November 21, 2013 • 28 mins
Skeptics and Sasquatches: What are we to make of the Sasquatch, bigfoot, skunk ape and yeti? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie discuss why the fabled creature doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Somehow Stuff Works
dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you believe in Sasquatch? Do you believe in dick Foot?
Did you believe in Bigfoot? Do you believe yet? Day?
(00:26):
The question? I know. I know as a kid, I
really really really wanted Bigfoot to be real. I have
to say I feel pretty skeptical about the YETI the
sasquatch existing. Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat.
I always think back to the two thousand and eight
Georgia Bigfoot hoax, particularly because that was my I was
(00:48):
I pretty much just started at how stuff works. So
my life suddenly had a lot more science in it
than than ever before because it wasn't just stuff I
was reading on the side. It was my job. And uh,
until you know, immersed in science is suddenly the all
over the internet and on the TVs. It was like
a slow newsweek. I think, um, they're they're all these
stories out of Georgia, the state we are in um
(01:11):
where apparently a car salesman by the name of Rick
Dyer and a then police officer by the name of
Matt Wouldn't claimed to have a big foot corps on
ice and a cooler, and it was and it just
escalated from there. It because there was a news conference
in California, and for a brief little sliver of time
there it was it was kind of to be cliche.
(01:32):
It was an amazing time to be alive, because because
it seemed possible that we might be about to know
for sure that there are sasquatches out there, that there
are bigfoots, skunk gates, whatever we want we want to
call them, and uh, and even though I doubted it,
I was, I gave into the temptation to really want
to believe. And of course then we found out that
(01:53):
it was just a sasquatch costume stuff with possum road
kill and slaughter house leftovers. But but for just a
little while, Catrick our imagination. You know, to what degree
did they think they were going to pull that off?
That's what I'm wondering, Like, why go through the trouble
of stuffing the innerds with with leftover meats? And well,
I was reading about it. I've I've read interpretations where
(02:14):
it's just kind of like a joke that got out
of control um and quickly was just out of hand.
I've also read some criticisms to say that one of
the individuals involved was really hoping to get some more
business for sort of wilderness tours in the area, so
you know, a little column and a little calm by
and maybe they themselves were kind of given into the
(02:35):
lust for sasquat reality as well. Well. I think of
the beginnings, at least in terms of the of arresting
the public's imagination on this topic, is being that I
think it's sixty four sixteen millimeter footage that was shot
by Roger Patterson and Bob Gillan excuse me, it was
the nineteen six seven and everybody is probably familiar with
(02:56):
his grainy black and white footage. Yeah, And but you
know the thing is, if you're looking for it on YouTube,
there's so many different versions of its CG to to
to lose track of the original, which I'll be sure
to to share when this publishes. But the original is
really haunting because like the first several minutes of it
are just dudes riding around on horseback. You're just looking
at the woods, and there's that click click click click
(03:17):
click click click. Uh, you know kind of sound is
that the film processes through and then you see this
creature sort of you know, doing that that saunter across
the clearing in the woods and uh. And it's been
parodied so many times that it tends to lose any
kind of impact on a modern viewer. But I find
(03:37):
going back to that original film and watching it from
the beginning and then having the the the mysterious creature
gradually appear, you recapture perhaps some of the original excitement
people found in that footage. Yeah, I mean, because what
you're talking about is that half human, half ape like
creature just ambling out of a stream bed in the
(03:57):
Six Rivers National Forests in northern californ On As you say,
it's not you know, they're just kind of moving along
there on horseback. It's the footage is just sort of
oh care nature. Although they are going after the sasquatch,
that is what they're into, was when they were actually
filming this. If that's certainly worth noting. It's not just
a matter of out and then there's a sasquatch and
(04:19):
we happen to see the sasquatch. So of course, there's
there's much debate about this film whether or not it's
actually someone in a guerrilla suit um, and we we're
not going to get into all of these sort of
whether or not this film is um real or not,
because people are still analyzing it and making arguments in
both directions. I do want to say real quick, the
(04:40):
term sasquatch is a Silish word from the Salish people
in other Native American people's of the Alaskan, Yukon and
parts of British Columbia, and it essentially means wild man.
But they're also like over a hundred and fifty different
local names for this shaggy bipedal creature. And in the
original myths they would also say that it could be
fift high. Nowadays, when people were talking about seth Watch,
(05:02):
they couldn't make an argument more and they're like the
seven to nine foot range. Yeah, and this has been
reported all over the world. Yeah, you have some variation
of it for Antarctica, Wellarica, but so you have you
have you have the eddies in the Himalayas, the skunk
apes in Arkansas and Mississippi, you have the Siberian almasty,
(05:23):
you have the Chinese year in or wild man um.
You have the Cherokee suel calu anywhere you look. And
when you get into the wild man myths to the
idea that they're wild men in the forest, you go
back to thirteen through sixteenth century Europeans. They believed in
wild men in the woods. Uh. And then there's a
you can find a compelling argument that essentially the big
(05:44):
foot myth takes over for us as we as we
encounter Darwin's theory of evolution. Uh, the idea that we
couldn't possibly be werewolves anymore, that with the werewolf, can
no longer be go to representation of our be steel
shadows cell. Instead we need this other form. Okay, So
Darwin came online and people are like, all right, here's
(06:05):
the deal. Were wolves they're out yet he's in, Yeah,
we're not. Really, we're not descended from wolves. We're descended
from apes. And so therefore an ape is a better
avatar for a be steel self. But then again, like
I said, people were we're seeing uh reporting wild men
in the woods long before Darwin came around. So I
don't think it's the most compelling argument, but it's interesting
to think about. So the idea of a sasquatch is
(06:28):
interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One as
I feel like it's really come to symbolize humans pension
for logical fallacies. So, you know, believers in Bigfoot would
claim that the absence of hard evidence of Bigfoot is
not evidence that Bigfoot does not exist. This is the argument, right,
And this is all kind of created this cottage industry
(06:49):
of sincerely earnest people trying to ferret out the truth
among pranksters and hoaxes. So it sort of money is
all the water here. You have people that really want
to believe Eve and want to find actual proof and
prove it. You have people who want to believe and
are willing to just cling to whatever. You have people
who just want to make a hoax. And then you
(07:10):
have people who really want to apply the rigors of
science to it or are already of the opinion that
we've already done that, and they're more pressing things to
consider right in the absence again of any body essentially
um And then I think you can't help to think
that somehow and all of this it sort of stirs
that childlike wonder, right, and that you know, there's somewhere
(07:33):
inside of us. There's just an iota of hope that
this nine to twelve foot harry mammal, you know, peaceably
roams the hinterlands, right, And I think about it as
being sort of a mash up between Chewbacca and where
the wild things are. These are these are things from
my youth and from my memory, my imagination, all embodied
(07:53):
in what Bigfoot is. Yeah, because the idea is that
there is this almost magical creature. I mean, most no
one out there that's you know, a sasquattion just saying
it's a magical creature, the saying it's a natural creature.
