Why are there so many versions of Bigfoot?

[Skeptic Chicken]

Seeing as no-one appears to have asked, I will. Hope no-one's offended as it's genuinely not intended as a joke or racial slur of any kind.

Does the Chinese bigfoot have slanty eyes?

I don't think anyone has gotten close enough to document that yet, my good sir.

[Stardrive]

Bigfoot did not canoe over to Australia.

Wouldn't have had to....

[drivernjax]

Am I the only person who has noticed that the descriptions of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, etc. all seem to match the scientific description of the Gigantopithecus? You know, 7 - 9 feet tall; covered with red, reddish-brown, brown or black hair; vaguely human features; etc. Maybe these aren't racial memories, but descriptions of an animal that was thought to be extinct, but may not be. I would also like to remind the naysayers that the mountain gorilla was thought to be a legend until one was captured in the early 20th Century. I could name more, but I believe you may have an idea of what I am saying.

[Myles]

Am I the only person who has noticed that the descriptions of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, etc. all seem to match the scientific description of the Gigantopithecus? You know, 7 - 9 feet tall; covered with red, reddish-brown, brown or black hair; vaguely human features; etc. Maybe these aren't racial memories, but descriptions of an animal that was thought to be extinct, but may not be. I would also like to remind the naysayers that the mountain gorilla was thought to be a legend until one was captured in the early 20th Century. I could name more, but I believe you may have an idea of what I am saying.

The mountain gorilla was not reported to exist in every country on the planet. Yet it was found and documented a hundred years ago. There are clear pictures of it.

[scowl]

I'd put more money on the giant ground slouth. Sure, it's been extinct for a while but it could almost walk on two feet and did live in the warmer parts of North America so it makes more sense than a tropical ape. Just imagine stumbling across one of those things in the forest! Yikes!

Strange how we know more about extinct species than Bigfoot. We don't even have a fossil record that would suggest that something like it ever existed.

[land cryptozoologist]

this is just proving it exsists more. i mean it is in all most every continent.

[Turecast]

This is like asking why are their so many versions of god

Edited July 10, 2012 by Turecast

[vitruvian12]

this is just proving it exsists more. i mean it is in all most every continent.

Talking and telling stories, no matter how repeated and retold, isnt proof.

[justcalmebubba]

_{I want to met a female big foot. being my luck that'd be come the perfect woman for me long hair big boobed big assed nutting a little soap an water an summers eve couldnt handle}

[+DieChecker]

And maybe some Nair?

[Q-C]

"Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says Hey Babe, take a walk on the wild side"

[Bendy Demon]

I have to admit that the original question can be a tough one to answer but in the case of "bigfoot" we haven't secured one shred of verifiable evidence.

If bigfoot could be compared to a gorilla, at some point it will have to forage on the ground, right?

Yet even people who have set up camp to catch a glimpse of "bigfoot" have come home empty handed.....

i think though that myths have a way of "evolving" just like the game where you are in a line of people and say something to the person ahead of you then that person passes it along and so on and so forth. At some point something is going to be left out or embellished or simply altered because someone wasn't paying attention.

I mean..it is remotely possible some sort of humanoid is out there but with all the hoaxes going on, the possible reality looks more and more like just another Hollywood movie.

[ReaperS_ParadoX]

Just like there are different species of big cats I think Its perfectly possible for there to be different species of Bigfoot, Now every country has a different name for these creatures and I think thats perfectly fine also. Just like every environment in the world is not the same Im guessing that all these creatures do not have the same appearance. Some might have more fur to shield better for colder weather and so forth and so on....But I mean its good to keep an open mind

[notoverrated]

they could exist. did anyone hear about the man who shot one and killed a baby also and took a chunk of meat to a DNA testing lab and it is a hominid but not human and has course fury.right now it is getting sent around to other labs to verify.

[+DieChecker]

they could exist. did anyone hear about the man who shot one and killed a baby also and took a chunk of meat to a DNA testing lab and it is a hominid but not human and has course fury.right now it is getting sent around to other labs to verify.

I'd heard about that. I've also heard it was completely made up by people that those guys were trying to get to back them up in the Press. So, I've pretty skeptical of that story till something real comes of it.

Here is where we discussed it here on the UM Forums.

http://www.unexplain...howtopic=218640

It's been revealed that the photo they are passing around of their "Bigfoot Steak" for sale was stolen from a cookbook website here:

Another UM link... Post 24 and 25.

http://www.unexplain...topic=189758

Not sure if this is a good link or not. Work computer will not let me open it. Click at your own risk.

