Scientific American: Dear Animal Planet, Learn The Difference Between Real and Fake Monsters

Don't call them River Monsters! They have feelings!

I love good skeptics, I hate lazy ones. When I say this I always cite my favorites. Sharon Hill of Doubtful News and a Huffington Post contributor and Brian Dunning of Skeptoid. Most others reach for the low hanging fruit or are just contrarians. These last two category of skeptics, the fruit-pickers and the contrarians, are unimpressive. Yes, this assumes I am worthy of being impressed, and truth be known, I can't think of a better person I would like to spend time impressing than myself. 

back to lazy skeptics, more specifically Kyle Hill (pictured left), a science writer who specializes in finding the secret science in your favorite fandom. Hill has also contributed to Wired, Nature Education, Popular Science, and io9. At least that what is says on his bio for Scientific American. Today he wrote an open letter to Animal Planet asking them not to blur the lines between real and fake using shows like River Monsters, Finding Bigfoot, and  Mermaids: The New Evidence as an examples that create an uphill battle for serious science educators. Boo hoo. Science is a method, teach the method and let people educate themselves.

The gist of his argument is real fish should not be called "monsters" and mythical creatures should not be considered real. We agree, leprechauns and unicorns should not be considered real--oh wait, he's putting Bigfoot/Sasquatch into this mythical category. Read for yourself below as he tries to protect the reputation of fish and uses the same knee-jerk arguments against the Bigfoot evidence.

I don’t want to see a legion of fisherman descend on the Congo or Amazon rivers to wipe out tiger fish, or any other animal, out of misplaced fear. Each time River Monsters decides to characterize a fish as a “flesh ripping chainsaw mauling atomic assassin,” the possibility grows. Don’t turn magnificent creatures into mythological horrors.

And don’t turn mythological horrors into real creatures.

I’m afraid I can’t speak highly of your track record when it comes to presenting evidence-based programming, considering that Finding Bigfoot never finds, and won’t ever find, Bigfoot. But never has it been worse than with Mermaids: The Body Found and the upcoming Mermaids: The New Evidence.

Cryptozoology persists precisely because there is no evidence for these creatures. If we actually found Bigfoot or mermaids, they would be studied, cataloged, and brought into the wide swath of biological knowledge. Bigfoot does not exist because there would be evidence left behind—hair, feces, bones, kills, offspring, a carcass—if it did. Considering how many expeditions have attempted to find this evidence and have come up short, in spite of the Bigfoot hunters who claim these creatures number in the thousands, we can effectively rule Bigfoot out. Admittedly, it’s hard to criticize the search for mermaids in the same way. We only recently captured the fabled giant squid on camera. But the difference between these sea monsters is that the squid, prowling the depths off Japan, leaves evidence behind (beaks, tentacles, whole carcasses).

Funny how footprints and casts never make the list of missing evidence. And there have been potential hair and feces samples that are currently being investigated by Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford. I also think it is crazy that people assume a population of thousands should be easy to find. We have downed airplanes that we can't find in the wilderness, and those had trajectories to give us clues!

Finally, these are TV shows not documentaries. Anybody who's research stops at a TV show bracketed by commercials and ads is not someone you should care to persuade anyway. Let Animal Planet entertain, because I think people are smarter than Kyle Hill gives them credit for.

Click the following link to read Kyle Hill's open letter to Animal Planet 

Today in Bigfoot History | May 15th 1977 | Canadian Bus Driver and 6 Passengers See Bigfoot

Canadian bus driver and 6 passengers claim they saw Bigfoot. 

"The hoax would be more important than a real Sasquatch sighting...it would teach us a lesson to smarten up." -- Rene Dahinden on the possibility the Canadian sighting was a hoax

The hoaxers eventually did fess up, but as Rene has said this is an important hoax to dissect.  So that's what we are going to do. But first let's start with the sighting.

As the story goes a Canadian bus driver named Pat Lindquist, who also happened to be a reserve Vancouver city police officer, was westbound a mile east of Lake Erroch on the Harrison Hot Springs-to-Vancouver run when he saw a 7 foot tall creature with black fur and a light colored face. It was estimated to be 300 pounds, but weight estimates usually just indicate it was heavier than the average human--very hard to guess visually.

This was an interesting encounter, because not only was the creature witnessed by the bus driver, but all six passengers saw it too, some waking up to see the creature! It gets better, the driver stops the bus and gives chase. He actually gets out of the bus and catches up with the creature. In the Oklahoma City Times he describes the confrontation:

"The first thing I noticed was the smell...a horrible smell like very rotten meat. The bush was thick and I was pushing the branches apart when I saw it about 20 or 25 feet away. I just couldn't believe it."

