is given more detail by the questions asked. Did the animal have a bear like snout? No, it had a flat face. (Never mind that a bear looking directly at you would its muzzle obscured by the angle). You know what a bear looks like? Yes. (Never mind that, before tv nature shows, a person living in remote areas may have known what a bear looks like, but also may have never seen a bear on two legs. Only humans stand on two legs—right?) Did the animal have shoulders? Yes. (But did it, or is this a later “false” memory held in conjunction with her belief in “sasquatch” and in her interrogators belief she did not see a bear?)
And it should be noted that the tracing of the animal’s track is reasonably recognizable as bear, and, except for size, little resembles the bigfoot track we have come to know and love.
jerrywayne:
Note that in everything you’ve said, there isn’t one piece of prima facie evidence that says “bear.”
I’d expect this woman to know what a bear looked like. (It’s not possible for any two things on two legs to look more different than a bear and a sasquatch, as described, except maybe a bear and a bluejay, although those two are not much more different.) “The behaviour of the animal in question is known bear behaviour.” It has also been described in many sasquatch reports. Tracks with a midtarsal break marker – they happen a lot – would be a prima facie excuse for a biologist to try to snow a non-scientist by saying “representing a bear spoor, with front paw and back paw overlapped.” Never mind that the bear appears to have NO TOES on one of its feet!
And as so often happens, look at what just gets discarded from the pseudo-analysis, utterly:
“…even though the tracks seemed two legged and whatever made them seemed to have stepped over a four foot fence.”
So. If you are concluding bear, I basically wouldn’t trust you. You didn’t analyze all of the evidence available, actually, didn’t really analyze any of it AT ALL, even though most of it says, tellingly, “NOT BEAR.”
And this is only one account. You have a few thousand more to debunk, not so good for you given that you couldn’t even put a rational dent in this ONE account.
(Doesn’t even include the utter literal credulity a skeptic (?) displays in the face of a CHILD’S story. Shoot, the proponents may be a lot of things, but no proponent I respect is anywhere near that credulous. Tut tut there, amigo.)
DWA,
You must be in the throes of a hive mentality. Such stinging remarks! I’ll try to address your emphatic criticisms.
As to prima facie evidence, remember the initial investigators thought this was a bear event. Remember too, when Green presented the tracing of the track to a zoologist, the scientist concluded it was bear spoor. (Now IF I were to argue in your own little special fashion, I would say that the scientist agrees with ME and therefore YOU are WRONG. But, I don’t like arguing in your fashion, so I won’t.) (Smile)
I’m sure you have actually seen this tracing, and except in size comparisons, it looks less like bigfoot spoor than it does an overlapping bear track. There are many web sites that will show you what overlapping bear tracks look like.
You no doubt are well stocked up in your man-ape library, so I refer you to Messner’s book on the Yeti where you will find an excellent example of overlapping bear track in mud. Dang if it doesn’t look almost like a human print!
So, one piece of tangible evidence from this event has been determined to be bear by someone who should know. Your suggestion that the hind print was toeless overlooks the fact that the tracing was just that: a tracing of the outer edges of the track.
Now your attempt to turn this evidence into non-evidence is to bring up “mid-tarsal break”.
Now, pray tell my dear Dr., where in this account do you find mention of a mid-tarsal break? Where is YOUR prima facie evidence for such an interpretation of the events? And I am curious to know, amigo, where did you find the evidence that led you to believe a zoologist, not biologist, “snow[ed]” Green?
I referenced the “two-legged” tracks and the “stepping over” a fence in order to honestly include what some might consider important information. I’m guessing these two factoids probably impressed Green and influenced his idea that this was a sasquatch event.
Of course, as you should know, bear tracks that are exhibiting overlap would look two-legged. This is not a controversial statement.
As to the stepping over a fence, you might find this just too incredible to believe of a bear. YOU might.
