Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzVErqgZn7Q
this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast is one of the episodes that we filmed during the Sci-Fi program Joe Rogan questions everything it is brought to you by Ting Ting is a cell phone company that gives you cell phone service that makes sense for you they allow you to cancel at any time they don't have contracts they use the Sprint backbone so you're getting Dependable reliable excellent cell phone service but you're getting it in a way that you probably wouldn't get from a big company like for instance if you don't use all of your minutes if you use less minutes than you thought you would Ting will actually knock you down to the lower level and then credit you the difference on your next bill that [ __ ] is unheard of no company does that and I think that's an awesome way to do business they're not trying to rob you they're just trying to sell you something that's really good and it's an excellent exchange an even exchange you give them money they give you good cell phone service at a reasonable price um Ting has on their website a lot of examples that people have sent to them about how much money that they have saved by using Ting but I can tell you personally I have spoken to many people on Twitter and social media that have sent me a thank you saying that Ting saved them a ton of money and it gave them excellent service with really high-end cell phone devices they use the Android phones and they have all sorts of other different kind of phones as well but the high-end Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 the HDC1 all the really topend nice devices that you can get uh I recently just got a a one of these uh Galaxy Note 3s is a [ __ ] ridiculous phone it might be too big I don't know if I'm going to keep it but right now I got it and I am very impressed with the Android operating system I haven't [ __ ] with this in a long time I got one a long time ago like maybe three years ago or something like that and it was like a drunk iPhone it was such a hunk of [ __ ] but boy have they caught up in a big way and this screen is magical anyway I'm waxing poetically about my new my new phone what I'm telling you is that Ting will save you money give you awesome cell phone coverage and make you feel good that
you're connected to a reliable but but ethical company that's not trying to [ __ ] rip you off so go to rogan.com and save yourself $25 either off service or device it's your choice and uh enjoy and I guarantee you if you're looking for some cheaper but yet excellent cell phone service that doesn't make you feel like you're getting [ __ ] over Ting is the way to go that's the new song Ting is the way to go rogan.com go get your freak on uh before this podcast airs I just want to say thank you to the fine folks at sci-fi and Arthur Smith the production company that that uh made my my show Joe Rogan questions everything thank you to uh Tim and Wayne from sci-fi also for allowing us to put this on the air um as a podcast one of the things that we did when we were filming the show is we wanted to incorporate the podcast into the show because first of all it's the best method that I know of for discussing an issue there's one one of the things that I found about the show that was kind of awkward I really enjoyed doing the show I really enjoyed the opportunity to explore all these different tops ICS it didn't come out perfect there's a lot of things that I wasn't happy with but that's all just a part of The Growing Pains of creating a show um but one thing that I did find is that having conversations in front of people standing up in weird circumstances like in a hallway or you know in a laboratory or whatever the many many different scenarios that we uh had conversations on the show is very awkward the best way to have a conversation is on a podcast sitting down across each other in a comfortable chair in front of a big oak desk where you're relaxed you feel confident you're comfortable rather you feel comfortable you feel it's quiet the room is you know it's it's it's a fun place to be it feels good there's there's good energy here and we control that for the most part by having it in a podcast form and my favorite aspects of the show were actually Duncan and myself talking these people on the podcast and it was kind of a revelation in a lot of ways it's like my favorite part of doing the show is the stuff that I was already doing before I was doing the show but I want to say thank sci-fi for allowing us to do it that way because it really uh it came out great um those parts of it
and so now you're going to get the full unedited podcast this first one is uh from the bigfoot episode and it's Dr Jeffrey Mel Meldrum Dr Jeff meld is in my opinion the most credible of all the Bigfoot Believers I shouldn't say the most credible cuz maybe there's some out there that are just as credible that I have't met he's the most reasonable guy that I communicated with and uh I really respect him for his first of all his stepping out and saying that he really thinks this is a big real undiscovered primate living in the Pacific Northwest which takes a lot of balls for someone who's a legit Professor uh you know cuz people immediately think you're [ __ ] crazy if you tell them there's a known monkey living in the woods he doesn't just do that he does that from an academic point of view he's a very very bright guy and he also does that as an expert in human movement and I found his theories on the Sasquatch uh combined with this uh knowledge that he has about human movement to be very fascinating and his analysis of footprints and what what's unique about these Footprints and why it mimics actual real PR real primates and not human beings in fact uh I thought was also incredibly fascinating he's a brilliant guy and a very nice guy and I appreciate very much that uh he took the time out of his busy schedule to come on the show so enjoy this is Dr Jeff Meldrum and once again thanks to everybody involved in the show everybody from the cameraman on down it was a uh amazing cool place uh to work for a few months so uh big kiss to you all and now enjoy a podcast with powerful Duncan Trussell and Dr Jeffrey Meldrum Jo podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all [Music] [Applause] [Music] day tell me when we're ready Dr Meldrum first of all thank you very much for coming here and talking to us about all things Squatch Duncan and I are uh very excited about this how many years first of all have you been involved in this were you in that Leonard nemoy in search of Bigfoot show no that predated me that predated you okay that's the OG of Bigfoot shows right yeah I remember seeing that when I
was a kid and being so convinced and excited that there was a big hairy man living in the woods obviously back then I didn't realize that it could be a species it wasn't just like one individual dude but uh a whole species and I've been fascinated by it since I was a little child I don't know why I don't know what it what is it about Bigfoot maybe you could tell us what is it about Bigfoot that speaks to man I there are different levels I mean there's the just simply the mystery something that's undiscovered unresolved uh I think there's an added Mystique because it's so humanlike I mean that's been a an icon and an archetype uh of The Human Experience U since the beginning of History some of the earliest Heroes hung out with wildmen whether it was Beowolf and grindle or um Gilgamesh and inadu you know they're there were these Denis of the forest that maybe represented our our sort of lost connection to Wilderness into wild places do you think there's a certain amount of arrogance in assuming that we have a full detail of the entire fossil record of primates when you know you see things like homo fanis The Hobbit man in Indonesia and the evidence of gigantopithecus which is only you know the 1920s they found that right absolutely yeah this is this is a theme that that it really is placing Sasquatch in in a very different context the one that I keep pushing because I I I can see this unfolding uh with every new discovery of of a homed like homop Floren uh the the tree of of homed radiation gets bushier and bushier and then Discovery after discovery shows that some of these lineages have persisted to much more recent times in the past than has ever been acknowledged previously so you know homesan is 13,000 years old a new neander talite maybe 10 10,000 years old really yeah and so the the notion that we're the only homed on the planet contrary to all experience in the past when there were multiple hominids coexisting on the landscape uh may be a real misnomer a real misrepresentation of fact and these Relic hominoids may be the rule rather than the exception it's it's a real tricky subject the Bigfoot Sasquatch subject I have brought it up with people that I love and respect and they have mocked me right in front of my face Jo
my friend Dana Dana White Dana White mocked me the other night at dinner right in front of my face for believing in big I tell you I was pretty disappointed when I heard you were going looking for bigfoot I was like how dare you sir what do you know about Bigfoot man it's one of those things Bigfoot is like ghosts or flying saucers or crop circles it it lumps you in a weirdo category it does but there but that's because there is a lot of weird that believe in Bigfoot that's right you must know that sure you probably experience more lunatics than psychiatrists do and that's what uh that's what uh warns off a lot of my colleagues is they they don't want to navigate try to navigate that morass of of The Lunatic Fringe and so you don't have the luxury of just simply going out and collecting data you have to winow through all this chaff to find find the Colonel and it's very I'm sorry it's very it's like when they lump you in like it's a stain it really is a stain on your career on your credentials they can say oh he's that Bigfoot guy absolutely well there was a moment as I was sitting here contemplating these footprints that sort of pulled me into this subject when I I I was familiar with Grover crants I knew the grief that he'd suffered at the hands of his colleagues because of his pursuit of this subject you know in his career uh stalling his career and uh I contemplated for a moment do I really want to go down that road or not but how could you not when you have 35 45 fresh Footprints laid out in front of you that are so clear so compelling so persuasive I mean for me that's what science is about it's going after those interesting even if they're anomalous uh data points what was it that got you started on this well it was that I mean I you we could go clear back to my childhood when I was born and in the Pacific Northwest and knew of Bigfoot knew of Roger Patterson and his film he came to Spokane where I lived as a as a youngster and showed his documentary showcasing that that film clip but my academic interest began in 1996 when I was shown uh a very this the same line of tracks I just referred to in uh the Blue Mountains outside of wala wala and uh I tell you the hook was set has there ever been a moment where you stepped back and said hang on am I waste my time on some hoie sure oh sure
