Thread subtitle: MR's been out in the woods scaring people again.
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/possible-bi...on-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.
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/possible-bi...on-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.