Just 'cause we haven't found anything yet.... part 2

Following on from the last post, what should we expect to find if bigfoot did exist? If they do exist, then they must leave some sort of a trace.

Let's assume that bigfoot is a primate, more specifically a great ape.

Facts about great apes
- Gestation period is roughly 9 months for all great apes.
- Females and offspring stay together for at least the first 3 years of the child's life.
- Females give birth every 4 - 7 years once they reach the mature age of 10 years. (Humans being the only exception).
- Average life expectancy in the wild is a maximum 40 years. In captivity, about 10 years more.
- Sustainable population is at the very minimum 1000. Less than this and they are classified as critically endangered. Every the bigfoot true believers think there has to be at least 2000.
- Most of the time spent eating and pooing. Humans again the exception because of the amount of meat we eat. The mountain gorilla eats about 34kg of vegetation a day!

Let's start with 1000 creatures, half female. Of these females if we spread them out over a 40 year life span, 3/4 are over 10. Of these, let's say 1/4 or these give birth in one year. That's about 90 births a year. Not all of these children will survive to adulthood. Let's be tough and say there is a 90% chance that the baby doesn't make it to adult hood. So that leaves about 10. Now, if the population is stable, this means that to balance out the births, we need 10 adult creatures to die every year. If they have been around for over 10,000 years, there should be at least 100,000 corpses in varies stages of decay. So we should be able to find some remains, eg, Hair, bones. Status: None found. Isn't it strange that when people say they have found such evidence the material always gets away.

With 1000 specimens out there, surely we should have conclusive pictorial or movie evidence. I mean, the Amur Leopard is smaller, exists in a more inaccessible habitat, consists of only 30 - 35 left in the wild and we can get superb footage of it.

We should have found faeces. These would contain the DNA of the bigfoot. Has such evidence been found? No.

That's a lot of food they eat. Where are the food scraps? And spending most of the day eating means that you probably spend most of the time in one place, especially the female caring for its young. So why has no one come across bigfoot nests, or a bigfoot den? Here you would undoubtedly find hairs and poo.

Unless they are carnivores, although we should still find poo. But then we should have found the bones of the creatures they ate with bigfoot teeth marks. Again, nothing found.

Also, from a historical perspective, there is absolutely nothing in the fossil record to show that a creature of this type could have evolved on the American continent. No evidence that a creature such as this could have migrated either. Nothing.

This is when you need to think well, maybe absence of evidence IS evidence of absence. The less you find the more likely it is that the creature does not exist.

A final note, does anyone remember a couple of years ago when two men claimed to have found bigfoot and had the corpse in a freezer? The Age newspaper ran two articles on it (here and here), I even heard Red Simons on 774 radio interview one of the men. Not much questioning went on. They sent samples away to be DNA tested.

Well, guess what? The DNA samples came back and showed it to be a mixture of human DNA and opossum DNA. Then, others were allowed to look at it, and what do you know, it turned out to be a gorilla suit. Here's a news report.



Personally, it would be fantastic if such a creature existed. It would revolutionise our understanding of evolution and we could extend our knowledge of primates. But reality has to kick in. People have searched for so long and nothing is found. What does all the evidence point to? That such a creature does not exist.