is there is there a lot of whoie involved in this subject there is yeah you got to get past that uh but I tell you what I have seen what I've experienced firsthand uh be it you know Finding tracks in very remote areas myself hearing vocalizations having rocks thrown at me what have you tell us about your experiences you've seen tracks where there's no people like deep in the woods yeah on several occasions well one one was in connection with a kind of an interesting inter possible interaction we never actually saw something or anything but uh when you eliminate uh you know when you eliminate the the uh likely uh scenarios uh then the unlikely is what you're left with and in this case we had we were in the cisu wilderness of Northern California one of the first Expeditions of sorts that I participated in we'd gone off from our base camp quite some distance uh off Trail to investigate some Lakes we we thought might have been shrunken up in the in the uh in the Heat and exposing mud flats for more tracking opportunities we did find a set of tracks in on a Dusty stretch of the trail you know if you've ever been out camping you get up really early and the and the the dust of a campsite is still moistened with the Dew and you step out of your tent and everything sticks to your foot those were the kind of footprints that we found on the trail one morning they were just as clear as could be something with a 16inch foot five toes had stepped in that uh that D Laden dust and it just lifted up a perfect outline of a footprint now as a Bigfoot freak what was that like for you this is like your first piece of evidence you're stumbling upon it yourself that's right yeah well it was you freaking out no no I mean it was it was confirming I'm freaking out I'm not even there yeah me too well at that by by that time when yeah there there were moments we'd been in the woods already for over four weeks and so uh we had kind of gotten to the point uh you know you have to sort of Steal yourself against that natural fear reaction to those circumstances uh but I think this is a something that a lot of big footo Hunters assume which is that Bigfoot is sweet or Bigfoot's this harmless being
that's out there picking flowers and printing his footprints in the de this could be a killer this thing could be a deadly angry tired bitter old jungle ape aren't you worried that in your quest for bigfoot you actually might find him well uh uh find one of them too you know let's make it clear this more than one yeah this is not one lone monster yeah but Bo but your but your points will take in I mean clearly this this if it exists this is a large powerful potentially dangerous animal should be shown difference but I mean if if they were Killers you know like grizzly bears they would have been hunted to Extinction just like Grizzlies were in the lower 48 for quite period of time uh there really isn't I mean the only stories you hear about U antagonistic U uh uh Behavior towards humans is usually precipitated when the humans have shot at them they've they've started the coral but otherwise they seem to be you know it's just like with um with gorillas you know gorillas were build by Barnum and Bailey as the most terrifying creature on the face of the planet but now we're they they're considered the gentle Giants you know the the the the Vicor of the endangered imperil tropical forest the the predatory primates are the ones that are most dangerous right like chimpanzees are more dangerous than gorillas because is they're predatory true yeah and this apparently what the the lore is what people believe at least is that if Sasquatch is a real thing it eats animals and it probably eats elk and it probably fils elk migrations sure yeah so so there is always that risk I mean you know anyone who's going out in the woods should should use do uh do caution yeah I mean people eat people sure exactly do you pack heat do you pack heat it depends on the circumstance not not he's a doctor dude he carries a gun how dare you he's about to say packs heat oh sure no when we're in the field I mean we're in areas where there where there are grizzly bears where there's cougar you know Northern California they've got uh lots of issues with uh with cougars praying on or attacking people so yeah CG personal security sure we sometimes do cgar no joke pepper spray too so pepper spray and a thick jacket there
cougars you want you want some some a lot of protection I prefer 10 mm so that too son and get some Kevlar maybe a sword what a predicament you're putting yourself in because let's say you do run into a tribe of these things and they've they're smart enough to know that they can't be discovered you've got to decide between not getting ripped as shreds by these Bigfoot or blasting them into Oblivion sure what do you pick well that's a good question I mean it's a I hate to speculate too much on a what if scenario I I don't think that they're in tribal social organizations or that they are that intelligent I mean I think we're we're dealing with u you know at least a a large primate a large ape and at most a very uh early offshoot of the homed radiation that you know has Intelligence that's not much higher than that of a Cher gorilla um I just have no experience to to back up anything beyond that if I could let you pick a toe any toe and we hack that sucker off and then immediately take you to big foot with cameras crew whole deal you get to see Sasquatch a whole Sasquatch family do you accept that do you hack off a toe to meet Sasquatch and know for sure I could probably get by without a pinky toe oh my goodness You Got It Bad sir you're ready to chop off toes I'll chop off my toe throw my pinky into the pot would you really absolutely I love my pinkies I'm not going to do that man what's it for what does it what does it do what do a pinky even it helps you move around you freak I what barely it's like yeah Wiggles to the left and it pushes off and helps you stabilize the pinky toe yes it's there for a reason barely a Vienna sausage like this maybe yours mine's very active hard hard to clip that little nail you know we wouldn't have to worry about that anymore oh my goodness you you guys are both sick how dare you okay it's tempting though you would transform human history with this video I on my toes dude discussion over selfish not chopping but it's a it's a valid question because I mean a guy like you who's been studying this for how many decades now nearly two decades yeah nearly two decades think about all that time and effort just to to see it right there but it's been a great ride I mean what you know I've got to see places on this
planet and see some of the most beautiful landscapes and terrains and meet all kinds of interesting people so it's been uh it's been an interesting experience yeah as we talked to one Sasquatch Hunter what he said was that even if he doesn't find Sasquatch he's still camping enjoying himself exactly I always tell people you know cultivate an appreciation for Natural History enjoying the outdoors because it's it's like me with fishing if I don't catch a fish in the first five minutes I'll start to lose interest pretty soon and if you're that way chances of you catching a fish or having a Sasquatch experience in the first weekend you go out it's pretty slim so enjoy what you're doing you you mentioned that these creatures th throw rocks mhm how big are the rocks that they throw well in my experience uh when we were there in the cisus uh we had it was about a softball-sized rock I mean if he wanted to cold [ __ ] me it could have probably but I think it was more of a I got the impression it was just uh letting me know that we were close and uh I got the sensation in fact that we had stopped to take a break at a spot that was on uh one of the pathways that they follow it was where we had found the the footprints the first the first go say it again cisu the cisu in nor in Northern California six Rivers National Forest in cisu Wilderness so the the primary Theory when it come what's the matter scoot just a little to your right there you perfect sorry sorry so is the primary theory about Sasquatch is that it was something along the lines of a gigant igus that was in Asia came down the bearing straight with humans and that's why there's so many of them inhabiting the dense rainforest of the Pacific Northwest that it just found it to be ideal habitat so just stayed there yeah that's that's one model I mean in gigantopithecus you have a primate that's the right size in the right place at the right time to have expanded its range over the bearing land bridge and there were times when that land bridge was a corridor of forest not not an arctic tundra so it wasn't like they were migrating they were just expanding the range you know each generation would expand into the available H so from Asia all the way to North America was Forest at one point time at times yeah off and
on it wasn't always ice locked and so uh and that would have preceded probably the time that humans came so they were probably here before Native Americans or Paleo Indians arrived in North America there's a lot of speculation as to how intelligent it is you seem to think it's very aplike but I've talked to other folks that think it's almost a human right that it's like something in between us and a chimpanzee yeah well a lot of those people who attribute to you know Primal people or some kind of primitive human um often also attribute various paranormal qualities they're in psychic communication they're being taught by them you know this ancient wisdom and Etc and um you know I don't have any personal experience upon which to uh evaluate those kinds of subjective how very respectful of you that was so scientific that was a nice way to say they're [ __ ] crazy lunatic that's how scientist calls you a lunatic so yeah it is a weird thing isn't it that it it falls into that crystals ch in energy thing often times yeah which gives me aa I got to get out of the room when someone starts talking energy and crystals I really it's it's I'm allergic to it like we had it yesterday someone started talking about energy and safe Zone safe space and I'm like I got to get out of here it's like immediately I feel like I'm threatened my sanity is threatened I might get sucked in your stupid Vortex I come one of you why is that why why do you think Bigfoot is a loon magnet do you think it's it because when you have people searching up for other things like butterflies that they theorized that might exist or other undiscovered species they haven't gone completely mad but for some reason a lot of these Bigfoot Hunters it seems like they've lost their mind in this Pursuit why why do you think that is well I think part of it is that um uh when when Bigfoot sort of fell into the lap of Academia back in well it was coincident with the Patterson gimin film essenti that's when it was thrust under the nose of of of science the scientific Community before that it was just a bunch of uh you know logger stories and Forester stories coming out of the the Northern woods of U of British Columbia or or Northern California which was still really wild back then
um it it came at a time that preceded a lot of what we understand now about uh early human evolution and U grade ape natural history and it was just there was no place to put it there was no pigeon hole to stick this in and so it it was rejected by the scientific community and then that vacuum came the amateur Fortune Seekers or enthusiasts or you know those that thought it was left here by UFO or traveling through interdimensional portals or any type of explanation as to why we aren't finding them what makes them different from other common Wildlife I think what it is is that there's there's first of all I think there's two two different types of people that get attracted to like really following up on on Sasquatch and one of them is the loons one of them is the people that if it wasn't if they weren't looking for Sasquatch they would be looking to remote view or they'd be looking to find out the cause of chemtrails or the they would just F they would find some mystery and lock onto it the other one is courageous people who aren't afraid of looking like Cooks because like yourself I think you you look at it you're obviously a very intelligent man you you you're an anthropologist you're a professor you know you know what you're talking about you look at this and you go you know what um I don't think I can dismiss this you know what I think there might be something here right right even though it sounds crazy to say it I'm sorry guys this is why there might be something here that's right what are what's the most compelling piece of evidence if you were trying to convince a person if a person was on the fence and they were like well geez Dr to Meldrum I don't know I mean you seem like a normal guy um really Bigfoot like tell me in in a paragraph what's the most compelling piece of evidence well for me again from my point of expertise it's the footprint evidence that's what drew me into this because my my study of the evolution of human bipedalism uh uh prepared me I guess you'd say I mean why why wouldn't I be fascinated by the possibility that there's another biped out there I mean it's a perfect natural experiment to against which to compare and contrast our own adaptation for walking on two legs which is otherwise considered to be