"At first I was mad. But then I went to awe and then to fright and I began to shake. I couldn't stop shaking and then I got out of there." The smell has been a common element in the reports from numerous people who claim to have been close to the Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot.

Lindquist, who is 6-foot-2, said the thing before him was no more than seven feet tall, only "much heavier than I am." "It had flat, flared nostrils like a monkey and large, wide eyes. It didn't make any sound except heavy breathing. It had a

broad chest and it was heavy up and down."

"It could have taken two steps and grabbed me, but it didn't do anything. It didn't growl. It didn't show its teeth. It just looked at me." Lindquist said the hair on its face was a light brown and "it appeared to have the mange; the skin underneath looked kind of white."

Ten days later the perpetrators admitted on radio that it was a hoax. Now, for those of you that think that we shouldn't dissect this hoax and give hoaxers any tips. I don't think there should be a concern. Either there is evidence or there isn't, otherwise it is just a story.

This hoax was composed of a team of  four individuals and took weeks to prepare for, in fact they started by selecting a bus line and planted a passenger that would alert everybody else on the bus.

The gorilla suit was bought for $200 dollars and was worn by a guy who was 5-foot-11 and  165-pounds. A far cry from the 7-foot 300-pound creature described.

This story even had footprints made from a resin cast they created based on one seen in the book Sasquatch/Bigfoot: The Search for North America's Incredible Creature by Don Hunter and Rene Dahinden.

You can read the original article, before it was revealed as a hoax, below:

MISSION, British Columbia (AP) - A furry creature about seven feet tall lumbered across Highway 7 near this Fraser Valley community Sunday and made some believers in the legendary Sasquatch.

The sighting, 35 miles east of Vancouver, occurred as a Pacific Stage Lines bus driven by Pat Lindquist was westbound a mile east of Lake Erroch on the Harrison Hot Springs-to-Vancouver run.

The passengers and Lindquist saw ahead of the bus a glimpse of something they all described as a seven-foot tall, 300-pound beast with dark brown to black fur or hair and a light-colored face.

"At first we thought it was a prankster in a fur suit," said Lindquist, 28, a reserve Vancouver city police officer. "But people were shouting 'what is it, what is it', so I slammed on the brakes to have a look.

"To tell the truth, I thought it was someone trying to con us so I took off after it. I guess I thought I was going to pull off his hat and bawl him out. I don't know why I did it. I'm not sure I really intended to catch up with it."

Lindquist, who police here describe as "very nervous and pale" when they arrived on the scene, later described what happened when he gave pursuit.

"The first thing I noticed was the smell...a horrible smell like very rotten meat. The bush was thick and I was pushing the branches apart when I saw it about 20 or 25 feet away. I just couldn't believe it."

"At first I was mad. But then I went to awe and then to fright and I began to shake. I couldn't stop shaking and then I got out of there." The smell has been a common element in the reports from numerous people who claim to have been close to the Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot.

Lindquist, who is 6-foot-2, said the thing before him was no more than seven feet tall, only "much heavier than I am." "It had flat, flared nostrils like a monkey and large, wide eyes. It didn't make any sound except heavy breathing. It had a

broad chest and it was heavy up and down."

"It could have taken two steps and grabbed me, but it didn't do anything. It didn't growl. It didn't show its teeth. It just looked at me." Lindquist said the hair on its face was a light brown and "it appeared to have the mange; the skin underneath looked kind of white."

© Oklahoma City Times; Monday, May 16, 1977

Newest Game Getting All The Buzz: Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery

Sony's new handheld game: Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery

I remember when video games were the size of refrigerators and you were lucky if a character was made up of more than 20 pixels. The graphics had to be used so frugally and characters so small, video game developers called them sprites. Heck when I was a kid you could recreate video game characters out of skittles and still have enough left over to taste the rainbow.

Now handheld video games have all the power to render 3D polygons with skin, texture, shading and lighting effects. If you can't tell if I'm being nostalgic or impressed by the power of technology then I have struck the right tone. In the video below is the newest game that contains an entire 3D universe, or at least a 3D campground in your pocket.

The video below is adorable, sweet and just makes you feel good. Spend a few minutes and dream that you too can be secret friends with a Bigfoot.

Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery follows young boy Jacob and the happenings during his time at summer camp, where he finds and befriends the Bigfoot of legend. Together the pair embark on a string of adventures, solving puzzles that will test players' logical, math, lateral thinking and observations skills.

Although it was released yesterday for the Sony PS Vita, this This Thursday (May 16 2013) it will be available on your iPhone.