Don't BS me!

[sebastian]

Here is what John Green wrote back in the 70s:

"To avoid being taken in by the more obvious frauds, here are somethings to watch for:

Mention of long fangs or claws.

Sasquatches using caves or having homes.

Stories of tracking sasquatches through the woods, or being able to find them at will, or having seen one - particularly the same one - at more than one location.

Sasquatches supposedly captured, or filmed, but for some reason the animal or film can't be produced right now.

Claims of being able to find signs of where the sasquatch have been eating, or sleeping, or making their territories.

Communicating with sasquatches in any way.

Exchanging things with sasquatches.

Secret methods of attracting sasquatches.

Knowledge of sasquatch migration routes."

(Green, John. 1978/2006 Sasquatch - the apes among us. Page 155 - 156. Cheam/Hancock House.)

In recent years, I have seen quite a few individuals basically followed this list in order to produce their "evidence". Believe it or not, John has warned us about such behaviour (hoaxing) over 30 years ago. I think John only missed a few things such as flying rocks (pebbles), straw woven hat, and pony tail.

Seriously, to those who claimed that they have film footage etc., show us what you have and we really don't care about another documentary.

[vilnoori]

Much as I respect John Green, I have to disagree with the above statements. All of these statements pertain to the assumption that sasquatches are a lower order ape, however, I think that facial bone morphology as described by eyewitnesses, as well as foot morphology as shown by photographed tracks and plaster casts made of them both point to sasquatch being a higher order hominin, such as Homo ergaster, antecessor, or erectus, or even Homo neanderthalensis. So if that is the case, we cannot rule out that they may show a spectrum of behaviours, with some having low levels of culture acquisition, and showing primitive ape-like behaviour, while other populations may have had a longer time to acquire and keep aspects of culture (especially if they watched or were in contact with Homo sapiens populations at some point) which might include some of the above.

To out and out make statements like that is to assume more information than we currently have. Now yes, John Green is making that kind of statement based on a large data collection of sightings, but might some of that not be regionally biased. Also might he also have applied the same sort of filter over time, "chucking out" sighting reports that incorporated some aspects of the above, and keeping only more primitive type encounters effectively skewing the data that he reports upon.

Just some thoughts.

[bigfoothunter]

Green goes mainly by the intermembral index that separates humans from apes. The Sasquatch is also said to be noctornal and the eyes glow when light is shown into them, which is also an animal characteristic.

Bill
Bigfoot Field Research

[sebastian]

Vilnoori, how are you? Please don't mistaken Green's suggestion on how to spot a fake. John Green is talking about the people's part. One needs to be careful when some people are talking sasquatch using caves etc. It doesn't mean that Green rejects the idea of sasquatch using caves or having migration route etc.

As far as I concern, no one can determine the taxonomic classification of sasquatch based on eyewitnesses' description. The concept of higher or lower order in taxonomy does not often indicate the organism's behaviour nor intelligent level.

[Gerry]

It goes back to John's statement." We must strive not to let presumptions turn into assumptions."
Meaning, that while many of the above points cannot be totally ruled out; neither can they be proven to be valid.
It costs nothing to make a claim; but it costs much to make a claim and provide proof to back it up.
And I have never seen, or heard of proof which backed up any of the points on that list. Ergo...beware of such claims

[vilnoori]

Hi everyone, (waves)

The intermembral index en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermembral_index

is based on currently living organisms. When Green was doing the bulk of his thinking about this, most of the hominin fossils and remains that we now know about had not even been discovered yet, or, for many of them, a skull had been discovered but not limb bones. So that doesn't wash, I'm afraid. Plus, many of the species that have been discovered we have yet to find postcranial remains, in other words, all we have is a skull. In addition, my point remains that many homo species' remains may yet be in the ground undiscovered. If relic hominins are living they could be one of the above and in my opinion are most likely so.