But there's something magical about the idea that there is
this uh, this cousin of humanity that still lives wild
and naked and furry in portions of the world that
(08:14):
we haven't turned into a parking lot yet, and that
they're so good at what they're doing that we have
really no proof that they're there, that they're they're almost
like a forest god living in the woods. And while
there are stories out there of of of a sasquatch
or a Bigfoot or what have you being aggressive towards humans,
most of the encounters, you seem to come across their
more mundane, they're more peaceful. And you see these representations,
(08:38):
for instance, the Melbourne Catchum Global Sasquatch Foundation. We'll discuss
that a little later on. But their emblem is is
this wonderful cheesey emblem of the planet Earth. And then
there's the outline of a sasquatch on there, and the
sasquatch is raising one hand, kind of like the figure
on the Voyager, that sort of I come in peace
sort of thing, and I I laughed the image, but
(09:00):
it does sum up I feel like a lot of
the hopes uh and and dreams out there when it
comes to belief or the desire to believe in a sasquatch.
It's a little bit of a Kauaii hangover, you know.
I was just thinking about the World Wildlife Fund, and
I believe their logo is a panda, which is super
and cuddly, but if you go up to a panda,
(09:21):
it will mally you. Right. So again, these are ideas
about things that exist that don't exist, perhaps exist, And
for me, what is again interesting about all of this
is that it kind of brings up this question of
could there be a species of primate behind these legends.
(09:41):
So not necessarily sasquatch or YETI as we we think
of it, but maybe something to this. That's the question
that that is interesting about this. Yeah, and it is
a reasonable question. It's it's easy to get distracted by
all of the nonsense out there. You lose sight of
the fact that, Okay, nine foot gigantopithecus creature did exist. Uh,
(10:04):
you know in prehistoric times that we do have guerrillas
to this day. So, and there are portions of the
world that that are there are more of a wilderness,
particularly you're looking in like northern North America or a
Siberian region. Uh, certainly parts of the Himalayas. Uh, you know,
deep jungles. There are places where you could conceivably have
(10:25):
a species, even a nine foot tall eight man species
living outside of a human understanding. Doubtful, but possible. Doubt
but possible. Yeah, you're not arguing of flying unicorns. You're
arguing something that tends to make sense, uh, based on
what we know about the natural world. In two thousand
and two, the world's perhaps the most famous primatologist, Jane Goodall,
(10:49):
came out as a I guess you could say bigfoot enthusiast. Yes,
if not someone who really hopes that this is the case.
And uh so she does admit to being a romantic
and having very much a heartfelt feeling about she She
said during the interview with Ira Flatau of MPR Science
Friday that she was sure of it. Now she's just
(11:10):
kind of talking off the cuff here in this interview. Yeah,
she's not presenting a paper on it. She's just he said,
he said that happening. She was like, oh, hey, um,
and so this is what she she said. She said,
I've talked to so many Native Americans who all described
the same sounds to who have seen them. I've probably
got about oh thirty books that have come from different
parts of the world, from China, from all over the place.
(11:31):
And there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper
just last last week which says that British scientists have
found what they believed to be a yetty hair and
that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London
couldn't identify it as any known animal. So we'll discuss
more about DNA in a little bit. But she goes,
as you say, on to say that she is a romantic.
She she um. She also says it's strange that there
(11:54):
has never been a single authentic hide or hair of
the big Foot, So she is acknowledging in a skeptical
way like we don't really have the evidence. But at
the heart of this, again, I think, is that childlike
wonder of like maybe it could be. So. Now, another
individual that that came up when we were looking at actual, legitimate,
(12:16):
learned individual scientists who are interested in the possible existence
of Bigfoot is Jeff Meldrum. Now, Jeff Meldrum is Associate
Professor of anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University UH.
He's a research associate at the I have A Museum
of Natural History, and he's his areas of research are
primate functional morphography, paleontology, but also crypto zoology as well. Now, um,
(12:40):
crypto zoology for anyone who isn't familiar with the term,
we have zoology, which is that dealing with actual, UH
creatures that are known to exist documented. Cryptozoo Zoology is
concerned with creatures that we do not know actually exist. There,
you know, you're things like your locknoest monsters, you're your
your Bigfoot, monster, what have you? So Meldrum is interest
(13:00):
in cryptozoology, he's interested in big Foot, but he is
also he also has the science shops to back it up.
He he is well informed about how the body of
a large primate works and would work if it were
in the form of the sasquash. That's right, because he
knows all about primate locomotion, human look emotion, and so
(13:21):
he has analyzed the footprints and he thinks that the
way that that the foot seems to be uh designed,
is that it's very well maybe a divergent species, and
so that's that's interesting. Um. He gets a lot of
flak for this, by the way, Yeah, as I imagine
(13:41):
he would. Yeah. Um, But you know he's out there
on the record saying, look, it's not just the footprints.
