June 03, 2006

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• Okay, which monkey was playing "freak out the bigfoot-watchers" this time?
• Well, I intend to cast my vote for the Formerly Extinct category. Handsome find, bone!
• Didn't the guy who filmed Bigfoot and the other guy who filmed Nessie both confess the films were hoaxes? Deathbed confessions: psych!
• What, no Jersey Devil? Pshaw.
• jersey devil is in da HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I heard that the guy who was in the bigfoot suit confessed. The filmmakers promised to pay him a big wad of cash, but stiffed him, so he told everyone what they did.
• Not American, but if you've not seen this fantastic film (FLASH) by Der Werzog, then you are missing cinematic gold.
• that looks very cool. i love how the matt hooper-a-like gets shot.
• Bigfoot is hiding behind my shower curtain RIGHT NOW!!
• There actually is a trade in snapping turtles: http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0506/328894.html
• "Didn't the guy who filmed Bigfoot and the other guy who filmed Nessie both confess the films were hoaxes?" No, not really. The Nessie thing is probably referring to one or another hoaxes that were exposed, there have been a couple. There are several Bigfoot films which are supposedly real, at least 3 of which are unverifiable, that is, they haven't been proven to conclusively be fakes. All are under question. A few years ago there was a rumour that a Hollywood effects guy made the Patterson creature costume, but this was started by a Director in Hollywood, & the actual effects guy denied it. "I heard that the guy who was in the bigfoot suit confessed. The filmmakers promised to pay him a big wad of cash, but stiffed him, so he told everyone what they did." A guy came forward & claimed to be the guy in the suit in the Patterson/Gimlin film. But it's important to remember two things: 1, the guy is an admitted hoaxer for money. You are going to believe a guy who says he lies for money, when he's accepting money to go on TV & say these things? Anyone could make the claims, & in fact several people have. Nobody has ever effectively reproduced the Patterson/Gimlin footage, & no one has produced the 'suit'. 2, the same guy's story is contradictory about how the suit was made, & he couldn't convincingly reproduce the Patterson/Gimlin creature appearance without thousands of dollars of modern special-effect prosthetics in a cable-channel documentary produced by professional skeptics. This sort of production value was out of the reach of the guys who supposedly did this in 1967. The best they could probably afford would be a professionally made ape-suit, of which none in 1967 would compare to the thing on the film. Compare this recent example of a Bigfoot hoax of a guy in a costume-shop monkey suit. The other thing to consider about the Patterson/Gimlin footage is that the guys who made it were hunting Bigfoot for nearly 9 years, which is a very long time out of your life to spend hunting something if you don't believe it's real. If you're gonna hoax something, you do it much sooner than that, I think. The creature in the Patterson footage looks like a very big guy in a suit, but the problem is that the guys who filmed it couldn't have produced the suit we see in the film easily. Plus, the arms are apparently a little too long for a human, & are not fake extensions because the elbow flexes & the hands move. There are muscle movements in the legs & buttocks that physicians have said look real. Yet other things in the footage are highly questionable. Penn & Teller recently did a show in which they made a fake Bigfoot film, & they managed to hoax BFRO, to their chagrin. This footage, it is notable to remember, fooled nobody else in the Crypto community.
• Looking at the Hairy Homonid Map, my initial reaction is that either Americans are far more gullible than most, or that Americans want there to be a Bigfoot so much they end up seeing the critters everywhere. That latter does not rule out Americans with a Hugely Humerous Hominid proclivity. Why shouldn't there be a Bigfoot? Or an Ogo Pogo? In brief: Why should the folk living in other countries have all the fun? Great post, bone!
• The creature in the Patterson footage looks like a very big guy in a suit, but the problem is that the guys who filmed it couldn't have produced the suit we see in the film easily. Heck, I could make a suit like that. People have snug clothing hand-made all the time, and any experienced tailor or seamstress could pull it off easily. And, there does not appear to be any special apparatus for the face beyond a hole for the eyes and nose. Furthermore, I know some people with freaky long arms, femes included. My arms reach halfway down my thighs, which is comparable to the Patterson pic.
• if it is so easy nunia, why has no one come forward with a costume that replicates it?