There is really no credulity involved in suggesting that to a child a bear walking on all-fours might look more like a “cow” than it would a giant bipedal ape. However, I’ll just have to accept your word that it is such a credulous idea that not even you would entertain it.
The event demonstrated typical bear behaviour.
You suggest such behaviour also indicates bigfoot. If you are correct, this makes it even more puzzling why we do not have conclusive evidence of bigfoot by now. You ever wonder why?
You suggest Mrs. Chapman should have known what a bear looked like. Maybe. She said she did. But, can we not reasonably suggest that she may have never seen a bear in standing position.
See, you and I know what a standing bear looks like. Now, I have never seen such a thing in person, but I have seen film and still photos galore of such an event. But what if Mrs. Chapman never had.
If you have read Messner’s MY SEARCH FOR THE YETI you might not be surprised to know Himalayan aboriginals believed in an animal sometimes called man-bear, and sometimes mixed up in local lore as a wild man. They described this animal in human terms; for instance, they would refer to this creatures offspring as “children”. In truth, this animal was a bear. Because it would sometimes walk on two legs, a feat only seen in humans, the bears would elicit awe and superstitious beliefs among the locals.
So, we can suggest (but of course never know for sure) that Mrs. Chapman may have glimpsed a standing erect bear, a sight she may have not seen before, and was thoroughly frightened at the proximity of this huge, bidedal hairy thing. She remembered the sighting as a sasquatch because it was the only entity she “knew” of that would fit the description of a giant, hairy two-legged entity. Later years, in later interviews, she changed her story somewhat and it is not beyond reason to suggest she may have “remembered” more details to placate later advocate investigators.
Despite your “thumbs down” review of my post, there really isn’t anything unreasonable or credulous about my interpretation of the events in question. Sorry your hive mentality came into play, but just remember:
Come to repect the skeptic; He is your friend!
jerrywayne: I still see
1) no prima facie evidence that points to bear;
2) continued glossing over of the two-legged trackway. Overlapping tracks don’t look two-legged; they look like one track of a two-legged animal, kinda but not really. A bear can’t go on like that for any distance any more than you or I can run on one leg, so a trackway that looks two-legged, IS two-legged;
3) continued glossing over of the stepping over a four-foot fence…with the added fantastic claim that a bear can do that (it can’t…most other than record-size brown and polar – neither of which this was if it was a bear – cannot at all, and NONE can on two legs);
4) continued glossing over that the statements in 2) and 3) were made BY THE SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATING THE CASE (why shoot your own “analysis” in the foot like that?);
5) Absolutely incredible “mundane” explanations! “As to the stepping over a fence, you might find this just too incredible to believe of a bear. YOU might.” [Implied finish: someone determined to make the world think bear, no matter what, wouldn’t put space flight beyond a bear. 😀 ]
6) “So, one piece of tangible evidence from this event has been determined to be bear [no matter what!!!!! 😀 ] by someone who should know [but knowledge and scientists become strange bedfellows when ol’ biggy is the subject 😉 Read “This Can’t Be A Bigfoot,” Chapter 1. 190. 240. Oh, pick a chapter].
7) “Your suggestion that the hind print was toeless overlooks the fact that the tracing was just that: a tracing of the outer edges of the track.” Excellent! A great way to cover up that there aren’t two sets of toes in the track, so maybe the track isn’t two feet, and the apparent overlap just might be a midtarsal break marker! That assertion is no less valid than any you have made. And it is backed up by more evidence, to wit: mainstream “analysis” of cryptid evidence usually works just like that.
8 ) “The event demonstrated typical bear behaviour. You suggest such behaviour also indicates bigfoot. If you are correct, this makes it even more puzzling why we do not have conclusive evidence of bigfoot by now.” No it doesn’t. Why would it? “You ever wonder why?” No, I know why: bear, NO MATTER WHAT! 😀 Not hard for an ape to hide from ‘science’ like that. 😉
9) “See, you and I know what a standing bear looks like. Now, I have never seen such a thing in person, but I have seen film and still photos galore of such an event. But what if Mrs. Chapman never had.” A native woman, in bear country. Absent evidence to the contrary, of which there appears none: SHE KNOWS WHAT BEAR LOOK LIKE.
