Prominent cryptozoologists comment on why the mysterious Bigfoot has yet to be caught.
Maya Bykova:
What properties inherent in it "work" for its mystery and mystery? The external image of the "Bigfoot", seen by many eyewitnesses, speaks of his earthly origin. He has a traditional body structure - five fingers on four limbs, one head, one body, more like a man or a huge monkey, the body is covered with hair. He is nocturnal and moves extremely fast. It has protective properties that allow it to remain unnoticed by people. No one has reliably seen his home. No one has substantiated data on the incentive reasons for the migration of this creature.
But perhaps the most amazing feature attributed to "Bigfoot" is his ability to suddenly appear and just as quickly disappear, even as if instantly "dissolve"! Previously, I did not attach importance to the testimony to support this. Until a certain point.
It is this extraordinary ability that prompts people to come up with various, sometimes fantastic versions of its origin.
Some are inclined to look for traces of it in other dimensions, while others associate its appearance with unidentified flying vehicles.
But one thing is clear: without access to the object of our interests, we cannot provide a scientific explanation for this phenomenon. But, relying on the testimony of thousands of people, we will try to explain two of these features, using the method of comparing them with those found in other terrestrial animals.
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Let's start with the wool. The closest comparison object is a monkey. However, some researchers object, arguing that large monkeys live only in warm regions. Moreover, it was previously believed that higher monkeys live only where the air temperature does not drop below plus fourteen degrees Celsius and there are no sharp drops. At the same time, we know that the geography of the Bigfoot knows no boundaries: he was seen both in the sultry deserts and in the Arctic.
But animals are widely known that can adapt to the most unfit, it would seem, living conditions. Confirmation of this is the so-called "snow monkeys", found in the sparsely populated northern regions of Japan and related to the species of red-faced macaques, widespread in the tropics. "Snow monkeys" are covered with thick light wool (unlike their counterparts), live in mountainous areas, where the land is covered with snow for almost four months, larger than their fellow tribesmen. There is a known regularity that prevails in northern animals - they are larger. This is understandable: a large animal loses heat more slowly. Macaques get food from under the snow - this is grass, young shoots of shrubs, tree buds, bark. Only in 1963 did Japanese scientists tame a group of these animals for scientific observation of them. Back in the seventies, the journal "Bild der Wissenschaft" of Germany published some materials about the experiments of Japanese scientists. One can only imagine how far their research has progressed since then. Unfortunately, we do not have detailed information about these works. In particular, this applies to the characteristics of the coat, behavioral response, skin structure, and so on. The absence of these data is a great loss for hominologists.
Today, only scientists at Northeastern University in Boston (Massachusetts, USA) are seriously engaged in wool color. It turns out (let's draw an analogy) that the fur of a polar bear ("Bigfoot" in the Arctic most often of this color), despite its whiteness, is capable of converting up to ninety percent of the solar radiation into heat into heat. It was also found that such fur converts almost all ultraviolet rays and part of the visible into heat, and the reflected part of the visible light is evenly distributed over the entire spectrum, due to which a person perceives it as white. Experience has shown that if you put polar bear fur under the glass of a solar collector, its efficiency increases by half or more. These are the possibilities given by the features of wool for the survival of an earthly beast.
Despite these already proven facts, some zoologists and hominologists do not want to discuss the question of the possibility of a relict hominoid living in the Arctic.
Let us turn again to the phenomenal property of "Bigfoot" - a sudden disappearance, as if "hiding" his biofield (we realize the instability of the term) in order to become invisible. More often than others, at least residents of central Russia, they saw him, for example, in the Himalayas, as is traditionally believed.
