The Science of Sasquatch
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on September 27th, 2012
The sasquatch is just waiting to be discovered in B.C., but too few want to admit or investigate it, says a Vancouver Island wildlife biologist and author John Bindernagel.
Photograph by: Lyle Stafford, Times Colonist
Excerpts from an article in the Times Colonist:
The sasquatch is just waiting to be discovered in B.C., but too few want to admit or investigate it, says a Vancouver Island wildlife biologist and author.
“And we have what has to be the best sasquatch habitat anywhere on the planet right here on the B.C. coast,” said Courtenay’s John Bindernagel, author of the 2010 book The Discovery of the Sasquatch.
“The question for me is no longer ‘Does the sasquatch exist or not?’ but ‘Why has the existence of the sasquatch been resisted for so long?’ ” Bindernagel said.
Now 70, he believes enough sightings, tracks and other evidence of the large ape-like sasquatch — Coast Salish for hairy man — have been collected to provide evidence of the creature’s existence in B.C. and North America.
Bindernagel has collected casts of massive, human-like tracks from Strathcona Provincial Park and even heard a “whoo, whoo, whoop” call. It’s similar to a chimpanzee’s call in Uganda, but he believes it is a sasquatch calling out for its own kind.
Bindernagel comes to the investigation of the sasquatch as a scientist. He studied at the University of Guelph and the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in wildlife biology. He has worked in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Central America, teaching, conducting research, surveys and preparing and implementing wildlife management plans and conservation measures before returning to Vancouver Island, where he worked as a consultant.
The Discovery of the Sasquatch is Bindernagel’s second book on the subject and the most scholarly in its approach. Even he admits his first book, North America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch, was undertaken with a hobbyist’s approach to the subject.
But the first book attracted the interest of some of the world’s best-known biologists, including chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall. And after its publication, Bindernagel said something unusual started to happen: People began contacting him with reports of sightings. But before they even began to talk with him, they wanted to know one thing.
“They would ask, ‘Are you serious about this?’ ” said Bindernagel. “That was always the question — ‘Are you serious about this?’
“I had to say, ‘Yeah, obviously I am.’ ”
So he began to collect their reports. Bindernagel also began to collect and document details of other reported sightings and bring them together, looking for patterns or repeated details.
But he started to run into what he calls a roadblock of “prevailing knowledge.” Too many scientists were unwilling to look at evidence from various sightings. They refused to give much credence to the plaster casts of tracks. “We can’t get our papers accepted at professional conferences, so our colleagues have remained ignorant of the evidence,” Bindernagel said.
“The scientific gatekeepers keep saying, ‘No, no, no, having Bigfoot on our agenda would taint our whole conference.’ ”
So in his latest book, he attempts to take a scholarly approach, reviewing and summarizing the existing evidence. He also tries to put it in the context of scientists’ approach to “the discovery process.”
Read the entire article: The battle to find sasquatch
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
“The sasquatch is just waiting to be discovered in B.C.”
Of course it is! Unless it isn’t. If we really *knew* which, the question would be neither so interesting nor so controversial.
Fhqwhgads: When one refuses to look at evidence, one can’t tell what it is, or do anything with it. And then there remains no way to ever *know* which.
Bindernagel has reviewed the evidence, as have I, independently of him. We’re in agreement, and he’s a scientist in a directly relevant field.
None of the gatekeepers Bindernagel is referring to gives any rational reason why the evidence isn’t being considered.
In other words: on this topic, they are basically ignorant laymen.
BTW: Anyone who wants to get a good idea how science works, when it is working properly, and why it isn’t working properly here, should buy that book John’s holding up there. It is right up there with, and probably more readable than, Kuhn’s “The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions.”
Of which, well, one is needed right about now.
@DWA
What do you mean by “reviewed the evidence”? Read a book? Or did you have access to any original materials?
Sorry, but if Bigfoot is KNOWN to exist in BC, he doesn’t exactly need to be “discovered” in BC, does he? Cows are *known* to exist in Hunt County, TX; no one gets excited about the need to “discover” them there.
There are three levels of positive evidence available. (1) Good enough for a hypothesis, not good enough to make a determination. (2) Good enough to convince oneself, not good enough to convince another rational person. (3) Good enough to convince any rational person.
