EP 20: Bigfoot Evidence & Legacy ft. Dr. Jeff Meldrum (1958–2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Close Encounter Club. I'm your host, Justin Gearhart.

(00:09):
Tonight's episode is one that I feel honored and a little emotional to share. Dr. Jeff Meldrum,
a world-renowned anthropologist, anatomist, and one of the leading scientific voices in
the search for Sasquatch, joined me and Josh for a conversation not that long ago.
On September 11th, 2025, Dr. Meldrum passed away. Not only was he a brilliant anthropologist

(00:33):
and anatomist, but also one of the few scientists willing to step out into the unknown and ask
questions most of his colleagues wouldn't touch. His work on Sasquatch footprints and human evolution
left an impact on me and many others that will last far beyond his lifetime. What you're about
to hear is one of his final recorded conversations. Unfortunately, we couldn't get his camera working

(00:56):
on that day, so this will be an audio-only episode. But I think in some ways that makes it even more
powerful, because it's just his voice, his ideas, and his passion for the truth.
It's not often you get the chance to speak with someone who completely shifts your perspective.
I'll be honest, I was never really a believer in Bigfoot. And Dr. Meldrum was the very first

(01:19):
person I ever spoke to about Sasquatch on this show. And what an honor it was. This conversation
changed my opinion dramatically. And I think by the end of it, those of you that are a little bit
skeptical of Bigfoot, you might find yourself looking at the mystery differently too.
This is Episode 20, and our conversation with the legendary Dr. Jeff Meldrum.

(01:42):
And you're listening to The Close Encounter Club.
Well, my name is Jeff Meldrum. I'm a full professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State

(02:05):
University here in Pocatello, Idaho, where I've been for nearly 33 years now. My teaching emphasis
is in the anatomical sciences, particularly human gross anatomy, a very applied sort of clinical
based, base study based type of anatomy for the allied health professional programs we have here.

(02:31):
So graduate level, full body dissection, regional anatomy dissection course. But I also do research
then into the vertebrate functional comparative morphology broadly, but most specifically into
the evolution of hominin bipedalism, how we came to be adapted to walking on two legs,

(02:54):
walking and running on two legs. And as such, I also teach occasionally some courses
as an adjunct in the anthro department there. And human evolution and the survey of living
primates, et cetera, those kind of things. So it was that emphasis that really brought me to the

(03:15):
topic of Sasquatch. It was the footprint evidence, which was so intriguing, and which I had
something to offer. So it wasn't just me, you know, I just didn't have, it wasn't me having an
experience, you know, being a UFO on an on a night or seeing a Sasquatch on a given day.
It was those those experiences, some approaching those were to follow. But it was

(03:41):
an interest in the prospect of another bipedal hominin, and perhaps multiple species on a
on a what's now been recognized as a bushy phylogenetic tree of hominins and hominoids
broadly, more broadly, with evidence that some of those species may have persisted
into the present time frame. When Dr. Meldrum says the evolutionary tree is bushy, he means it's

(04:09):
not a single straight line from ape to human, but a branchy structure with many species existing at
the same time. Yeah, so that was actually one of my first questions was, did you have an interest
in Bigfoot? And that's what drew you to study anthropology? Or was it vice versa? Was it you
you had an interest in anthropology first, and then you took a turn into into Sasquatch?

(04:32):
Well, it kind of it's almost a chicken or an egg discussion, because it's hard to dissect apart
what was influencing what. So as a youngster, I mean, I grew up fascinated that from a very
the earliest age, with with all things natural history, we, we moved around a lot in different

(04:56):
situations. And we often ended up in a in a home that was close to the edge of town,
where there was wild, there were wild stretches to be explored by youngsters back in the days when,
you know, you'd grab a sandwich and stick it in a in a baggie, but the folding

(05:19):
top baggies before we had Ziploc even, and they offer the day, you know, we and mom would say
we'll be home before dark, and we'd be gone all day. And this I mean, I'm talking grade school
years, you know, I can't really imagine doing that these days, but we were exploring and and
collecting, you know, finding bones, collecting insects at Terraria and Aquaria in my room,

(05:47):
and always bringing home stray animals and, you know, had a prairie dog for a while at
all sorts of came tried to smuggle a whole grocery sack full of garter snakes into my
bedroom when I was in first grade, you know, and things like that. So when word of the Patterson

(06:08):
Gimlin film, which was my first exposure, as is the case with so many people, my age and and and
younger, somewhat younger, but maybe under different circumstances. But this was one of the
inaugural showings of the film to the public in the US was when Roger started, you know, taking

(06:30):
his documentary that showcased the film on the road. One of his first stops was nearby Spokane,
Washington, where I happened to be residing at that time. So I was at that time about fifth grade,
about 11 years old. I promise I won't interrupt too much more. But for anyone who may not be
familiar, the Patterson Gimlin film is a short piece of footage shot in 1967 at Bluff Creek,

(06:54):
California. It's the video that you think of when you think of Bigfoot. It shows what appears to be
a large upright hair covered figure now famously known as Patty striding across a clearing. The
film has been studied, debated and argued over the decades, with some calling it the most important
piece of Sasquatch evidence ever captured. To this day, it remains one of the most iconic and

(07:16):
controversial images and videos in cryptozoology. You know, as the kids at school who had seen the
advertisement in the paper, we're describing this and a couple of kids have actually seen
the readers digest article had already come that reprinted a condensed version of I think it was

(07:37):
Argosy was the version they had either Argosy or through magazine, I'm not sure which one
cared it at that time. It just seemed to embody all the things that I was fascinated because
of course my interest in natural history, I of course went through the dinosaur age and so was
fascinated by all things prehistoric, including prehistoric man and human evolution, the

(08:01):
almond infossil record. You know, we were, my brother and I, although are interested and always
aligned, we when we got interested in something, we really immersed ourselves in it. So, you know,
instead we'd never collected baseball cards, we never had sports stats, although later my

(08:22):
brother did. I mean, his almost savant ability to memorize all of these stats. I mean, I could
tell you every dinosaur's scientific name and which period it was found in and you know,
what its specific stats were and so forth. My brother could tell you sport stats, but
he was fascinated by aviation. So, he could look up and based on a contrail, tell you

(08:47):
that make a model of that aircraft and what its top speed was. Fascinating.
Yeah. And so, you know, my parents were always very supportive and very encouraging when it came
to those interests, both of us. And so, you know, we had our World Book Encyclopedia set. We had an

(09:07):
International Wildlife Encyclopedia set. We had, of course, the whole Time Life Nature Library
series. You know, summers were spent trips to the library, bringing home stacks of books and
so forth of all different stripes. But anyway, so the point being is there was a predisposition

(09:28):
had sort of prepared the soil for the planting of that seed and it took off, you know, like
Jack's Magic Beans. It really exploded. Although that interest waxed and waned over the years,
I mean, it certainly had an influence and was a lens at least for a period of time through which

(09:51):
a lot of those interests were focused. And so, when it finally came time to select a career path,
I actually went to college on a scholarship on a free veterinary science and had already done my
volunteer hours at a local clinic and had gotten to know the veterinarians in the neighborhood

(10:14):
and so forth and was, you know, very eager to pursue that. But I hadn't to clue what academia
was. And so, not having had any role models in that area, my exposure to the collegiate
environment was a real eye-opener for me. I just loved, you know, the campus environment. I loved

(10:37):
the seminars and the concerts and symposia and the access to the library. You know, I got to
remember this was pre-internet and so to have a university library right there and all that you
could tap into and just the intellectual stimulation of the coursework, you know,

(11:00):
taking courses and all these things. I was fascinated with vertebrate zoology and human
anatomy and so forth. I eventually landed on physical anthropology and as the embodiment of
so many things I was fascinated with, the anatomy, the primatology, the paleoanthropology, the, you

(11:23):
know, hominin fossil record and, you know, literally kind of found my way through that process of
identifying programs and striking up correspondence with potential faculty mentors and reading their
reprints and doing research into, you know, what was the cutting edge, what were the real

(11:47):
questions of the discipline and where research was taking place and so on. And then that, then,
I mean, at that time the interest in big book was very, very dormant. And it wasn't until some
other events kind of rekindled that curiosity, that interest and further development and some

(12:08):
opportunities that were laid down in my path that afforded me a chance to examine some of this evidence
firsthand in the field and in the laboratory, I mean, and to get acquainted with some scholars like
John Bindernagel and Dr. Grover Kranz and others. But I was in a particular, particularly

(12:31):
advantageous position and posture being so focused on the evolution of hominin bipedalism and especially
the anatomy and the alteration, the evolution of the modern human foot form, the timing and
pattern of the process of that emergence of those adaptations, so that when I was out in the field

(12:57):
on an occasion and was shown a long line of 14 and a half inch tracks, I was one of a handful of
academics who were particularly skilled in the evaluation of footprint evidence and, you know,
fossil footprints as far as the hominin record goes. But in order to understand fossil footprints,

(13:21):
a lot of comparative studies looking at other great apes and humans walking in track beds and
evaluating comparative basis for interpreting that anatomy. So when I sat there taking in these
very, very fresh footprints in the mud, I mean, it was extremely impactful, much more

(13:43):
significant perhaps to me than the average to the average person who didn't have the depth of
understanding the appreciation of what these footprints conveyed, but the story that they told.
Yeah, I'm imagining, I'm imagining if I was walking through the woods and I saw that,
you're the guy that you would call to analyze that.