• According to Michael Wallace, Bigfoot is a hoax that was launched in August 1958 by his father Ray L. Wallace (1918-2002), an inveterate prankster. Shortly after Ray’s death, Michael revealed the details of the hoax, which were reported widely in the press. Ray had a friend carve him 16-inch-long feet that he could strap on and make prints with. Wallace owned a construction company that built logging roads at the time and he set the prints around one of his bulldozers in Humboldt County. Jerry Crew, a bulldozer operator, reported the prints and The Humboldt Times ran a front-page story about “Bigfoot.” The legend was born. However, a former logger, 71-year-old John Auman, claims Wallace left the giant footprints to scare away thieves and vandals who'd been targeting his vehicles. His hoaxes didn't begin until after he'd seen what a stir he'd created. Do you mean to tell me that no one on this planet could reproduce this monkeysuit?
• Have you seen the Wallace pictures? They're laughable. No respected, serious crypto researcher has taken his claims seriously for years. His claims of having started the Bigfoot story alone has been debunked thoroughly. Additionally, Bigfoot stories go back 400 years if you count Indian stories. Wallace responsible for all of them? Wallace responsible for thousands of bigfoot tracks all across the Northwest that have details like musculature & skin ridges? Just how omnipresent & brilliant was he? & Apparently he's still doing it to this day, long after he died! Plus, you're taking the word of an admitted hoaxer, a liar. You believe what he says? The internal consistancy of Bigfoot evidence, such as it is, would not be reproduceable by any hoax. Earliest modern reports of Bigfoot go back into the early 1800s. As for the Patterson film, no one, not a single person, to this day has been able to reproduce the footage with the resources available to Patterson & Gimlin back then. Wallace stomped around with wooden bigfoot clogs and photographed his wife dressed up as bigfoot: Looks nothing like the Patterson critter. Now, I admit there are many things that stink (no pun intended) about the Patterson/Gimlin film, but if you ask me, they weren't hoaxers themselves, given their years spent on the search. They may have been hoaxed by someone else, but up til now, nobody has been able to prove this.
• The problem I have with the critter here is the opposable thumb. Ignoring the bipedalism, there's little reason to think a Sasquatch would have opposable thumbs, so that mitigates in favour of fake. But if you ask me, the buttocks, legs & shoulders look very close-fitting & unlike padding, from the way they move. The guy in the suit must have huge physique to have such wide shoulders and be able to move his padded arms in a seemingly natural manner. The ends of the arms can't be fake, because there is no flex other than at the natural joint, & the fingers appear to move. The buttock 'muscles' appear to move in relation to one another. The leg muscles seem to judder as the feet are planted on the ground. If this is a suit, it's an incredible piece of work for 1967. I can't think of a sci-fi show or movie that had a suit that good in that era. Even the Mugato on Star Trek a year or so later wasn't that detailed, in terms of the obvious muscle structures under there. The arms are clearly rather long, reference the photo of the BBC 'recreation' I posted above. If you take up space with shoulder padding to recreate the Patterson creature's bulk, the arms end up looking much shorter than what we see. So the guy in the suit has freakishly large shoulders and arms. On the other hand, what primate has huge furry breasts? And female great apes don't have as pronounced a cranial ridge as males, which is a muscle-anchor for their huge jaws, used to mash rough vegetable matter. All of what we see in the Patterson film can be achieved by clever suit makers, now, for a couple of hundred thousand $. But by a couple of low-wealth trackers with little knowledge of musculature & suit making in 1967? Claims by debunkers notwithstanding, there are not even any hollywood monkey suits of that era that look like this. So if this is a guy in a suit, he's a big guy. Bob Hieronymus (the latest claimant of being the suit guy) couldn't recreate the gait with the arm swing like that, even with a huge, bulky, oversized head & fake arms. From these new stabilised shots, the head is clearly mobile, and detailed, not a bulky, over-large plastic thing as shown in the latest attempt to recreate it. I was surprised at the level of movement in the neck, on seeing these new shots, because it always looked like the Patterson thing couldn't turn it's head. Clearly it does. Plus, digital enhancement reveals a significant amount of detail on the face, even an eyeball. How did these guys anticipate someone dragging that much detail out of their shitty 9mm film, in 1967?