Regarding Bigfoot, anyone who has had a personal encounter may have level (2) evidence. They may not have the DNA, let alone a type specimen, but they may be completely convinced by their own experience. You, however, do not claim to have had a personal experience. It’s hard to see how you could claim to be personally certain of the existence of Bigfoot.
Unless maybe you think you have a portfolio, which you decline to share, which taken together is level 3 experience. So to you, Bigfoot is as certain as the cows around Commerce, TX.
Your assurances are not enough for a rational person. It takes more.
Especially since I can take you right to those cows; you can see them, hear them, and smell them. You can even buy a steak from them with considerably more confidence than when you buy a Bigfoot steak.
I am suggesting that level (1) evidence exists. It is enough to LOOK for Bigfoot in BC. It is not sufficient to allow one to KNOW BEYOND THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT THAT HE HIS THERE WHETHER YOU FIND HIM OR NOT.
By all means, LOOK. But if you don’t find Bigfoot, don’t come back and say, “We didn’t see him, but I know he was there anyhow.”
Fhqwhgads: I am trying to come up with a connection with what you posted, and what else is here.
I can’t.
No matter what I say to what you posted – and of course I’m not going there – your response will go back to what…well, to what your post rests upon.
Which is, and nothing more:
The sasquatch hasn’t been proven to exist yet.
So? Do we sit on our hands until a body shows up? How many animals do you think science would confirm if that’s what science did?
I’ve written nothing contestable up there. What I have written means what it means.
(And outside of that I have written what I think about this topic so many times, in so many places here, that I decline to do that tango again, ever. I am flat astonished at the people who come here having done no homework and thinking they know everything.)
I don’t have to explain anything to you. Would you feel constrained to explain physics to a total ignoramus, who contested everything you said? Which, from a position of ignorance, is a very easy thing to do?
Probably not. If I were you, I know I certainly wouldn’t waste my time.
What you have to explain to me is:
What you know that Bindernagel and I don’t.
You will be able to come up with nothing but:
The sasquatch hasn’t been proven to exist yet.
UM, WE KNOW THAT.
I’m not really sure where the rest of your post comes from.
But if you’d reviewed the evidence, you’d know what I know, and stop asking ignorant questions.
At least you said: “by all means, LOOK.” That, however, is science’s job, not mine.
And this just has to be said:
“You, however, do not claim to have had a personal experience. It’s hard to see how you could claim to be personally certain of the existence of Bigfoot.”
Both sentences are so very wrong that you have just equaled the unbreakable record – set and tied by Ben Radford, many times – of having delivered a statement of which no stronger proof could be given that you either read nothing I write, or deliberately set out to misrepresent all of it.
Enough.
And because I LOVE piling on:
Didn’t you announce, in as many words, in a previous blog that YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN READING ABOUT THIS?
DWA, I recall you denying at an earlier point having seen a Bigfoot. If my memory is faulty on this point, it is just faulty on this point. I really can understand how someone who has seen Bigfoot, or even seen something more vague that he is convinced is Bigfoot, could be totally convinced of the creature’s reality without being able to prove it to anyone else. (Other encounters — smells, noises, flying rocks — are not as convincing.)
So let’s get to what Bindernagel actually said, things like, “The question for me is no longer ‘Does the sasquatch exist or not?’ but ‘Why has the existence of the sasquatch been resisted for so long?” That is AN ABSENCE OF DOUBT regarding the existence of sasquatch: an absence of doubt in the presence of what you admit is an absence of proof. So much for an open mind! Yeah, that’s the way to do cryptozoology! Not the way to do science, mind you, but the way to do cryptozoology.
So you want to know what I know that neither you nor Bindernagel knows? It’s this: DON’T SAY BIGFOOT IS JUST WAITING TO BE FOUND IN BC UNTIL YOU HAVE PROOF. Say that he MAY be waiting to be found. Say even that there is good reason to suspect he is waiting to be found. Do not, however, say that he simply *IS* waiting to be found.
As for reading, how freakin’ hard would it be for you to include some titles and ISBNs? If you spent 10% of the time you spend bragging about how well informed you are in sharing why you claim to be well informed, this question would not come up. If I don’t read them, so what? I guarantee you that any question I ask, someone else wanted to ask. Maybe someone else who reads this exchange, quite possibly someone who has never registered, let alone posted, will read the books you suggest.