I've examined that footage um from nineteen sixty seven. He says,
you can see muscle movements, you can see the shoulder
blade slide under the skin, you can see tendons attaching
to joints and so forth. He says, the already is
really much better than most people have acknowledged in the past.
(14:03):
So again he's talking about that iconic film footage, which
which I do after researching this podcast, I do agree
that that we tend to just dismiss that footage these
days because it has been lampooned so much, and it
is has been ridicule and I've really become a joke.
And I'm not saying if you look back at it,
it's definitely going to convince you or anything. But if
(14:24):
you if you just put all that aside, all your
all these preconceived notions, and you watch the footage, fake
or not, it's it's far more effective than we often
give it credit. I agree. I also wanted to point
out it's a gigantapithecus, the giant ape that you had discussed.
This is this kind of gives us a clue about
the limits of primate morphology. Right, so there is the
(14:47):
possibility that you could have a nine foot tall mammal
by three ft wide that you can't say that's not
a possibility. It's we know that this is a kind
of morphology that has exists it in the past. However,
Michael Schermer will talk about these these different animals that
(15:08):
we have discovered, and he'll will say that the reason
cryptods merit our attention is that enough successful discoveries have
been made by scientists based on local anecdotes and folklore
that we cannot dismiss all claims a priori. So he says,
the most famous examples include the gorilla. Actually in um
(15:28):
we see the old copy that was a short necked
relative of the draft commodo dragon in nineteen twelve, the bonobo. Uh.
He goes on and on and on, but he says,
there is one thing that is common, a common thread
in all these discoveries. They have a body. It Yeah,
(15:49):
like like another one. He mentions, of course, this cryptosol
just loved to point at the ninety eight the discovery
of a sila can that's in a species of archaic
looking fish, and that we used to think it had
gone extinct in the pitatious period, and then here it is.
But to his point, we had a sela can to
show off. Here's a gorilla, here's a sela can, here's
a panda. And as Shermer points out in a two
(16:09):
thousand three essay for Scientific American, uh, that's the big thing.
Here show me the body. Where is the body? Because
anytime we were classifying a new species, we need a holotype.
We need the body of the creature. We need a
specimen by which to go on to say here's what
we found and here's another one. Oh, we can can
we can compare uh the d n A here, we
can compare the morphology of these two species and say
(16:30):
this is this and it's not these other specimens. Okay,
so we've discussed a bit about the case for the
existence of bigfoot sasquatch yetti. Let's take a quick break,
and when we get back we will talk about the
case against it. All Right, we're back, you know, and
(16:52):
I want to mention real quick, but Melvioun when he's
talking about the tracks and prints and and even the
uh that famous bit of footage, he's really all about
the sasquatch, and he even admits that the case for
the yetti in the Himalays is far less impressive. Yeah,
and we'll get a bit into the Eddie and the
Himalays and the reasons why that is problematic in a moment.
(17:15):
But let's go back to this idea of you know,
show us the body, or show us some sort of
evidence that that gives us an idea that this species exists. Yeah,
to uh to Jane Goodall's point, it is incredible that
if this creature were to actually exists, that we don't
have any proof of it, that we don't have bodies
(17:35):
and we don't have a significant samples of their anatomy. Uh. Now,
the the that would have in my mind, that tends
to lead to the answer, well, that's because they don't exist,
and or they did exist, they have not existed in
a very long time. But uh but yeah, what are
we what are we to make of that? Because it's
because especially now, it's one thing to say, you know,
(17:56):
early twenty century, but now this is the twenty one century.
There are more humans round than ever before, and just
about all of them have a camera on them. Because
I said the other that's a whole other issue that
the camera footage. But just about everyone has a camera.
Where we're out all over the place. Why haven't we
discovered a body? Well, I will play Devil's advocate for
just one second and say that, you know, every once
(18:17):
in a while you get the undiscovered tribe, right, so
you know that there are pockets of people out there,
maybe even a new species that just has not been
discovered yet in the rainforest in the Amazon between two
thousand and ten and two thousand and thirteen, there were
four d forty one species of plants and animals that
were discovered. How many of them were nine ft tall?
(18:38):
That's the problem. Yeah, we're talking about a big creature
that would would need a larger area in which to roam.
Uh And and we just haven't seen it. We have
not seen it happen. Again, not saying it it's impossible
for it to exist. But when you start looking at
the details, the size of the creature, how much space
it would need and uh and in the various parts
of the world in which it's reported to have been anist,
(19:00):
then I feel like the case just grows less and
less impressive. But then you have someone like Melba Ketchum
who is saying, hey, here is some possible proof, or
even saying there is proof species exists. Yes, tex And
veterinarian Dr. Melba s Ketchum uh contends that her research
teams five year genome sequencing study of a hundred and
twenty to alleged bigfoot DNA samples because they are tufts
(19:22):
of hair and whatnot that have been collected by by
bigfoot hair hunters out there in the wild Anyway, she
says that she claims that their findings point to a
hybrid species that split from Homo sapiens and an unknown
hominid species some thirteen thousand years ago. Now she published
her results. Yes, now you you probably have not heard
(19:45):
of the scientific journal that published them, uh DiNovo Scientific
Journalists what is called because it did not exist before
publishing this study, and her catch them study is the
only study that it has ever published. Um So it
was not pure reviewed. It did not show up in
any of the normal scientific journals that we would mention
on this this podcast. So this kind of a red flag.
