[aldo_14]

There are, I belive, animals which have only been observed once or twise and never again - despite modern technology.  I think one is a pygmy boar, which was seen once in the 50s, and which has since vanished.....

what you seme to forget, is that in the likes of the jungle there are masses of heat sources - not to mention extremely dense foliage that prevents vision or movement.  arial surveys are useless, because of this, as well IIRC.  you;d also have to keep the entire area under constant surveillance for many months - stuff like bahviour patterns (sleep periods, hibernation, how and where it would hunt, how often it needs to hunt, etc) could all have an effect.

Also, computers have a massive amount of trouble discerning what a viewed object is (there is pretty much no way a computer can currently identify, for example, what the objects are in an image).  so you;d have to do it by eye.

Imagine surveying several hundred miles of populated (by animals), dense forest - and trying to detect a couple of unknmow, vague heat sources.

Even if we have sufficiently disscerning technology to identify an unknown lifeform, we still have to identify a way to actually use that technology over a large area.  And there's always the maxim that 'abscence of proof is not proof of absence'.

[Bobboau]

actualy I think it's probly a very interesting phycological effect, a type of halucination that sows up commonly amung diferent people due to some instinctive fear.

[aldo_14]

Well, extreme fear does apparently **** up the process of forming memories (mild levels of fear actually improve this process, though), so I wouldn;t be surprised if many encounters are a result of screwed up memories.

[IceFire]

Good point aldo...I was just sugesting that if a sighting was reported quickly then you could do a pretty much standard in manhunting now and fly helicopters over a region looking for large moving ape/human like creature.

That would cut it down from having to survey thousands of KM and attempting to discern one or a group from all of the other possibilities.

Bobbau is probably correct in that its probably a shared halicination that is perhaps somewhat hard wired into our pysch and then brought on by fear.  I think many underestimate how quickly instinct plays a part of our behavior...especially under high stress situations such as those.

[Bobboau]

wouldn't even need fear, probly more a sence of isolation

[Grey Wolf]

They probably don't exist. However, we did think that one fish was extinct, but then found a ton of them in a cave in Africa, so who knows.

[Gank]

Originally posted by IceFire
Bobbau is probably correct in that its probably a shared halicination that is perhaps somewhat hard wired into our pysch and then brought on by fear.  I think many underestimate how quickly instinct plays a part of our behavior...especially under high stress situations such as those.

Its a hallucination of a giant monkey thats brought about by the fear and stress of seeing a giant monkey?

[Bobboau]

that or a instinctive fear of unfamiliar human(oid)s in unfamiliar environments, we are a rather terirorial species

[Black Wolf]

Hmmm... more varied than I thought

For my part, I'm naturally skeptical, but, given the body of evidence the longevity of the belief, and the not completely over the top expectations of the animal biologically, I'm less skeptical about this than I am, say, the Loch Ness monster or the Mokele mbembe and what not.

And, for the record, Polar bears give off practically no heat (a sleeping bear is undetecteable by IR anyway) but I still agree with Icefire that it's likely these things, if they're out there at all, could be picked up through their bodyheat.

Liberator - Nope, I haven't seen those places, and I don't doubt that they're dense and inhospitable and quite possibly could support large, undiscovered animals. I was more trying to point out that, given their location in America, they're probably more regularly traversed, flown over, studied etc. than, say, the entral Congo or Amazonian rainforest, or the Himalayan peaks.

[Janos]

Most recently found large animals have been found because
1) trails, tracks, other marks
2) bones, skin, droppings
3) local stories combined with 1 and 2.

Of bigfoots and so on we have only stories, and they are not the "interesting type" - similar long and detailed stories shared by many independent tellers (Okapi).
Latimeria and Yeti are like apples and oranges. You really can't compare the two.

[Tiara]

So, basically we have some overgrown freaks of nature. Like with humans, there are always exceptions. Just because human is 2.30m and has feet the size of a USN aircraft carrier doesn't make him a different species.

Maybe some other animal had some freaky DNA accident

[neo_hermes]

BigFoot is probably the US militaries new weapon for fighting in forested areas. and people see it run away because the general in charge doesn't want to be found out messing with genetics and ordered it to run away.

[JarC]

fact: there exists a gen in the human genome which can cause the affected patient to grow to enormous size. Head, hands and feet are often overproportionately large

fact: there exists a gen in the human genome which causes the patient to have enormous masses of body hair.

fact: since day and age, mutations or 'abnomalities' have never been accepted in any type of culture and such 'creatures' were often killed or abandoned, in which case it was possible for a 'mutant' to survive (living as a hermit)

fact: since the days we lived in caves, the human race is scared ****less of anything it doesn't understand and makes up stories around such things to better deal with their fears.

the result: countless of legends about large, hairy, ape-like creatures have evolved among every single culture on earth...

conclusion: Yeti/BigFoot/Sasquatch exists, we are him!

that does not mean that is it NOT possible for a side branch in the evolution to go undetected for so long a period, contrary to popular belief, there are still large parts on most continents unexplored (once charted perhaps but often never revisited) because the environment is so 'wild' and stretched that it would take either eons to comb thru or we simply do not have the financial resources (technical ain't the problem nowadays). So, who knows there may still live an undiscovered type of humanoid somewhere, but the chance to that is bout as big as the chance on the US leaving the middle east

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Who believes? On the one hand, we're asked to accept a large animal which has never been conclusively sighted, nor even had its carcass or skeleton found, and has no truly similar animals in the recent fossil record. Moreover, Sasquatch is supposed to live in the continental US and Canada, one of the most populated and scientifically scrutinized parts of the world. On the other hand, there's a belief that goes back thousands of years, some degree of evidence, and similar stories from several separate places around the world.

Mainly, I'm just curious.

i can't beleive that you forgot the yowies  (australian version of bigfoot, yadda, yadda, yadda  )

[Bobboau]

I mentioned that one, though I spelled it Yawee, fictional spelling of a fictional creature I supose

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Turnsky


i can't beleive that you forgot the yowies  (australian version of bigfoot, yadda, yadda, yadda  )

P'raps I'll start a separate topic...

Yowies/Bunyips/Tasmanian Tigers/Those escaped US panthers that are supposed to be running around Aedlaide and the like/etc.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Black Wolf


P'raps I'll start a separate topic...

Yowies/Bunyips/Tasmanian Tigers/Those escaped US panthers that are supposed to be running around Aedlaide and the like/etc.

Only that Tasmanian Tiger was a true animal, now extinct.

[kode]

while we're on the subject, does anyone know where to find the complete invisible dragon analogy by carl sagan?

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Janos


Only that Tasmanian Tiger was a true animal, now extinct.

There are still occasional, unconfirmed sightings in tassie, as well as a widely held belief that there are Tasmanian tigers here on the mainland. It's certainly not impossible that they're still around, so it still fits fairly well with the rest of the list.