Tibetan monks "red-hats" argue that the Yeti possesses volitional control, and more precisely - and more specifically - it can stop the activity of the brain EXACTLY FOR INVISIBILITY. Who else but them can judge this unusual property, if the monks themselves achieve such an effect, because teaching him is included in the mandatory points of the condition of gradual improvement. In their opinion, the absolute ability to dissolve, to become invisible to the observer, was preserved in nature only by the "Bigfoot". Europeans more than once, according to the monks, met, viewed him as a very real object, then pursued him (unfortunately, a trivial version of human behavior!). But at this stage of the "meeting" the embarrassment happened. "Bigfoot" disappeared every time, "as if dissolved." This is not about literal disappearance, but about invisibility to the observer,that is, about suggestion - suggestion, but directed not only at others, as was first suggested in the book "On the Beginning of Human History" by B. F. Porshnev (M., "Mysl", 1974), and, first of all, on himself. Here, perhaps, natural auto-training spontaneously works, similar to falling into lethargy in case of nervous, mental or physical overstrain.
This is the novelty of my approach to our topic. B. F. Porshnev believes that the loss of such and similar properties by a modern person is the result of the complication of the human psyche, - a thought is consonant with popular ideas. Acquiring in the process of evolution, in particular, speech, at a certain stage of development, a person lost something. All of the above, just by touch, by one step, allows you to advance in the study of this most complex and interesting phenomenon. Therefore, the "Bigfoot", who has not mastered speech, is a creature parallel to a person, accompanying, from the same detachment, but not a step forward in comparison with a person. And far from his ancestor.
On this basis, many different guesses appeared, expressed by people who had never dealt with the problem. Parapsychologists and psychic healers are especially "persistent". Based on the collective and conventional name, which includes "man", they begin to groundlessly assert that this animal is either higher than man in all respects, or a product of the degradation of some mysterious tribes! And this is about a creature that has no idea about society!
I am firmly convinced: we must look for analogues of the properties of a terrestrial animal on Earth, and not in a fictional fantastic flight of thought. This is the only correct method of approaching a topic. For, as has often happened in biology, the method is worth discovering.
Valentin Sapunov, Doctor of Biological Sciences:
He has not yet been caught alive. But in order to finally be convinced of the reality of Bigfoot, it is enough to find his remains, say, a skeleton. Or at least a part of the skeleton, suitable for the day of identification. However, the mysterious hominoid is also elusive for paleontologists. Why?
When recreating bygone faunas, paleontologists rely on the fossil remains of extinct animals. It is believed that the fossil record really reflects the history of the animal kingdom. As you know, this chronicle is incomplete. Is it even possible to say at least approximately what proportion of dead animals we are able to dig up? How big are the white spots in evolution, including in the human race?
Alas, the remains of animals that have not yet been found, as a rule, are not preserved in the ground, but continue to decompose. Since the animals are dead, this is a purely physical-chemical process. Therefore, as an analogy, we can consider the decay of radioactive elements, say C14, the content of which in fossil bones is inversely proportional to the elapsed time. The more time has passed, the less isotope is left. Its half-life is 5730 years, and after 60,000 years the isotope is virtually undetectable by conventional laboratory methods. Based on the analogy, it is possible to construct a mathematical model of decomposition (and, accordingly, conservation) of organic residues in the soil. Of course, references to a mathematical model and the use of modern computers alone do not guarantee the correctness of the conclusions, so I will formulate the starting points.
First, the number of animal remains that can be found during excavations is inversely proportional to the time that has passed since their extinction. Let's say it's easier to dig out a mammoth than a dinosaur. Secondly, the number of paleontological finds is directly proportional to the number of these animals that lived on Earth, that is, it is easier to dig out numerous animals than small ones. And, thirdly, the probability of finding animals that lived in the past depends on the conditions of occurrence, the structure of their bones, the scale of excavations, etc. These considerations formed the basis of the mathematical model. But before getting acquainted with the simulation results, I will make one more remark. As a rule, only individual bones are found during excavations. The fewer there are, the more difficult it is to identify and describe the species. Paleontologists have long prided themselves on their ability to reconstruct an animal from skeletal fragments. But their possibilities are not endless. If it is still possible to identify an animal by such bones as the atlas (upper vertebra) or mandible (lower jaw), then, say, by a separate rib, it is unlikely. In practice, the limit of a description of a fossil animal is a single find with a skeleton preserved at least 2-3 percent.