• I have no idea what you see, but I can't detect articulated muscle movement in this film. The butt appears to be a stationary cap that does not shift back and forth while the "creature" is walking. Also, the creature in this film appears to be wearing shoes (look closely). Furthermore, the face is inconsistent with skull shapes of hominids and is obviously wrapped around its mouth and jaw with "fur." This, too, is inconsistent with primates, as primates tend to have exposed lips and snouts. To say that no one could have made this suit because it was so "complicated" is the same argument that some deity created the universe because it's so difficult to understand. The 1960's wasn't the stone age, for crissake. Furthermore, no one said that anyone invented this "creature," or the mythology around it. I can see how a guy would be interested in using an already-famous spooky story to scare the local idiots. Chupacabra, anyone? For as many authorities that come out and say this footage is legit, there are many more who say, "Whatever." Many of those foot casts have been rejected as authentic by podiatrists. No matter how many "witness" (witless?) accounts there are, and no matter how much "evidence" exists, I'm not going to buy it until someone hands me a peer-reviewed paper on the matter. My opinion is: if it's not impossible to fake, then there is a reasonable doubt.
• "To say that no one could have made this suit... is the same argument that some deity created the universe because it's so difficult to understand." No, that is a strawman. The issue of the suit is absolutely integral, & debunkers dismiss it because they cannot explain it. How did two relatively poor trackers in '67 put together a suit that even physicians say has anatomically correct details? Easily falsifiable: find a monkey suit manufacturer from the late '60s & look at their stock. Find the suit used, or recreate it. No one has been able to do so. This is definitely *not* the same argument as ID, because it is falsifiable. We're not talking about the beginning of time, here, but 1967. "but I can't detect articulated muscle movement in this film." & I don't see shoes. Shall we dance? After the 2nd (red) closeup of the face, look at the next couple of steps taken by the thing. The upper & lower leg muscles 'judder' as the foot hits the ground. SCICOP & others have tried to explain the muscle movement away by the suggestion of the use of 'water bag' pouches to get that motion, so even other doubters see the muscle jiggle. You said you could make a suit like that, & said that the face is just holes for mouth & eyes, now you're picking out details. How much further do we go, shooting down objections while you raise new ones? Wanna talk about differences between the Patterson creature & normal primates? Try bipedalism. That's all you need to dismiss it without looking at further evidence, by saying, 'since nothing like this exists, then it can't be possible'. See: Antoine Lavoisier's dismissal of the existance of meteorites. Many foot casts are fake, true, but there are many others that show consistancy in details as subtle as lift-off points, & dermal ridges, like fingerprints, which seems to be above the expertise of the average hoaxer, particularly when the casts are gathered from over a 40 year period at different places in the country. You'd have to have a secret society of sasquatch-hoaxers coordinating their evidence over longer than a generation. A study of a database of 550 track cast length measurements reveals the Gaussian distribution of the 550 footprint lengths gives a curve that is very similar to the curve given by living populations of known animals without much sexual dimorphism in footprint length. There has never been a peer-reviewed paper on the possible existance of an unknown primate in North America. Why? There has never been a proper scientific study of the evidence. Peer-reviewed papers don't come out of a vacuum. "Furthermore, no one said that anyone invented this "creature," or the mythology around it." When people bring up Wallace, they usually claim just this, that he took sole responsibility for the creation of the Bigfoot flap. Jane Goodall is only one of the notable primatologists who believe that, based on evidence, witness reports& the audio recordings of howls, that there is a real animal behind the reports. There are several other important figures in the field who agree. I don't know what is in the Patterson footage. Sometimes I see a guy in a suit, sometimes I see details that I can't explain away as easily. Irrespective of this, the veracity of the Patterson footage has little bearing on the overall question of Bigfoot's existance, which I think really does bear a lot of scrutiny. We've found odder things before, such as the Coelocanth, a fish thought to have been extinct since the Cretaceous. Lo & behold, fisherman catch one in the late 30s, & now we know they are robust & have many colonies, previously considered impossible. Life is strange, & the world is large.
• The coelacanth is represented in the fossil record. Sasquatch is not. Even for the enormous undertaking involved in finding the creature, no evidence of its existence is forthcoming. I am not saying that new species of animals are not discovered (even living fossils like coelacanths), but that this "bigfoot" footage is not compelling scientific evidence for the existence of the creature. Furthermore, the fact that the people connected to the footage confessed that it is false is, in itself, more compelling than any supposed experts pontificating on its validity. Should we actually find fossil (or otherwise) evidence of bigfoot, or a bigfoot specimen, I will be very happy for those guys in cryptozoology. Until then, I remain unconvinced.
• I WANT TO BELIEVE!