(20:08):
And critics have charged that her samples were likely contaminated
because you have inexperienced evidence gatherers out there that are
end up introducing their own DNA onto the animal samples
that they bring in. There sneezing, their coughing, they're breathing heavily,
what have you. They So they bring in a contaminated
sample which then wants is analyze. You end up with
confusing and misleading results. So again, the problem with this
(20:32):
is starting at the assumption that, um, that the animal
exists right right, and and that's clear from the get
go just by you know, just go to her website,
looks at the logo, look at the mission statement of
the organization, and you see that that they have they
have an intention in mind. Yeah. Daniel Laxon, he's a
co author of the book A Vulnerable Science Origins of
(20:52):
the Yetti NeSSI and other famous criptis, says quote. A
scientist generally starts with a conservative working assumption that proposed
new idea are not true. This is so important, right,
We've talked about it so over and over again, or
that hypothetical new entities do not exist, and then revises
her probability estimate upwards only when the evidence forces her
(21:13):
to do so, he says. A pseudo scientist, on the
other hand, typically starts with the assumption that a novel
pro puzzle seems to be true, and then revises her
probability downward as the evidence leaves her no choice if
she is willing to surrender the possibility to do to
any degree at all. So we've talked about cognitive bias
all the time. This idea that we continue to sort
of add weight to this argument that we really want
(21:35):
to be true, and we begin to assemble patterns where
sometimes there are none exactly. So yeah, as you go
into into this kind of study with the cryptozologist mindset,
with the idea that I really want the big foot
to be to exist, then that ends up I mean
that that's the mission statement for the study, that ends
up skewing the entire study. So no much, no matter
(21:56):
how much science you throw in after the fact, you've
already turned the steering wheel off the road. All right,
So we've talked about the you know, things that have
existed been discovered. The body showed up, Um, what if
what if the species is? It does exist but it's
(22:17):
not what we think it is. There's another explanation, yes,
and this, uh, this explanation just recently came out in
the news and it has to do with Oxford University
geneticist Brian Sykes. Now Sykes his investigations are going to
be featured in an upcoming Channel four documentary series. He's
writing a book, um called the Yetie Enigma at DNA
(22:38):
Detective Story And basically, uh, he put out the call
and said, all right, you have samples of your yetis,
your sasquatches, what have you? Send them to me and
we and we will analyze them. We will look at
the DNA evidence here and and and then you can
stop complaining about scientists not listening to your bigfoot stories,
because I'm here to listen. Just send me the stuff, right.
(22:59):
So they took two of the more promising samples of
what we're supposed to be uh, you know, supposed to
be yetty hair yetti yet yettie materials. Uh, and they
analyzed them and what they found was pretty incredible, though
not incredible in the way that cryptozoologists would want it
to be. No, because again, here's the thing about sciences
(23:20):
that in the scientific method sometimes it yields results that
you never imagined, completely different than what you thought would happen. So, yeah,
he called through the gen Bank database and he found
that two samples were a match with the DNA of
an ancient polar bear from small Bard, Norway, and that
polar bear lifts some one to forty thousand years ago,
(23:41):
just when the brown bear and the polar bear were
diverging as a separate species. So there you go, one possible,
one possible explanation for the belief in the yetti. Yeah,
perhaps what what people were experiencing all these uh these
years and seeing into sharing stories about passing down from
(24:02):
generation generation. It actually had to do with a bear
that lived up, a species of polar bear that lived
in the region. Yeah. Now, he said that we shouldn't
take these results and assume the ancient polar bears are
wandering around the Himalayas. Um. But he did say that
perhaps the yet he could be this hybrid of polar
bear and brown bear, essentially a new species of animal. Um.
(24:23):
He has not published his research yet. It's up for
peer review, and there are some people who are criticizing
it only because of the logistics, saying that what we
know of polar bears, we know that they would have
a hard time surviving in the Himalayas, right, and Small
Bard is a long ways away from the Himalayas, right.
So there there are aspects to it that I think
(24:43):
need to be sussed out. But it's interesting. Well, I
have a theory here. The Yeties existed and they used
polar bears imported from Small Bard if their steeds, so
they wrote around on them and you know, wage war
and intended their mountain farms. I was just thinking maybe
they use him as pelts and made little coats put
over their own hairy bodies. Well maybe they were they
had naked bodies, or it may be clever, and maybe
(25:08):
they were actually short, more human size. Maybe they were
just they were just dudes, like two of them, so
they were like one once on the other shoulders and
then they had a little polar bear suit that they
pulled over it. It sounds pretty good to me. Peer reviewed,
my friend. Yeah, it's officially peer reviewed, all right. So
there you have it. A brief entry into the world
(25:30):
of the sasquatch, the big Foot, the yetie, etcetera. Obviously,
this is a topic that one can spend a lot
of time on. You can spend a lot of time
on it just on the scientific side of things, and
if you want to wander over into the the non
scientific side of things, uh, there's even more time to
be wasted. So if you want to spend more time
with this topic, I would recommend you check out our
(25:51):
sister podcast and UH and video series stuff. They don't
want you to know. They frequently come back to the
big foot issue and they're going to approach it from
a less skeptic standpoint, but but not like a completely
nutty standpoint either, No, and I think they will bring
up some very interesting ideas actually point in caterpoint ideas.
(26:13):
So check it out. Yeah, all right, and if you
want to talk to us about Bigfoot, we would love
to hear from you, seriously if you have I mean
a lot of the Bigfoot story, a lot of the
the Eddy story. It a lot of it comes down
to personal encounters. And you know, we've talked before in
the past about the flawed nature of memory, the flawed
nature of paranormal experience. Uh. Michael Sherman that we mentioned earlier,
(26:36):
who was talking about, you know, his skepticism regarding the
Big Smith. I mean, he himself and had a paranormal
experience during a bike marathon and which he saw extraterrestrials
and that kind of that led to his examination of
why did I see that? What led to that experience?
Because I know it wasn't aliens and and and so
his entire career as a skeptic author has has risen
(26:59):
from that. So because he was under extreme physical extreme
physical physical arrest, and he had that cultural script already
in mind. So if you have a story about big Foot,
send it to us. We're not going to pick it
to pieces on the air. We're not gonna call you
foolish or anything, because again, I really want, I would
really wish that this were true. And and even if
there is no such things, is a big foot. Experiences
(27:21):
of the big Foot are are real. Those do occur
like we do have paranormal experiences, even if the reason
for the occurring lies entirely within the natural world. So
share your stories with us. We'd love to hear from.