From the mathematical model it follows that for any fossil species, sooner or later, a critical moment comes when the probability of finding remains, its representatives becomes vanishingly small. In other words, modern paleontology has a limited resolution and is simply unable to find some species. Several tiny areas of our planet have been more or less fully explored by paleontologists. Among them are the so-called Kostenkovsky region in the Voronezh region and the famous Olduvai valley in East Africa. But even here, only the areas of individual excavations measuring several tens or hundreds of square meters have been studied in detail. In total, less than one billionth part of the total land area of the earth has been dug up and studied by paleontologists and archaeologists.
A few words about the Kostenkovo expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences. This area of the middle Don attracted the attention of scientists back in the 18th century, and has been studied in detail since 1879. The age of the fossil material (dwellings of the late Paleolithic, animal bones collected by primitive people) is 20-30 thousand years. From the point of view of evolutionary paleontology, the period is short, and the species fauna has hardly changed during this time. Extinct only mammoths, woolly rhinos and a few other species, which were replaced by other animals. Over a hundred years of painstaking work, the remains of 37 species of mammals have been discovered. And currently 70 species live here. It is believed that 20 thousand years ago there were no less of them. This means that during the excavations only slightly more than half of the species composition was found.
For 5000 years (the time that the excavations cover), 140,000 mammoths could have lived in these places. The remains of about a hundred animals have been found. At least 300 thousand Paleolithic people passed through the historical arena (approximate data based on the study of the remains of dwellings). But the next figure is accurate - for a hundred years of work in Kostenki, four human skeletons were found, three of which are fragmentary. These are the permissive possibilities of paleontology. To clarify again, this is one of the most studied areas in the world. What then can we say about other parts of the world!
If a species close to Homo sapiens lived in the Kostenki area 20-30 thousand years ago, and its number was several tens of times lower, then such a species, simply speaking, is undetectable.
Now about Bigfoot
A human thinking as a biological species arose, according to most scientists, about 100,000 years ago. At this time, our ancestor Arhanthropus (or Homo erectus - Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, etc.) turned into the so-called paleanthropus - a thinking man, a subspecies of Neanderthal. The latter has spread widely across the globe. After several tens of millennia, it began to split into two branches. The first line is the graceful Neanderthals of the Ehringsdorf group (named after the place of a typical find) - obviously our direct ancestors. The fate of the second evolutionary line is less clear. These are the classic Neanderthals (named after the places where they were found - the Chapelle, Moustier, Spie groups, etc.) - an offshoot from the general trunk of the human race, and the offshoot is evolutionarily recent. This is evidenced by the Middle Eastern Neanderthals of the Skhul group - possiblyhybrids of two branches.
In the fossil remains 20-30 thousand years ago, representatives of the modern thinking type begin to prevail. Classic Neanderthals are becoming increasingly rare. Their mass finds cease, there are only isolated bone fragments, mostly dubious. Most anthropologists believe that the Neanderthals became extinct in the Late Paleolithic. But it can be assumed that the number of our cousins was declining. The critical, close to zero, abundance, when the species becomes extinct, could be reached today, plus or minus several centuries. Rather - a plus, given the never-ending flow of evidence of some mysterious humanoid creatures leading a secretive lifestyle in remote corners of the planet and appearing under the names "Bigfoot", "Yeti", "Almasty" … In any case, their appearance is large weight,physical strength, etc. - corresponds to the direction of evolution along which the classical Neanderthals walked. Of course, not Neanderthals have survived to this day, but a new species.
If their number 20-30 thousand years ago was an order of magnitude less than our direct ancestors, then this lateral branch could disappear. At best, palaeontologists may end up with insignificant skeletal fragments that are of little use for serious research. New species of a wide variety of animals are discovered on Earth every year, including primates. So, in 1987 in Tibet, high in the mountains, four individuals of the Yuan golden monkey were caught. For a long time, they were considered an invention of local residents, but now they can be admired in the Beijing Zoo.
In conclusion, let us say that the animal world of both the past and the present is much richer than it seems today.