Do you think BigFoot is real??

[CombNWattles]

Not a Bigfoot believer myself, but to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, the existence of a forged banknote doesn’t disprove that of a legitimate one, rather the other way around.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Not a Bigfoot believer myself, but to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, the existence of a forged banknote doesn’t disprove that of a legitimate one, rather the other way around.

Correct. Establishing the Patterson film as a hoax doesn’t prove bigfoot doesn’t exist. The biggest issue by way of proof is that it calls into question the track catalogue, the tracks so far being the best physical evidence of their existence.

Dr. Grover Krantz and Dr. Jeff Meldrum were world-leading experts in primate foot morphology. They were also bigfoot believers and believed the tracks proved the reality of bigfoot. They also believed in the authenticity of the Patterson film.

The problem, besides them being duped and it calling into question their discernment of evidence, is that they used the Patterson tracks as the gold standard to test other tracks. If bigfoot tracks didn’t look like the tracks from the Patterson subject, they were suspect. Also, prints matching the Patterson subject were collected from Bluff Creek years before the film. That has been used as evidence of authenticity, as it implies that the Patterson animal had been living in the area for years.

If Patterson hoaxed it all, it also means he had been hoaxing tracks around Bluff Creek using the same foot mold for years. And if he was that dedicated, then him or his associates may have been faking tracks all over the Pacific Northwest during the 60s and the 70s. After the 70s, long trackways stopped being discovered for the most part. That suggests that after the 70s, the network of hoaxers stopped being active.

The entire track catalogue that Krantz and Meldrum were holding out as real may have been fakes. And if by chance there were some real tracks submitted, they may have been discarded because they didn’t match the standard.

So we may be left with a complete lack of documented physical evidence for bigfoot. That’s a problem.

On the other hand, the modern accounts that seem most credible to me involve descriptions of an animal that doesn’t match the Patterson subject. They often describe an animal that has a more ape-like body and a more human-like face. Or perhaps a face more like a monkey’s than the face of a modern ape. And one that routinely moves on all 4s as well as bipedal. The Patterson subject’s legs are more human-like and it couldn’t have ran on all 4s. And the tracks of Patterson and other typical prints from the 60s and 70s look like enlarged human prints, while the potential track I saw looked more ape-like with a divergent big toe. Like a big gorilla print with a foot that could grip things.

It all leads me to believe that most bigfoot sightings are bunk, nearly all the vetted physical evidence is bunk, but behind it all, there may be a very rare ape that was once common in North America and is now either extinct or so rare as to almost never been seen. The actual animal may not look much like the modern conception of bigfoot beyond it being a big, bipedal, ape.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

For reference, one of the Patterson tracks. It looks typical for a bigfoot track from the 1960s and 1970s.

A yeti track:

An orang pendek track:

The yeti and orang pendek tracks look a lot more consistent with what one would expect a bipedal ape’s foot to look like. They seem more biologically “authentic.” It doesn’t mean they’re real, but if faked, it means the hoaxers put more thought into zoological realism.

The track I saw looked very much like the yeti print, with the divergent big toe long but curled up to give the impression of a giant toe.