(14:04):
Well, yeah, that's, yeah, that's how it's turned out. Yeah, whether it's footprints or whether it's
there was a footprint, I was just commenting on and evaluating for someone last night and then
this morning that someone had contacted me about a forelimb skeleton that they thought could be,

(14:26):
they, according to the local sheriff's office and the coroners and so forth, they concluded it
wasn't human, but they didn't know what it was. Well, I took one look at it and it's, it's probably
a dog, it's a canine, a dog coyote. I don't think there are wolves in Kentucky right now, but there
might be some, there've been some coy wolves in that region. But anyway, the point being is, yeah,

(14:51):
I'm, I know what I'm looking at. And so not only am I particularly qualified,
the word I'm after, particularly qualified to render an opinion, but, but that opinion
is, is even more impactful to me personally, as well as I would hope to others who can appreciate
the expertise that it's based upon. You know, so when people ask me, what's the most compelling,

(15:15):
what's the most persuasive evidence? Well, it's the footprint evidence for me, it's the most
pervasive, it's the most prolific thing that we have, other than enigmatic hair samples or
inexplicable vocalizations or fleeting glimpses and a few photobomb kind of possible images.

(15:38):
The Patterson-Gimlin film remains the most iconic image that we have. And I'm quite convinced
of its credibility, but it set the bar so, so high, so early in this, nothing has ever
overtaken it as of yet. Well, you know, the human footprint is, is characterized

(16:03):
by a very distinctive suite of very derived characteristics. We have, in the course of
our evolution, humans have greatly reduced the robusticity of our skeleton, including the foot
skeleton. And, and so it is much more, we, we, we say, grasat, more slender and built, not as wide

(16:28):
for length. We have also, along with that, have very much lessened our muscle mass. So we're
much leaner. We're kind of like, you know, it's like comparing a marathon runner to a,
a bodybuilder on steroids. There's tremendous contrast. And, and of course, that has been,

(16:49):
that, that comparison has been strongly selected for people who are good at running marathons
versus people who have, you know, subjected their body to a natural hormone environments that have
caused, you know, hyperplasia, hypertrophy of muscle mass. But the point being is the hominids

(17:10):
neptically, genetically had a predisposition for heavier body mass, thicker muscle, thicker
skeletal elements, more robust skeletal elements and heavier musculature. But with the advent of
homosapiens, and they've kind of pinned it down, it appears that we have a duplication or two of

(17:33):
a gene known as myostatin. Statin means, you know, put the brakes on, and myo refers to muscle.
And so this gene, if you knock out this gene and test subjects like mice or, or beef cattle,
they put on massive amounts of muscle. So it seems that we have genetically been selected

(17:54):
to be lean, mean running machines. And our feet have adapted to that behavior with the advent of,
and it's not just like it happened overnight. There were a lot of, of sequential and of mosaic
modifications to the foot. But in, in short, we have a narrower heel, very distinct sole pad under

(18:20):
the heel and under the ball of the foot, where the, the basis of support for a longitudinal arch
are found. Our toes are greatly shortened in length. And our big toe has remained quite large by
comparison. And it, and our, our center of mass passes from down the lateral side of the foot,

(18:44):
medial word to the ball at the base of the big toe. And then the final push-off comes through
the toe, the big toe, the halux at push-off. That characterizes the, the human. And I do that because
it's important that you have that in mind as you contrast the differences of the saswar foot.
You mentioned the mid-tarsal brake. By brake, we mean an axis of flexion, bending of the foot.

(19:10):
And so the mid-tarsus is, is where in a human foot, the bow in step would be located.
The bones just ahead of the heel bone and the ankle bone, which are greatly enlarged in size
relative to these other bones. But right in front of the heel and the ankle bone is a pair of joints,

(19:31):
which is together, referred to as the mid-tarsal joint or the transverse partial joint.
Just for a quick, the mid-tarsal brake is a flexible joint in the middle of the foot.
Humans mostly lost this feature, but apes and possibly sasquatch retain it,
allowing more powerful pushing off in uneven terrain. Back to the episode.

(19:55):
That joint is present in humans and in non-human primates, but in non-human primates,
it exhibits a much greater range of motion. So we describe their feet as flat, flexible feet.
And this affords them an adaptation for climbing up vertical supports.
So if you've ever seen a chimpanzee go up a pole, you know, that big, robust, big toe

(20:20):
opposes the long, curved lateral digits in a pincher grip. And then while that grip is maintained,
the foot can still act as a lever by flexing across the instep, such that the heel segment,
the hind foot, can move and push the center of mass up through the ankle, from the ankle upward,

(20:43):
and the animal climbs upward by displacing its center of mass upward.
It's almost like they have four hands rather than two hands.
Well, definitely. In fact, when the adaptation is extreme, as in a orangutan, we call it,
instead of quadrupedal, it's quadruminous, quadromanus. Manus meaning the hand.

(21:04):
Like manual versus petal, the foot. And so you're right, absolutely. And so that's one of the things
that the terrestrial hominins, and I've lost early on, was that divergence of that big toe.
And this is confused some people because they think, well, the only reason to lose that
divergent big toe is if it were incorporated into a longitudinal arch. Well, the arch doesn't appear

(21:29):
until much, much later. And it's not full blown, as in modern humans, until the modern human
lightning of the skeleton and musculature appears. The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens has now
been pushed back to about 300,000. Now, the immediate predecessor, that's still kind of a
wastebasket tax on Homo heidelbergensis, which takes in the species, Afro-Asian species,

(21:58):
spanning the whole old world. But it already had. I had the opportunity to look at a
late specimen that was located outside of Beijing, the Lai Xu specimen. And it has the
remarkable condition of preserving almost the complete foot skeletons. And so it gives us a real

(22:20):
exceptional snapshot of heidel foot evolution at that stage. And that specimen is actually quite
young, thought to be dated, at least preliminarily, somewhere between 12 and 20,000 years ago. Very
possibly. I mean, they were clearly around and temporaneously with modern Homo sapiens. But

(22:44):
these were big, robust, heavy muscled, heavy bone. But they did have an arch. It was a low arch. They
still had a fairly long deal segment in a broad foot because of the robusticity of the musculoskeletal
system. But this was the common ancestor for us and the Neanderthals and Denisovans, which spread

(23:05):
from Europe all the way to East Asia and Southeast Asia. And they also show an arched foot. That's
on Neanderthals had an arch, but they have a very distinctive looking foot, very robust,
very broad, you know, splayed foot with a longer, relatively longer heel segment on average.
So what I'm hearing, I actually make sure I'm understanding. So through evolution,

(23:32):
the farther back you go in time, our foots are broader, they're flatter from what I'm
understanding. And as we've evolved, they've gotten thinner. And I guess you could say more
agile, more arch, more flex. So where does the Sasquatch prints that you have studied,
where do they fall in that range? I mean, from what I've seen, they're broader and flatter,

(23:56):
is that correct? Yes. So they are even broader than what we were talking about with some of these
early pre-human, pre-modern human hominins because of their massive body size. So an animal that's
upwards, you know, the males upwards of 1,200 pounds, they have necessity, have greater breadth
to length ratios of the foot because the tissues, you know, they only have so much limits and so