I could go on. But I don’t see the picture changing. Once again, only one account. So what? I say. But once again: no reason to believe this woman saw anything other than what she says she saw.
DWA,
My view is that bigfoot phenomena is an open mystery. While I doubt the existence of a giant native American ape, I do not say it is impossible and I leave open the possibility of such an animal in the remote Pacific North West.
I do not accept or understand scofticism, which I define as someone who is more interested in scoffing, in disbelief, at the phenomena rather than in trying to understand it. Similarly, I am puzzled by contra-scofticism, the advocate’s counter scoff aimed at any possible mundane explanation alternative to the advocate’s belief that the phenomena can be understood only by accepting the idea of a breeding population of bipedal apes in the American countryside.
There is nothing inherently and rationally prohibitive in considering the Ruby Creek account a bear event. Of course, there is no way to say definitively whether or not it is a bear event. All I wanted to show was that Ruby Creek could possibly be seen as a bear event, given that the posted topic concerned bears maybe being taken for bigfoot.
My posts above concern the possible reconstruction of Ruby Creek as a bear sighting. For the moment, let’s take Mrs. Chapman’s description of the animal out of discussion. What are we left with?
The first person who saw the animal, a juvenile, thought it was a cow. This implies that the animal was moving initially on four legs.
Investigators (not scientists) who responded to a call thought it was a bear event, judging so based on the evidence they saw.
The behavior of the animal inferred from evidence such as a raided and broken fish barrel, is consistent with known bear behavior.
A tracing of one print was made on sight; apparently no one could or thought to make a plaster cast. This tracing was determined to be a bear spoor by a qualified scientist who later examined it.
While the tracing was as large as a bigfoot track, it does not otherwise resemble the type of spoor allegedly made by bigfoot.
Now, let’s add Mrs. Chapman’s account. She said she saw a large, hair covered man and she was terrified. We should not lose sight of the probability that she had a but a very brief look at the animal in question.
You feel she should have known what a bear looked like. My point made in above posts is that we do not know if she had ever seen a bear standing on two legs before. It is reasonable to suggest she may have not (what opportunity would she have had previously to see a bear standing on two legs?).
This point is crucial. The reason I referred to Messner’s book is because he discusses how native belief imbued bears with human-like attributes because of the ability of bears to stand, prolonged, erectly—like humans and unknown in any other local mammal. It is no stretch of imagination to suggest that Mrs. Chapman did not understand what she was seeing because it was foreign to her experience, and she simply compensated by understanding the event in terms of a handed down belief (lore) in giant wildmen.
Also, keep in mind that by all accounts the woman had a superstitious belief in wildmen and she even felt she was cursed by seeing such (she became addicted to drink and later died crossing a river). Remember too, her story was inconsistent, even according to an advocate, and more detail was “remembered” as the years went by commensurate with both her cultural belief in wildmen and her interviewers beliefs in anomalous apes.
Consider this: I had a cryptic sighting once of a giant Garden Spider. On a sunny summer day, I was hiking in a wooded area when I ducked under a low hanging tree limb. I was met with a face full of spider web (which always creeps me out). I looked straight ahead and saw a monstrous Garden Spider, its body as large as a 70 watt lamp light bulb and its legs at least a foot long each. I was really frightened and immediately moved as far away as quickly as I could.
Later, I thought: did I see what I thought I did? It was only a brief “encounter”; did I see such an enormous spider or did I imagine it? Did I mistake a leafy, gnarled tree-limb, as monster spider, suggested in my mind by a face full of spider web? Or did I really see a creature unknown to science, easily the largest spider existing—if it existed?
