Bigfoot

I think your characterization of how field biology works is a good one (so sez me, 'cause I are one - sort of). Trace is extremely useful. Scat, track, hair, prey remains, teeth marks on bones, etc, are often the only evidence we have of the presence of even smaller organisms in a region. For instance I "know" beyond any doubt that we have ocelot in our reserve. Scat and the very occasional track are all I need to definitively report they exist. I can also state without much fear of contradiction that we don't have jaguar. Not only the lack of trace (in spite of locals' claims to the contrary), but also because of the ecology: the jaguar prey animals are also absent. One would expect at least some unambiguous trace to indicate, as you said:

quote:

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"There is something living in XYZ forest and we do not know what it is."

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if there was something there.I do disagree with a few of crashfrog's rebuttals to nuggin, however.1. MVP (minimum viable population) for primates is actually pretty low. A population of less than 50 Alouatta seniculus (red howlers) is considered viable - even without recruitment. Around 20-25 Callicebus moloch (dusky titi) is a sustainable number. Admittedly, these small populations are highly susceptible to local extinction due to disease, local climate fluctuation, hunting pressure, etc. In fact, disease is my working hypothesis on why the howlers in the reserve went extinct. In short, "bigfoot" may not require a population of "several thousand" to be genetically viable.2. Nutrition requirements. If we accept that some adaptation permitted the existence of cold-resistant large primates in the Pacific Northwest (evolution has done stranger things), I don't see any a priori reason to state there aren't sufficient nutrient resources in the region to support a small population. Even taking into consideration the broken vit C gene in hominids (which everyone claims bigfoot must be), there are plenty of native fruits up there to at least seasonally provide the missing vitamin. There are also certainly enough examples of near-obligate folivores among primates - both Old and New World - to indicate that such a gut adaptation is possible as well.In short, theoretically at least, such a critter could exist. However, and here's the catch, in order to get enough food - especially over the long northwest winter - a man-sized primate is going to HAVE to have developed cooperative foraging and hunting behavior. All of the alleged sightings to date have been of single individuals. I don't care what time of year it is, or whether you're an obligate or facultative folivore much of the time, you're going to have to be living in a group. ALL known primates do. You're simply NOT going to see singletons wandering around no matter what they eat. Primates are ALWAYS in groups. This IMO is the most telling evidence against bigfoot. If you're going to see one, you're going to see bunches. If you only see one, then you're not seeing a primate.

It actually depends on the species. MVP is being pushed off the conservation skyline because the calculations are squishy - and no one has been observing any given species for 100, 500, or a thousand years (the three mutually-contradictory timeframes commonly cited) to see if the calculations match reality. Some researchers use X number of generations, as well. However, although the calculations take into consideration both deterministic and stochastic threats, they are really not much more than "best guess". The two primate species I mentioned in my previous post are "95% probability of survival for 100 years" calculations, based on ecological requirements (space, nutrition, and avoidance of inbreeding depression, mostly), and are used for protected area design in the tropics. I'll let you know how things weork out: we're planning on ultimately re-introducing approx. 50 red howlers into our reserve (about four groups of 12-15). Ask me in 100 years if it worked .Of course, to bring this back in the vicinity of the topic, this doesn't help nuggin. Most studies on MVP for primates indicate that for a species (not a local population) to survive at an ideal 97%/40gen rate the MVP IS in the 1000's. Estimates for pongids, for instance, indicate that a successful conservation strategy needs 5000-7000 adults (simiang (Symphalangus) and orang-utan (Pongo)). IOW, the larger the primate, apparently the larger the population needed for the species to survive.

The biggest problem with MVP or PVA calculations on an organism like bigfoot is that, since no one has ever observed them, we have no way of knowing their ecology and natural history. Talk about operating in a vacuum. However, I think the general rule about thousands rather than tens is probably accurate - at least if we're talking about primates. Heh. Not to mention the generations of trappers, loggers, hunters, backpackers, etc that have been wandering about the area. I mean, it's kind of fun to speculate on what it could be, but in the absolute absence of any concrete evidence - from subfossils to roadkill to scat to foraging traces - it's a bit hard to accept that it actually exists. I've never been comfortable with the "if there's smoke there must be fire" kind of arguments in the absence of any corroboration.

I was thinking about this today. Ya know, it doesn't have to be a hunter in its own right. It could conceivably be a scavenger off winterkill or other hunters. Just add that bit to the ever-growing strings of "ifs" surrounding this critter. As in, if we have a cold-adapted primate, and if it has sufficient gut adaptations to subsist partially on leaves (during spring-summer) and partially on dried grasses under the snow (during winter), but is still capable of subsisting on meat at other times and if it has the behavioral adaptations to follow the herds of grazers during the winter altitudinal migrations and if ...Speculation is fun, isn't it?

That's what "winterkill" means, nuggin.ABE: On a slightly different note, although jar's post was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it does bring up an interesting question. Given the fact that - as you note - the local indigenous groups were fairly widespread in the region in question, and given the fact that although many of the groups were fishers, they were all also hunters (whether opportunistic or continuous), has anyone excavated any middens? I mean, of settlements prior to the plagues introduced by Europeans. If so, have there been any discoveries of "bigfoot bones", or at least anomolous bones? These hunters basically killed and ate anything that moved, after all.Edited by Quetzal, : No reason given.

This is more or less true as far as it goes. However, to make this a reasonable argument, we'd have to determine a point in time where the various populations of this putative species descended below the viability threshold. If (yet another "if") they were once widespread enough to survive as a species (remember the numbers necessary for large-primate viability), then we would expect to see at least some trace - no matter what ecosystem they inhabited originally. In this case, we're talking subfossil remains of either "bigfoot" itself or the intermediates between "modern" bigoot and Gigantopithecus or an equivalent. Given that the fauna (living and extinct) of the northern continents have been intensively studied over the years, and given that this organism apparently lives in multiple regions - many of which have been very closely scrutinized for fossils (especially of Late Pleistocene species - of which "bigfoot" must necessarily be one if it exists today), I would say that the utter and complete lack of any ancestral/modern remains anywhere is a strong indicator that the species doesn't/didn't exist. Not that it couldn't exist, but rather that it in fact didn't.It's quite fun to speculate on the existence of "unknown" species. About once a decade or so field experts find some "new" vertebrate (often relictual, or at best geographically isolated from its nearest relatives) quietly living in some remote area. A couple times a year they find something small (like an insect). My team just last year found a new frog species (now officially designated Centrolene yachanensis in the literature - Yay!!!). It's what keeps cryptozoology alive - although evidence for most of the putative species cryptozoologists are interested in is at the very best anecdotal, and at worst pure fabrication.This goes back to what crash has been trying to convey (IMO) - while absence of confirming evidence of any kind clearly does not allow us to state unequivocally that the organism doesn't exist, given this lack of evidence coupled with the very real ecological constraints on a large omnivore living in such marginal habitat, the physiological and behavioral adaptations necessary for simple survival, AND the necessity for the organism to have some kind of identifiable history in an area that has been more or less accessible and open to humans for at least the last 8-10,000 years, the likelihood of its existence seems vanishingly small. Unless and until someone comes up with confirming evidence, there's no earthly reason to accept its existence - even provisionally. Call it the agnostic stance.

So your entire argument is based on an alleged misunderstanding of the difference between "couldn't" and "doesn't/didn't"? Seems like a lot of effort for little purpose. Evolution has done stranger things, so I find it difficult to believe that anyone with a science background (especially biology or its subfields) would state "couldn't" in this context. I think you may be a victim of "science shorthand".