Finding Bigfoot Could Have the Same Staying Power as Ghost Hunters

Finding Bigfoot's investigator James 'Bobo' Fay. Part commercial fisherman, part surfer, part squatch caller.

MassLive.com has an intriguing article hinting at the longevity of Finding Bigfoot by comparing it to the popular series Ghost Hunters which has 8 seasons underneath it's belt. Another interesting note; Cliff Barackman [of CliffBarackman.com and NorthAmericanBigfoot.com] is described as the oddest member of the Finding Bigfoot Group. Once again, Cliff Barackman is singled out as the level-headed one.

Finding Bigfoot' has Animal Planet feeling squatchy

Published: Monday, January 16, 2012, 4:04 PM     Updated: Monday, January 16, 2012, 4:24 PMby Laura Merwin, MassLive.com As Matt Moneymaker proclaimed in a recent episode, “I do believe there’s a squatch in these woods!” the Animal Planet’s ‘Finding Bigfoot’ is quickly starting a revival of interest in the forest-dwelling, elusive beast known by several different names such as sasquatch, yeti, bigfoot and swamp ape. While the investigative team that spends hours tramping through fields, forests and swamps in pursuit of the elusive creature have yet to proclaim Bigfoot ‘found’ the Animal Planet is doing quite well for itself by bringing the search to living rooms across the country.

The ‘Finding Bigfoot’ team consists of 4 members:

Matt Moneymaker: The self-proclaimed leader, Matt Moneymaker is the founder of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) which has been looking for bigfoot since 1995. Moneymaker is best known perhaps though for his prolific use of the word ‘squatchy.’ As in “These woods certainly feel squatchy.” And “Who would have thought that Rhode Island was so … squatchy.” While he proclaims himself the leader of the group, the group has other ideas and not one of them is in agreement but the term ‘arrogant’ and ‘He’s not my leader.’ has been thrown around in some episodes.

James ‘Bobo’ Fay: I kid you not, Mr. Fay’s nickname is in fact ‘Bobo.’ I’m just going to sit here while you make up your own jokes on that one. I’m sure you can come up with at least 3 good ones and you haven’t even seen his hair yet. Bobo’s bio has him as a California surfer turned commercial fisherman. On the show Bobo is the resident ‘Bigfoot stand in.’ Whenever the team wants to get an estimate of how big the creature was in a witnesses sighting they invariable send in Bobo to play the part of the creature, you know, mainly because they’ve never captured a Bigfoot and been able to get him to stand in for himself.

Ranae Holland: Ranae is the group skeptic. A research biologist, Ranae is the one member of the team that actually has some real credentials and she’s not afraid to use them. Various episodes have shown Ranae calling out suspect witnesses on camera but to her credit she doesn’t just laugh at their stories and walk off, she sticks around and investigates, even though she knows that it’s futile and dons the obligatory ghillie suit and spends hours sitting in a tree with nothing but a bunch of squirrels for company. That is dedication.

Cliff Barackman [CliffBarackman.com]: Cliff is perhaps the oddest team member. On the Animal Planet website, Cliff is described as a former member of the BFRO, complete with italics even. What that story is I’ve not really cared enough to dig into as yet. Cliff is the one team member, besides skeptic Ranae, that takes a scientific approach to gathering evidence. Indeed, in a team of ‘squatch chasers’ Cliff seems to be the level headed one that is more likely to say ‘That’s a really cool barred owl screech, not a squatch.’

The locations that the team investigates will more than likely prove to be the stars of the show, well, that and the eye witness’ stories that a crack team of computer artists bring to life via Bigfoot-infested cgi while Matt Moneymaker and the crew fill us with bigfoot facts.

Facts such as:

• Bigfoots come in as many hair colors as people do, presumably in champagne blonde as well as beautiful brunette and glittery gingers.
• Bigfoots go grey as they age as several white bigfoots have been spotted.
• Southeastern Ohio is the retirement community of Bigfoots, much the same as humans move to Florida.
• Baby bigfoots like to climb trees but adults not-so-much.
• Rhode Island is exceptionally squatchy.

‘Finding Bigfoot’ is quickly growing in popularity on the Animal Planet channel, once again proving that it is not the ‘finding’ but the ‘thrill of the chase’ that has the entertainment value. For proof one need only look to that amazingly popular show ‘Ghost Hunters,’ who in 8 seasons, have yet to produce even one jarful of ectoplasm, nevermind a headless horseman. I’m sure ‘Finding Bigfoot’ will find its audience quickly even if it doesn’t manage to find Bigfoot, even if that audience is more interested in doing a shot of banana flavored brandy every time Moneymaker invokes the term squatchy or Bobo lets loose with a heartfelt squatch mating call.

Todd Standing Interviewed about his Search and Rescue Experience

A screen shot of Call out Search and Rescue featuring Todd Standing

This post continues our extensive coverage of Todd Standing. Todd has uploaded a radio interview to You Tube. Listen and learn how Todd Standing survived a grizzly bear attack. The complete You Tube Description below:

Todd Standing is interviewed by Karen Black in December of 2011 about recent events including several tv show appearances. Todd has appeared on two tv shows Call out Search and Rescue which you can watch here...www.knowledge.ca/program/callout-search-and-rescue-ii

Click the watch now tab and watch the episode entitled "Sasquatch and Horses" Animal planet discovery channel has Todd on the Jan 15th Episode of Finding Bigfoot here... animal.discovery.com/tv/finding-bigfoot/episode-guide.html The episode is entitled "Canadian Sasquatch"

Smithsonian: Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct

A reconstruction of Gigantopithecus. Image courtesy of Flickr user Sam_Wise

 "...at least one dental study indicates Gigantopithecus developed and matured very slowly—a sign they probably had low reproductive rates, which can elevate a species’ risk of going extinct. --Smithsonian

One our favorite places to visit is the Hominid Hunting section at the Smithsonian Blog. At Bigfoot Lunch Club we believe hominids and anthropology go hand-in-hand with Bigfoot research. Sometimes the point where these sciences cross paths is so stark that an institution entertains questions we (Bigfoot enthusiast) ask ourselves.