Bears use caves. Humans use caves. Cougars and other large predators use caves when denning young. It would make sense that for the same purpose, sasquatches would also do so. Many hominin remains have been found in caves, probably for the same reason. Caves are good shelter and easy to defend. They are a good place to hide. I would be surprised if sasquatches did not use caves. This is an assumption based on a logical premise, it is not just a wild guess. Furthermore there are sightings and reports that incorporate caves, especially First Nations accounts (I am thinking of the reports from Yale). To make an unfounded blanket statement that sightings should be rejected because caves are a part of them is, especially at this point of everyone knowing so little, short-sighted and, in my opinion, presumptuous.

Bill, human eyes glow when light is shone into them. If sasquatches have larger eyes as an adaptation for night vision, that glow might be enhanced. I don't give much credit to the eye glow stories when there is no ambient light at all. In fact I am leery of eye glow accounts if there is no other evidence to point to sasquatch because of the many other possible sources of such an experience: owls, raccoons, deer, even spiders give off eye glow that can be mistaken for something else. There are even mushrooms that glow in the dark.

It has not been firmly established that sasquatches are nocturnal. There is certainly some activity during the day or else most of the sightings we have down on record would not be true. And in any case, nocturnal animals are not ever totally nocturnal, nor are diurnal species. Every month there are nights when it is very light out and many animals conduct business as usual, especially in snow when the moonlight is reflected back and can even throw a shadow. It's very pretty, too.

If sasquatches prey on deer, which would be a logical premise considering they probably need the protein source and maybe the fat and vitamins in wintertime (from deer liver and bone marrow) I would think they would be active when their prey are active, just like any other predator.

[bigfoothunter]

Human eyes glow? Please demonstrate.

Bears- deer - rabbits - coyote - cats - and etc have eye shine, but not humans. This was confirmed by both Krantz and Meldrum and why I do not think we are talking about the same thing. Their forearms being longer than humans was reported as far back as the Jacko incident (1884). The terminology may be newer, but the concept is much older and one Green has mentioned to others as far back as I can remember.

eye shine


Bill
Bigfoot Field Research

[Gerry]

I think that we are all saying the same thing but getting buried in semantics!
Squatch does not have infrared vision ..any more then any other night hunting creature. And is it truly infrared..or just irises which are capable of opening more to let in lore light?
Even if they do have infrared capabilities...who came up with the bright idea that a camera's film can capture such?? Can it??

[vilnoori]

Any time you take a picture of your cute blue-eyed kid and end up with red eyes you are looking at human eye shine in response to flash. It is not a glow. It is not due to a tapetum lucidum like a cat's, just the back of the eye, the retina which of course is pinky red because of the blood vessels back there. That's why I would expect sasquatch eye shine to be red too--same reason, but if their eyes have evolved to be larger to admit more light, such as other night-adapted primates have done (tarsiers are an example) the eye shine would be more intense in response to ambient light coming in their direction.

Bill, I presume your picture is also one of primate eye shine, since it is from Madagascar? Possibly a lemur or a Aye-aye (they are nocturnal). Good one. I'm sure you will know that most primates lack a tapetum lucidum, except for some diurnal prosimians such as the above two mentioned from Madagascar. No monkeys or their descendants are known to have one and to show that kind of eye glow, so it would be a bit of a stretch to say that sasquatches are an exception. It is much more probable that some other adaptation of the eye is responsible for the reported effect.

Also I doubt that they require infrared capabilities. Even human eyesight is quite good in the dark if there is some light present from a moon, as I know from my childhood in Africa, where there were no street lights and where the sun set promptly at 6 pm leaving me stranded on a footpath away from home (and late for supper). After a period of adjustment of a few minutes (up to 20 if you are willing to wait that long) it is quite possible to see on most nights except when the weather completely obliterates it, and on nights of no moon at all. Those were the nights I got home using the mental map formed by familiarity, the same mental map which sasquatches also must have since they have spent all their time no where else but in their own patch of forest and probably know it even better than we know the back of our hand, especially in the dark if that is when they are most active. A far more acute sense of smell and sense of hearing would contribute to an almost supernatural awareness of things in the dark.