unique amongst primates and so was gigantopithecus thought to be bipedal or is that in debate well it's in debate Grover CRS made some arguments based on the the shape of the jaw given the bread the angle of the jaw is that supposed to be a giganto that is that's one of the two of the uh examples of the largest species of gigantopithecus Blackie OE yeah and that looks like it would hurt if it bit you yeah well yeah those are massive massive MERS big a head then like about that AB yeah absolutely they call that thing black yeah gigantopithecus Blackie yeah after the discoverer how rude that's what he said that's what that's his name well the uh the thought is that they looked more orangutang like than gorilla is that correct well again speculation speculation because they're found in Asia they're part of what we call the shine radiation the thick enameled Apes of which orangutan is the only Relic species in existence today uh but again there's no way to know I mean gorillas and chimps are closely related and yet their skulls look quite different from one another in many ways so the foot the footprint evidence is in your opinion the best evidence right and uh the this one that we have we both have the same one what is uh the origin of this footprint this was cast by a deputy sheriff by the name of Dennis Harford in the 80s in Grace Harbor County Washington State so over at the base of the Olympic Peninsula and uh he was responding to a report of a disturbance at a construction site and there on that uh that Spur Road hardpacked dirt with a layer of fine pulverized dust from the movements of the heavy machinery wet down by a rain uh left this remarkably clear uh imprint the these are actually desiccation cracks where that wet mud was beginning to dry in the Sun and shrink and crack but the Extrusion of the mud around the footprint and between the toes and all left a very uh very striking uh fa simile of that foot it seems so uniform that's where I start to get skeptical again it's it's the remarkable uh conditions when you know there were photographs of of a number of footprints at that site including some interesting uh what I refer to as Hal tracks that uh that terminate I mean the the details on
here are remarkable you can see what looks like the head and the base of the fifth metatarsal maybe a little bit of arthritis or some kind of injury to the joints there yeah uh this bulge right here then is the key though that that you have on the side of your foot if if you left a wet footprint on the cement when you came out of the pool you'd see that bulge and it's at the uh it's positioned at the what we call the calcano cuboid joint which is uh right there now in Apes the these two joints across here are much more flexible they're adapted to climbing trees If This Were a chimpanzee it would look more like this and when they're grasping that Branch then you have to uh be able to lever the foot without disrupting the grip we've we've we've changed that Al together by relinquishing that grip and and incorporating the big toe into one stiff lever like this so the whole foot acts as a as a mechanical lever but there's moves here remarkably Sasquatch foot appears to have retained that uh uh that aplike degree of flexibility which is actually pretty uh elegant adaptation to climbing you on very steep rugged mountainous terrain what would be the evolution benefit of keeping a a humanlike foot as opposed to like a gorilla or a chimp where they can grab and climb with their feet well when you're 800 lbs it's kind of dangerous to climb up into trees besides what what would you look for up there that we don't have fruiting trees in the coniferous forests the the fruit element of your diet is in the under story The Bear is in the in the shrub layer so I've only I've heard a couple people say they climb trees you think that's whoie well it's probably uh juveniles maybe to you know put in a younger up in a tree in order to get it away from potential Predators if you're parking it there while you while while you're off foraging for example but no I don't think I mean just as large male gorillas don't spend much time climbing up in the trees um because a fall even you know even for humans a fall from 10 feet can be fatal if you're experienced rock climber you it it seems like if you wanted to fake that you would have to have a very Advanced understanding of gorillas from if if you were going to draw that thing and spend the time doing it you'd have to have a deep
understanding of Prim or you're really shitty at making a fake foot and you just got lucky Incorporated something that looks remarkably similar to that metatarsal Breck I don't know that's a pretty that's good luck I would never throw an accidental metal metat tarsal break that's not is that what it is a metatarsal break or did I make that up no that's right met how are you going to accidentally draw a metatarsal break but where where are his calluses what it seems like his feet are kind of sh down manic beautiful it's like he could go to the beach right now he could go and lay out and people would think he had great feet well again the the the conditions of of that particular footprint were just really quite remarkable making a very clear imprint but um you know there it's it's indicated that the the soul pad is probably pretty substantial and pretty thick we have some examples of them where they've stepped on rocks or stepped on other obstructions and that Soul pad that substantial Soul pad is able to accommodate those intrusions quite uh quite remarkably but it it's it's the composite you know if you take one example and you look at it you can dissect it and criticize it and and pick it apart and question it but when then you see you know as you point out repeated appearances not only showing for example the midtarsal break but but these correlated half tracks that uh where they're running I mean when when we run because of our stiff Arch we if we're sprinting not having a not exhibiting a heel strike we'll leave just an abbreviated footprint because we're up on the ball of our foot since their foot's flexible when they run they run like this and it and it uh imprints the entire four part of the foot so in other words if if this individual were running its running track would look like that and again so so that's the question I've often asked if this is H if this is all just spurious convergences of of you know would be hoaxers who's passing out the little black book giving instructions on how to f remarkably consistent how uniform is that it's remk remarkably yeah example after example after example I mean to the point that I took the took the leap of uh uh intellectual faith if you will of uh
uh naming the footprints there's a a Convention of taxonomy called OT taxonomy that applies lenan classification schemes to trace evidence like Footprints where the maker of the footprint is unknown and so uh we can now call these Footprints a published peer-reviewed uh name uh anthropoid depz amab Borealis which is North American AP foot and wow how silly would that be if it's all fake though God you a whole beautiful sounding Latin name well it's going to be hard to prove that something doesn't exist though I guess so but that's not what science is all about right proving things do exist based on evidence based on the evidence and and that's it it's based on a diagnos is that that uh of distinguishing characteristics these are not just fax similes of enlarged human Footprints like like this example you know this is actually pretty large uh this would represent an individual with a foot that's probably in the upper 1% of the human population have you ever seen Skil O'Neil Sho no I haven't I've always wanted to get I got a photo I got to remember to get it to you guys it's a picture of me my face next to Shaquille O'Neil shoe it's bigger than my entire head it's huge I'm not kidding it's bigger than this yep totally totally bigger than this so Shaquille O'Neal if he wanted to could be the greatest Bigfoot hoer of all he is Bigfoot I mean if he went and wandered through the woods he's 7 feet tall he's more than 300 lb he's just slap some fur on him his foot have the same kind of Bend no it wouldn't that's the thing even even as as large as his foot is and it's not uh it would probably not be and I don't have his metrics to to say this with certitude but I would predict that his foot is not as wide as as this imprint most likely yeah mostely he doesn't have the mid tarel break he doesn't have evidence of that he they probably ban him from the league like look we don't allow Sasquatches cuz if they ever did catch Sasquatches and then they found out that sasquatches were people very similar like to n Andals and they wanted to start playing football we'd have real problems we would we have real problems what would the problem be except football would be interesting for once they'd start banging all the White
Chicks first of all so what that would be a huge problem you're going to have Sasquatch hybrids great the giant 9 foot people I'll take them Sasquatches W want to enter into the UFC we'd have to make new weight classes everything gets better if you add a Sasquatch I don't care what it is if they start showing up or set now gorillas uh are fairly intelligent chimpanzees are intelligent dolphins are very intelligent we have zero problem locking them up in swimming pools if if we did find a Sasquatch do you think because of the bipedal nature of it we there would there would probably be some pretty intense debate as to what to do with this thing well our our Humanity isn't defined by any one characteristic like bipedalism or opposable thumbs or you know a non- Divergent big toe I mean it's it's uh a composite of of a number of characteristics and so we're beginning to understand that bipedalism uh was a characteristic of many different species of a very early hominid and even some uh non hominid Apes so um you don't think that it would be like people go like it's an a man he's standing up straight we can't put him in the zoo well I'm sure there'll be something that would say that yes what what do you think they would do what is your honest opinion would they detain him would they have to like let hang out to him for a little while see if we can figure out his language or what if it's like killer whale like you just never figure out their language like you know they're smart be like I don't know what you're saying dude and eventually just let him loose well sure there'll be all kinds of ethical questions if we come to that point and and and what the outcome will be you know it's really hard to predict I mean because then you're not only dealing with the characteristics but you're dealing with human reaction human attitudes political agendas whatever yeah I'm sorry to wh if you to death but that's just what dunan and I do all day but I think that's an important question I I think I think when you're out there looking for this thing you do have to consider that your discovery of the thing might be the worst thing that ever happened to Sasquatch in a way you're his enemy yeah well you know that's been been suggested