A reminder:  In 1988, due to a high volume of inquiries on the subject of Bigfoot, The Smithsonian developed a formal Bigfoot response letter.

Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct 

Posted By: Erin Wayman

 Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti. The Abominable Snowman. Whatever you want to call it, such a giant, mythical ape is not real—at least, not anymore. But more than a million years ago, an ape as big as a polar bear lived in South Asia, until going extinct 300,000 years ago.

Scientists first learned ofGigantopithecus in 1935, when Ralph von Koenigswald, a German paleoanthropologist, walked into a pharmacy in Hong Kong and found an unusually large primate molar for sale. Since then, researchers have collected hundreds ofGigantopithecus teeth and several jaws in China, Vietnam and India. Based on these fossils, it appearsGigantopithecus was closely related to modern orangutans andSivapithecus, an ape that lived in Asia about 12 to 8 million years ago. With only dentition to go on, it’s hard to piece together what this animal was like. But based on comparisons with gorillas and other modern apes, researchers estimate Gigantopithecus stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds (at most, gorillas only weigh 400 pounds). Given their size, they probably lived on the ground, walking on their fists like modern orangutans.

Fortunately, fossil teeth do have a lot to say about an animal’s diet. And the teeth of Gigantopithecus also provide clues to why the ape disappeared.

The features of the dentition—large, flat molars, thick dental enamel, a deep, massive jaw—indicateGigantopithecus probably ate tough, fibrous plants (similar to Paranthropus). More evidence came in 1990, when Russell Ciochon, a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa, and colleagues (PDF) placed samples of the ape’s teeth under a scanning electron microscope to look for opal phytoliths, microscopic silica structures that form in plant cells. Based on the types of phyoliths the researchers found stuck to the teeth, they concluded Gigantopithecus had a mixed diet of fruits and seeds from the fig family Moraceae and some kind of grasses, probably bamboo. The combination of tough and sugary foods helps explain why so many of the giant ape’s teeth were riddled with cavities. And numerous pits on Gigantopithecus‘s teeth—a sign of incomplete dental development caused by malnuntrition or food shortages—corroborate the bamboo diet. Ciochon’s team noted bamboo species today periodically experience mass die-offs, which affect the health of pandas. The same thing could have happened to Gigantopithecus.

A Gigantopithecus jaw. Image courtesy of Wikicommons

Further evidence of Gigantopithecus‘ food preferences and habitat was published last November.Zhao LingXia of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues analyzed carbon isotopes in a sample of Gigantopithecus teeth. Plants have different forms of carbon based on their type of photosynthesis; this carbon footprint is then recorded in the teeth of animals that eat plants. The team determined Gigantopithecus—and the animals living alongside it, such as deer, horses and bears—ate only C3 plants, evidence the ape lived in a forested environment. This work also supports the proposed bamboo diet, as bamboo is a C3 plant.

So what happened to this Pleistocene Yeti? Zhang’s team suggested the rise of the Tibetan plateau 1.6 million to 800,000 years ago altered the climate of South Asia, ushering in a colder, drier period when forests shrank. Other factors could have exacerbated this crisis. Gigantopithecus‘s neighbor, Homo erectus, may have over-hunted and/or outcompeted their larger ape cousin. And at least one dental study indicates Gigantopithecus developed and matured very slowly—a sign they probably had low reproductive rates, which can elevate a species’ risk of going extinct.

Some Bigfoot hunters say Gigantopithecus is alive and well, hiding out in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Other Sasquatch enthusiasts, however, point out this is unlikely, as Bigfoot is reported to be a swift, agile, upright walker—not a lumbering, 1,200-pound quadruped.

UPDATE: Dr. Jeff Meldrum , Anthropology professor at the University of Idaho responded to the Smithsonian you can read his response to the article below:

Glad to see the Smithsonian maintaining its tradition of objective consideration of the question of Sasquatch/Bigfoot. Gigantopithecus has often been pointed to as a potential antecedent of sasqutch — after all it is a species that is the right size in the right place at the right time. George York’s reconstruction of Gigantopithecus (pictured above) conveys the sense of the enormity of the ape, but it seems unlikely that a terrestrial ape would retain the limb proportions and suspensory specializations of an over-sized orangutan, if it ever even possessed them to begin with. Fragmentation of the Pleistocene forests might just as well have spawned novel adaptations as driven Gigantopithecus to extinction. The extremely sparse fossil record for this large and likely rare ape provides only a meager glimpse of its past range and distribution. As for diet, the recent paper pointing to a C3 diet and therefore a forest habitat is an important addition to our understanding. It really doesn’t lend that much support to the “bamboo hypothesis.” Omitted from discussion is reference to the analysis of dental microwear, which says something about the composition of such a C3 diet (Bamboo feeding, dental microwear, and diet of the Pleistocene ape Gigantopithecus blacki. Daegling, DJ | Grine, FE. South African Journal of Science. Vol. 90, no. 10, pp. 527-532. 1994). This pointed to a catholic diet most similar to that of chimpanzees, not the what was predicted for a specialized bamboo feeder. The characterization of a lumbering 1,200 quadruped (or biped for that matter) –”the size of a polar bear” — is misleading. I suspect few would want to challenge a polar bear to a foot race.
Comment by Jeff Meldrum — January 9, 2012 @ 4:44 pm