You can find us on steppable in your Mind dot com.
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(27:41):
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dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you believe in Sasquatch? Do you believe in dick Foot?
Did you believe in Bigfoot? Do you believe yet? Day?
(00:26):
The question? I know. I know as a kid, I
really really really wanted Bigfoot to be real. I have
to say I feel pretty skeptical about the YETI the
sasquatch existing. Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat.
I always think back to the two thousand and eight
Georgia Bigfoot hoax, particularly because that was my I was
(00:48):
I pretty much just started at how stuff works. So
my life suddenly had a lot more science in it
than than ever before because it wasn't just stuff I
was reading on the side. It was my job. And uh,
until you know, immersed in science is suddenly the all
over the internet and on the TVs. It was like
a slow newsweek. I think, um, they're they're all these
stories out of Georgia, the state we are in um
(01:11):
where apparently a car salesman by the name of Rick
Dyer and a then police officer by the name of
Matt Wouldn't claimed to have a big foot corps on
ice and a cooler, and it was and it just
escalated from there. It because there was a news conference
in California, and for a brief little sliver of time
there it was it was kind of to be cliche.
(01:32):
It was an amazing time to be alive, because because
it seemed possible that we might be about to know
for sure that there are sasquatches out there, that there
are bigfoots, skunk gates, whatever we want we want to
call them, and uh, and even though I doubted it,
I was, I gave into the temptation to really want
to believe. And of course then we found out that
(01:53):
it was just a sasquatch costume stuff with possum road
kill and slaughter house leftovers. But but for just a
little while, Catrick our imagination. You know, to what degree
did they think they were going to pull that off?
That's what I'm wondering, Like, why go through the trouble
of stuffing the innerds with with leftover meats? And well,
I was reading about it. I've I've read interpretations where
(02:14):
it's just kind of like a joke that got out
of control um and quickly was just out of hand.
I've also read some criticisms to say that one of
the individuals involved was really hoping to get some more
business for sort of wilderness tours in the area, so
you know, a little column and a little calm by
and maybe they themselves were kind of given into the
(02:35):
lust for sasquat reality as well. Well. I think of
the beginnings, at least in terms of the of arresting
the public's imagination on this topic, is being that I
think it's sixty four sixteen millimeter footage that was shot
by Roger Patterson and Bob Gillan excuse me, it was
the nineteen six seven and everybody is probably familiar with
(02:56):
his grainy black and white footage. Yeah, And but you
know the thing is, if you're looking for it on YouTube,
there's so many different versions of its CG to to
to lose track of the original, which I'll be sure
to to share when this publishes. But the original is
really haunting because like the first several minutes of it
are just dudes riding around on horseback. You're just looking
at the woods, and there's that click click click click
(03:17):
click click click. Uh, you know kind of sound is
that the film processes through and then you see this
creature sort of you know, doing that that saunter across
the clearing in the woods and uh. And it's been
parodied so many times that it tends to lose any
kind of impact on a modern viewer. But I find
(03:37):
going back to that original film and watching it from
the beginning and then having the the the mysterious creature
gradually appear, you recapture perhaps some of the original excitement
people found in that footage. Yeah, I mean, because what
you're talking about is that half human, half ape like
creature just ambling out of a stream bed in the
(03:57):
Six Rivers National Forests in northern californ On As you say,
it's not you know, they're just kind of moving along
there on horseback. It's the footage is just sort of
oh care nature. Although they are going after the sasquatch,
that is what they're into, was when they were actually
filming this. If that's certainly worth noting. It's not just
a matter of out and then there's a sasquatch and
(04:19):
we happen to see the sasquatch. So of course, there's
there's much debate about this film whether or not it's
actually someone in a guerrilla suit um, and we we're
not going to get into all of these sort of
whether or not this film is um real or not,
because people are still analyzing it and making arguments in
both directions. I do want to say real quick, the
(04:40):
term sasquatch is a Silish word from the Salish people
in other Native American people's of the Alaskan, Yukon and
parts of British Columbia, and it essentially means wild man.
But they're also like over a hundred and fifty different
local names for this shaggy bipedal creature. And in the
original myths they would also say that it could be
fift high. Nowadays, when people were talking about seth Watch,
(05:02):
they couldn't make an argument more and they're like the
seven to nine foot range. Yeah, and this has been
reported all over the world. Yeah, you have some variation
of it for Antarctica, Wellarica, but so you have you
have you have the eddies in the Himalayas, the skunk
apes in Arkansas and Mississippi, you have the Siberian almasty,
(05:23):
you have the Chinese year in or wild man um.
You have the Cherokee suel calu anywhere you look. And
when you get into the wild man myths to the
idea that they're wild men in the forest, you go
back to thirteen through sixteenth century Europeans. They believed in
wild men in the woods. Uh. And then there's a
you can find a compelling argument that essentially the big
(05:44):
foot myth takes over for us as we as we
encounter Darwin's theory of evolution. Uh, the idea that we
couldn't possibly be werewolves anymore, that with the werewolf, can
no longer be go to representation of our be steel
shadows cell. Instead we need this other form. Okay, So
Darwin came online and people are like, all right, here's
(06:05):
the deal. Were wolves they're out yet he's in, Yeah,
we're not. Really, we're not descended from wolves. We're descended
from apes. And so therefore an ape is a better
avatar for a be steel self. But then again, like
I said, people were we're seeing uh reporting wild men
in the woods long before Darwin came around. So I
don't think it's the most compelling argument, but it's interesting
to think about. So the idea of a sasquatch is
(06:28):
interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One as
I feel like it's really come to symbolize humans pension
for logical fallacies. So, you know, believers in Bigfoot would
claim that the absence of hard evidence of Bigfoot is
not evidence that Bigfoot does not exist. This is the argument, right,
And this is all kind of created this cottage industry
(06:49):
of sincerely earnest people trying to ferret out the truth
among pranksters and hoaxes. So it sort of money is
all the water here. You have people that really want
to believe Eve and want to find actual proof and
prove it. You have people who want to believe and
are willing to just cling to whatever. You have people
who just want to make a hoax. And then you
(07:10):
have people who really want to apply the rigors of
science to it or are already of the opinion that
we've already done that, and they're more pressing things to
consider right in the absence again of any body essentially
um And then I think you can't help to think
that somehow and all of this it sort of stirs
that childlike wonder, right, and that you know, there's somewhere
(07:33):
inside of us. There's just an iota of hope that
this nine to twelve foot harry mammal, you know, peaceably
roams the hinterlands, right, And I think about it as
being sort of a mash up between Chewbacca and where
the wild things are. These are these are things from
my youth and from my memory, my imagination, all embodied
(07:53):
in what Bigfoot is. Yeah, because the idea is that
there is this almost magical creature. I mean, most no
one out there that's you know, a sasquattion just saying
it's a magical creature, the saying it's a natural creature.