With my experience in mind, I can easily understand how Mrs. Chapman framed her encounter, which was made suddenly and frighteningly, by associating it with the fears and apprehension she must have felt whenever she was told giant wildman (sasquatch) stories in her youth. Despite your protest, a fearful glance at a tall standing bear could be reflected back as a monstrous hairy man, in the woman’s mind.
Importantly, it should also be mentioned that you take “sightings” as literally recounted, probably seeing such events in your mind’s eye almost exactly as recounted. What you do not take into account is the fact that the sighting report is not a virtual replay of events as they were unfolding, but instead are the MEMORY of the events, imperfect as we know they are.
As to the physical evidence that convinces you the Ruby Creek event was a bigfoot encounter, I am not so sure why you find such so compelling. Your language is a little unclear to me on this point, so I’ll just say: an overlapping bear trail gives the impression of having been made by two feet, left and right, and thus obscures the fact that the animal is walking on four feet. The track hence appears bipedal.
We do not know how much of the track appeared to be strictly bipedal, but there was a reason the tracks were recognized as bear tracks.
Now, it seems truly incredible to me that you cannot see how a large grizzly bear can negotiate a four foot wire fence. Do you think such an event is impossible? Or, are you imagining Yogi Bear stepping over such a fence and you’re thinking: “preposterous, he would catch his dingle-berries on the barbs if he tried”?
No, amigo, a bear can step over such a fence, without assistance I dare suggest. (I once owned a beagle that could literally, from the ground, climb over a five foot hurricane fence, a feat one wouldn’t believed if not witnessed). And, as you mockingly suggest, what alternative does a bear getting past a fence have—-flight?
One last thing. I have always thought your virtually unquestioned acceptance of “sightings” is blindingly naive. Now, I realize you are not alone. Upon reading other advocates, Moneymaker comes to mind, I realize you (and others) rig the discussion in your favor by accepting such evidence at face value and by making it illegitimate, in principle, to challenge such evidence by interpretative means. By this I mean, you accept Mrs. Chapman’s sighting without question, and will not accept any interpretation contrary to your acceptance of its literalism. You demand “evidence”, but such a clause is really just a resort to unrealistic demands; in this case, you would apparently want someone to have filmed Mrs. Chapman seeing a bear at this event, or another witness to say “I was there, and the lady saw my uncle Ned!” or some-such.
Let’s apply your defense insurance to my sighting. I had to have seen, unknown to science and to the rest of the world, a giant Garden Spider because I said I did. Any interpretation of the event that doesn’t square with what I said I saw, such as positing my mind was playing tricks on me, or that the contrasting play of shadow and sunlight projected an image I rashly assimilated as a monster sighting, is out of bounds conceptually as an explanation. You would want “evidence”—-such as film of the event or someone else having witnessed the event but seeing something else. This is your counter argument to interpretation, and it will always insure that you get want you desire—belief unmolested by doubt.
jerrywayne: let me see if I have your views on this issue correctly, amigo.
(I do. 😉 )
1. Evidence cannot be reviewed, even looked at, until proof is obtained.
2. If it is at all conceivable that something could not be a bigfoot, it wasn’t one.
You may dispute me. But your approach to the evidence typifies, precisely, that of a person who firmly believes those two things. In other words, you could not ACT more that way if you firmly BELIEVED that way. Your approach PROHIBITS considering ANY evidence in ANY way as: might have been a bigfoot. No, it DOES. Regardless what you may THINK.
Now. It would help if you got me right too. I have tried, many times. But you are worth salvaging. 😉
“Importantly, it should also be mentioned that you take “sightings” as literally recounted, probably seeing such events in your mind’s eye almost exactly as recounted. What you do not take into account is the fact that the sighting report is not a virtual replay of events as they were unfolding, but instead are the MEMORY of the events, imperfect as we know they are.”