As for the length of the arms, again, we have no comparison for length of arms for many newly discovered homo species because we have few or even no arm remains, and what remains we have are partial. We also have no idea how the trapezius muscle attaches from the back to the base of the skull. Apes by comparison have long arms partially because of their hunched posture due to the way the muscles attach back there, and also because their legs are proportionally short as well. We could expect some of the same sort of thing happening in any protohomin to the point of somewhere intermediate between apes and modern people. Posture can affect the length of the arms quite a bit in sightings.

[Gerry]

"To make an unfounded blanket statement that sightings should be rejected because caves are a part of them is, especially at this point of everyone knowing so little, short-sighted and, in my opinion, presumptuous."

I can say equally..
"To make an unfounded blanket statement that sightings should 'not' be rejected because caves are a part of them is, especially at this point of everyone knowing so little, short-sighted and, in my opinion, presumptuous."

Even to use your own yardstick for 'interesting' the reports of sasquatch been seen in caves or living in caves is extremely rare. Probably about 1%
I repeat! Where is the proof to make such a statement? Anecdotal, does not do it, I am afraid! I could not care less about possibilities. I am only concerned with provable facts. Does that make me unrealistic? Only to the bigfoot community. The rest of the world thrives on facts!

[billr]

Personally I agree with John Green.
The more extraordinary the claim the more extraordinary the evidence should be

[duallie]

May 18, 2011 10:19:24 GMT -5 Gerry said:

It goes back to John's statement." We must strive not to let presumptions turn into assumptions."
Meaning, that while many of the above points cannot be totally ruled out; neither can they be proven to be valid.
It costs nothing to make a claim; but it costs much to make a claim and provide proof to back it up.
And I have never seen, or heard of proof which backed up any of the points on that list. Ergo...beware of such claims

good point.

many people claim to have had all types of encounters.
there is one common factor that all these encounters share.
zero evidence or proof of said encounter.

does that mean that they are all lying?
no it doesn't.
but, myself, i am not about to just believe every story because someone said so.
ones that seem solid stand out from the rest.

there are people out there who have an apparent "encounter" every single time they step just off the road.

[bigfoothunter]

May 29, 2011 1:31:44 GMT -5 vilnoori said:

Any time you take a picture of your cute blue-eyed kid and end up with red eyes you are looking at human eye shine in response to flash. It is not a glow. It is not due to a tapetum lucidum like a cat's, just the back of the eye, the retina which of course is pinky red because of the blood vessels back there. That's why I would expect sasquatch eye shine to be red too--same reason, but if their eyes have evolved to be larger to admit more light, such as other night-adapted primates have done (tarsiers are an example) the eye shine would be more intense in response to ambient light coming in their direction.

I was not referring to the 'red eye effect', but actual reports of the type of eye-shine attributed to animals sich as the bear, deer, racoon, etc,.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_ape

[Richard]

May 26, 2011 1:31:01 GMT -5 Gerry said:

Even if they do have infrared capabilities...who came up with the bright idea that a camera's film can capture such?? Can it??

Sorta ...

Modern day CCDs are able to detect some wavelengths into the ifrared portion of the spectrum - not a lot of it, but certainly can.

It also doesn't need to be a "night vision" camera. Next time you have your iPhone, Blackberry or cell phone with a camera and video mode, go into video mode and point your remote control at the camera and push a button.

You'll see the IR LED (Infrared Light Emitting Diode) pulse white in colour - you are picking up the IR wavelength.

Now, will this show up as "red glow" ... no it does not. In fact 'redeye" as it is commonly known is due to the the light reflecting off the back of the eye itself:

Light from the flash reflects off the fundus at the back of the eyeball and out through the pupil. The camera records this reflected light. The main cause of the red color is the ample amount of blood in the choroid which nourishes the back of the eye and is located behind the retina

So any "eye glow" when seen through a camera isn't a glow ... in fact the same holds true for light in the eye of a critter at night. Their pupils are dilated allowing the light to reflect off and "glow".

There you have it folks ;D

Richard.