But there's something magical about the idea that there is
this uh, this cousin of humanity that still lives wild
and naked and furry in portions of the world that
(08:14):
we haven't turned into a parking lot yet, and that
they're so good at what they're doing that we have
really no proof that they're there, that they're they're almost
like a forest god living in the woods. And while
there are stories out there of of of a sasquatch
or a Bigfoot or what have you being aggressive towards humans,
most of the encounters, you seem to come across their
more mundane, they're more peaceful. And you see these representations,
(08:38):
for instance, the Melbourne Catchum Global Sasquatch Foundation. We'll discuss
that a little later on. But their emblem is is
this wonderful cheesey emblem of the planet Earth. And then
there's the outline of a sasquatch on there, and the
sasquatch is raising one hand, kind of like the figure
on the Voyager, that sort of I come in peace
sort of thing, and I I laughed the image, but
(09:00):
it does sum up I feel like a lot of
the hopes uh and and dreams out there when it
comes to belief or the desire to believe in a sasquatch.
It's a little bit of a Kauaii hangover, you know.
I was just thinking about the World Wildlife Fund, and
I believe their logo is a panda, which is super
and cuddly, but if you go up to a panda,
(09:21):
it will mally you. Right. So again, these are ideas
about things that exist that don't exist, perhaps exist, And
for me, what is again interesting about all of this
is that it kind of brings up this question of
could there be a species of primate behind these legends.
(09:41):
So not necessarily sasquatch or YETI as we we think
of it, but maybe something to this. That's the question
that that is interesting about this. Yeah, and it is
a reasonable question. It's it's easy to get distracted by
all of the nonsense out there. You lose sight of
the fact that, Okay, nine foot gigantopithecus creature did exist. Uh,
(10:04):
you know in prehistoric times that we do have guerrillas
to this day. So, and there are portions of the
world that that are there are more of a wilderness,
particularly you're looking in like northern North America or a
Siberian region. Uh, certainly parts of the Himalayas. Uh, you know,
deep jungles. There are places where you could conceivably have
(10:25):
a species, even a nine foot tall eight man species
living outside of a human understanding. Doubtful, but possible. Doubt
but possible. Yeah, you're not arguing of flying unicorns. You're
arguing something that tends to make sense, uh, based on
what we know about the natural world. In two thousand
and two, the world's perhaps the most famous primatologist, Jane Goodall,
(10:49):
came out as a I guess you could say bigfoot enthusiast. Yes,
if not someone who really hopes that this is the case.
And uh so she does admit to being a romantic
and having very much a heartfelt feeling about she She
said during the interview with Ira Flatau of MPR Science
Friday that she was sure of it. Now she's just
(11:10):
kind of talking off the cuff here in this interview. Yeah,
she's not presenting a paper on it. She's just he said,
he said that happening. She was like, oh, hey, um,
and so this is what she she said. She said,
I've talked to so many Native Americans who all described
the same sounds to who have seen them. I've probably
got about oh thirty books that have come from different
parts of the world, from China, from all over the place.
(11:31):
And there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper
just last last week which says that British scientists have
found what they believed to be a yetty hair and
that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London
couldn't identify it as any known animal. So we'll discuss
more about DNA in a little bit. But she goes,
as you say, on to say that she is a romantic.
She she um. She also says it's strange that there
(11:54):
has never been a single authentic hide or hair of
the big Foot, So she is acknowledging in a skeptical
way like we don't really have the evidence. But at
the heart of this, again, I think, is that childlike
wonder of like maybe it could be. So. Now, another
individual that that came up when we were looking at actual, legitimate,
(12:16):
learned individual scientists who are interested in the possible existence
of Bigfoot is Jeff Meldrum. Now, Jeff Meldrum is Associate
Professor of anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University UH.
He's a research associate at the I have A Museum
of Natural History, and he's his areas of research are
primate functional morphography, paleontology, but also crypto zoology as well. Now, um,
(12:40):
crypto zoology for anyone who isn't familiar with the term,
we have zoology, which is that dealing with actual, UH
creatures that are known to exist documented. Cryptozoo Zoology is
concerned with creatures that we do not know actually exist. There,
you know, you're things like your locknoest monsters, you're your
your Bigfoot, monster, what have you? So Meldrum is interest
(13:00):
in cryptozoology, he's interested in big Foot, but he is
also he also has the science shops to back it up.
He he is well informed about how the body of
a large primate works and would work if it were
in the form of the sasquash. That's right, because he
knows all about primate locomotion, human look emotion, and so
(13:21):
he has analyzed the footprints and he thinks that the
way that that the foot seems to be uh designed,
is that it's very well maybe a divergent species, and
so that's that's interesting. Um. He gets a lot of
flak for this, by the way, Yeah, as I imagine
(13:41):
he would. Yeah. Um, But you know he's out there
on the record saying, look, it's not just the footprints.
I've examined that footage um from nineteen sixty seven. He says,
you can see muscle movements, you can see the shoulder
blade slide under the skin, you can see tendons attaching
to joints and so forth. He says, the already is
really much better than most people have acknowledged in the past.