(24:23):
much tolerance to the weight bearing demands. And, you know, as you know, when you in face linear
dimensions, so as a creature gets bigger, it gets taller, its volume is increasing to the cube
of those linear dimensions, whereas the surface area, like on the sole of the foot,

(24:43):
is only increasing to the square. So it never works quite right. It's like examples of
pituitary giants and humans. Their bodies just aren't designed to be that big. You've just taken
a design that's been selected for, you know, a size range between five and six feet,

(25:08):
and you've stretched it up to seven, eight, nine feet and without any modifications for that increased
size. And as a result, the tissues don't tolerate those stresses and they, you know,
knees break down, arches collapse, and then even the organs have problems maintaining
the homeostasis in its body that size. It's the simple, you know, the explanation why mice

(25:35):
aren't the size of an elephant and a creature the size of an elephant looks like an elephant
rather than a mouse because it has to have those changes in order to be a big animal like that.
So Sasquatch isn't just a big person. It isn't just a wild giant human because it has to show

(25:56):
adaptations for its increased body size. And in the foot, we see that in greater breath.
We see that in a flat, arc-less foot so that weight isn't concentrated in localized areas
beneath the heel and the ball that rather is spread out over a whole planter surface,
the sole of the foot. And there are other aspects. The, you know, the toes are smaller,

(26:22):
shorter than a, than a gorilla or a chimp, but they're not quite as short as humans because
they don't toe off the same way. So you can adapt anatomically, but you can also adapt
behaviorally. And so one of the things that many eyewitnesses have noted about Sasquatch,
when they walk, they said it looks so strange because instead of the expected head bobbing,

(26:47):
which we see in humans, because we walk with an extended limb, heel strike, and then that
rather extended straight leg acts like a pole vault over the top of that to maximize our step
length. The compliant gait with a, a walking on flexed knees and hips, the foot instead of

(27:09):
a distinctive heel strike, the foot coming down pretty much flat on the foot. We look at the
footprint casts that have been documented from that site. They don't have the differential
impression of a heel strike and a toe off through the big toe and the ball. Instead,
in some of them are flat as boards. In fact, this was part of the problem when, when Roger Patterson

(27:32):
selected a right and the left as representative footprints to make casts of, he picked the
cleanest, crispest, flattest examples that, you know, least disturbed that he could find.
And as a result, the experts look at these and go, oh, these look like they're made out of
carved wooden planks, you know, or left by something made out of a carved wooden plank.

(27:55):
They're flat and featureless. They don't look natural. Well, there were lots of them that
had more topography, that had more dynamic features that showed evidence of that midfoot
flexibility, which you can actually see in the film. So you can watch, you know, my, my interpretation
of the, of this resulting mid-tarsal pressure ridge, which sometimes is an artifact that's

(28:20):
the result of the mid-tarsal break. In other words, the foot steps on the ground, the heel is
elevated, you know, as the calf musculature contracts. And then the push off now is coming
from the entire forefoot, not just through the toes. That's what wards a bit longer toe,

(28:41):
more prehensile capability in the Sasquatch foot than the human. And sometimes if the
substrate texture is appropriate, and there's the sufficient impulse forward impulse,
it'll push back a pressure release ridge or disc from behind that mid-tarsal break

(29:02):
towards the heel. And, you know, my interpretation of that has been questioned.
First of all, we find signs of it in some of the early hominins, like the Leotoli tracks
from Tanzania of Lucy's ilk, the Australopithecus afarensis. They walked on flat, flexible feet
and some of their footprint show evidence of a mid-tarsal pressure ridge, just like that I've

(29:28):
described for Sasquatch. But when my, you know, interpretation was challenged, all I have to do
is say, well, watch the film. The action that I've just described, you can see portrayed in the film
right there before your eyes. So it's not like I'm hypothesizing anymore. I'm just describing
the associated behavior that correlates with the dynamic trace of the footprint evidence.

(29:52):
So it's a retention of a primitive trait. It's the way early bipedal hominins walk for, you know,
probably five million years or more. And so it's absolutely to be expected with Sasquatch
with then modifications as a result of their immense body mass, their huge size. Patty probably

(30:16):
stood just under eight feet, or I'm sorry, just under seven feet and weighed just over 700 pounds.
You know, her anatomy is consistent with that kind of body mass. We have examples of slightly
larger footprints, you know, from two to three inches longer that probably represent males and

(30:38):
they're relatively broader length, foot length. And those males probably stand eight and a half
feet tall and, you know, or in the neighborhood of 1200 to 1400 pounds. That's the size of a moose.
You know, you stop for a minute and plant them plate a moose stepping out of the reeds there and
yell, you know, in Yellowstone. I've experienced it several many times. You know, I'm always impressed.

(31:03):
You one of the things favorite things I do at the Bear Drounds when the Eastern Idaho Fair as I love
to go to the animal shows and see the draft horses. Yeah, enormous and Sasquatch weighs
in the same ballpark. What do you think like it would take for like a bite of bite people

(31:23):
primate to survive undetected for this long in a continent like North America? Well, the point is
they aren't undetected and people do see them. I had this very conversation on another show
that I where I was being interviewed and the caller was kind of taking me to Thomas and

(31:45):
he was drawing attention to the work of Elizabeth Loftus. Here, Dr. Meldrum is referring to Elizabeth
Loftus, a renowned psychologist who studied the fallibility of human memory, especially
eyewitness accounts. He's bringing her up to highlight how memory can complicate reports of
Sasquatch encounters. He's saying on that basis, one has to reject all of these eyewitness

(32:10):
testimonies. They're unreliable. And I said, well, I think you're comparing apples to oranges. I
said, it's one thing, you know, I actually made a little cartoon where I had this little old lady
standing in front of a police lineup with a series of silhouettes of the potential suspects.
And she's trying to pick out one from the other. And then on the other on the flip side is an

(32:35):
outdoorsman standing there. And the lineup consists of an elf, a deer, a bear, a big foot, and a
backpacker. I said it's, you know, we're comparing apples to oranges. And he was getting more and
more frustrated. Well, you know, I acknowledge the reconstructive nature of memory and its

(32:58):
malleability. But there's also a growing body of literature. The pendulum is swinging back the
other way, where it's being acknowledged that actually memory and recall is quite good. And
under the appropriate circumstances, it's very reliable. I mean, that's how we've survived.
Remembering where the fruiting trees were located or where the animals tend to go to water, you

(33:21):
know, or where the game trails are, where we can set our snares and so forth. The ability to recall
that information has been selected strongly. And he got frustrated. And he said, he said, if there
was an 800 pound gorilla out in the woods, people would be seeing. And I paused and I said, well,
that's where we started this conversation, wasn't it? People are seeing it, but you're throwing it

(33:45):
out. Just a priory is unreliable. But that's just it. You can't eat it too. So, but you make a good
point. Relatively speaking, most encounters are purely by chance. There are very few instances
where people have intentionally gone out with the, you know, the express goal of having an

(34:09):
encounter with the Sasquatch. Those that claim that they do that successfully and on a regular
basis, you know, that raises, that does raise serious red flags and concerns for me because of
the nature of this very solitary, far-ranging, very generalized, elusive creature that is intelligent.

(34:31):
But I don't think, I mean, intelligent on par with, say, a gorilla or a chimpanzee. But I don't
think, you know, and I always point this out to people when they say, well, they must be really
smart. They must be like almost human intelligence to be able to avoid people. And I said, every time
you see a buck that has avoided being shot season after season after season, are you going to invoke

(34:57):
that they, oh, they must be as smart as my neighbor or as my neighbor. Yeah. Because they, well,
not only that, I know with like mountain lions, panthers, a lot of the cat family, you can be
out in the jungle of the Amazon or wherever they may be, and you will not see them because they
don't want to be seen. And it's very rare that you'll see a creature like that. So it makes complete

(35:21):
sense to me that if this ape is even not intelligent as us, but just like weary of humans that it
could 100% stay hidden. And you're in their home, not the other way around. They know they're in
their element. You're an interloper. No matter how much you frequent the out of doors, you still are

(35:44):
not on par with an animal that, you know, makes its living under those circumstances. And so
that part doesn't concern me. You know, where are the bones? Well, there are lots of things that
are being discovered every day, it seems, or frequently. And when you consider the rarity,

(36:06):
the longevity, I mean, I think it's reasonable. We have some indirect evidence from repeat appearances
of recognizably distinct individuals by based on their footprints that span decades. And if we
can analogize within the group, you know, the super family hominoidia, the great apes and

(36:28):
humans all live to be about the same. I mean, we've extended our, our life expectancy here
recently because of the industrial revolution, because of our increased standard of living,
medical care and nutrition and so forth. It's like I tell my students in my anatomy and physiology
courses that I was describing earlier, you know, the factory warranties run out at about age 45.

