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+--- Thread: Searching for Bigfoot in Oregon (/thread-7930.html)
Searching for Bigfoot in Oregon - Yazata - Dec 11, 2019
Thread subtitle: MR's been out in the woods scaring people again.
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/possible-bigfoot-sighting-revealed-as-scientists-hunt-for-apelike-creature-in-oregon-forests
The story claims that "thousands" of bigfoot signtings have been made in Oregon. Supposedly something like 1/3 of the bigfoot sightings in the US are in Oregon.
So a scientific team, led by a primatologist from Florida Atlantic University has been out searching for them in the Cascade forests of central Oregon. She is something of a cryptozoologist and has already discovered a new species of lemur. (Not in Oregon!) But she says from her experience that some species of primates such as lowland gorillas have become very good at hiding from humans. So she doesn't think that it's impossible that an unknown species of large primate might be living in the more remote parts of the Oregon forests.
The best they've gotten so far is a long-distance thermal image of a large bipedal figure.
It seems to me that the presence of human hunters in these things' range (if they exist, a big if) might arguably create a selective pressure towards covertness and drive their evolution rapidly in that direction. If only the best hiders survive, and some of that is heritable (whether genetically or culturally) they would rapidly become better hiders.
One of my biggest reasons for doubting these cryptozoological hominids exist is that their remains have never been found. One would expect them to die in the woods now and then and humans to stumble upon at least their bones. But if they have become superhuman hiders, then they may carefully remove their companions' corpses to some hypothetical secret big-foot burial ground known only to them.
Of course the evolution-towards-stealth speculative theory requires that less stealthy variants be taken by human hunters. So it would pretty much require that humans have evidence of them, if humans are successfully hunting them so that only the best hiders survive. But (again speculatively) that might have occurred thousands of years ago with the American Indians and have been more or less completed so that Bigfoot was already stealthy by the time settlers arrived in the early 1800's. And the local Indians do seem to have many legends of these kind of things, which might fit.
Bottom line: I'm still hugely skeptical about whether these things really exist. But I'd love it to be true that some other species of proto-human, descended from Homo erectus perhaps, is still out there coexisting with us much like the Neanderthals and Denisovans once did, but more successfully.
RE: Searching for Bigfoot in Oregon - Magical Realist - Dec 11, 2019
I plan on watching that series if I can ever get their Travel channel air time right. Infrared heat footage of a large apelike biped out in a forest is pretty good evidence as far as these things go. There's not many things other than a Skwatch that that could be other than some kook running around in a gorilla suit, which probably wouldn't show up with a heat signature. If they have footprints in addition to this footage I will impressed. But I'm not holding my breath for anything like a live encounter. Skwatches are smart and elusive as hell. They disappear into interdimensional portals..
RE: Searching for Bigfoot in Oregon - C C - Dec 12, 2019
(Dec 11, 2019 05:39 PM)Yazata Wrote: . . . One of my biggest reasons for doubting these cryptozoological hominids exist is that their remains have never been found. One would expect them to die in the woods now and then and humans to stumble upon at least their bones. But if they have become superhuman hiders, then they may carefully remove their companions' corpses to some hypothetical secret big-foot burial ground known only to them...
There have been rare sightings of mountain lions along a lake miles from here, but encountering the remains of one seems vastly unlikely (if it died naturally, without human assistance). Taking the dog on various walks, I noticed one coyote carcass disappeared in a matter of weeks -- no bones were even noticeable anymore at the end.
Bigfoot costumes, of course, are the perfect camouflage for time travelers doing research about the past. If an explorer gets sighted, then the residents of this era just have a big hoot about it. They might even be robots in biological disguise -- would humans of the future need to venture out to do dirty work of any kind? If one gets damaged, maybe it disintegrates like those aliens in the The Invaders. "What body? I don't see no stinkin' body around here. Are you David Vincent, that crazy UFO guy?"