to me and brought up uh numerous times by various various people I you know and my one of my responses is simply the the formal recognition the discovery of the species isn't suddenly going to make it easy to go out and shoot a Sasquatch or to catch a Sasquatch it's not going to change much at all uh you know there there's a study underway now to to examine uh extract and examine uh DNA from from hair samples attrib Ed to Sasquatch if uh if that researcher Dr Brian Sykes from Oxford if he discovers a novel sequence that uh confirms that there's a species out there we don't recognize it's not going to change that situation we still won't know anything else about them DNA will only tell us so much I me tell us about where it fits in the family tree but not what it does on a daily basis or how intelligent it is or whatever if I'm the president okay and I come to you and I'm like Dr Meldrum enough is enough we need answers we need a Sasquatch research team head up by you sir will you accept this position and you have unlimited resources to go find Sasquatch what's your plan well we've actually got an initiative thank you for the segue there uh it's entitled the Falcon project and this is uh they're going to confuse people they're going to think you're looking for Birds well why not the Bigfoot project that's bad why does it have to be Falcon that's just badass it doesn't matter so bad Falcon project sounds like it's a comic book thing yeah it does kind of way um well the the the person who is the originator of this notion he picked that he tells me just because falcons fly high in C far and the premise of this approach is to use lighter than air ships a helium filled derable so a drone an unmanned drone God I love that but but with the capability of hovering you know and and uh and going uh doing a grid search pattern using state-of-the-art uh thermal imaging and high resolution videography and Survey that way why a blimp though why a balloon aside from the fact that it's incredible and I can't think of anything more psychedelic than to release a balloon into the forest to look for Bigfoot with Zeppelin music playing from IT project Falcon so that would be the move balloons I I think this is a a no not
not entirely novel these techniques are being used in Wildlife survey studies already I mean there there are companies that have popped up that uh that provide this service to government agencies uh you know fishing game and so forth um it's just the combination with this particular type of an Airship but I think it's the way to get at uh the daily behaviors and and ranging patterns and so forth of these creatures on the ground you're looking for that proverbial moving needle in a hay stack we're going to obviously combine the effort with ground insertion teams that will attempt to follow up to find trace and physical EV evidence and how many people do you need I'm the president member yeah an unlimited budget not that many we uh let's see a half dozen could do it listen we're going to need to take all these people away from the DEA and give them real jobs this is the move take the people from the DEA and put them in the the Bea yeah now if they're Primal people though we may have the problems with the big fooot enforcement agency personal rights and so forth if they are people that does become inion well there's people that have said that they've shot them and then of course now they've passed laws saying in certain States it's actually illegal to shoot a Sasquatch it is yeah not in all 50 right no it's it's usually by County uh so banit County where I come from we have a safe haven Sasquatches wow now if someone did shoot a Sasquatch in your county what's the what's the penalty it's like a parking ticket or do you go to they were kind of vague on that yeah what the penalty actually was I guess we have to see and that raises the question of of the status whether they're humans nonhuman or human yeah right why have there been no bodies why have there been no skulls why has there been no hair why why have there been lots of hair lots of hair yeah but none of it like substantiated as in fact by way of DNA that's not a human by way of morphology we've got hair that can't be attributed to any any commonly known Wildlife that has consistent morphological characteristics one of which is uh a hollow or a cellular Medela the Central core which makes getting DNA from a hair that simply shed that doesn't have an actively dividing follicle uh very difficult very challenging but it was
proven to be actual real hair oh yes definitely absolutely real hair so it's an unknown animal's hair do you know whether what kind of animal is that known primat like primate definitely well in the sense that non- primate mammals fur bearing mammals of North America have have fur rather than Simply Hair that means they have guard hairs these long coarse tapering uh guard hairs that provide mechanical protection and then the underlying that differentiated layer of insulating hair very fine uh underfur that's like down to keep exactly yeah like down on a on a bird bird have they have down and flight feathers um in in mammals it's guard hairs and and underfur uh primates though don't have that differentiation they have hair that's kind of like a modified guard hair but it's untapered it's long parallel tips worn tips no sign of ever been having been cut trimmed yeah with a floby that's yeah so sasquat with flow the woods what color is the hair it ranges we have and it correlates with the reported colors of sasquatches seen by eyewitnesses from uh almost white you know almost white is it the the yeti or actual Sasquatch Almost White uh well SAS we're still still talking about Sasquatch so there have been white Sasquatch described by Witnesses yeah rare but but nevertheless seen all the way to Black the DNA on the hair comes up with nothing well it's difficult to get DNA because there's You Know the Way hair is constructed that you have a cuticle and then you have a layer called the cortex and then a central core and in in uh if if that uh core or medulla has cells stacked up in it then that's usually where the DNA is extracted from in animals that don't have a a Mulla present a cellular medulla then you have very little um nuclear material of of the cell left in that in that shaft in that keratin shaft and so getting any DNA in order to sequence it is is almost impossible what do the Party Poopers say that that hair is well they don't they say they say there's no evidence you know that one way or the other so it's basically you've got this hair that hasn't been identified but you know identifying hair is kind of more art than science because even on our bodies we have hair that differs in appearance head hair beard hair pues mole hairs exactly pubic you
had to bring that up Mole hairs um so it's different yeah it's definitely different yeah um yeah the inside nose hairs what the [ __ ] are those all about huh those are ridiculous or eyelashes for God's sake yeah eyebrows no one's going to f here's another thing uh the same way that I can't imagine someone taking the time to fake those Footprints no one's going to go through the woods with a bag of weird hair and Scatter it through the forest no but you might pretend you found it you don't have to go scatter it if you're pretending you found it yourself there's a lot of people that are full of poop right we we know that you know that I know that and this this subject particularly attracts a lot of them I'm sure you're aware of the gentleman in Montana recently that was killed uh this hilarious but not hilarious cuz po poor fellow's just trying to hoax somebody he had a a Bigfoot suit on got hit by one car driven by a 17-year-old girl and then run over by another car dri by a 16-year-old girl he's an [ __ ] he's trying to scare kids you know well that could cause a wreck anyway well yeah look I have a 16-year-old daughter if he got she got scared by an [ __ ] in a fake Bigfoot suit and got into a wreck I'd be pissed yeah sure so the world got a little lighter as Bill Hicks would say we lost him [ __ ] the um this this phenomenon for whatever reason is well I guess there's a bunch of reasons why people would want to hoax it first of all notoriety second of all because it's fun and third of all because it's so similar to us it's not like trying to if we tried to hoax the lock Nest monster that would be a pain in the ass but uh you know you're a fairly big guy we'll put you in a big monkey suit put you at a distance you know have you wandering around you know as long as there's nothing we could line up for perspective you look a little you know we can get it off oh yeah there there's lots of misidentifications I mean that's one of the problems of of eyewitness testimony is you're not only uh at the mercy of of The witness's credibility but but honestly even if they're sincere and genuine in what they think they saw you're you have to um evaluate their ability to evaluate their experience to interpret what they exper yeah my
memories poop mine too my memory is it gets worse all the time true and especially because since we started doing the podcast and um you know just having all this information like rattled at me every day and dealing having these long form three-hour conversations I don't remember who I said what with or when and I confuse stories sure and you know what also and I don't know if there's any statistics for it but I heard that there's a statistic that 40% of the people at Disneyland are on ecstasy at any given time I heard that that's like a statistic like the number of people on psychedelics there and the same way in the forest how many people camping are high what's the percentage cuz I think it's 90% of the people who go camping are high and I don't think that this discounts the fact that there's Bigfoot but I would say that most of the people who see Bigfoot if they're out in the woods they're probably stoned on top of it it's possible that they are but I think another issue is that you may only be able to contact Bigfoot when you're high I I'm sure maybe that's it maybe it's the cuz the paic northwest we need to get on some mushrooms son the Pacific Northwest is overflowing with cocy and mushrooms I mean they're everywhere it's so rainy up there it's just like pertile perfect fertile uh ground for them and a lot of people go up there to to gather those things now if you were up there and you were gathering those things maybe that puts your mind into a certain frequency when Bigfoot's like I know this guy's tripping let's go [ __ ] with them and then Bigfoot chose himself hey dude plus those those mushroom Pickers are pretty territorial so maybe just making up the stories to scare off the comp competition are they really you would think mushroom people would be the least territorial oh no they're it's big how do you no sir bust I've run into a lot of run into them as in called them hey meet me here with a bag I've run into you and you've run into my CH my cash I wonder if Bigfoot eats those mushrooms I wonder of course he does why wouldn't he's smart that's the craziest trip is tripping with big Bigfoot on mushrooms yeah tripping with Bigfoot is definitely a great kids book I wonder if
Bigfoot is pissed at all the wolves killing the elk you know they have like serious issues with wolves killing elk and deer now because they reintroduced the uh they took an an Canada wolf which is a larger version of the gy wolf and introduced them to Idaho and all these different areas now they're having a problem these things are running rampant and there's thousands of them they're just in massive packs killing things well they've just opened a season in Idaho on wolves on wolves that that disturbs a sh out of people and that's just a wolf and it's because we we see it as you know as a dog I got to say I think that you are a courageous person because you seem very levelheaded you seem completely logical and rational with all this stuff and I think it must take an awful lot of patience to constantly end up in interviews with Stoners asking you if Bigfoot eats mushrooms yeah yeah well there there's a lighter side i' I've got I've got a a notebook with all the uh all the lighter stories that I'll publish one day all right now here's something that you said that chap unfortunately disturbs me here's something you said that unfortunately disturbs me okay and that is uh you talked about the Patterson footage as if it wasn't BS that Patterson footage to me looks like a blurry video of a dude in a monkey suit well if it looks that blurry to you then you haven't seen the best uh Renditions the best copies of the is are they online uh there's one there's one that's online what's the best one H well I'm not sure if I can call it off top of my head but the producer of the show just looked at me like oh no here we go because he knows I got a thing for the Patterson footage well one of the things an hour we're fine we got a lot of good stuff already one of the things that's interesting is every time the film is assailed by a critic or a or a pretender uh to be the man in in uh in the suit such as Bob heronimus right um the uh you know it seems that that new technologies have become available in the intervening period and and they're applied one of those was um the uh was digital imagery by scanning that uh film digitally the uh the image could be uh the color could be Channel split uh we know that the the the the um lens that was used was not corrected for chromatic