(36:53):
And after that, you're on borrowed time. And everything starts to go downhill.
Is there any evidence of primates burying their dead? No, other than us. There's not. There's not.
There's not. The forest generally just takes care of its, if it's to try this very efficiently and
rapidly. So yeah, there's no evidence of that. And so, and especially because the, the evidence that

(37:18):
the few clues we have, that is encounters and footprint finds all seem to point to solitary
individuals or a female with some dependent offspring, a non-social, a solitary animal like that,
it seems even more unlikely that they're burying their dead. That seems to be a very recent,

(37:41):
even, you know, I think erroneously that behavior has been attributed, say, to Neanderthals.
It's just that they occupy caves. And in the wintertime, you know, if you, if there's 12 of you
living inside of a cave under exotic kind of conditions, and it's not desirable to go venturing
out frequently, when someone dies, you know, what do you do? You push them into a crevice and put

(38:08):
some dirt over them, if not carry them out and let them freeze outside. But even this homo naladi
attributed burial behavior, intentional behavior to this hominin that has a brain the size of a
chimpanzee, I think it's just ludicrous. The place that they're found is so out of the way,

(38:29):
you know, evidence points to it being waterborne and the evidence of fire and the evidence of
scrapings on the ceiling. I mean, it's so ambiguous and so tentative that I think it's just a bit
more sensationalism than anything. The first evidence we really have of burial is homo sapiens.
So I think it's very unlikely and unnecessary. Can I ask about another, another Sasquatch

(38:57):
evidence or footage put out there has had some good discussion around it. The Sierra sounds,
so the vocalizations that were recorded, what's your take on that?
For those of you that don't know, the Sierra sounds are audio recordings captured in the
early 1970s by Ron Morehead and Al Berry in a remote hunting camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains

(39:19):
of California. The men reported strange vocalizations outside their camp at night and
decided to record them. What they captured has become some of the most debated audio evidence
in Sasquatch research, a mix of whoop, howls, whistles, and what almost sounds like rapid fire
speech. Some researchers have argued the recordings reveal vocal ranges and structures outside that

(39:41):
of known humans, while skeptics have dismissed them as hoaxes or misidentified animal calls.
The Sierra sounds remain controversial, but for many in the Bigfoot community,
they stand alongside footprint casts and the Patterson-Giblin film as one of the most compelling
pieces of potential evidence. Here's what they sound like.

(41:26):
Well, I've always been extremely intrigued by them and, you know, one of the qualities that

(41:54):
taught my interest very early on was there's an exchange where the men inside the wiki upper
are whistling, and there's a response that the response you hear, where the men are whistling
through their teeth, you know, through their lips, not just a regular whistle, but, you know,

(42:14):
the athletic kind of whistling I guess you'd call it. What's the term with that? That would be the
one that I can't do. But in any case, when the Sasquatch seemingly responds,
there's this interesting, you know, attempt at mimicking it. Obviously, it doesn't sound the
same, and it has, it sounds like it's not whistling through its mouth or its teeth,

(42:38):
but rather from its throat. And there's actually a harmonic, an overtone that would suggest that
it's modulating its pharynx in such a way, you know, like a bird. A bird whistle can whistle,
but a bird doesn't have lips. It has a rudimentary tongue, maybe, but there's no lips. There's

(42:59):
nothing else to, and so the whistling is occurring in the syrinx. The structures in the throat
that surround the union, you know, like our larynx, the union between the freaky and the
esophagus. So it's interesting. That always made me very curious about it. I know Ron

(43:21):
Morehead very well, kept him as a friend and heard him speak. I don't agree with all the things that
he has hypothesized. You know, his quantum Sasquatch is a bit, I just can't rationalize that,
nor, again, nor do I think it necessary to account for the reported behaviors and

(43:45):
observations of anatomy and so forth. Likewise, the work of Scott Nelson, the
cryptolinguist, are fascinating. And he has actually toned down some of his assertions, because
at the last time I heard him speak, oftentimes he at these conferences, if I'm on the program,

(44:07):
I don't have the wherewithal, because I have to man a table and interact with the patrons
of the event. And so I don't always get a chance to hear the talks. But on one occasion, he actually
did kind of back off, and he said, he's not saying that they have language. You know, their

(44:28):
communications, their vocalizations may be a form of communication, but not necessarily a full
syntax, language with syntax, like, like, or equivalent to that, employed by homo sapiens,
which I thought was an important caveat, because in the past, he's overstated their

(44:50):
linguistic abilities and the gibberish and chatter, what seems like exchanges, meaningful
exchanges may indeed be meaningful, but may not be language as we define human language.
The other thing that gives me pause, and this, you know, and this I don't say lightly, because

(45:11):
I am so fascinated by the Sierra Sound. But for me, in every instance, the footprints,
if there are footprints to be seen, that's the litmus test. Unfortunately, the footprints that
have been publicized, associated with these experiences up there, are very odd. They're

(45:32):
very unnatural in appearance. They're very wedge shaped. They look almost like a swim thin with
what some have called sausage toes, because they're so uniform and cylindrical across the
end of the foot. In such a way, you can't tell if you're looking at a right or a left foot.
There's no asymmetry. That really gives me some concern. Now, Ron has said that there are other

(45:58):
footprints, and then also, I mean, I add to that oddness of the footprints, the paranormal. Initially,
the paranormal aspects, the orbs and other eye strangeness, as the term is applied,
were always kind of on the down low. They weren't emphasized in the descriptions, but of late,

(46:23):
it's become more fashionable, if you will, to dally in the arena of paranormal,
and so they've been getting more airtime. I wonder why that is, because you think about that, like,
I mean, Sasquatch, I mean, we have gigantic epithegists and other species that we've talked about

(46:44):
that are just as fascinating as Sasquatch is, and we've documented that those are where we have,
like, you know, we have bones and things like that, right? So it's so funny that, you know,
and then you also have, on another hand, you have, pretty recently, there's been
species of, like, there was a snakehead fish that was recently discovered that they thought was

(47:07):
extinct for like 40 years, and that was at the Tasmanian tiger, I believe, is another one that
I believe they've seen, or there's some evidence of. So you have all these evidence of other species
that have been, you know, hiding, so to speak, for 40 years, but somehow you have to

(47:28):
commit this paranormal, like, woo stuff to Sasquatch, and I just don't understand why that is.
Yeah, definitely the case for cryptozoology, for the existence of cryptid hidden species,
can be made. I mean, I think, unfortunately, even in that arena, when the net gets cast so broadly

(47:50):
that you're bringing in fairies and werewolves, you know, a dogman, and all sorts of other
phenomenon, then it becomes, you know, it dilutes the rational evidence and arguments that can be
made for a biological species. I mean, and that's why I literally shun that participation. I mean,

(48:16):
well, it's fascinating. I shouldn't say shun. I guess I don't entertain it in the same way. I try to
remain open-minded, but it's, you know, this dates me, but it's that old, the Enverger commercial.
Where's the beef? You got to have a beef patty between the buns, and so far, all I've seen are
buns, and there's no beef, and when I press the issue home in some instances, it just falls apart.

(48:42):
It becomes all too clear that there is no footprint evidence for dogmen, period. There is no footprint
evidence for dogmen. Do you have other scientists and other people in your field that maybe privately
come to you and say, you know, Jeff, I believe you. I think that there's something to this,

(49:04):
but they won't, you know, come out publicly and say it because they're ashamed.
Well, yes and no, but let me just qualify some of your word choice. Most scientists are
reluctant to or are resistant to use the word believe because it carries such a connotation,
and the ideological skeptics, the trolls out there, love to use the term who-believer

(49:31):
as someone who has abandoned objectivity and rationalism and instead
holds to a conviction that's basically emotionally based. It's just a curiosity and interest,
but it's not an informed, educated, objective, critical position.

