February HopsSquatch: Gunnar Monson presents "Bigfoot's Brain"

Gunnar has been an Investigator with the BFRO for a number of years,
participating in expeditions in Oregon, Washington and New Mexico

Save the date! February 16th. HopsSquatch returns with another exciting installment presented by BFRO investigator and coffee magnate, Gunnar Monson!

DATE: Sunday, February 16th

TIME: 12 noon
WHERE: NW Quimby Lucky Lab | 1945 NW Quimby St. Portland, OR 97209

WHO: Gunnar Monson

WEBSITE: HopsSquatch.com

You may recognize Gunnar from the Season 1 finale of Finding Bigfoot, the Bigfoot and Beer episode that takes place at Ike's pizza. We are in for a special treat as Gunnar presents Bigfoot's Brain. Gunnar describes his presentation as, "There are many reports of Bigfoots displaying behaviors that are generally described as 'paranormal'. But what IF those attributes are simply similar to our own generally unexpressed abilities? What if those attributes have been developed over generations and we’re now seeing the results of that development?"

Gunnar is a bonafide field investigator with several years of hands-on experience under his belt. A respected member in the community who is simultaneously thorough and open-minded. read his bio below.

GUNNAR'S BIO
Gunnar’s natural inquisitive nature led him to the Bigfoot community through the path many of us took-exposure to the Paterson-Gimlim footage as well as ‘In Search of’ and John Green’s books.
Although his interest in the subject had been shelved for some time, it was renewed after Al Gore’s invention of the internet.

He appeared (albeit briefly) in the Beer and Bigfoot episode from Finding Bigfoot and was part of the group of Bigfooters who participated in an episode for the current season. He also assisted with the editing of Ron Morehead’s book ‘Voices in the Wilderness’.

Gunnar has been an Investigator with the BFRO for a number of years, participating in expeditions in Oregon, Washington and New Mexico. He is also one of a handful of people that have been invited to visit Dr. Matthew Johnson’s SOHA site. He is currently the lead investigator for an active research area in the Oregon Coast Range.

Recently, Gunnar combined his love of Bigfoot and coffee addiction by creating The Bigfoot Sasquatch Coffee Company.  You can find it at www.SquatchCoffee.com

DATE: Sunday, February 16th

TIME: 12 noon
WHERE: NW Quimby Lucky Lab  | 1945 NW Quimby St. Portland, OR 97209

WHO: Gunnar Monson

We are trying something different this year. Instead of requiring $5.00, we are are requesting a $5.00 donation to help fund our efforts seating is still limited.

We still have memberships available that guarantee you VIP seating and a collectible tshirt.  

Kirk Sigurdon Takes on the Paracas Skulls

An elongated Paracas skull

"Most people don't know that King Tut's and his daddy's skulls are both elongated. But what about a bunch of skulls in Peru?" --Kirk Sigurdson

More Paracas Skulls

Brien Foerster and his Peruvian research on odd-shaped skulls is making the media rounds lately. Popularized by "main stream" media, the story really starts in 1928 when a Peruvian archaeologist, Julio Tello, discovered a massive graveyard  filled with the remains of elongated-skull individuals. Tello found more than 300 of these elongated skulls, which are believed to date back around 3,000 years. 

Kirk Sigurdson reports on KultusBook.com that, "DNA Tests Reveal South American Elongated Skulls NOT Human" You can read an excerpt below followed by a link to Mr. Sigurdson's post.

When elongated skulls are found (more often than you might think) anthropologists have been trained to assume that the odd shape of the skulls is due to ""cradle boarding." This horrible practice was common in a few cultures thousands of years ago. Baby's flexible heads were bound in such a way as to elongate their skulls over time as they grew and hardened permanently.

Enter: The "Paracas" skulls. They are definitely elongated. Far more than King Tut's skull!

The skulls were found on a desert peninsula of the south coast of Peru. This area used to be Incan. Of course, the skull find there is nothing new. In fact, the skulls are old news, although the DNA tests on a few of them are new.

Read more at DNA Tests Reveal South American Elongated Skulls NOT Human

Unknown Mega-Society of Chimps Found in The Congo

Actually these newly discovered chimps kill leopards, but we thought this was cuter.

The Times of India is reporting a newly discovered mega-society of chimps, a population of perhaps thousands. Locals have been talking about them for yearss, they have even claimed the chimps were known to take down leopards. Read an excerpt below.

An unknown mega-society of chimpanzees has been discovered living in a 50,000sqkm forest in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands walked hundreds of kilometers in the forests across the region for several years and caught their activities on motion activated cameras.

The Eastern chimpanzees, as they are called, inhabit remote Bili-Gangu forest which is infested with poachers and rogue militias. Local people reported that there were great apes in the forest that could kill and eat leopards, but to the outside world, nothing was known.

The article continues to mention the use of game trail cams, "The chimpanzees of Bili-Gangu build nests on the ground, patrol their territory and were caught on cameras killing an occasional leopard."

The scientists covered a total of 1,800km of reconnaissance walks to the north and 500km to the south of the Uele River as well as 160km of line transects in the Bili-Gangu Forest, and discovered a population of chimpanzees numbering in the thousands. Evidence of behavioral continuity shows that the north and south groups may be connected culturally as well.

"Our results suggest that a large and widespread population of chimpanzees inhabits the forests and savannas of northern DRC", says Thurston C. Hicks, a primatologist based at the Max Planck Institute. "This population has remained unnoticed to researchers until now and may represent the largest viable population of this subspecies, but it currently lacks any protection." When they re-walked parts of these transects again in 2012, the researchers found that the number of chimpanzee sleeping nests had not declined since 2005.

You can read the article in it's entirety at  Unknown mega-society of chimps found in Africa
The Daily Mail also has a great article on the same topic Researchers discover 10,000-strong community of Chimpanzees