Bigfoot Researchers Declare 2013 "The Year of the Bigfoot"

[geminilee]

I agree. I just meant that if we go with the idea that the Geneva convention wouldn't apply because it was not war, then they would just move the goalposts* and claim that it was false imprisonment laws, or some other law that would apply to a human in the same situation.

It would definitely not be classed as a human being, and probably wouldn't fit under any existing laws other than those that generically cover all animals and protect against abuse and such. There would be no restrictions on capturing them and owning them. Any restrictions would come later, after they were proved to exist by someone who captured and owned one. And it would come after much debate and some court rulings.

*Probably not the right expression, but I can't think of the right one.

[diddy]

I agree with your assessment. This whole "Geneva Convention" claim is just a rubbish excuse to cover up the idea that they don't have any Bigfoot. It's a ruse and most likely one that they can keep using.

"Well we can't capture one, it's under the Geneva convention. Trust us!"

[Singing in the Drizzle]

You capture a big foot and had to release it because of the "Geneva Convention" but could not manage to take one decent picture of it. The face also look intently darkened after the picture was taken.

For some reason I do not understand my BS meter is in the red.

[diddy]

I stopped using my BS meter on cryptozoology claims - it kept breaking via overload.

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by geminilee

It would definitely not be classed as a human being,

Strangely enough the scientific definition of a human includes anything from the genus Homo which is everything from Homo habilis up to Homo sapiens sapiens, the latter just happening to be the only extant species. If Neanderthals or any other species or subspecies had survived to the modern day they'd be considered to be human. Depending on where an alleged Bigfoot fits on the evolutionary tree it might actually count as a human in scientific terms, but whether it counted as a human in legal terms might be a different matter altogether.

(It's a moot point anyway since they're imaginary.)

Originally Posted by Singing in the Drizzle

You capture a big foot and had to release it because of the "Geneva Convention" but could not manage to take one decent picture of it. The face also look intently darkened after the picture was taken.

For some reason I do not understand my BS meter is in the red.

That's not an actual photo of 'Daisy', it's just a graphic someone mocked up for that article. There'd be a heck of a lot more chatter about this if they'd released an actual photo, at this point all they have is a completely ambiguous email that someone apparently received by accident which may or may not be fake or a prank or even related to Bigfoot at all, an unconfirmed "no comment" statement from someone who might or might be involved and a rambling youtube video about army bigwigs and the Geneva convention and the moon landing from a nutcase taxi driver. The BS is even deeper than you imagined.

I love this stuff, I couldn't make it up if I tried.


Edit: I found the source for that photo and it's a photo of a chimpanzee taken in Cameroon in 2009, in case anyone was wondering.

[Gutter Monkey]

Here's a 'Daisy in a Box' update for anyone who was wondering whether the captured Bigfoot story panned out: pretty much everyone has now accepted that it was all a hoax. Back on Dec 27 the mystery guy 'Ed Smith' claimed that he'd intercepted a coded message from mystery group 'Quantra' and then claimed that the creature had been moved to a secure facility, a guy from another group somehow connected to Quantra released a statement saying they would "neither confirm nor deny" they had a live specimen, Smith then said he'd met with the team responsible for the capture but they refused to show him the creature, he then organised a 'bridging team' of well know Bigfoot researchers to meet with them, the bridging team was then expanded to include almost 20 experts and non-partisan researchers, the bridging team meeting was then cancelled because Quantra were apparently bringing in a PR firm to release all the info, a former private investigator then tracked down Ed Smith's details and found a bunch of holes in his story and now Smith has dropped off the radar and everyone who assumed it was a hoax from the start is going "I told you so!"

As you can see, almost every detail was supplied by this Ed Smith guy with absolutely no evidence to back it up. There was also a whole bunch of extra drama around this with people jumping in to make other unsubstantiated claims (eg: the guy claiming that Daisy had been released under the Geneva convention), people being banned from Bigfoot forums, lots and lots of podcasts speculating about what was happening, etc etc etc..


I've only given the bare bones details of this big dumb mess so here's some links to other sources in case anyone is interested in seeing how it all unfolded:

Here's the 'Bigfoot Evidence' blog with a more detailed timeline of everything that happened: 'As the Squatch Turns' (part 1 of 10)

Here is the former private detective putting the mysterious Ed Smith under a microscope and poking holes in his stories.
(He also has a Hall of Shame with other Bigfoot hoaxes.)