Interview with Sierra bear hunter

Edited July 18, 2012 by DieChecker

[Englishgent]

Just like there are different species of big cats I think Its perfectly possible for there to be different species of Bigfoot, Now every country has a different name for these creatures and I think thats perfectly fine also. Just like every environment in the world is not the same Im guessing that all these creatures do not have the same appearance. Some might have more fur to shield better for colder weather and so forth and so on....But I mean its good to keep an open mind

I agree it is good to keep an open mind but that becomes very difficult in the case of the bigfoot due to a complete lack of any substantial evidence

[slaughtr]

I believe it.Everybody has their opinion or need proof so be it.If everything can be explained then there's no need for school. Just like with the paranormal until you get the shyt scared out you then one will believe, even science can't explain that..yea science gained some proof but no explanation.Everything is not meant to understand.To each his own about Big foot.I hope someday there will be proof everybody can see as far as the paranormal I've been through it not fun.

Edited August 31, 2012 by slaughtr

[E. L. Wisty]

Several posters have suggested that because they accept Bigfoot as an article of faith, the rest of us should too. Unfortunately, physical reality either exists or it doesn't. If Bigfoot is a real animal, you shouldn't have to "believe" in it, because it self-evidently exists. If it doesn't self-evidently exist, there's no particularly compelling reason to believe in it, so why should we? Unless we're the kind of people who want reality to be the way we say it is just because that would be nice.

To answer the question posed by the OP, there are so many varieties of Bigfoot because it's a fairly broad archetype, not an actual creature. Just about every culture in the world seems to have two basic types of mythological humanoid - very tall, very strong giants who are physically more powerful than humans, and almost always very aggressive, but so stupid that puny humans outwit and kill them in the end; and very short fairies or goblins who are physically inferior to humans, but sly, sneaky, and very good at hiding. If, like Loren Coleman, your increasingly shaky and desperate belief-system compels you to accept that all of these stories are based on fact, then more than half the surface of the Earth is the home of up to nine distinct species of unknown hominid with heights ranging from under 2 feet to over 20 feet tall, and not once has one single living or dead specimen, or even one single bone, has ever been made available to science because... er...

At this point, True Believers usually start granting them special magical powers of the sort conspicuously not possessed at all by chimpanzees, gorillas, or humans, because otherwise they couldn't be real. Look at dragons. Human imagination being finite, the Chinese came up with sort of vaguely the same huge supernatural flying lizard-like creature as the Europeans. But there the similarities end. The two creatures are about as closely related as lobsters and geraniums. Both cultures also independently decided that a horse-sized quadruped with only one horn was kind of special. Now compare the unicorn and the ki-rin. The same animal, and therefore a real one? I doubt it!

You'll all probably have noticed that a few days ago, a man was run over on an American highway while attempting to pull off a Bigfoot hoax. What do you suppose the odds are that, after more than a century of legends and rumors, a hoaxer pretending to be Bigfoot is accidentally killed by a car before any driver anywhere hits the animal itself? Unless of course it doesn't exist. In that case the odds would be about right.

Also consider that the vast majority of Americans are not professional zoologists. A hiker finding a rotting corpse or skeleton that looked even vaguely human would probably assume that it was human and inform the police. Bigfoot, if real, is the only American mammal whose corpse could easily be mistaken for that of a human being. Of course, if it was a very fresh corpse, and was obviously a Bigfoot, who wouldn't call it in and instantly become famous?

Oh, and this all supposedly happens in a country where at certain times of the year hunters are advised to wear bright orange because it's the only fairly sure way not to be shot dead by idiots who will cheerfully blast anything that moves and isn't very obviously another hunter.

The number of sightings actually counts against Bigfoot, because if it was this common, we'd have hundreds of bodies by now, and a few live ones in every major zoo. Unless almost all of the witnesses are in some way mistaken or otherwise not telling the truth. And if almost all of them must be wrong, is it such a stretch to assume that all of them are? I am typing this in a country which recently saw police helicopters called out to look for a "lion" that was later identified as a fairly large domestic cat called Teddy Bear. The much-publicized photo is so obviously not a lion that nobody would have thought it was one unless they'd been told in advance that it might be. Somebody even thinks they heard Teddy Bear roaring - though not while actually looking at him, obviously. And this isn't the first time this exact same thing has happened in this country. The fact is, people can be incredibly stupid, and sometimes they ludicrously misidentify things they're looking straight at in broad daylight.