(49:55):
And so that's that. And then the word ashamed, I think it's not that so much as it's caution.
They're cautionary because or cautious. They take a cautionary stance because
they've seen what I've endured and what Dr. France has endured and others who have, you know,

(50:20):
Dr. Binternagel. Yes, though, to your question, there are people that I interact with. There are,
I mean, here's just the one illustration, facing point and anonymous, but every once in a while,
I'm successful in getting an abstract accepted to the physical anthropology meetings, my flagship
organization. Now it's Biological Anthropology, American Association of Biological Anthropologists

(50:45):
name change, but I remember one time and I learned quickly not to do a podium presentation
because I would lead time for questions. And while the presentations were always well attended,
it's not like they boycott it, you know, Meldrum's big foot talk. It was a standing room only,

(51:08):
but when it came time when I when I opened the floor to questions, it was crickets. No one dared
ask a question. And so I decided to just do poster presentations where people could have
a little more intimate interaction. And of course, they were well attended. And then you've got,
instead of just 10 minutes, you've got four and a half hours to interact with people. And it was

(51:33):
nonstop every time. And at one point, on this one occasion, this gentleman, he was, I didn't
recognize him. He was a more senior scientist, but I think he was a cultural anthropologist
or social anthropologist, I think, but more than a biological anthropologist. But in any case,

(51:56):
he leans over to me, he said, I'm so glad to see someone finally doing this. I'm glad it's not me,
but I'm glad someone's doing it. And that just epitomized, you know, that just epitomized
the attitude, the concern. Now I've had more and more, well, one of the things, and this is,
here's an opportunity for me to plug, the relic hominoid inquiry. I established an online registered,

(52:22):
peer reviewed journal back about 13, almost 14 years ago now. It is an open access journal that
focuses, provides a venue for scholarly writing, whether it's primary research articles or in-depth
book reviews, or news, commentaries, archival materials, excuse me, translations of foreign

(52:48):
papers, so forth. I don't do it alone. I have an editorial board of about a dozen
PhDs or professionals of other skill sets. We have representation of a citizen scientist
on our panel too, and are encouraging a special topic or category of submission

(53:09):
from the citizen scientist who doesn't necessarily have the accolades behind their name, the PhD,
and so forth. But the point being is I interact with a lot of people, and I interact with lots of
potential reviewers and commentators, and have had very, very positive interactions.

(53:30):
Just a couple of, not rejections, but, you know, so-and-so, well, there was one person,
I can think of one person who did never respond to repeated email attempts to contact them.
I had one person who said, who demurred because they said they had a stack of like three or four
reviews that had to get done before the end of the month, and they couldn't possibly take on

(53:52):
another manuscript to review. He said, but it looked really interesting. You know, I've always
gotten very positive feedback from reviewers, and even if they're critical or not approving,
entirely approving of the merits or quality of the paper. So, yes, there is interaction.

(54:13):
The sad thing has been, the very disappointing thing has been, a number of very prominent scholars,
like, I mentioned John Bindernagel, Grover Trance, Deris Swindler, a primatologist,
University of Washington. Just as they enter retirement, and they're now in a position
to take a more active role, you know, with no more encumbrances, unfortunately they get taken from us.

(54:38):
So, I guess the waddle for me is not to retire.
Well, you really struck a chord there with me because, you know, starting this podcast,
I really set out to be skeptical and hearing some experiencer stories of across the whole
gambit from UFO to ghost, cryptid to what have you, it really has played on my emotions a little bit

(55:03):
where, you know, you look in these people's eyes and you just have so much empathy for what they
have experienced, real or not, you know, it's real to them. As a counterpoint to that, one of my
areas of study is artificial intelligence. I'm really trying to contribute to that field,
that's something I believe in, and quantum computing a little bit too. So, what I did,

(55:27):
I had this idea that I'm going to build myself an AI. I use open AI or chat GPTs infrastructure,
and I've built a custom GPT that we call Scully, which is a playoff of the X files.
And she's, I've programmed her to be, to keep me honest, to keep me skeptical, and to bring

(55:48):
science and only science, and when we hear some of these stories, I'll feed the transcript to her,
and I'll be able to ask her questions, which has been a really cool little thing that we
have been doing lately, because, again, I really want to stay scientific and skeptical.
And I guess a question I have relating to that is, what kind of evidence do you think that we're

(56:10):
going to see next with Sasquatch? And I guess also, do you think that AI and maybe quantum
computing could help in that way? Like, could AI help us find more evidence and bring more science
into this realm? I think so. I think, you know, and I've been fielding that question

(56:32):
in a particular way for a couple of years now, and things have continued to change. But I think
that to advance this beyond the almost stereotypical way in which Bigfoot research is conducted in
the field, you know, going out looking through night vision or through thermal imaging, most often

(56:53):
at night, it seems, which I don't think is the best, or should not be an exclusive strategy,
and so forth. But I think, or, you know, call blasting, wood knocking, all these
supposed tried and true, but unsuccessful methods, at least not conclusively successful.
I think there are two directions, and I would add now a third that you've mentioned,

(57:16):
because that this is repeatedly come up. But the first two would be either one,
the applications of aerial reconnaissance combined with ever improving, or more accessible,
the improvements probably there, but the pen penetrating thermal imaging, or alternately

(57:37):
lidar with sufficient resolution, combined with the penetrance of lidar to differentiate
individual features, like of, you know, of considerable size, like we were talking about
earlier on the range of 700 to 1500 pounds. So you could, in other words, tell the difference

(57:57):
between a moose and a bear and a Bigfoot, based on the signature of the profile, or the thermal,
you know, signature, the characteristics of a thermal image. And so that's one. And as drones,
excuse me, right now, the limitation on our multi copter powered drones versus, well,

(58:21):
even fixed wing drones. I mean, there's some place where that could be a way and that would
increase the reach and duration over a multi copter drone, but also then you've got the
limitations of the battery power of the, of the instrumentation. So that's one. And I, you know,

(58:44):
I had, and it's been a while now, I haven't followed up lately with technicians in this field of
lidar, but was assured that the time was not far off when that degree of resolution and
differentiation would be possible. So I think that's one. The other is ability to cast a net

(59:05):
more broadly in order to gather DNA evidence because you've got this moving needle in a haystack
and interacting with that moving needle is, is pretty dodgy. But if that needle is leaving bits
of its DNA throughout the haystack, you just have to sample, but then it's the question of can you
differentiate the DNA from that rare and elusive entity. If this creature exists and it is within

(59:33):
the hominoid family free, it may be very easily if it's a hominid or hominin rather, if it's on
this our side of the split with the common ancestors to the known and extinct great apes versus the
bipedal hominins. And there's more and more evidence that see bipedalism wasn't, it isn't

(59:57):
exclusively an adaptation, a derived adaptation of the hominins, but there may have been some
myosin apes that like aureopithecus and denuvius and oh, there's several different
genera that have species that have more generalized

(01:00:17):
pelties and feet and so forth that bipedalism wasn't facultative bipedalism at least,
if not habitual bipedalism. It may be that habitual bipedalism is the an exclusive derived
trait of the hominin family free in which case Sasquatch could be more closely related to us

(01:00:38):
than any other living creature. And as near as say chimps are with DNA that's oh 60 or sorry 94 to
96 percent identical, maybe a Sasquatch is 99 percent identical. And so unless a very thorough
analysis is carried out and isn't it interesting that on those rare occasions we have hair samples

(01:01:04):
and unfortunately one of the characteristics that seems to be distinctive of the Sasquatch hair is
the lack of a cellular medulla. Not a mysterious feature but it's rare and unusual especially
in its consistency across all the color spectrum from you know almost white up through the mahogany

(01:01:26):
black. The lack of the cellular medulla means there's precious little DNA in the hairship.
So unless you have an actively dividing follicle or a hair that's been borne out
from the follicle with a little skin tag attached to it, you know there's not going to be much in
the way of DNA in a regular hair shaft. And so what's the result on those rare instances when

(01:01:48):
they do get DNA invariably the result is human. And it's argued that they're either contaminated
for mishandling by the witness or someone along the chain of custody or two it's simply a human hair
that's been misattributed to a Sasquatch. Hair is very persistent in the environment. It's very