What you think is EXACTLY, and cold not be MORE, what I think. Just as your first sentence could not be LESS what I think. Here’s what I do that you don’t: I READ THE REPORTS. I never take a toss-off remark about, or by, a kid very seriously. (I saw a big kitty, mommy, does NOT mean the kid saw a kitty – or a cow – unless evidence supports that.) But a sighting made by a child who remembers, decades later, what they saw, precisely, is a different story and must be treated differently. (To imply that adults misremember mundane childhood events as sasquatch implies mental illness. This must be backed up BY EVIDENCE. No, normal functioning adults do NOT do that.)
“As to the physical evidence that convinces you the Ruby Creek event was a bigfoot encounter, I am not so sure why you find such so compelling.”
For one thing, HER SAY SO THAT IT WAS. Natives don’t turn bears into apes; you are presuming something that doesn’t happen in the normal world we inhabit. For another thing, who said I was convinced? She did not see a bear. Unless, of course, she was lying to get attention, which she may well have been.
You’re ignoring my strictly-scientific approach on purpose, I fear. ONE ACCOUNT, REGARDLESS HOW COMPELLNG IT SOUNDS, AIN’T NOTHIN’. Frequency and coherence, uber alles. Unicorn: not real. Ivorybill: extinct. Sasquatch: plausible and worth looking into. Why that one and not the other two? F and C. Period.
“…an overlapping bear trail gives the impression of having been made by two feet, left and right, and thus obscures the fact that the animal is walking on four feet. The track hence appears bipedal.”
No it doesn’t.
As I said above: Overlapping tracks don’t look two-legged; they look like one track of a two-legged animal, kinda but not really. A bear can’t go on like that for any distance any more than you or I can run on one leg, so a trackway that looks two-legged, IS two-legged. Occasional track overlap may happen. But you will never see a trail of overlapping bear tracks looking like a bipedal critter made them. That’s wilder than a bigfoot. Or a unicorn.
“No, amigo, a bear can step over such a fence, without assistance I dare suggest. (I once owned a beagle that could literally, from the ground, climb over a five foot hurricane fence, a feat one wouldn’t believed if not witnessed). ”
He ain’t, that is AIN’T GONNA, STEP over it, like nothing happened. And leave, as the account clearly states, a track that looks bipedal. Your beagle, I am so sure, left a trail after climbing that fence that looked like a bigfoot did it.
😉 Sasquatch, however, have been reported by eyewitnesses casually stepping over four and five-foot fences, many times. A biologist with an open mind would say: given choce, probably a sasquatch. Sorry, science at work there. Unless, of course, you just blithely take all the sasquatch evidence and toss it in a dumpster without a glance. Science not so much at work there. Science taking a brain vacation, there.
“One last thing. I have always thought your virtually unquestioned acceptance of “sightings” is blindingly naive.”
Amigo, you gotta read what I post, man! For the 500th time (do I get a prize?): when the sightings stand unchallenged by any sensible alternative explanation, they deserve review in the field to substantiate what is causing them. Saying that it could have been a bear hopping around on one foot is NOT a sensible alternative explanation. 😉
But of course I forget your blind belief in numbers 1 and 2 at the top of this treatise. 😉
“Now, I realize you are not alone. Upon reading other advocates, Moneymaker comes to mind, I realize you (and others) rig the discussion in your favor by accepting such evidence at face value and by making it illegitimate, in principle, to challenge such evidence by interpretative means.”
Wrong, amigo. We “rig” the discussion by noting ALL the evidence in our favor, and NONE of the evidence in yours; and noting also that bears hopping around on one foot kinda has to be supported by evidence. 😀
(Doctor’s Note: “Interpretive means” can’t include or be limited to smoke screens; implying mental illness in normal people; Laying On of Hands; divining rods; What I Want To Think, No Matter What: or any other kind of “interpretative means.” This is science. Where is your EVIDENCE?)
“By this I mean, you accept Mrs. Chapman’s sighting without question, and will not accept any interpretation contrary to your acceptance of its literalism. You demand “evidence”, but such a clause is really just a resort to unrealistic demands…”
Nope.