aberration so different colors refracting differentially through that lens boy you sure talk a good game mistic aberation how dare when you split you know just well just pop a mushroom and you'll understand what I'm talking about with these okay rainbow colors we split the colors we can subtract away the least clear channels and just limit the image to the sharpest imagery and uh boy I I tell you you see that image as you've never seen it before um and there are details I I've you know I'm I'm working right now with a gentleman who is a former Hollywood makeup artist and F and um costume fabricator Bill Bill muns he's also very good with uh with computer graphics with photogrametry and we're doing some really interesting work on the film but you know when you stop and think about the materials that were available in 1967 they didn't have four-way stretch fur they just had fur cloth which when you make a costume out of it even a a a padded costume it looks like pajamas it doesn't look like a fitted a fitted uh costume it doesn't look real to me that bit that that does not walk like a a gorilla it walks like somebody who's late for a meeting not only that there's gorilla there's the context there's something about uh human beings where when a human being is wearing a suit or you you see a human being that's pretending to be something that they're not it doesn't seem right they walk like a human you think that you see that thing walk that to me feels like a human being I've seen chimps walk on two legs I've seen gorillas I've seen primates move they move differently than people do they have a completely different anatomical structure they feel different when you watch them this feels like an [ __ ] pretending to be Bigfoot also here's a let me just play Bigfoot advocate here there is the possibility though I mean if you're if you're shooting a Bigfoot hoax video mhm you're going to walk better than that this whoever did this is like it's like he's in between takes going to use the bathroom or something well this is just a dude this Bob heronimus the guy who says it's him he's just a guy who was friends with Bob Patterson and we we've already been over the fact that Patterson like wrote a bad check to pay
for the very camera that he's a shady character he wasn't exactly the salt of the earth if he went looking I'm sorry but he he went looking for bigfoot and then found Bigfoot that sounds so ridiculous but if you're going to take the time to go out in the forest with whatever that big suit is and to film yourself walking through the to make a hoax Bigfoot video you're going to try to walk more like a gorilla or some Supernatural thing the stride of that thing is so bad and seems so fake that it makes me believe that it's real I well I got baked one night at the ice house and I was convincing myself for 20 minutes I mind [ __ ] myself and I completely convinced myself that it was real and then I woke up I was like that's ridiculous that's a guy in of monkey suit ask ask Dr meld though what he was studying before Bigfoot cuz it's gerine to his okay we'll get to that we'll get to that um but the this this film have you ever looked at it and thought it was fake never well I mean I've questioned whether it was authentic or not but I've never come to a conclusion that it must have been fake it's the Holy Grail of Bigfoot footage uh well yeah but that's not that's not the reason I that that that no I'm not but it is yes oh sure it it has set the bar I guess that's I would rather look at it that it it sets the bar as high as as it is for photographic evidence and anything that falls short of it since we're still debating it is certainly not going to tip the scales but if it was fake it would be devastating uh no no it wouldn't because we still have this dozens and dozens hundreds of footprints that fill my lab that that form uh the basis of of my conclusion but I would think it would just be devastating just because people would be so upset they were claiming that it wasn't real or it was real that would be ego wise that would be a Crusher especially to such a fringe belief anyway right sure sure but if all I had to go on W was the uh the correlated Footprints were the correlated Footprints from that film side that would be enough to convince me that it's authentic really the Corel fil Footprints were very good well yeah this example that so is that one from Bluff Creek that is that so that's from the Patterson footage that is MHM and that exhibits that whole mid tarsel break
that you talk about right that's right and and you can see that kinematic that action in the fo of the film subject so it's you know what it looks to me when I watch it it looks like a guy walking with ice skates on you know when you have ice skates you can't walk right well that's that's that effect of the compliancy of the gate they don't walk you know you said it doesn't look like a chimp it doesn't look like a gorilla and that's absolutely true because gorillas and chimps are quadraped they're not bipeds well actually I said it looks like a person is what I said said when you watch a chimp move and you watch a gorilla move they don't look like human beings this looks like a human being right and and that similarity is largely due to the fact that this is another biped that uses a mode of locomotion that's very similar but not identical to our own and one of those differences you you point out with the ice gating is that effect of the compliant gate you know one of the things you notice often notice in in many of these Footprints is compared to a human there's not a real distinctive uh heel impression and a ball impression which is the result of our arched foot that concentrates pressure under those ends of the arch so we have a heel strike and a toe off when walk this creature because of its great Mass has to distribute its weight over a larger surface area so it it walks more flat footed without an arch and then you've got the action of that midtarsal breake you can see here's the deepest part of the footprint right there and then the pressure Ridge the pressure release that's pushed up behind it but in order to also reduce those reaction forces that impact of the step it walks with a slightly bent ankle knee and hip and so instead of the head bobbing along like we walk when we're walking briskly down you know the the sidewalk umth exactly I've had eyewitnesses when when they saw they thought it was either levitating floating through the air one described it he said looked like it was on a bicycle because its head was just moving horizontally through space as it was uh as it was walking so smoothly wow so that's a that's an interesting distinction but to my eye that's that confirms The credibility rather than refutes it that's interesting still looks like a dude in a monkey suit
though well it does at first glance you know but when you start looking at things like you know you're a bodybuilder the attachment of the trapezius yeah I am just to let you know the attachment of the trapezius on the back of the head you can see the traps come down to those massive shoulders you can see the definition of the deltoid or you see a dude who has football pads on inside a gorilla suit I I gotta tell you you have such a smooth voice and such an easy way of talking about this you could make me believe in leprechauns unicorns you mean you don't that would be fantastic it's it's easy to get me to start believing man I I start looking at it over and over again I've been watching the video the entire time we're talking like maybe maybe man nobody would want it to be real more than me that's why it disturbs me that I think it's fake because man I would want that to be real so bad almost as much as you you first me like second well one of the interesting thing you know Roger's no longer here to defend himself but Bob gimlin his partner is and Bob was kind of pulled in on this he was uh he was the friend who had the necessary horse trailer and equipment and so forth to make this kind of happen and he got pulled in he was interested he you know heard the stories that that Roger told him and went out riding with him every now and again over by Mount St Helens and Mount Adams near near where they lived in Yakama but uh they uh they had gone down there specifically because there had been Footprints discovered a month earlier mhm a long line of tracks of three individuals a 15in which I'm convinced was her and then a 13 and a 11in which probably were were juvenile offspring of hers that were just in tow uh they'd been down there for two weeks already it was not like they just went down and two whole weeks wow they put in the time they really deserve finding the first video footage ever of a giant apik man thing well it's it's dumb luck there's always a certain element of dumb luck or yeah of course you want you can play it off either side of it but you got to weigh the you know even if even if you dismiss it on the basis or or if you uh hedge on the basis of those circumstantial evidences then you got to
account for the film you know that was the year that Planet of the Apes came out now that was the state-of-the-art in the industry for costumes that has never been repeated in the industry we quickly passed costumes and if we were going to do it now we'd do it with CG ey no one would even tackle that with a costume all right let me play Devil's avocate real quick even the really good footage let's be honest it's blurry if you went to see a movie and it looked like that you would be pissed what kind of [ __ ] movie are you making I can't even see what's going on this is all blurry the trees you can't see the leaves everything is like washed out it's very difficult to distinguish really really closely exactly what you're looking at well there's enough detail that that you can see the the you know the Deep set eyes you can see the nose you can see the split of the mouth you can see the well no they're there see something going on what about Bob heronimus the guy who says that he was in the suit and the guy who when he walks looks like Bigfoot well he doesn't actually one interesting thing no he doesn't look anything like it his limp proportions are completely off you know he's not wearing his suit here's a funny little Telltale Telltale sign okay you notice that when he tries to imitate the Patterson film He Walks Like An Egyptian he turns his his backand back really far there was a there was a frame from the Patterson film that was widely published uh sometime after it was actually a copy that was in the possession of uh Renee de hinden and it had a little blemish on the copy that made it look like there was a almost like a thumb and a forefinger making an okay sign that made it look like that hand was turned back like this uhhuh um that's an artifact of the of the copying the hand is actually positioned like this the Palm doesn't face backwards but heronimus trying to exemplify trying to emulate the posture exaggerates this Egyptian hand posture based on that widely uh published publicized sounds to me like someone's got a little confirmation bias I don't look someone wants it to be real a little bit no no it's it's it it sounds that way because I'm throwing out things that are based on very exhaustive evaluation of the film the