Here's a hilarious youtube video from one of my favourite Squatchers Michael Merchant/SnowWalkerPrime ranting about it the whole deal.
Michael Merchant's group Team Tazer are the ascerbic troublestirrers of the wider Bigfooting community and they have several youtube channels including ParaBreakdown which mercilessly tears apart dodgy fake Bigfoot videos. If you're looking for your weekly dose of skeptical schadenfreude they'll probably hit the spot.


All in all this has been a fascinating window into the social machinations of a pseudo-scientific community.

[DawnStorm]

Notice how there's not a lot of Bigfoot or UFO sightings now that everyone and his dog has a phone camera handy?

Gutter Monkey: is the Weekly World News back in production?

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

Notice how there's not a lot of Bigfoot or UFO sightings now that everyone and his dog has a phone camera handy?

Yeah the video hoaxers have had to get a bit creative these days. Here's a recent video that a lot of people got excited over, some anonymous person apparently filmed it through the window of their tent with their smart phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHc535VzMoo
It's a dodgy blurry video that could really easily be someone in a latex halloween mask but on top of that people somehow linked the video back to Rick Dyer, one of the two guys who ran the notorious 2008 'Bigfoot in a Freezer' hoax.

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

Gutter Monkey: is the Weekly World News back in production?

Actually it is - as a website! They've even got a whole bunch of Bigfoot articles:
http://weeklyworldnews.com/search/bigfoot
You'll need to subscribe to actually read them but the headlines are funny enough on their own.

[fitz1980]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

Notice how there's not a lot of Bigfoot or UFO sightings now that everyone and his dog has a phone camera handy?

I've been saying that for years. Used to be that stories about bigfoot, UFO's ghosts, ect were often "there it was right infront of me, big as life" but they had no proof because they didn't have a camera on them. Now paranormal investigators have been reduced to chasing digital video artifacts and points of light that barely register on the camera as evidence of their claim.

[Gutter Monkey]

There's a whole bunch of things going on in the Bigfoot world right now that will probably start trickling out into the media at some point, if they haven't already.


1) A researcher called Dr Melba Ketchum has apparently spent the last 5 years studying some Bigfoot biological samples and she claims to have discovered some significant DNA evidence. She's written a formal paper about it but couldn't get it accepted into any peer-reviewed journals in the English speaking world (but issued a press release about it anyway, which is really frowned upon in scientific circles) but apparently a Russian journal will print it 'soon'. 'Soon' has stretched out into quite a few months.

2) A hunter called Justin Smeja was out hunting for bears in California with a buddy when he shot a large Bigfoot but lost it when it ran away. Two baby Bigfoots broke out of cover and were wandering around looking for the bigger one and Smeja also shot one of them dead. He wasn't quite sure what these creatures were and suddenly realised that he might get in trouble with the Department of Fish and Game for killing them so he stashed the baby's body under a bush and he and his friend went home. Some time afterwards he cautiously mentioned this on a hunting forum and some Bigfoot researchers saw it and got in touch with him. They convinced him to go back and get some physical evidence but there'd been some heavy snows in the meantime and all he could find was a 'steak' of flesh with some hair attached. They apparently sent samples to several DNA labs for testing but the results came back as 'bear'.
Regardless, the 'Team Tazer' Bigfoot research group has gotten right behind Justin and even got him to sit a polygraph test which he apparently "passed with flying colours". They are now making at least one documentary about it all and when they returned to the area to camp out and shoot footage they reportedly had a Bigfoot encounter in the middle of the night.

3) Dr. Bryan Sykes of Oxford University, a fairly famous DNA researcher who has written a whole bunch of books (some of which were turned into documentaries) announced a while back that he was going to look into Bigfoot DNA. There's been recent reports that the the DNA results on the Yeti hair he got from Russia somehow turned out to be horse, raccoon and American black bear.

4) Remember the "tent video" of a Bigfoot I mentioned a few posts ago? It turns out that this was filmed by known hoaxer Rick Dyer and the story goes that a few seconds after he finished filming he ran out of the tent wearing nothing but his boxers and shot the Bigfoot dead. Some versions of the story say there was a BBC documentary crew with him who filmed the entire thing and apparently got into a fist fight with him over killing the creature. Just yesterday a fairly well known Bigfoot skeptic (who had previously been a Bigfoot believer for many years) was invited by Dyer to a facility outside of Las Vegas to view the Bigfoot's corpse and he's now 100% convinced that it's a genuine Bigfoot body.


Of course there's no actual evidence that any of these stories are the slightest bit true and the various Bigfoot camps are sniping and barking at each other constantly and accusing everyone else of being hoaxers, which is standard operating procedure for these people. The fact that production companies are involved in most of these stories (some from even before the stories became publically known) is also quite suspicious. 2013 really might become "The Year of the Bigfoot", one way or another.