(01:02:09):
durable tissue. Peryton you know holds up in the environment quite well. The third possibility
might be that you just haven't sequenced enough to stumble on those rare markers that would distinguish
a Sasquatch from us. Yeah I wonder if like a CRISPR or like a gene editing. I know that's gene
editing which is not exactly what we're talking about but I wonder if a tool like that maybe

(01:02:33):
combined with AI can help us get a little bit closer to that to kind of fill in the the gaps of the
DNA to make us understand it. And that might be yeah that might be but I think before some of
the see the problem with those applications those is you really need to have a known sample

(01:02:54):
that you can you establish the baseline for comparison with everything else. And so
short of that I don't I don't know these technologies well enough to to envision how.
Now there's been suggestions and this brings up a third wrong. There's been suggestions made by
several people that you know building on some of the interesting insights we've gained about

(01:03:20):
anecdotal report data through GIS analysis of distribution penitents and correlations
that AI may help to process in in new ways novel ways information that might be
embedded in in some of that anecdotal data basis. I mean there's been some really

(01:03:44):
interesting things that have been done. There was a paper that an editorial that was admonishing
the users of ecological modeling software not to rely unwittingly on the outputs of these algorithms
that you need to know what treatments you're subjecting your data to not just you know use it

(01:04:11):
like a magic black box. And so to demonstrate the potential pitfalls they set out to test some
ostensibly bogus data namely they used Sasquatch data and one of the individuals had had a history
with the subject matter and he'd been a student at the University of Colorado and actually did

(01:04:32):
his honors thesis on a Sasquatch related question of geospatial data analysis. And but what they
came up with was this remarkably a solid demonstration of a remarkable correlation between
black bear habitat parameters and the distribution patterns of Sasquatch data

(01:04:55):
so much so that they opined in their conclusions that you know it's possible
that two species could have such similar bioclimatic factors determining their habitat
but it seems much more likely that given the correlation that herein we have an explanation

(01:05:16):
for Sasquatch encounters they're simply misidentified bearing count and you know I got in
touch with the one author and I said what what gives I thought you were you were sympathetic to
this prospect and he goes Jeff you should realize more than anyone given your experiences had we
even hinted at the possibility in our manuscript that that this data actually lent some credible

(01:05:42):
support to the question of Sasquatch existence the paper wouldn't have gotten published so we had
to adopt a kind of tongue-in-cheek posture and you know and or you are reviewers that's so frustrating
and he said but yeah he said but I'll have you know this was the punchline I'll have you know

(01:06:03):
my two co-authors who entered into this project absolutely skeptical of Sasquatch after seeing
the results they're asking me all kinds of questions they're really intrigued I have them
both reading your book so so anyway I'm I'm thinking again I don't understand these technologies and

(01:06:25):
how they work exactly but it would just seem that building on that kind of analysis that AI might be
able to be employed in in trying to analyze you know the hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of
reports that have come in and continue to come in and you know there's a lot of chat there's a

(01:06:51):
lot of it's messy data it's not coming from you know objective observers but people who are
who are enthusiasts and that word carries some cautionary baggage yeah yeah hypothetically

(01:07:12):
if someone brought you a Sasquatch tomorrow living or dead what would be the first test
you'd want to run on it well I guess given my expertise I want to do some quick radiographic
analysis of the foot and ankle for one thing to confirm verify the hypothesis the observation

(01:07:34):
description of that central characteristic of the the Sasquatch foot the mid-tarsal break I mean
that that's sort of the key to the description you know I undertook the it no taxonomy of the Sasquatch
footprint there's a parallel Linnean system of classification for fossilized typically

(01:07:58):
fossilized cracks and traces for those instances where said cracks and traces are not directly
correlated with crack maker or trace maker in other words the extinct species of that
footprint hasn't been identified but in order to attach a description and a accepted you know

(01:08:22):
reviewed and published diagnosis of the footprint so that there's a handle that it can be discussed
and talked about and later attributed to a species this system exists and so with encouragement from
the movers and shakers in that discipline that I have only kind of peripheral involvement with

(01:08:46):
we applied that nomenclature to the Sasquatch footprints and in so doing established a description
and codified this mid-tarsal break as a central element of the of the foot morphology and the
distinguishing characteristics so that would be a real important thing is to actually be able to

(01:09:08):
confirm that it no tax on in association with the establishment of a of a nomen
for the species itself but then you know I would I would certainly be interested in
the dental morphology and so forth establishing that because obviously evidence eventually

(01:09:32):
fossil evidence of teeth from cave deposit and so forth is going to be forthcoming and
having that established would be very useful and helpful in that regard but then we of course
would want to have molecular geneticists I haven't done any DNA sequencing for decades
and would want to collaborate with those people who are doing that work now on the cutting edge

(01:09:57):
do a genomic sequence and characterize the genetics we'd want to do karyotypes as well
and staining and you know get an understanding of the chromosomal morphology as well because
that might be where some of the differences located you know even though chimpanzee is

(01:10:17):
96 percent identical to human in sequence there are some major fusions and inversions
and translocations and chromosomal rearrangements that have a had tremendous impact on the phenotypes
of humans and chimpanzees and so you know culturing some cells if they're if that was still possible

(01:10:40):
if it was an early demise or recent demise that would be significant those kind of things would
be what I would be looking for but just it would be document document document
if you could build a dream research team across any discipline to help you you know essentially

(01:11:04):
locate a Sasquatch improve the existence of one who's on it well yeah I've grappled with that very
kind of question because we we have had a couple of opportunities one that was realized and a couple
that never quite were never quite materialized that afforded us the means the wherewithal to try to

(01:11:31):
do that a little bit I had the privilege of working with someone in the field who was remarkably
talented as a wildlife biologist and ethnobotanist as well as a just
avocational cultural anthropologist techniques you could say that's john meinzinski
and we spent a lot of time in the field in the back country doing all kinds of things

(01:11:56):
testing equipment at the time that was kind of cutting edge technology advances so rapidly that
hard to keep up with things you buy you buy and invest in equipment before you can get it out of
the box it's absolutely almost I mean the problem has been is that in spite of all those those toys

(01:12:17):
if you will or that that instrumentation the equipment the means you're as I described earlier
you're you're searching for the proverbial moving needle in an A-stack and so there has been
so many encounters that are well the nearly all encounters like I said that are

(01:12:40):
purely happenstance I mean I've had the good fortune of finding footprints in the field on
on a half a dozen occasions that are quite convincing and some in extremely remote areas
I'm very unlikely that any any folks are or prank you know prank activity would have could have

(01:13:00):
taken place but it's just it's hard to get around that that rarity factor the the illusivity
and so the that's why the the two strategies that I've described permit the reach to be
extended or the net to be expanded whether it's through aerial survey when we get to the point where

(01:13:26):
you can survey and maybe you know I've had people say Jeff if we could ask a military
great spy satellite and and they because you know we were discussing this challenge of the
penetrance of the canopy you know it's not like the the military movies you see where they they

(01:13:48):
fly the drones over the deserts of Iraq and they can pick out individual terrorists I mean
we're talking about it's it's more like when you have the night vision on a police helicopter and
the perp is running across a parking lot but then ducks into the city park and disappears
hey guys you can't see through the pre-tops or the brush or you know the bushes but but I've

(01:14:14):
been told Jeff if we flew this over your house on Saturday morning I could tell you what brand
cornflakes you read oh okay I don't know if that makes me feel uncomfortable I don't know
it sounds like you lean more towards like technology rather than you know a dream team of
you know Joe Rogan and you know I don't know who else well we we've talked with you know

(01:14:38):
ex navy seals and and special ops these people who are supposed to be able to go in
get the target and get out of the thing like trackers and things like that yeah right well
that and I've dealt with man trackers and animal trackers but again and that was what I have a
standing understanding with one individual who if if I come upon a line of tracks the to get him

(01:15:06):
there as quickly as possible and he'll track it to its end you know it sounds great but then the first
requirement is is pretty high pretty stiff because it's just it's rare to find footprints you've
got a rare animal even though it's a moose it's like you said the the lucidity of a moose one time

(01:15:28):
I remember I was up the Olympic Peninsula in the Olympic forest and we were kind of scouting around
in just just poking around but we were in a clear cut there were about oh 12 head of moose antlered
bulls over there all of a sudden they decided we were too close and they put off into the woods