This is just characteristic of your responses, though. A year or two ago I asked you at least a half dozen times to list what you considered the best evidence of Bigfoot. EVERY TIME YOU REF– USED. You claimed that your vast, encyclopedic knowledge simply could not be summarized. Never mind that this is never the case with anyone who knows what he’s talking about; a professor of literature may have written a dozen books about Hamlet, but if he’s asked to summarize the play in one page, he can do it. You claimed I would not be able to give the 5 best pieces of evidence for relativity, but I responded immediately with 5 strong pieces of evidence, the significance of which I explained.
Fhqwhgads:
You’re no less wrong; but every now and then, you’re interesting.
“As for reading, how freakin’ hard would it be for you to include some titles and ISBNs?”
As I said in my last post. I have, several times here, posted in fact the same STOCK PARAGRAPH. ONE OF THEM IS RIGHT UP THERE, if you want to know why he’s so convinced.
AND WHY AREN’T YOU ARGUING WITH HIM!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
(I reserve all caps for special cases.)
“A year or two ago I asked you at least a half dozen times to list what you considered the best evidence of Bigfoot. EVERY TIME YOU REF– USED. You claimed that your vast, encyclopedic knowledge simply could not be summarized.”
Um, no I didn’t. I POSTED THE SAME STOCK PARAGRAPH THAT I HAVE, SEVERAL TIMES. And if you can’t be bothered, um, er, the point, again?
“Never mind that this is never the case with anyone who knows what he’s talking about; a professor of literature may have written a dozen books about Hamlet, but if he’s asked to summarize the play in one page, he can do it.”
Great, Mr. Knows What He’s Talking About. Apples and oranges, and anybody with a smidge of scientific mind knows it. Professor of literature!?!?!?!?!? *I* can summarize Hamlet here! (Off topic, so I won’t. You, go ahead, shoot, even *you* can do it!)
“Maybe someone else who reads this exchange, quite possibly someone who has never registered, let alone posted, will read the books you suggest.”
But clearly *you* won’t, Mr. May Want To Consider That He May Not Know What He’s Talking About. And Doesn’t Even Want To Ask Why A QUALIFIED SCIENTIST Is Saying What He Says About This, Which Anyone With A Modicum Of Curiosity Might, You Would Think, Do.
“You claimed I would not be able to give the 5 best pieces of evidence for relativity, but I responded immediately with 5 strong pieces of evidence, the significance of which I explained.”
Oh big whoop. The peanut gallery AGREES WITH YOU! All you have to do is appeal to authority! I know what you would say to anything I posted…and I told you so back then. THAT’S NOT PROOF so neener-neener. (And I have posted it, here, specifically, VERY specifically, times beyond telling. Search “sasquatch” here, and search the threads with double-digit posts – although there are more – for “DWA.” But you aren’t curious enough to do that.)
That’s what you would say. THAT’S NOT PROOF. It comes down to this – and once again I have posted what “It” is, times beyond counting on this site and won’t do it again because I know a waste of time when I see one.
But even you can get short form:
The evidence for the sasquatch (and the yeti, btw) was a mountain – compelling the full-time attention of any open-minded scientist – well before the Patterson-Gimlin film, by the late 1950s at latest. Fully-funded teams of researchers should have entered the field, as soon as that film became public, and stayed there until confirmation.
And the mountain has only grown exponentially bigger, and more and more consistent.
Which is a thorough and devastating indictment of the “open-mindedness” on which science prides itself. It’s about as open-minded as …OK, fine, fill in your church here. :-p
If that – alone – is not enough to compel you to even start with that book that guy is holding RIGHT UP THERE…
…as I said: I know a waste of time when I see one. (And you are wasting yours here, for sure.)
And don’t expect me to waste more, other than to point out to the rest of Cryptomundo: see, THIS is what Meldrum and Bindernagel have to deal with.
Because, I have to admit, that’s fun. And that’s, btw, what THIS is.
Stop reading tabloids. THIS IS SCIENCE, son.
The more I read DWA’s post on this forum the more and more I’m convinced he’s just a troll trying to push peoples buttons… Every one of his posts follows the same basic outline everywhere he posts.