[barbrainey]

Ninety-nine percent of these so-called Bigfoot sightings are bears of some sort, either black bears or grizzlies. The only "Bigfoot" sighting that cannot possibly be bears are the ones that are reported in the winter. That is when bears hibernate. However, I don't know of any wintertime Bigfoot sightings. It seems that virtually all of the sightings occur either in the late spring, summer, or early autumn when the self-proclaimed sighters are either camping, or hunting.

Barb Rainey

[crocoduck_hunter]

Bears don't hibernate 100% of the winter.

Technically, they don't hibernate, either, since they maintain a fairly high body temperature (during a true state of hibernation, an animal's body temperature drops to close to the temperature of the environment), but that's beside the point.

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by barbrainey

Ninety-nine percent of these so-called Bigfoot sightings are bears of some sort, either black bears or grizzlies. The only "Bigfoot" sighting that cannot possibly be bears are the ones that are reported in the winter. That is when bears hibernate. However, I don't know of any wintertime Bigfoot sightings. It seems that virtually all of the sightings occur either in the late spring, summer, or early autumn when the self-proclaimed sighters are either camping, or hunting.

Barb Rainey

There's usually a lot of Bigfoot footprints turn up in the snow during winter. Here's a rather well known photo from the BFRO website, it shows deer tracks on the left and what appears to be rather large footprints from some sort of biped on the right:


You'll also notice that the 'Bigfoot' tracks appear to be in a straight line like a tightrope walker and not left/right/left/right like human tracks, this is apparently quite common and is often used used by Bigfoot advocates as a way of identifying Bigfoot snow tracks.

And if you look really really carefully you'll see that some of the 'footprints' aren't actually one big print but two smaller, circular prints that are really close together. It's a moose track. Some moose will occasionally step into the same print with their front leg and then with their back leg if the snow is at a certain depth and it can make their hoofprints look like massive footprints.

[fitz1980]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

You'll also notice that the 'Bigfoot' tracks appear to be in a straight line like a tightrope walker and not left/right/left/right like human tracks, this is apparently quite common and is often used used by Bigfoot advocates as a way of identifying Bigfoot snow tracks.

The only way the tracks in that pic could belong to a biped would be if said creature were doing the runway model walk where it puts one foot in front of the other, rather than side by side. Of course models do that so that their hips and butt shake as they walk down the runway and the idea of a lumbering ape-like bigfoot doing that creates a very funny image in my head.

[GenYus234]

I'm too sexy for my fur, too sexy for my fur, too sexy I'm sure.
I'm a Bigfoot, you know what I mean. And I do my little turn on the meadow.
Yeah on the meadow, on the meadow yeah.
I do my little turn on the meadow.

You're welcome for the earworm.

[Gutter Monkey]

This news broke a few days ago and I've been waiting for some actual developments before posting it here but it's starting to creep into the media so I guess we'd better get on it.

I posted this earlier:

1) A researcher called Dr Melba Ketchum has apparently spent the last 5 years studying some Bigfoot biological samples and she claims to have discovered some significant DNA evidence. She's written a formal paper about it but couldn't get it accepted into any peer-reviewed journals in the English speaking world (but issued a press release about it anyway, which is really frowned upon in scientific circles) but apparently a Russian journal will print it 'soon'. 'Soon' has stretched out into quite a few months.

Lo and behold she's now published the paper! She couldn't get it into an established journal so she created her own journal and self-published. People who are familiar with the ethical and methodological requirements of the scientific process were naturally horrified and bemused by this bizarre turn of events. Oh and she's charging $30 to read the paper.
This Huffington Post article sums up the situation fairly well.

The science guy from the Houston Chronicle's website passed the paper on to some bonafide geneticists and their response was that the paper was a mess and that she doesn't present sufficient data to support her conclusions. Bigfoot's current scientific golden boy Professor Jeff Meldrum has been dismissive about the journal but hasn't commented on the paper itself so far.

A google search shows that there's a bunch of other news articles about this already and there'll probably be a bunch more over the next few days.

[Gutter Monkey]

A group of biologists get hold of the Bigfoot DNA paper and run the genome sequence through the Genbank database to verify the paper's conclusions. (Spoiler: the paper is hilariously inept and got pretty much everything wrong.)
The discussion gets fairly technical in parts but it's not that hard to follow along.




Is anyone surprised?

[The Goof]

Very interesting and funny video. Thanks.