exhaustive evaluation of Bob heronimus Walk Like an Egyptian hands oh sure yeah I looked about everything that he's allowed to be replicated or published yeah can I throw my pinky in with a doctor here please do I just want to say look here's the thing if I'm going out in the woods and I've got this futuristic Bigfoot suit and horses and a camera I'm going to walk in a weirder way I'm not going to walk it's you buddy right me I would walk exactly like this guy in the monkeyy suit you would walk like that yeah I would never know number one about the head movement thing I wouldn't know that this was some kind of primordial thing so these people seem to have deeply studied it to make something seem so fake or it just walked straight and they filmed it all blurry and then we add all these things to it sure well yeah there why is it exhibiting Behavior that's so uncharacteristic of every other Sasquatch sighting every single Sasquatch sighting they're like in the middle of the woods they don't come out in the open they don't stand there and when they walk why would they walk that way why would it go right back the woods why is it walking diagonally as if to give you a nice long view of itself as you got your camera it seems that way seems staged well one there's several possibilities just just give you an apologetic okay first one is it's [ __ ] right first one well sure it's [ __ ] but the other is that one of them is that uh first you have to know the lay of the land there and and we've been to the site we've surveyed the the landmarks the trees the stumps and so forth this is a very deep Canyon with very steep walls at that point there's a wide girth there because of the flood that essentially scoured out that that Creek bed and left that very convenient if you will a sandbar where those beautiful tracks could be laid down but it made a beine up uh Upstream some distance cross the creek and and once it was past that steep uh narrow it opened up a bit and that's where it immediately went up up to higher elevation one explanation that's been offered is that it was now remember I I said that a month earlier there were actually three sets of tracks possibly two juveniles those aren't obvious here in in this footage and like I said I'm quite convinced that her tracks match those of
the other 15inch set of tracks so she's obviously a female if if it's real uh and so if she has some young and Tow one behavior of of you know that exemplifies the maternal instinct is that broken wing syndrome where the mother walks off nonchalantly to lead the The Intruders away from the sequestered Offspring oh so The Offspring are over here so she's like stra making them follow her leave her ospring alone that's a isn't that an odd thing to do in a place that's filled with predators and then you seeing two Predators that's how they do it they would like that you know what how how much of a of a threat are humans you know I mean I would think they're a huge threat which is why sasquatches are hiding otherwise if they came down and got food from us we would feed them every day I mean I feed squirrels dude you tell me I wouldn't feed a Sasquatch Sasquatch showed up in the yard sure how have they avoided trail cams well uh there are a lot of animals that are capable of avoiding trail cams I mean there's actually the growing literature showing everything from uh you know coyote spec especially uh other Predators like felids that U uh exhibit avoidance behavior whether it's uh electronic emissions whether it's light leakage whether it's scent whether it's just the novelty of something on that regularly used trail that wasn't there the day before probably smells like people or something I had a I had a friend uh he's a wildlife biologist he's been working over in Southeast Asia and he said recently a BBC crew came over and they wanted to get uh images of elephants and they put out 18 trail cams the elephants found and destroyed over half of them wow so yeah elephants are very smart exact it's kind of strange how smart they are exactly so we have no problem locking them up well yeah again but it's a it's a question in part of Rarity of solidarity and intelligence and behavior and and so on you know is isn't it possible that this creature has evolved the ability to hide that wait let me ask that again isn't it possible that this creature has evolved Beyond other beings when it comes to the ability to hide maybe whatever this is is super Advanced and camouflaging itself in a way that we've never seen well that's possible I I I I don't think that you we really
have to resort to extraordinary explanations for it hiding I mean other animals are very capable of of remaining undetected it's just a matter of odds I mean how many times when you have gone out or you know people uh I just drove through Yellowstone you know and got caught up in these traffic jams where people would um uh stop to see the bear or the Bison but there are hundreds of Bison out there that are never seen you know but when you have that many scattered across the landscape the chances of bumping into one increase but if you're talking about a very rare animal you know something like a wolverine or a Fisher or Martin right you know you can talk to people who have spent lots of time in the woods who have never had a sighting of one of those animals so it's just you know for me it's it's a matter of U statistics just just probabilities of of encountering but gee you know if we don't see something move a vertical line especially is is very cryptic in the woods we're usually seeing things that are horizontally oriented like the back of a deer or a bear or whatever but it's kind of like that uh closing scene in uh Harry and the Hendersons when suddenly the how dare you quote Harry and the Henderson when you come on a show to talk to us about serious Bigfoot think was so good science by the way that's a pretty obscure reference pal for most normal folks most normal folks are not like quoting Harry and the Henderson what and what happened in Harry and the Henderson well in the final scene when Harry's sent back into then out out from the landscape emerges his whole family and they were standing there right in front of you but just because they were still you didn't see them and then as soon as they cute when it's a movie well right but well but there's there's truth to that we we really pick up our our brain zero in on a movement you know a movement in in the but if it's absolutely still uh we have a hard time sometimes like like in Predator yeah exactly how much Credence do you give to uh the idea that they're all over the country oh very little um their their their distribution again assuming they exist for a moment is very ecologically based so we don't find them in the middle of wheat fields of Kansas
or or uh you know West Texas we find them where there's sufficient rainfall to support coniferous forests and understory that that's productive enough to support a large omnivore so if you looked at a if you got a guide to mammal and flipped open to American black bear for example looked at the distribution or better yet flip open to my field guide you have a Sasquatch Field Guide I have a Sasquatch Field Guide and it's laminated isn't it it's yep so waterproof um but there is a um if I can find it here there is a distribution map of a hypothetical distribution where can I get one of those um well I can give you a address to send a check to and get one how dare you he just just got money out of you how much just G this is well with with postage it would be$ 1150 I'll take in the United States I'll buy it for you Merry Christmas buddy anyway but uh there there's a distribution map and what's interesting is it's very similar to the distribution map for American black bears because there's another omnivore that needs a certain amount of uh of productive habitat and uh you know there's lots of space on that map where there's no uh there's no evidence of any of any Sasquatch existing you certain your your um your belief is that you're dealing with the Pacific Northwest primarily and then possibly a few other spots like Connecticut sure well the the backside of the appal so if you go across the Boreal forest of Canada right down the backside of the Appalachia New England states Connecticut Connecticut well could be that's pretty densely populated state but uh pretty kind of hard to hi Monkey but down the back side of the Appalachia even even Eastern Ohio it's pretty it's surprising if you never been there yeah there's there's some support for so you believe Ohio maybe possibly Pennsylvania uh yeah Western Pennsylvania could Florida Florida SK Cape sure really some of that some there's a lot of my experience has been uh and for a long time I simply used the you know the uh easy caveat that I didn't have the time or resources to consider all the evidence east of the Mississippi but my experience has been that the data that has come from those areas that might corroborate such sightings is pretty
scanned and there's a lot of things that are just not credible whatsoever meth like meth a lot of meth in Florida I think if you're seeing skunk Apes now I want can you talk a little bit about the way that a Bigfoot smells well yeah oftentimes in the skunk Cape you know is a moniker that uh derives from that supposed stench but uh it's interesting when you look at the statistic coated from lots and lots of sidings uh a stench is only reported in about 10% of the of the circum of the sightings that suggests to me that they don't continually smell badly to our to our nose but that they're capable of exuding a smell uh great apes like like chimps and gorillas have very well-developed axillary organs the uh the uh apocrine sweat glands the things that that when we sweat when we're nervous as opposed to the watery sweat that is used in evaporative cooling and um when animals are when like like gorillas Jane um Diane FY rather excuse me she describes the first time a Silverback Bluff charged her came barreling down at her she hunkered down you know and averted her gaze and and it stopped just a foot short of her but she said she was nearly bowled over by this locker room scent that it was emitting oh my God and uh and she was probably emitting one by that point too just imagine how hard horrifying that would be you got a giant silver back charging you and it gets so close you can smell his stink so so whether it's fear or um uh tension or uh intimidation uh they're probably capable of exuding that kind of smell under those circumstances just like a skunk just like a skunk sure we were in my backyard the other night and uh I had explained to my daughter that you can't get too close to the skunk there was a skunk wandering in the backyard we have chickens and the skunk has found out chick by the way skunks are murderers okay they're very carnivorous they're predators and they were looking to kill my chickens and they actually drink their blood that's what how they get them they gank their neck and drink their blood so cute little skunks pep La not so much they're little monsters but you know I had explain to her like I go if it gets you the smell is unbelievably bad and you know she's five like I don't even know what you're talking about