She could have been lying. She could have been deranged. She could have been told to see a bigfoot by aliens. Or bears. You tell ME. 😀 But there’s no reason to say she didn’t say what she says she did, unless you have EVIDENCE.
If you are saying it is unreasonable to provide EVIDENCE…well, this is why I put so little stock in bigfoot “skeptics.” 😉
Gosh, DWA! Your last post is largely incoherent. I know you can do better, my friend.
I asked you about the “physical evidence” that gives you confidence in the Ruby Creek affair as a bigfoot event. Your reply: “HER SAY SO THAT IT WAS.” Sorry my friend, but testimony is not “physical evidence.” (I’m assuming, amigo, that you really are not a close reader of words from a skeptic.)
You say “Natives don’t turn bears into apes.”
Funny, but Mrs. Chapman never said she saw an ape. John Green turned Mrs. Chapman’s sighting into an ape encounter, not the witness. YOU have turned her sighting into an ape encounter; she never claimed to have seen an ape. (Since Sanderson believed sasquatch was human or proto-human, he no doubt believed Mrs. Chapman’s testimony was confirmation of his view.)
We get into some really weird stuff in your address about overlapping bear tracks. Here we go:”Overlapping tracks don’t look two-legged; they look like one track of a two-legged animal, kinda but not really.” What In The Hey? I had to read your dissertation on overlapping tracks several times to even get to a sliver of comprehension concerning what you are saying. Then, I figured it out!
You actually seem to be thinking I am positing that in the Ruby Creek event, a large bear walked on its hind legs all around the homestead, and when I refer to “overlapping”
bear tracks, I’m arguing that the bear put one back foot into the track of the other back foot.
Is this what you are thinking!!
No, my friend, you are not comprehending. Mrs. Chapman only “glimpsed” a standing bear. When she moved away from the area, with her children, the bear would have advanced on the cabin and shed, ON ALL FOURS, with its back right foot stepping into the track of its right
forefoot, and same on its left side, creating elongated tracks that seem not only human-like, but bipedal.
I quote you: “you will never see a trail of overlapping bear tracks looking like a bipedal critter made them. That’s wilder than a bigfoot. Or a unicorn.”
I quote Nicholas Saunders from his 1995 book ANIMAL SPIRITS, concerning Yeti tracks: “…the photographic evidence is not conclusive as very large footprints are sometimes produced by mountain bears. When travelling at a lope, bears place their hind feet partly over the imprints of the fore feet to produce tracks which look as if they were made by a large bipedal animal.” (p. 144)
I really don’t know how you might think a bear negotiates a 4 ft. fence if it doesn’t step over it, but you seem to think that is impossible. We know tracks led to the fence and were found on the other side. Does this really preclude any consideration of a bear as the Ruby Creek culprit. I don’t think so.
You suggest one “COMPELLING” sighting really
“AIN’T NOTHIN” as far as its evidential value.
But, you apparently believe an accumulation of
“NOTHIN” means somthin. Compiling “NOTHIN” (sightings) gives you “COMPELLING” evidence (oops! sightings) after all. This is your “strictly-scientific approach.”
Let’s look at this logic: “I never take … remarks… by a kid seriously”, “but a sighting made by a child who remembers, decades later, what they saw, precisely, is a different story…” Do I have you right: A fresh sighting account is not preferred, compared to one remembered “decades” later?
Now you apparently do not accept that people may mechanically assimilate events as they experience them with their own personal, internal understanding of the event as rehashed in remembering. You say of this probably everyday occurrence: “normal functioning adults do NOT do that.” Ok, if you say so, Doc.
As to your two points concerning my approach:
1. I do think evidence can be reviewed, which is what I have been doing with the Ruby Creek affair. Of course, I know that you disallow any nuanced consideration of evidence if it does not support your belief in bigfoot. (And please amigo, don’t tell us again that you have no belief in bigfoot and then spend the rest of your post displaying your belief in bigfoot).