(14:03):
So again he's talking about that iconic film footage, which
which I do after researching this podcast, I do agree
that that we tend to just dismiss that footage these
days because it has been lampooned so much, and it
is has been ridicule and I've really become a joke.
And I'm not saying if you look back at it,
it's definitely going to convince you or anything. But if
(14:24):
you if you just put all that aside, all your
all these preconceived notions, and you watch the footage, fake
or not, it's it's far more effective than we often
give it credit. I agree. I also wanted to point
out it's a gigantapithecus, the giant ape that you had discussed.
This is this kind of gives us a clue about
the limits of primate morphology. Right, so there is the
(14:47):
possibility that you could have a nine foot tall mammal
by three ft wide that you can't say that's not
a possibility. It's we know that this is a kind
of morphology that has exists it in the past. However,
Michael Schermer will talk about these these different animals that
(15:08):
we have discovered, and he'll will say that the reason
cryptods merit our attention is that enough successful discoveries have
been made by scientists based on local anecdotes and folklore
that we cannot dismiss all claims a priori. So he says,
the most famous examples include the gorilla. Actually in um
(15:28):
we see the old copy that was a short necked
relative of the draft commodo dragon in nineteen twelve, the bonobo. Uh.
He goes on and on and on, but he says,
there is one thing that is common, a common thread
in all these discoveries. They have a body. It Yeah,
(15:49):
like like another one. He mentions, of course, this cryptosol
just loved to point at the ninety eight the discovery
of a sila can that's in a species of archaic
looking fish, and that we used to think it had
gone extinct in the pitatious period, and then here it is.
But to his point, we had a sela can to
show off. Here's a gorilla, here's a sela can, here's
a panda. And as Shermer points out in a two
(16:09):
thousand three essay for Scientific American, uh, that's the big thing.
Here show me the body. Where is the body? Because
anytime we were classifying a new species, we need a holotype.
We need the body of the creature. We need a
specimen by which to go on to say here's what
we found and here's another one. Oh, we can can
we can compare uh the d n A here, we
can compare the morphology of these two species and say
(16:30):
this is this and it's not these other specimens. Okay,
so we've discussed a bit about the case for the
existence of bigfoot sasquatch yetti. Let's take a quick break,
and when we get back we will talk about the
case against it. All Right, we're back, you know, and
(16:52):
I want to mention real quick, but Melvioun when he's
talking about the tracks and prints and and even the
uh that famous bit of footage, he's really all about
the sasquatch, and he even admits that the case for
the yetti in the Himalays is far less impressive. Yeah,
and we'll get a bit into the Eddie and the
Himalays and the reasons why that is problematic in a moment.
(17:15):
But let's go back to this idea of you know,
show us the body, or show us some sort of
evidence that that gives us an idea that this species exists. Yeah,
to uh to Jane Goodall's point, it is incredible that
if this creature were to actually exists, that we don't
have any proof of it, that we don't have bodies
(17:35):
and we don't have a significant samples of their anatomy. Uh. Now,
the the that would have in my mind, that tends
to lead to the answer, well, that's because they don't exist,
and or they did exist, they have not existed in
a very long time. But uh but yeah, what are
we what are we to make of that? Because it's
because especially now, it's one thing to say, you know,
(17:56):
early twenty century, but now this is the twenty one century.
There are more humans round than ever before, and just
about all of them have a camera on them. Because
I said the other that's a whole other issue that
the camera footage. But just about everyone has a camera.
Where we're out all over the place. Why haven't we
discovered a body? Well, I will play Devil's advocate for
just one second and say that, you know, every once
(18:17):
in a while you get the undiscovered tribe, right, so
you know that there are pockets of people out there,
maybe even a new species that just has not been
discovered yet in the rainforest in the Amazon between two
thousand and ten and two thousand and thirteen, there were
four d forty one species of plants and animals that
were discovered. How many of them were nine ft tall?
(18:38):
That's the problem. Yeah, we're talking about a big creature
that would would need a larger area in which to roam.
Uh And and we just haven't seen it. We have
not seen it happen. Again, not saying it it's impossible
for it to exist. But when you start looking at
the details, the size of the creature, how much space
it would need and uh and in the various parts
of the world in which it's reported to have been anist,
(19:00):
then I feel like the case just grows less and
less impressive. But then you have someone like Melba Ketchum
who is saying, hey, here is some possible proof, or
even saying there is proof species exists. Yes, tex And
veterinarian Dr. Melba s Ketchum uh contends that her research
teams five year genome sequencing study of a hundred and
twenty to alleged bigfoot DNA samples because they are tufts
(19:22):
of hair and whatnot that have been collected by by
bigfoot hair hunters out there in the wild Anyway, she
says that she claims that their findings point to a
hybrid species that split from Homo sapiens and an unknown
hominid species some thirteen thousand years ago. Now she published
her results. Yes, now you you probably have not heard
(19:45):
of the scientific journal that published them, uh DiNovo Scientific
Journalists what is called because it did not exist before
publishing this study, and her catch them study is the
only study that it has ever published. Um So it
was not pure reviewed. It did not show up in
any of the normal scientific journals that we would mention
on this this podcast. So this kind of a red flag.