doesn't smell at all I'm like it can smell it smells on purpose sure that's a weird thing the ability to spray that stuff on purpose absolutely yeah and they can only do I heard they can only do it 10 times a year skunks yeah they can't they only have a certain amount that they could spray so whenever they spray they have to mean it a rate of production what's fascinating is that smell that um that we can recognize in just uh small parts per million right that's how dogs smell us yeah well not so bad I'm sure but they can smell the they have ability to recognize us the way we could recognize skunks which is it really puts it in perspective CU there's very few smells that are like that that are squirted out by a small animal that can spread for blocks and blocks you know that when you're driving you're in your car you smell it through your vents right you know super powerful so um mostly Pacific Northwest or anywhere where there's large densed Forest yeah who's the most credible eyewitness that you've ever talked to oh there have been several what one that that always comes to mind when I'm asked that though is a lady by the name of Julie Davis had a remarkable encounter in the South San wans of uh of Colorado she's a very Avid goat Packer and she's hiked the entire uh Continental Divide Trail through Colorado and uh her story was uh was recounted in The Denver Post um in a big feature article but and I've I've spent um over a month uh in the in the back country with her and a couple other researchers and got to know her very well and been in her home heard her recount her her U Recollections over campfire and and um you know when when someone H shares that kind of experience well hers is worth retailing very quickly she was off Trail uh with her goats and a couple of dogs the dogs were acting up she suspected maybe that she was being stalked by a bear and and there still are Grizzlies and supposedly still are Grizzlies this is the area of the the so-called ghost Grizzlies where they they think they're extinct and then a hunter shoots one and it's a female and she's OB obviously suckled the Cubs so there still are some Grizzlies out there perhaps and what part of the where is South Colorado Rockies uh the wuch
country in the South San Juans but uh at one point she um her dogs were again acting up she was kind of on on the lookout she didn't want her dogs to tangle with the bear so she was taking the dogs towards the tent and stepped into the tent and got her pepper spray and uh suddenly the goats approached the tent they weren't looking at her though they were looking up above the tent and so she stepped out thinking she was going to confront a bear and have to spray it and they're standing right behind her tent so about from me to you just a small Dome Tent is this 8ot tall hairy figure locking eyes with her and this was in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight and had Close Quarters she said um she it looked at her it looked at the goats it looked back at her mean it was apparently fascinated by these funny looking animals it hadn't encountered before perhaps and uh she said she had a sort of a subliminal uh impression suddenly that that I won't bother you if you won't bother me and uh she said that uh when she had that Rec that that sense its demeanor kind of softened The Edge sort of went off it and at that point a second one that was standing right behind it a slightly smaller one peered out from around the bigger one and they sat and kind of stared at each other for you know probably what seemed like an eternity it was just a few seconds and and then they both turned and they headed off towards the tree line and disappeared I'd be like where you going yeah exactly come on I'll show you candy I have uh have soda have a goat she didn't uh she didn't dare tell anyone for years about it because of the fear of the stigma and God I would give a$ thousand to know if that's true yeah exactly not even to experience it myself just to know that she was telling the truth well and as I said it's one thing to you know in your position to sit well yeah you know it could be it could be it couldn't be right but when when you when it's someone that you have come to know and you count as a friend as a close acquaintance then you know how oh well you were mistaken you know it was just a bear standing upright from 10 feet away right you uh you know you just imagined it or you misinterpreted it brain blew a fuse or or you're lying to me you know you're just making this up for attention
we spoke to one woman who had Barbara who had an incredibly compelling story yep so we yeah I've I've talked to people that have stories that make you just go W boy I wish I knew well yeah people are having experiences again it comes back to this issue of of how do you interpret those experiences how credible are they that's really got to be where the madness is because you can't discount unique experiences you really can't you can't and but but I always kind of push for the corroboration you know I want to see an Associated footprint I want to see a strand of hair that that matches that sort of uh standard or that that um Arc Type of of the hair of Sasquatch that that's kind of the the the gold standard you'd say I guess um because then then there's another dimension to it that takes some of the subjectivity out of the evaluation of of the experience for me anyway is this your full-time job do you no no no I mean I'm I teach I do research you know I I publish on uh homed Evolution and bipedalism um it it takes a significant amount but I see it as one facet a very compliment M facet to my my other research some of the insights that I've gained from studying carefully the Sasquatch Footprints have actually uh fueled new interpretations of some of the homed footprint evidence that have uh that have uh caused me to Advocate some different alternate interpretations of some of that early evidence besides Bigfoot what are the other Bigfoot like creatures that you believe possibly exist right well there you know there's the reports of all around the globe of of different sorts of things not all related now interestingly there's reports of very sasquatch-like creatures in Eastern Russia and uh China and even down in Southeast Asia uh in fact you go up from Southeast Asia across myamar Northeast India along the foothills of the Himalayas up around the pamier and alai ranges on the bordering Mongolia even as far uh West as the Caucasus between the Caspian and black Seas there are these gigantic reports an Evidence of gigantic Footprints left by large bipedal creatures very similar to sasquad they have the same mid tarsel break in the footprints well we have a much scanter fossil record they they resemble I mean one of the tracks from
the Caucasus that a researcher in fact I'm going to the Caucasus this August uh to work with this researcher who came back with a footprint that was cast by a villager uh from a long line of tracks that that most of the village witnessed of a big hairy creature that walked uh walked through this um this fow field um they they resemble remarkably the the sasquad footprints uh so this might be the former range of you know gigantopithecus or giant paranthropus or some other homonid um there's there's the Himalayan Yeti and uh there is unfortunately scant evidence for it I've gone through as systematically as possible and evaluated all the footprint attributed to the yeti much of it's just unintelligible the snow you know the prints have melted out or sublimated you know where the snow evaporates at the High Altitude uh another significant fraction are bears absolutely bears and it it boils down to probably two specimens the famous uh Shipton photo from the Menan Glacier back in the 50s what's the name of that uh Eric Shipton s sh i p t o n yep mhm and another one that's I find even much more compelling is the mcneel Cronin footprint the mcneel Cronin expedition to the Aon Valley in um in the Himalayas um those suggest a creature that's actually probably much more akin to this individual they exhibit a opposable or Divergent big toe in fact the MCN Cronin particularly look just like an oversized chimpanzee with short Stout digits hold hold this up so you feel like the yeti might possibly if it's real might possibly be a different animal another a different undisclosed probably one that's still are boreal that lives not up in the snow fields but down in the uh subtropical to temperate valleys of the high mid Himalayas I guess you'd say like the Aon Valley I mean mcney Jeff mcney and Ed Ed Cronin were were um uh biologists who were conducting a 2-year biological survey of the wildlife in that area wildlife and the Flora and so when they when they woke up one morning and found a line of tracks that came up a very steep slope through 3 feet of snow bip pedy uh on a ridge uh leading to a pass that they were just about to go over themselves made a detour meandered in
amongst the brightly colored tents and then continued on over the past and they lost the trail in a roded endan Thicket but here were these chimpanzee like very large chimpanzee like Footprints do you um M do you what's your take on aliens or extra terrestrials do you believe in UFOs well uh you know and I always asue that that term believe it doesn't matter if I believe or not but uh I I've not busied myself with the the evidence I mean I I saw a UFO an unidentified flying object myself one time we were out looking at stars with you know on date do you think Bigfoot possibly was in that UFO no I don't think so no you never know until you go in that UF can you imagine that what a mind [ __ ] that would be big puts from another planet and he just lands and likes to go for walks through the woods just like everybody else all I saw was was a point of light you know when when when we were kids we would sleep out on the Sund decks and we'd count the satellites as they went over and they had very particular kind of oblique orbits this thing was going north to south and which would have been fine except that it executed two right angle turns in succession I mean absolutely right angle turns just as sharp as if you put a square up there in the gu wow and and so I you know both our Jaws dropped and did you see that yeah I saw maybe that's the government because it's trying to throw you off this Bigfoot Thing by making you look even more ridiculous this was way before that this was back in college years maybe they have a time machine and they knew that you were going to be one of the most prent Pro well that that's the thing about Bigfoot researchers all all these conspiracy theories if there's Men In Black out there you know harassing and and intimidating these Bigfoot investigators either I'm a good uh disseminator of disinformation or something because no one's ever shown up at my lab they don't bother you at all they hav never bothered me so you could yeah so the idea is you probably work for the CIA you trained underground to have this hypnotic soothing voice you get around Stoners convinced them Bigfoot exist leave little breadcrumb Trails you know right you're the one with a bag of hairs I knew it I knew it you're right that's it you're a
government agent um the uh the the possibility that Sasquatch uh predated humans in North America uh you brought that up what about the possibility that there's some sort of a hybrid between humans and Sasquatch is that yeah I think it's very unlikely I mean I actually am aware of a couple of interesting stories from Native American sources that suggest that that U that there was the possibility of of uh inner so you feel like there's a Yeti which if may or may not exist but if it does is a completely different species and then there's a Sasquatch there has been some talk about hybrids and including the Melba Ketchum DNA results which she reports to indicate some sort of a human and uh primate unknown primate hybrid what how do you feel about the results of those uh I don't hold those in in uh in very high regard uh I don't think that her uh results are that credible reliable and certainly her interpretation of the data is Highly Questionable also it's important to note that when you say a human Squatch hybrid what you're saying is that someone wasn't just lucky enough to discover a Bigfoot but they were also able to make love with the Bigfoot well we're talking about a long time ago and most likely they didn't even make love with a Bigfoot they made love with another thing and created Bigfoot that's the idea that's that's her her thesis yeah that it's not being looked at with uh well rosecolor glasses I mean even setting the any supposed data aside for a moment just to think about the the the feasibility of that scenario you have to have two populations that are at least close enough that they're going to produce a viable and a fertile offspring and yet they're different enough that that Offspring isn't subsumed into one or the other of the parental population and and just you know diluted back into the gene pool they they remain distinct and then the crosses have to be frequent enough the the you know the the hooking up at uh yeah I like how up that there's that there's a a substantial population then that that acrs and and that becomes Sasquatch and somehow gets from Europe to North America and other parts of Asia and relinquishes all material culture and and other accoutrements of humanity and