2. Your second point is stated prejudicially, but it has some truth. You should always prefer mundane explanations to extravagant ones. It will get you closer to finding the truth. In the Ruby Creek affair; we KNOW bears exist; we KNOW bears exhibit the kind of behavior described; we KNOW bears can leave human like tracks, etc. We “know” NO such thing about an alleged, giant bipedal ape.
And one more thing about Mrs. Chapman’s testimony. We know she changed it over time. Initially, her sighting seemed to be a mere “glimpse” of the animal in question. One version of her story says she thought she spied a bear initially. One could see how she might catch a quick look at what she saw and took it to be a bear obscured by foliage (since it was), only to look back a few moments later to see a frighteningly large, hairy beast standing on two legs. In that case, a hairy giant on two legs was her internal idea of a sasquatch projected onto the event.
DWA, let’s call a truce. I don’t mind you critiquing my posts. But the bragging and the belligerence and the sloppy attempts at ridicule
are really not necessary. I know you are passionate, and I realise you view yourself as some sort of “skeptic slayer” guarding the gait. but I know you are capable of better, more focused, and more sober analysis than you sometimes produce in hasty reaction.
If you view yourself as a person of scientific bent, a little dispassion would be nice.
You have made others uncomfortable and they do not want to post here. Let’s show everyone that Cryptomundians are capable of calm deliberations and gladly welcoming of all views entwined in cryptozoology.
And if you don’t agree, stick it amigo, until next time! (SMILE!!!)
Amigo: Read up there. Each one of my posts, again. Dispassion personified.
I think your REACTION to dispassion gets a little, well, I never have used the phrase “stick it” on this forum.
And the idea that bears produce TRACKWAYS that look like a bipedal animal made them (the investigators clearly thought they looked bipedal) is absurd. The occasional track overlap will happen. But you will never find a bear TRACKWAY that looks anything like anything but a bear made it. (That’s the mistake I made up there, not using the word TRACKWAY when that is what I meant.) A quadruped cannot leave tracks that look bipedal over any distance. Not if it is actually moving on four legs, it can’t.
Adios, amigo! [SMILE!!!!]
P.S. I’m a SKEPTIC. But people who Believe in Stuff like Nonexistence tend to have trouble with that.
Thanks amigo for your calm response. Of course, I must disagree with your assertion concerning “dispassionate” posts: you like to trash any skeptical posts with too much relish and haste to appear calm and contemplative.
The problem with the Ruby Creek event, one that makes it difficult to reconstruct, is its recorded variation. It seemed to grow with the retelling, and from its earliest use as “evidence” for sasquatch, it was solely in the hands of advocates with a pro-bigfoot axe to grind.
Your assertion concerning the improbability of bear tracks appearing bipedal over a distance fails to convince me. First, we have no photographic evidence or even a mapping of the trackway. We do not know if it was broken up by grass, gravel or rocks at places, or even how distinct the tracks may have appeared. We do not know how well the investigators reported the tracks, or if later remarks by investigators were influenced by pro-bigfoot researchers. On the other hand, we do know the surviving tracing is not inconsistent with overlapping bear spoor, and it really doesn’t look like alleged tracks of a bigfoot.
Second, you make the assertion that bears would not leave bipedal appearing tracks for any lengthy distance. This is an assertion that I doubt you can definitive demonstrate. But even if I grant your assertion as true for sake of argument, there is nothing in the Ruby Creek reporting that I have seen that would make me think this trackway was too distanced to rule out bear.
I think we should entertain the thought that bigfoot does not exist, a controversial idea among bigfoot “true believers”. This, of course, is not the same as a dogmatic belief in “Nonexistence.”
And for you to suggest you are a skeptic on the bigfoot issue, even while you have already posted previously that you would bet all your fortune on the existence of bigfoot —- well, what can I say except that you use words in your own special way and are thus bound to be misunderstood.
P.S. The “stick it” remark was meant in jest, hence the “Smile!!!”.