The Extinct Podcast 024 with Guy Edwards

Two reasons why we shouldn't bother debating if Bigfoot is more human than ape

Your's truly, Guy Edwards, was fortunate enough to be invited to the 24th episode of the Extinct Podcast. Among the group were Ro Sahebi, Michael Merchant, Shawn Evidence and Damian Bravo almost made it. I opened up with the above visual, because I was concerned the ape vs human debate was more of a distraction than a healthy conversation with a conclusion.

When you get bigfooters talking about other bigfooters in private, you often hear the qualifier (or disqualifier) , "he's in the dumb ape camp" or the opposing, "he thinks Bigfoot are almost human." 

In our opinion the reason that people pick sides is a basic misunderstanding how smart apes are. You can go to our previous post, "hard-wired traits in all primates," to see just how intelligent primates are. They are quite capable of sophistacated communication, counting, self-awareness and empathy. 

The other is the misunderstanding is how closely related apes and humans are. Many articles have made it clear. So if we agree 1) Humans are Apes and 2) Apes are not dumb. We can stop talking past each other and disqualify the rest of each other's research.

I was able to talk about a few other things at 24th episode of the Extinct Podcast embedded below or click to watch it on the Blip.tv website. 

When Good Bigfoot Go Bad

New Book by UFOlogist and paranormal investigator Preston Dennet

Preston Dennet may best be known for his UFOlogy research. According to his website he has already published nine books on UFO's and five books on the paranormal. That's 14 books, but on the same website his bio says 13.

Preston Dennett began investigating UFOs and the paranormal in 1986 when he discovered that his family, friends and co-workers were having dramatic unexplained encounters.  Since then, he has interviewed hundreds of witnesses and investigated a wide variety of paranormal phenomena.  He is a field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a ghost hunter, a paranormal researcher, and the author of thirteen books and more than 100 articles on on UFOs and the paranormal.

He may need to update his homepage, especially since he will soon add another book, "When Good Bigfoot Go Bad."

Below is the book's short and long description from the SmashWords website:

By Preston Dennett
Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: Sep. 01, 2012
Words: 2653 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781476159560

Short description

Is Bigfoot Hostile? Or is Bigfoot friendly? In this article, we will explore some of the most extreme cases of Bigfoot hostility and Bigfoot friendship. Bigfoot is not only real, there are well-documented cases of Bigfoot attacks and even kidnappings. On the other hand, some people claim that Bigfoot has saved their lives. Which is the truth? Read about these cases for yourself.

Extended description

When Good Bigfoot Go Bad: The California Files
By Preston Dennett

While Bigfoot has been reported across the entire world, California contains what appears to be the world’s highest population concentration of the creature. Writes leading cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, “It has been estimated that the population of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest is between two thousand and four thousand individuals, with the greatest concentration around Bluff Creek, California…Bluff Creek is the Mecca of the Bigfoot field.” Coleman has compiled a list of the top twenty Bigfoot hotspots in the world, and Bluff Creek heads the list. Not surprisingly two other places in California (Willow Creek and the Antelope Valley area) are also on Coleman’s top twenty list of Bigfoot hotspots. For whatever reason, California is hopping with Bigfoot.
Literally hundreds of cases come from virtually all corners of the state. Reports of the hirsute beast reach back almost two centuries and continue to the present day. There is surprisingly strong evidence supporting the reality of Bigfoot including movie films, photos, audio tapes, footprints, body-prints, hair samples, dung samples, animal reaction cases, and of course the thousands of eye-witnesses, many of high integrity.
By far the most common type of California Bigfoot encounter is seeing a 7 to 12 foot-tall hairy biped traverse the highway late at night. Most other encounters are even more brief, usually involving the sighting of large footprints, smelling the foul odor of a Bigfoot or hearing its howl. It is very rare that a Bigfoot actually interacts with a witness. And in those cases where there is interaction, it is usually limited to both parties stumbling upon each other in surprise and then bounding away in terror.
However, in a few extremely rare cases, there has been extensive interaction between humans and Bigfoot. In some of these cases, the encounters are decidedly friendly, seeming to indicate that Bigfoot is a caring and benevolent creature. Others, however, take a much darker more menacing aspect, showing that Bigfoot isn’t necessarily always our fuzzy little friend. These two types of outlying cases have a lot to say about the nature of Bigfoot.

Click the following link to read the first ten pages of  "When Good Bigfoot Go Bad"

Look Out Meldrum, There's Another Bigfoot Anthropologist in Town

Zachary Throckmorton is Serious about Sasquatch

"If Bigfoot is real, it’s a great ape like chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, it came to the New World over Beringia like Native Americans, and it’s bipedal like humans. " -- Zachary Throckmorton

Okay, there is nothing Meldrum needs to "look out" for, as a scientist I'm sure he welcomes other serious academics looking into Bigfoot, and this new guy isn't anywhere near Meldrum's town. The problem is we needed to get your attention and the alternative title for this post is, "There's another serious anthropologist similar to Dr. Jeff Meldrum that specializes in primate locomotion and thinks we should keep an open mind as to the possibility of Bigfoot and he's working on a book on the cultural and biological anthropology of Bigfoot ." It is just too long.

Today, at dane101.com, we stumbled upon an interview with Zach Throckmorton, an anthropologist at UW-Madison. It seems Zach is very serious about his interest in Bigfoot. He says he uses Bigfoot to teach about pseudoscience, but he means no disparagement towards Bigfoot, he acknowledges there is pseudoscience regarding Bigfoot, but that does not exclude actual science being applied to Bigfoot.

Here is the part of the interview where he talks about Bigfoot reprinted below.

D101: What's the most interesting/exciting part of this for you? Why is it your favorite project?Zach: As I said I like to people watch. I think the ways in which we differ from each other are fascinating, and I like to understand and think about why we're all different.  I'm glad that my abstract search for evolutionary understanding also has real-world applications, like how to find shoes that fit best and avoiding unnecessary surgery. It's also a treat to be able to use my expertise in foot evolution to talk about Bigfoot, because Bigfoot is such an amazing topic to illustrate what anthropologists do.  (Seriously.) 

D101: Hold on a second. Bigfoot?Zach: I use Bigfoot as a context for discussing the nature of science, and the line between science and pseudoscience. If Bigfoot is real, it's a great ape like chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, it came to the New World over Beringia like Native Americans, and it's bipedal like humans. Most of the evidence for Bigfoot's existence is of course footprints, so that's an opportunity for me to talk about my expertise in human and ape feet. I'm also working with a friend who is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology here at UW-Madison on a book on the cultural and biological anthropology of Bigfoot, though it's not the highest priority for either of us.

There other parts to the interview that are not about Bigfoot, you can read it here. But why? You probably want to hear more about Zach take on Bigfoot, right?

You can get a bigger dose of Zach Throckmorton talking about Bigfoot in the video below. This is a presentation he did after four beers. Some of this may be review for us Bigfooters, but I recommend either sticking around or fast forwarding to the last ten minutes, the most interesting stuff he says is during the Q&A session.