Some Common Questions and Statements from Bigfoot Skeptics Addressed
I often read the same comments or questions in bigfoot forums and and other bigfoot discussions coming from skeptics. Some of those questions actually have answers, and some of the statements simply aren’t correct. So I decided to compile some here, and anyone else can feel free to add their own or enhance or correct any of these in the comments.
Why hasn’t someone found a body?
The lack of a Bigfoot body can be attributed to several reasons such as habitat and terrain, scarce population, scavengers, and/or the possibility that Bigfoots bury or otherwise conceal their dead. The dense forests and rugged terrains that Bigfoots are said to inhabit makes it difficult to find any hard evidence.
With Bigfoots being rare and elusive creatures, it is entirely possible that humans have simply not come across a Bigfoot’s remains yet. It’s not a very common occurrence to come across the remains of any predatory animal in the wild. Added to that is the finder of said remains would have to recognize that they were from a Bigfoot. It is certainly possible that bones have been left lying because the finder didn’t recognize them as significant. Below is a video of how fast decompostion and scavenging happens from an experiment done on the TV show MonsterQuest.
“There hasn’t been any evidence found.”
This is simply not true. There hasn’t been any definitive evidence found, but there certainly has been evidence. For one, eyewitness testimony is a type of evidence. There are also videos and photos that purport to show Bigfoots. The authenticity is debated, but some have been compelling enough to sway some scientists.
Footprints have been found and casts have been made of these. Some experts that have examined these say they come from a real and unique animal. In addition suspected hairs that have been subjected to morphology examinations have yielded a repeatable pattern of a hair that lacks or has a minimal medulla. This would also indicate a novel species.
The only definitive evidence will be a type specimen, in part or in whole, that can be studied. Which takes back to the “where is the body” question. Rest assured, skeptics and believers equally want this to be found. However there has been evidence found. Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science is a great book to outline some of the best evidence and scientific study on Bigfoots to date.
The guy who invented Bigfoot admitted it was a hoax, right?
Well, this is a false premise. There is no guy who invented Bigfoot. What you are likely thinking about is the story of Ray Wallace. He was involved in the incidents that brought Sasquatches into the mainstream in America and the newspaper article that coined the term “Bigfoot”. That was in the 1950s. Before they were called Bigfoots, though, they were reported as Sasquatch, wild men, wood boogers, and a bunch of other names. In fact, there was even a Sasquatch themed festival in British Columbia in the 1930s, around 2 decades before the word “Bigfoot” entered the lexicon.
You may also be thinking about Bob Heironymous, who claimed he was the subject of the famous Patterson-Gimlin Film and that he was wearing a horsehide suit. Again, Bigfoots were not invented by this film. The filmmaker was making a documentary about them. And Bob’s story has not been proven beyond his word, and has a lot of holes in it. I go a little further into detail in one of my earlier posts:
Sasquatch Suspect #4: Human Hoaxes
There is no fossil evidence for a great ape (other than humans) in North America.
This is another assertion that is a shaky premise. Fossil evidence is good to back up the existence of a species and even the length of existence of that species in some cases. However, fossils are extremely rare. Every bone does not eventually become a fossil, not even close. And finding a fossil is even rarer still. There are certainly many, many species that have come and gone over time without any human ever finding a trace of them, even large species.
A fossil of a North American non-human ape may never be found, but I would argue it is equally as likely that a fossil of one will turn up tomorrow. It is not as if people are digging every inch of the earth for fossils every day, and some environments aren’t suited for preservation of them. Some known animals haven’t shown up in the fossil record. Chimpanzee fossils were not discovered until 2005.
If someone really had a hair or scat, DNA would have proven it.
There are a couple of problems with this assumption. First, it isn’t as easy to have something DNA tested as TV would have you believe. On top of that, DNA testing isn’t cheap, and the samples need to contain enough DNA and need to be collected and stored without contamination. There are also at least 3 different DNA testing methods used for species identification.
The second problem with DNA goes back to the original type specimen problem. A database called GenBank stores the genetic sequences of most known animals. When DNA testing is done the result is compared to known sequences. Gen Bank doesn’t have “Sasquatch” in the database, because there hasn’t been a type specimen. So a Sasquatch’s DNA would come back as unknown. What would need to be done is have several samples from several places all come back with the same sequence – and that sequence be previously unknown. But even then, depending on how close to human the samples were they may be written off as contaminated.
Again, a type specimen is really the only answer.
Add Your Input
If you’d like to add questions, add to the answers, or debate any of these feel free to do so in the comments below!