(01:15:48):
and I thought well I'm I just really want to see it and animal that size I want to see the
trail this cluster 12 leaves left we found a few hoof prints just a couple here there but there was no
you know through the thoroughfare there were no horned limbs or branches or lots of needles knocked

(01:16:09):
off they just lean their head back and that rat goes slipping through with the green you know with
the grain of the and doesn't get snagged and they're they're like ghosts they hardly leave a trace
and so it doesn't surprise me and that's with sharp hooves and you know well-defined appendages
and antlers and so you have an animal that has a soft padded foot sole pad that doesn't have claws

(01:16:38):
that doesn't have sharp hooves and and so even you know unless you've got the best of the conditions
mud or or road dust or there just isn't a lot of space out there to get the footprint so yeah so
then what how do you what do you do with your your special ops team where do you deploy them

(01:16:58):
how long do they stay in one spot at one time we were getting ready I wanted one of the fellas I
worked with that very deep pockets he was a retired executive with a major investment company and
he's always had the bug growing up and but he finally had the notion I'm going to do this and so
he reached out to me is in sort of a consulting capacity and had the good fortune I got to work

(01:17:23):
with him in the field it was a lot of fun we did a lot of interesting things by a lot of new
techniques and so forth but one time he wanted me to choose a location this was part of the problem
is he was like a butterfly he would would flip from one blossom to the next and I kept saying we've
got to work we've got to settle on one region have a have a rationale and then work it work it

(01:17:50):
work it network with the local we got to multiply our eyes and hands by networking with local agency
and local people and law enforcement and so forth and then you know really focus on that he
would just he would react to reports or to experiences of habituation flames which I have never

(01:18:17):
had positive experience with or seen bear under close scrutiny they've always been
overly imaginative people who interpret very um equivocal experiences as by attributing under
passport and have no good solid evidence and looking for us to follow up on when we go there

(01:18:40):
but anyway so he had me pick a spot in Idaho so I'm put on the you know put in the hot seat
it's but I tried to use a real sensible approach looking at the habitat looking at the potential
for tracking etc etc but to make a long story short he picks me up and he turns to me and he said

(01:19:02):
now remember the numbers I was talking about how many I think are out there they're they're very
rare they're very very rare I I put it at about 200 black bear for every one Sasquatch so we
building on that remarkable demonstration of correlation between black bear habitat and Sasquatch
distribution data makes sense two large omnivore species would have similar biochlamatic

(01:19:29):
requirements but their differences in their natural history differences in their lifespan
in their reproduction rates and so forth and in other aspects of their say gut physiology their
digestion their mastication and so forth that would partition resources partition strategies

(01:19:50):
and and population densities supported by that after that anyway in in all of Idaho
we have about 35 000 black bear at a ratio of 200 to 1 that's
175 Sasquatch in the entire state so I picked out an area and this area one of the
draws one of the features was the big sandy creek which when you looked from google earth was this

(01:20:16):
meandering creek and this flood plain that was had tons and tons of exposed sandbars
and so not only did the meandering creek afford lots of resources but that the exposed sandbars
present more surface area to potentially find tracks to confirm the potential presence

(01:20:38):
of something worth spending our time devoting our time but when when this gentleman picks me up
you know we we decided to just take the one one vehicle usually we have multiple but for this one
we were kind of conserving was a it was a preliminary scout group and anyway he turns to me
what do you think jeff what are our odds and i just kind of laughed and i said well not great

(01:21:03):
all over at this kb quick stop up here and let's buy a few scratch cards and i'll talk to you about
our odds yeah i said we can have all of our ducks in a row we can have all the equipment function
to specification no batteries inexplicably dying whatever we can do all the things that

(01:21:24):
we're supposed to do and if there isn't a sasquatch possibly a single senus watch
in that drainage that i've picked out because we're only going up there for like 10 days
just a short jaunt in those 10 days we're sol you know it could be just over the ridge in the next
drainage but we won't know because we're not going over there we don't have the time or the means

(01:21:48):
to get over there and thoroughly investigate it and because you know we were just basically
boots on the ground we didn't have means for exhaustive aerial survey or or other tools in our
bag of tricks and so i said you know it's like if you don't buy a ticket you'll never win the more

(01:22:10):
tickets more scratch cards you buy the better your chances are of winning but it's about on the same
odds not worse yeah i mean speaking about all of these these tools what do you think about
what they found using the lidar underneath the the pyramid of giza in uh in egypt i don't have the
expertise archaeologically or geologically to critique or evaluate those arguments so i find

(01:22:37):
them interesting and i i certainly have have looked at and read a little bit about some of that
especially with all the renewed interest in the you know subterranean structures that supposedly
exist underneath the pyramids now that it's all fascinating and you know whether it bears up under
scrutiny or not and and there are some parallels i mean there are all fields of science have

(01:23:02):
experienced periods of entrenched dogma that has stifled novel thinking and in anthropology for
example when when the patterns of gimlin film came out you know i often wondered why was there such a
visceral rejection why was there this reaction irrational and some of the things that were said

(01:23:24):
well when you look at it against the the backdrop of what the prevailing consensus was at the time
in the 60s there was a new theory in anthropology that had been largely influenced by uh the niche
or niche hypothesis in ecology which in turn borrowed it from molecular uh uh uh microbiology

(01:23:49):
which was uh where it was called the competitive exclusion principle that no two species could
occupy the same niche one would always be better making a living bigger than the other and the
ultimately drive the other to extinction or drive it to um you know partition the niche or
you know what we call character displacement strong selection for a different expression

(01:24:16):
of that characteristic different variation of that feature well at that time in the 60s
as the fossil evidence of hominins tended to be lined up in a straight line
and this single file march i alluded to this bushy busy tree that didn't appear until later

(01:24:38):
in the 70s that notion once the the single species hypothesis that the hominin niche was an exclusive
club and there could be only one member in it defined by bipedalism big brains and you know
enlarging brains and material culture the possession of material culture well um now

(01:25:04):
and so against that backdrop we're the bipedal hominin so how do you accommodate a sasquatch
or a yeti or a russian almas or a yaoi they can't exist and so literally this was thrown in my face
a paper that was rejected the when pressed for a rationale for the rejection she said

(01:25:26):
they can't exist therefore they don't exist and it doesn't matter what evidence they think they have
real scientific attitude right yeah right well now that paradigm has shifted and you we might
there there isn't a term really i just used the term the persistent multi species hypothesis
that we have a bushy tree it turns out there are different ways to be a bipedal hominin

(01:25:53):
and there were contemporaneous species across the across the board at different slices of
time through the past and in fact many there's evidence now of many of these lineages persisting
until just tens of thousands of years ago which would have been inconceivable um just a few decades

(01:26:13):
so uh the point being you know when i was growing up i mean another case in point uh
just to emphasize it for other listeners perhaps but uh when i was uh growing up the clovis
that was the oldest the first and only occupants of north america the curtain was raised at what

(01:26:33):
well 1200 years ago or 12 000 12 000 years ago 12 000 and uh no human occupation existed before
and they would bend over backwards to discredit any claims to the pond ferry even though there were
all sorts of really interesting and tantalizing suggestions of much earlier occupation and even

(01:26:57):
far southern locations that were possibly tens of thousands of years older than that which meant
even perhaps earlier uh initial occupation and then of course the idea of trans-pacific
immigration and you know sources from australia or from other areas of indonesia so anyway the

(01:27:20):
point is that facade eventually crumbled collapsed under the weight of accumulating evidence
and we saw the same thing happen to the single species hypothesis so now on this bushy tree
there's lots of branches upon which one might hang a relic promenoid like a sasquatch or like a

(01:27:40):
al-masti that might be a relic neanderthal or a hobbit that might be a relic australipithecine
you know or the yaoi that could be who knows what you know the yaoi's a problem because again for
me the litmus test is the footprints and i can summarize it in in one figure where i've made a

(01:28:01):
mosaic composite of about seven different examples of footprints attributed to the yaoi and no two
are the same so that's that just speaks to a model a model of misidentification and uh
and hoaxing and who knows what you know the yaoi uh yaoi in australia is a really interesting one

(01:28:24):
like it's really deeply embedded in our do you do you think there's any credibility to the yaoi as
as a whole and if so why do you think there is reports of aggression more so in that
bit of australian yaoi than there is others the central uneasiness revolves around the