“I know things and you don’t because I have done “research” and if you don’t agree with my opinion on things you simply don’t care as much as I do or don’t know as much or are just silly and I will talk about how much of a waste of time you are instead of lending anything important to the conversation.”
Then someone else inevitably feeds him by pointing out common sense or something and then he jumps head first back into his. “If you were only as well informed as me you wouldn’t be saying such silly things, look at how enlightened I am blah blah blah blah blah.”
I mean I guess I have to give him credit for committing to such an arrogant rant post after post after post….for his sake I hope its all for fun and he doesn’t actually believe any of it.
Anyway that’s pretty much all I wanted to say, hate all you want or tell me how off topic this is or how I don’t know anything or ….whatever, it really isn’t important.
WinterIsComing:
Common sense, I frequently see here, is uncommon.
You clearly don’t know much about this topic. Go ahead, try me.
Spouting, when you don’t know what you are talking about,
…IS trolling.
So stop it.
Let me add that only in cryptozoology can ignorance be seen as enlightenment.
If you want me to respect what you think…DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
And while I’m trolling, Fhqwhgads has to come in for another slam.
“You claimed that your vast, encyclopedic knowledge simply could not be summarized.”
Let’s see you summarize your science education, one post. All of it. Go. Read it? Why would I?
One of the reasons people like you think there is no evidence is that you have not read it, and will not read it. (Found my stock paragraph yet? Shouldn’t take you too long. Hint: Michigan cougar. No spoilers, sorry. I need to see whether you have one iota of interest or just come here to sneer.)
You cannot understand how to deal with sighting reports unless you have read them. LOTS of them. That’s what my stock paragraph tells you to do (and it tells you where to look). You can tell that people like Ben Radford haven’t read them, because he summarizes all descriptions as “big dark and hairy.” Good job there, Ben! Those databases get compiled for a reason, and the reason is not to be unread. It is for the interested, the curious, the non-trolls (Mr. Fourth Season up there) to note the nuances of description, the consistencies in time, place and situation of sighting, in physical attributes and behavioral patterns of the observed subject, the high frequency and astounding coherence of the encounter literature. Astounding, that is, for something that people are randomly making up. (Not so astounding for a continent-wide conspiracy two or more centuries old. Betting on that?) Casual lies and wildcat hoaxes do not add up to a serious head start on the biology of a species, clearly a great ape, which is what the encounter literature is giving us here, if you care enough to read it.
One of the reasons crypto isn’t viewed as a hard science is that people get away with behavior here (Mr. Fourth Season up there) that isn’t tolerated in the other hard sciences. You simply wouldn’t get away with the kind of stuff you are saying here on a physics website. The knowledgeable would be telling you to go find something you are really interested in rather than coming here because you think you know it all, and can rip people and ideas from a position of zero (sorry, that’s what it is) knowledge.
(Watch how the response to this really shows what Meldrum and Bindernagel are dealing with.)
Stop telling me the zoological equivalent of “you know, physics is really God moving big magnets around.”
Show me you know something about this topic. You don’t show me that. Try to. Or at least be willing to learn from someone who does. That quote of yours up there, Fhqwhgads, is a freakin’ insult, tantamount to me slagging your correspondence-course physics “degree.” (Three months, was it? Quick!)
When a qualified scientist puts out two very readable books on a topic (and there are at least two other extremely readable ones out there …found that paragraph yet?), but people think, no, it’s more fun to condescend and act like everyone here is a rube and blow them away with what I don’t know….
….I lose interest.
And am. Patience too.
Somebody once asked me: why are you so patient with all the idiots you encounter there? Sorry, but that’s what they said. I can’t help it; I didn’t say anything to them. They just read the exchanges, and posed the question.
I wonder. Maybe crypto needs to start losing its patience with ignorance.
Excuse me, Bigfoot is not, never has, nor will be in British Columbia. “Bigfoot” was the name of an individual Sasquatch that was running amok in Bluff Creek in 1958. Unless Sasquatch migrate from California to Alaska as many suspect, then “Bigfoot” the Sasquatch would probably have traversed through British Columbia.