(20:08):
And critics have charged that her samples were likely contaminated
because you have inexperienced evidence gatherers out there that are
end up introducing their own DNA onto the animal samples
that they bring in. There sneezing, their coughing, they're breathing heavily,
what have you. They So they bring in a contaminated
sample which then wants is analyze. You end up with
confusing and misleading results. So again, the problem with this
(20:32):
is starting at the assumption that, um, that the animal
exists right right, and and that's clear from the get
go just by you know, just go to her website,
looks at the logo, look at the mission statement of
the organization, and you see that that they have they
have an intention in mind. Yeah. Daniel Laxon, he's a
co author of the book A Vulnerable Science Origins of
(20:52):
the Yetti NeSSI and other famous criptis, says quote. A
scientist generally starts with a conservative working assumption that proposed
new idea are not true. This is so important, right,
We've talked about it so over and over again, or
that hypothetical new entities do not exist, and then revises
her probability estimate upwards only when the evidence forces her
(21:13):
to do so, he says. A pseudo scientist, on the
other hand, typically starts with the assumption that a novel
pro puzzle seems to be true, and then revises her
probability downward as the evidence leaves her no choice if
she is willing to surrender the possibility to do to
any degree at all. So we've talked about cognitive bias
all the time. This idea that we continue to sort
of add weight to this argument that we really want
(21:35):
to be true, and we begin to assemble patterns where
sometimes there are none exactly. So yeah, as you go
into into this kind of study with the cryptozologist mindset,
with the idea that I really want the big foot
to be to exist, then that ends up I mean
that that's the mission statement for the study, that ends
up skewing the entire study. So no much, no matter
(21:56):
how much science you throw in after the fact, you've
already turned the steering wheel off the road. All right,
So we've talked about the you know, things that have
existed been discovered. The body showed up, Um, what if
what if the species is? It does exist but it's
(22:17):
not what we think it is. There's another explanation, yes,
and this, uh, this explanation just recently came out in
the news and it has to do with Oxford University
geneticist Brian Sykes. Now Sykes his investigations are going to
be featured in an upcoming Channel four documentary series. He's
writing a book, um called the Yetie Enigma at DNA
(22:38):
Detective Story And basically, uh, he put out the call
and said, all right, you have samples of your yetis,
your sasquatches, what have you? Send them to me and
we and we will analyze them. We will look at
the DNA evidence here and and and then you can
stop complaining about scientists not listening to your bigfoot stories,
because I'm here to listen. Just send me the stuff, right.
(22:59):
So they took two of the more promising samples of
what we're supposed to be uh, you know, supposed to
be yetty hair yetti yet yettie materials. Uh, and they
analyzed them and what they found was pretty incredible, though
not incredible in the way that cryptozoologists would want it
to be. No, because again, here's the thing about sciences
(23:20):
that in the scientific method sometimes it yields results that
you never imagined, completely different than what you thought would happen. So, yeah,
he called through the gen Bank database and he found
that two samples were a match with the DNA of
an ancient polar bear from small Bard, Norway, and that
polar bear lifts some one to forty thousand years ago,
(23:41):
just when the brown bear and the polar bear were
diverging as a separate species. So there you go, one possible,
one possible explanation for the belief in the yetti. Yeah,
perhaps what what people were experiencing all these uh these
years and seeing into sharing stories about passing down from
(24:02):
generation generation. It actually had to do with a bear
that lived up, a species of polar bear that lived
in the region. Yeah. Now, he said that we shouldn't
take these results and assume the ancient polar bears are
wandering around the Himalayas. Um. But he did say that
perhaps the yet he could be this hybrid of polar
bear and brown bear, essentially a new species of animal. Um.
(24:23):
He has not published his research yet. It's up for
peer review, and there are some people who are criticizing
it only because of the logistics, saying that what we
know of polar bears, we know that they would have
a hard time surviving in the Himalayas, right, and Small
Bard is a long ways away from the Himalayas, right.
So there there are aspects to it that I think
(24:43):
need to be sussed out. But it's interesting. Well, I
have a theory here. The Yeties existed and they used
polar bears imported from Small Bard if their steeds, so
they wrote around on them and you know, wage war
and intended their mountain farms. I was just thinking maybe
they use him as pelts and made little coats put
over their own hairy bodies. Well maybe they were they
had naked bodies, or it may be clever, and maybe
(25:08):
they were actually short, more human size. Maybe they were
just they were just dudes, like two of them, so
they were like one once on the other shoulders and
then they had a little polar bear suit that they
pulled over it. It sounds pretty good to me. Peer reviewed,
my friend. Yeah, it's officially peer reviewed, all right. So
there you have it. A brief entry into the world
(25:30):
of the sasquatch, the big Foot, the yetie, etcetera. Obviously,
this is a topic that one can spend a lot
of time on. You can spend a lot of time
on it just on the scientific side of things, and
if you want to wander over into the the non
scientific side of things, uh, there's even more time to
be wasted. So if you want to spend more time
with this topic, I would recommend you check out our
(25:51):
sister podcast and UH and video series stuff. They don't
want you to know. They frequently come back to the
big foot issue and they're going to approach it from
a less skeptic standpoint, but but not like a completely
nutty standpoint either, No, and I think they will bring
up some very interesting ideas actually point in caterpoint ideas.
(26:13):
So check it out. Yeah, all right, and if you
want to talk to us about Bigfoot, we would love
to hear from you, seriously if you have I mean
a lot of the Bigfoot story, a lot of the
the Eddy story. It a lot of it comes down
to personal encounters. And you know, we've talked before in
the past about the flawed nature of memory, the flawed
nature of paranormal experience. Uh. Michael Sherman that we mentioned earlier,
(26:36):
who was talking about, you know, his skepticism regarding the
Big Smith. I mean, he himself and had a paranormal
experience during a bike marathon and which he saw extraterrestrials
and that kind of that led to his examination of
why did I see that? What led to that experience?
Because I know it wasn't aliens and and and so
his entire career as a skeptic author has has risen
(26:59):
from that. So because he was under extreme physical extreme
physical physical arrest, and he had that cultural script already
in mind. So if you have a story about big Foot,
send it to us. We're not going to pick it
to pieces on the air. We're not gonna call you
foolish or anything, because again, I really want, I would
really wish that this were true. And and even if
there is no such things, is a big foot. Experiences
(27:21):
of the big Foot are are real. Those do occur
like we do have paranormal experiences, even if the reason
for the occurring lies entirely within the natural world. So
share your stories with us. We'd love to hear from.
You can find us on steppable in your Mind dot com.
You can find us on social media Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter,
Google Plus all of those, and you can always drop
(27:41):
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.