(01:28:45):
you know the biogeographic problem of a of a hominoid species a singular existence of a
placental hominoid on an island that is has been largely isolated now there've been
examples of hominins that have made it to the and the question of whether older individuals

(01:29:12):
i mean older types of hominins like asian homo erectus or homo heidelbergensis might be at the
root of some of those stories and they might be in much more direct competition with humans and
therefore more oral traditions of aggressive behavior antagonistic interactions i don't know

(01:29:39):
you know you wonder with with the remarkable examples of convergent evolution between so
many marsupials and placental mammals i often when i spend a lot of time on convergence and
because it's interesting how how nature solves similar challenges in similar ways even if from
quite disparate starting points and it's a real estimate of natural selection and so you've got

(01:30:06):
all these guilds that are represented you've got the painted like carnivore the fielded like
carnivore you've got ricochettled you've got gliding you've got climbing you've got digging
you've got you know all these things that have remarkably similar so good and arboreal i mean
most of the lower primates kind of representation convergent representation amongst the possums

(01:30:30):
and gliders these arboreal climbing clean animals that are very primate like in that
characteristic but what about a hominoid what about a large body did any i mean short of a tree
wallaby which doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to a chimpanzee is there a marsupial that could

(01:30:52):
have evolved convergently to the point that in oral traditions it takes on the the aura of an
ape of a hominoid all right dr. Belgium let's um i think i have one final question for you
so what what has been the hardest part of pursuing this research as a tenured scientist

(01:31:17):
and what keeps you in it well you know i i like to say that i i was not entirely naive
i was just idealistic i was aware of the experiences that you know my predecessor dr. Grover Krantz had

(01:31:39):
experience so it wasn't like there there was it wasn't as if there wasn't some present precedent
upon which to appeal to for you know a pattern and uh but i thought you know quite honestly
grover had a real reputation of being some of a somewhat of a manfreak in many different ways

(01:32:03):
in in many aspects he was very prescient and actually anticipated things he was just
a decade ahead of his time and so he was he was the point of the spear you might say and but it
drew a lot of ridicule or uh denigration as a result that i thought well i'm i'm really well
established i'm mainstream doing solid research i've published you know who would not hate what

(01:32:30):
i had to say seriously right yeah so that was a little overly enthusiastic let's put it that way
and so no it's been a real eye-opener and this is the sad commentary for all of our adulation you
know of the ivory tower of of scientific intellectualism scientists represent academia

(01:32:54):
represents a cross-section of humanity that has as much variety as just about any other
subset and as a result there are personalities there are prejudices there are there's bigotry
there's ego my experience has exposed an underbelly to the scientific uh you know the institutional

(01:33:21):
machine that is not very complementary i have to say quite frankly i i've i've resisted the
tendency to be jaded or to become too cynical i always felt bad that it seemed that dr france had
really gotten cynical when you read his book his final chapter on the quote scientific

(01:33:45):
establishment i know exactly what he's what he means by that what he's referring to but yeah i
want to in first reading it i kind of thought oh it's too bad that there's so much evidence of
just uh you know sour grapes but i can appreciate and understand and i had had some very unfortunate
experiences with colleagues i've had some very positive ones though i always want to balance

(01:34:10):
the negative with the very positive experiences you know i had a i had a journalist who sat across
the chair from me here and she made the point that she had already i think it was a she maybe
was the he this time but that they had they had already talked to a lot of the both students
and faculty on campus and they go you're pretty much considered joke i just laughed and i i held

(01:34:40):
up my book and i said well you know whose name do you see on the cover the bottom under that endorsement
well that's dr jane goodall that's right you know who she is right yeah you know who dr
george scholler is uh well kind of he's you know the probably the the preeminent next the list of
our century and i said he wrote the forward to the book and you should read it and there's a passage

(01:35:02):
on the back of the book and here in the paperback the first couple of pages are endorsements from
phd's and professionals of other you know state state veterinarians wildlife agents and so forth
and you talk to who you know it's not a teflon coat but but it deflects a lot of silly ridiculous

(01:35:24):
baseless sniping that the journalists sometimes gravitate to or you know or become friendly to
when you hold the credentials you know of some instructor in the physics department
against the experience of uh and expertise of dr jane goodall who doesn't endorse the

(01:35:45):
existence of sasquatch but she endorses the objective consideration of the question of
the existence of relic hominoids she's impressed by the native traditions dr scholler he uh doesn't
out the existence of bigfoot in in his forward or his comments but he does praise me for approaching

(01:36:10):
it as a scientist objectively and with rigor and marshaled an argument or laid out the evidence
means without you attempting to try to persuade but rather to to persuade to a point of view but
rather to persuade regarding the compelling nature of the evidence itself the evidence itself which

(01:36:36):
speaks for itself if you if you consider it from an informed position and and that's you know i
really appreciate that and and that has served my objectives you know very very well so i i have a
very thick skin i very honestly have very little patience for ignorance at this point

(01:36:57):
it's been disappointing i i look back once in a while you know i wonder what my career might have
taken had i not uh pursued this this line of uh that is as i and i as i was kneeling next to these
footprints in 1996 where i was shown had this rather exceptional opportunity to actually witness

(01:37:23):
in the ground prints that were less than eight hours old had this little conversation with the
two imps one on each shoulder the one saying look at what happened to france look at you know his
his tenure was delayed his promotion to full professor was delayed he was ridiculed he was

(01:37:43):
made fun of the other one saying what an amazing set of data you're you're looking at how could
you walk away from this i mean sasquatch actually walked by here last night crazy and so yeah so
you can see who which which won the argument today it's been frustrating uh if i if i have

(01:38:06):
successfully kept the door open so that another generation by if i've been a conduit that has
kept the door open and allowed some students coming up and i and i have experienced evidence
of that i have interacted with students who have talked to me approached me and so forth
i mean one of the most i've shared this with other people but we had a visiting assistant

(01:38:32):
professor in anthropology and she was interested in the anatomy program and donors and whether
you know those tissues might be available for her archaeological research at a lull in the
conversation she said can i ask a geeky question i said well sure those are usually the most

(01:38:54):
interesting she reached in her her handbag and pulled out sasquatch leisure meat science
and would you sign my book in fact would you sign this one for my dad that's awesome and
she had grown up sharing this fascination with the subject of sasquatch with her father
and it certainly didn't close her decision to pursue anthropology but in a very different way

(01:39:17):
which is a wise decision to follow a line of research that isn't directly
the and declaratively centered on bigfoot but what it pleased me the most about was
it was an example of a student from a very prestigious graduate program but who wasn't

(01:39:40):
indoctrinated or at least hadn't allowed herself to be indoctrinated by the dogmas of the single
species hypothesis you know and those who were still laboring under that influence like
thomas kuhn said it sometimes takes an entire generation to die to pass away to clear the
clear the way for new ideas to take root and flourish and we're witnessing that transition

(01:40:07):
i i feel quite strongly we're we're witnessing that transition and as this next generation
comes up many of these students have grown up with the documentaries with access to internet
you know with all the stories and so forth that and and the cultural icons that make it just part

(01:40:27):
of the landscape
that was our conversation with dr jeff meldrum what stands out to me the most about him is the

(01:40:53):
courage it took to follow the evidence wherever it led even if it meant facing ridicule from the
scientific establishment not many people are willing to risk their reputation for the truth but
dr meldrum did his passing on september 11th 2025 is a loss that can't really be measured

(01:41:14):
but what he left behind the research the writings and the inspiration he gave to people who are
curious enough to keep asking questions will continue to shape this mystery long after today
i genuinely hope this conversation leaves you thinking differently not just about sasquatch
but about the importance of staying open-minded in the face of the unknown i think that's going

(01:41:37):
to be dr meldrum's legacy and i think it's what you'd want if you enjoyed this episode
please follow the show leave a review and share it with someone who loves a good mystery
and if you have your own close encounter ufo ghost cryptid or something stranger
send your story our way we love to hear it

(01:41:59):
this episode was produced and edited by josh paredo mixed and mastered by bret jarvis
this has been episode 20 with our conversation with dr jeff meldrum
and you've been listening to the close encounter club
rest easy dr meldrum it was an honor speaking to you

(01:42:41):
you

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