I mean it just it kind of uh not only that how big must that thing have been if people are our size and then there's Sasquatch which is even bigger thing had to be even bigger than Sasquatch had sex with a person made something in the middle right does it work that way no it doesn't science does not work that way you know why it doesn't work that way why ligers ligers are way bigger than tigers or lions Yeah well yeah I mean there there there are yeah you you can point to examples that they do lions and tigers really aren't good biological species because they do when the when the opportunity presents they do cross and produce viable offsprings but the viable offsprings are sterile are they not no ligers minor understanding is that ligers are not sterile really yeah that you can you could breed you could in fact one of not Pocatello but Eastern Idaho claimed to fame was ligertown a couple of uh unscrupulous individuals that were were breeding and but not taking good care of them and all all heck bro broke loose when they showed up outside of a school playground the liers did yeah and well they they found well-beaten paths where they were getting out on a regular basis before they fin discovered yeah it was it was pretty but that but that's an interesting interesting possible scenario now I I started to mention that there's a couple of Native American uh accounts that suggest you know there's always been this theme of abduction of of the uh you know the the Sasquatch abducting um uh human females ah but the only two that I'm aware of upon which I can base any you know any evaluation reported that there was a pregnancy there was a birth but the individual grew very rapidly very sickly and died and was stunted mentally and died before the you know reaching teen years suggesting it wasn't viable and probably wouldn't have been fertile and this was an abduction yeah well Bigfoot abducted a Native American Woman made love to her brought her back and she had a baby that died why'd he bring her back or she got away or whatever I me maybe she was annoying maybe Bigfoot thought it'd be really cool you know it's like a lot of hookups you build it up in your mind you know and then you get together with her and the reality sets in maybe she's annoying
should have stuck with Bigfoot I mean there they sound like Just So Stories but you know we have some president baruti galus the urutan lady researcher she in her book reflections of Eden recounts uh an instance where at a provisioning station her native um assistant was accosted by an A young male uh orangutan who completed the deed and uh but he had been he was a rehabit tuated or repatriated I guess you'd say rehabilitated I'm not sure what the proper term is there one that had been confiscated and then raised and and trained to return to the woods so it had some contact with humans previously but the but the point simply being is that that scenario is not completely out of the question the question is is what's the probability of there being a successful impregnation between two different species now I've never can I just stop yeah I I would if it seems like if an orangutang had made love to a woman that I would have heard of that by now and you would have too I don't think so there's that lady in Connecticut that was almost entire almost definitely sleeping with her chimp she was giving it wine and Xanax I slept in the bed with her was very jealous of her that I knew about that she's probably having sex with that thing but this is different from from being on an expedition and having a orangutang Barrel out of the forest and [ __ ] you yeah but I think it's probably pretty standard for orangutangs they're bigger we're smaller they [ __ ] us not standard I think that's what they do when they're horny I don't think they really think about it there would be a Blog dedicated to it at least just not enough contact with people with cell phones that live you can tell that was a this was a Pandora's Box wasn't it whole show is a Pandora's Box sorry I apologize for that the um the Jane Goodall quote boy when Jane Goodall came out and said that she believes 100% that Sasquatch is a real animal did you go yes you must have been so pumped well I followed up and uh and uh and saw and tried to see if she would um read my book manuscript and possibly endorse it which she did so the cover of my book boasts an endorsement from from Dr Goodall so you have you spoken with her I have yeah a couple of times what's her number one thing that she locks on to as far as proof one of the things
that impressed her was the uh the the uh accounts by Native Americans that she's come to become acquainted with and uh the fact that they that they've had these encounters and that they uh that their oral Traditions are so Dee rooted about interactions and you know encounters with these creatures that they're they're part of the of of the real landscape as well as you know as with so many animals the Native American stories often have are very metaphorical very like eso's fables they you know convey um convey morals and so forth and so they're often times the the animals are given anthropomorphic characteristics and or Supernatural characteristics but that doesn't change the fact that you know the clever um and and trickster coyote is based on a real species of animal yeah so the wild man of the woods is probably the same what does Jane Goodall think of this footage you know I haven't uh I haven't had that opportunity our our conversations have always been very brief unfortunately we haven't had the opportunity to sit down and speak in great length but uh so I don't know what she would say about the about the footage what was your background before you became intoxicated with the Bigfoot Legend right well my my training is in anatomical Sciences with an emphasis in physical anthropology so much of my day spent teaching human grow Anatomy full body dissection lab course to uh Health Professions programs so you know I've uh been involved with the dissection of hundreds and hundreds of human bodies and all that Machinery inside and out uh my research revolves around the evolution of human adaptations particularly those for walking on two legs and and more specifically the interpretation of of foot Form and Function as it relates to to bipedalism and arboreality and other other primates like the great Eeps and and monkeys you're you're living in Washington state is that where you live Idaho idah state of Idaho I teach Idaho State univers nice and woodsy out there right well poel is kind of plunked there on the edge of the sage FR step so we have to go a little ways to get to the woodsy but there's lots of wild country we're just two hours away from the Tetons and Yellowstone National Park and uh entas are just south of us so there's there's some real Prime territory so you
can go squatching pretty close to your house sure can do you do do you do that I I've I've gone I go out with a a colleague John mazinsky is a wildlife consultant and ethnobotanist and we've done a lot of work in Western Wyoming together and uh for a number of years we've spend at least a month at a time in the field looking for trace evidence and trying to get DNA uh with various by various means so would you say that you spend more time dissecting human bodies or hunting for bigfoot uh probably dissecting human bodies yeah but Bigfoot's really fun and dissecting bodies get boring after a while right well I never lose that uh it has a certain uh novelty to it every each and every year I mean everybody's a little different and and sharing that experience you know this is real unique opportunity for students to have that very intimate uh experience of dismantling that marvelous machine that's the human body so it never it never really gets old for the record just so for the show would you look at me and tell me exactly who you are and what your um credentials are yeah my name is Jeff meldam I'm a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University uh I teach primarily anatomy and research uh the evolution of human bipedalism I hope you're right me too I I I'm seriously rooting for you there's not a lot of subjects that I really hope are true but Bigfoot man for me it has always been the one UFOs I'm pretty sure there's life out there whether or not it's visited us excuse me whether whether or not it's visited us I'm sort of I'm iffy on that sure but Bigfoot I'm hoping for man um God I want it to be real well it's interesting there was a recently uh the the cover story of New Scientist magazine this year was uh of one issue was what are the top 10 questions that face human evolution the students of researchers of human evolution today and number nine was are other hominin alive today so it's gaining some traction this this notion of Relic homono I've actually launched an online scholarly Journal peer-reviewed Journal called The Relic hominoid inquiry to provide a venue for discussion and publication of of uh research on this topic and so it's it's making inroads homo floresiensis that
you're so interested that that was really an interesting yeah because here these these discoverers kind of scratch their heads and admit to the reporters well yeah actually the local people have been describing these little three- foot tall hairy people that live up in the mountains and and uh even some of the European colonists have described encounters with them all along and that had been folklore for the longest time and thought to be nothing but just stories until they found these bones what is it like 2006 or something like that yeah it's just been a few a few years crazy isn't it little tiny 3ot tall nonhuman people right they said could levitate no they fly they just fly they don't levitate they like Superman no Superman Levites they walk through trees right through them they Rock right through the tree they become M with the tree from from what I read the little people can fly where are the little people supposed I mean there's also the oring pen deck right right is that thing supposed to live that name comes from Malaysia so uh Flores is a little island of Indonesia but there are reports of these small hominids all throughout southeast Asia recent reports right oh yes contemporary reports absolutely as well as the native tradition they're still alive yeah little tiny things they're very smart apparently hiding from people and very smart fascinating stuff Dr melum seriously thank you so much and thank you for all this work because if it wasn't for a guy like you an actual intellectual smart dude who is obsessed with Bigfoot as well it would be so sketchy because you're getting this information from all these various sources some of them highly doped up you know it's hard it's hard to celebrate the weak from the shaft is that what you saying weat from the shaft weat from the shaft it's hard I don't think it's sha cha I think is the proper term it's it's hard you know when you're a person like myself who is not educated in anthropology to dissect this stuff sure and uh if it wasn't for people like you out there I think the uh overall picture would be far muddier so thank you sir really really appreciate it pleasure and uh an honor having you on really appreciate that nice to meet you thank you that was awesome
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