See there it is again! without fail, FANTASTIC! You can not possibly know the amount someone else knows just by bashing them on an internet forum! You keep coming from this angle of “You don’t care enough/ are interested enough to learn as much as me” How an you possibly know that?! You don’t, you just think your special.
And for the record I dont like coming here and treating people like they are a rube or blow them away. I just find it funny that you spend more time on here attacking peoples “lack of knowledge on bigfoot” and when someone asks you to please give examples of your research or anything else for that matter you just say “I’ve already done it, I’m not going to repeat myself, and if you wont go looking through the forums for it then you just dont want to know.”
Well if thats the case why don’t you just stop posting? You have obviously added any and everything you can of “scientific” value on the subject and since you won’t “waste your time” reposting any of it in other conversations you just sort of sit around and tell people how much less they know than you.
I guess I don’t see the point is all….unless asserting your internet dominance of the bigfoot forums allows you to feel like you are doing something important? And for the record THIS is why cryptozoology is looked at the way it is by a lot of people….people like you acting like an expert on something that hasn’t been proven to be real. (yeah yeah, science is plotting against bigfoot discovery, no one wants to see the truth, if you don’t know hes real we haven’t seen the evidence you have blah blah blah. figured I would save you some time.) And not only do you claim to have done all this scientific research and you know bigfoot is out there, you then belittle other peoples interests in the subject when they dont agree with your stance on it by telling them they simply dont know or care as much as you do. It’s just ridiculous. Anyway have a good day everyone!
WinterIsComing:
Science is a female dog, ain’t it.
Meldrum and Bindernagel agree, down the line, with me; they have relevant scientific credentials and are applying them in spades….
AND WE’RE SUPPOSED TO LISTEN TO YOU!!?!?!?!!?!??!?!!??!?!?!
Go troll somewhere else.
Big tent here! Excluded is only:
Know-nothing scoffing.
Get up to speed, or ask intelligent questions (and no, I don’t like repeating myself over and over and over and over and over….only to get “feedback” like yours) …or get lost. This is a fun site, as long as people either understand science or come here wanting to learn about it.
Your disagreement with me is nothing, if it is not backed by evidence. It’s just ranting.
So cut it out. Butthurt has limits in the hard sciences.
Jonathan Poulsen:
Bigfoot is a bit more generic than that. But point taken, on terminology.
I have a feeling that, like cougar moutain lion painter puma panther; like gray and timber wolf; like ringtail and cacomistle; like opossum and ‘possum….
….neither sasquatch or bigfoot is going anywhere. We may just have to live with it.
(Native cultures also have a host of other names we could try on for size, of course.)
OK, SPOILER ALERT. DO NOT READ FARTHER UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR WORLD IRREVOCABLY ROCKED!
The sun is 45 million feet away.
The moon is across the street.
Water will kill you if it touches your skin! (Actually, I really hope you read this far!)
As WIC seems to think that I influence the evidence, simply by saying what the evidence is, thought I’d try it out!
The water thing is, I admit, a nasty trick. Don’t die of thirst, WIC!
The evidence is the evidence. I have read up, and know what it says.
To come here disagreeing with me is fine.
To disagree with me on that, however, is ignorant.
Sorry. Regardless what WIC thinks, I don’t make the rules on this planet. Nature does.
You know, I get DWA’s point of view, and I happen to share it. If anyone here truly wishes to make a credible case for the non-existence of BF, at this stage of the game I’d say the burden is on you. Why? For precisely the same reasons DWA continues to point out.
Look, to state something blindingly obvious, this thing Al Gore invented has been a game changer in so many areas of human endeavor and knowledge, cryptozoology amongst them (I mean, we are here, aren’t we, on this site, for exactly that reason, aren’t we?) When you allow the population at large to post their extemporaneous impressions of their experiences with this creature, as you will find on the BFRO website, and others, and you claim to have an interest in this subject, AND you confess that you haven’t read those reports? (If you have, well, let us know that, and what you think of those reports) Sorry, you might as well raise a banner professing your willful ignorance. Well, really, you have. At that point, I too would not waste time to discuss that with you.
I know DWA reads those reports, and I’ve spent a goodly amount of my time parsing through those as well. As do scientists like Meldrum and Bindernagel. If you’d like to discuss the content of those, after you’ve read them, I’d love to do that. Until then, well, not much to discuss.