Big food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These guys, are you
fav It's so like say subscribe and rade it. I'm stuck and me righteous
one wish today listening watching limb always keep its watching. And now your hosts
Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay, Hey, Bobes, how you doing?
Oh wait, you're not here. It's just Cliff today, Cliff and all
of our listeners. And then I guess are a periodic guest host, Matt
Pruet, Hey Matt, how are you doing today? I'm doing great?
Cool? So yeah, so Bobo's not going to make it today. Apparently
he is visiting his parents down there in Manhattan Beach and all power and internets
and all modern stuff went out basically just less than twenty minutes ago. So
he is sitting in the dark, well it would be dark except this sul
daylight right now down in manhatt Beach, hanging out with Fireball and his mom.
And I believe his mom's a listener to this podcast, So hi,
Alice. Anyway, Yeah, so Boba's not gonna be with us. He
might be able to join us if the power comes back on, and if
it does not come back on. You're just stuck with Cliff and Matt here,
So I don't know, Matt, do you have anything to share before
we jump into things today? No, I'm excited about today's guest for sure.
Oh yeah, it's gonna be a good one. It's going to be
a great one as far as I'm concerned. You know, this is a
squatch Giving week. I just want to wish everybody a happy squatch Giving.
I hope everybody enjoys it and has some good family time. And if you're
not into that sort of stuff, I just hope you have a very,
very very pleasant week. And of course, other than that, why don't
we hop into the show. Today's guest we have on doctor Hogan Cherrow.
He is a PhD in evolutionary anthropology or no evolutionary, yeah, evolutionary anthro
anthropology. He got it from Yale, so that's nothing to sneeze at.
So there's not gonna be any sneezing on my behalf. And he's been all
over the place, all over the world, working with a huge variety of
animals, including humans. Seem to me he kind of specializes in behavioral sort
of stuff, and just a short little background here. I met Hogan here
because he came into the museum. So he's obviously a man of exquisite taste
and high curiosity because he came into the Bigfoot Museum despite having a PhD in
anthropology. Hey, hey, Hogan, welcome to the show. First of
all, thanks for coming on. We really do appreciate it. Thanks for
having me. I'm happy to be here. Very good, Very good.
Now, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but did I
more or less int I mean, I was pretty vague in my introduction,
I admit, But did I more or less introduct introduce you correctly? Yeah?
Yeah, absolutely. I got a PhD in evolutionary anthropology for Yale.
Like you said, I studied chimpanzee behaviorally cology in the wild for about fifteen
years and have studied everything from grizzly bears to gibbons to some work on humans.
Right, So I think today on this show, obviously we're going to
be focusing on the primates in general, because you know, sasquatches are primates.
We're primates, primates for everywhere we look, you know, in some
sort of ways, and what one primate has, like behaviorally speaking, is
often echoed in other species, and I thought that would be an interesting conversation
because and now correct me if I'm wrong again, and feel free to do
that for as long as you know me, feel free to correct me if
I'm wrong. But you are not one hundred percent sold the sasquatches are real
animals. But perhaps you're open to the idea. Is that an accurate depiction
of your belief system? Yeah, I grew up here in the Pacific Northwest.
My dad was a hunting and fishing guide, so I've spent my entire
life basically in the woods here when I'm not off on some other continent,
and have loved the sasquatch lore forever. Have always loved the idea that sasquatches
out there, but am pretty skeptical. But I also, as I used
to always tell my students when I was teaching, never say never in biology,
because as soon as you do, somebody's going to catch a selacant off
the coast of Madagascar, and your whole idea of things that's going to be
shot. So I keep an open mind, and as you should in science,
if we get new data that's that's compelling and convincing. Then you shift
your your thinking on things. Okay, so since you're not, you're not
You're not there yet with the bigfoot thing, which is totally understandable. I
encourage everyone, including our listeners, to be very skeptical about everything because if
you look at the media, it's full of hogwash. If you look at
the Internet, it's full of hogwash in general. And people are out there
proclaiming very loudly about ridiculous things they claim sasquatches that they are able to do
and all this stuff. So there's lots of reasons to remain skeptical. But
for you personally first and then secondly, for the scientific establishment in general,
what do you think are the biggest obstacles between you and an acceptance of a
theoretical acceptance of the species. So you personally and then the scientific establishment me
personally, probably is is maybe a lower bar for my personal thoughts than it
would be for you know, consensus among say biologists or or evolutionary anthropologists.
For me, I think it would be some sort of really compelling evidence,
and I guess, like most people, I would like to have some sort
of personal experience with that. I will say, when I was visiting you
in the in your museum that some of the prints that you showed me,
some of the casts that you had made were very thought provoking, I'll put
it that way. They definitely were not easily explained and really thought provoking.
So I really appreciated that for the scientific community. I mean, you know,
it's been people have been saying for years, it's going to take a
body. I don't. I don't don't think necessarily it would take a cadaver
or even a body part, as much as it would take what was it
a month or so ago, you guys had had an episode where you were
talking about the DNA project back at I think North in North Carolina. Yeah,
that Darby Orchid is like the first university sponsored DNA study out there that
might unravel the Sasquatch mystery for everybody. So you think DNA might be able
to do that for us? Well, I think for some folks that would
be compelling that there's something out there. But but I do think they're kind
of you know, the old school died in the wool. They want to
they want a body to examine folks. Still, it's hard to say what
would convince the science. You know, when you say the scientific community,
because it's not. It's not one homogeneous voting block. You know. They
they they've all got their different perspectives. I mean, if you go and
talk to a morphologist, they want they want body parts. A geneticist is
they're cool at DNA. And so I think, you know, it depends
on what discipline they're coming from that sort of thing. I think it will
take a lot though. Yeah, and you know, the neat thing about
that, and and the sad thing and also in some ways, because there's
no blessing without being a curse in some sort of way, you know.
So the a thing about that is if somebody, say Darby in his study
over their North Carolina University get gets some sort of DNA that they go,
no, this is it, this is the it's a done deal. That'll
mean a lot to geneticists. And I had that conversation with doctor Todd Dissattel
out there when he was at New York University. He's in Massachusetts at a
different institution. Now, Yeah, he's a good friend. Oh really,
well, my god to say say hello, we'd love to have him on
the show sometimes too. I haven't, I haven't spoken to him. For
a few years. But I was talking to him and say, you know,
if if you did get solid DNA, it would mostly mean stuff to
DNA nerds, and then the rest of us be going, well, I
believe you, because you're in a position of authority, but what does that
mean to us? And really the next few steps would be okay, Well,
they would go out and they would obtain a specimen. So the first
domino to fall might be the DNA thing, but it won't be the last
domino. Because you can only tell so much about an animal by its DNA
or a or a hair or something like that. You kind of have to
have a body in some ways to learn about what they're doing, because an
animal's anatomy reflects its behavior so strongly. Well, and you know, I
mean a great example of that is and you and I talked a little bit
about different hominin species when I was visiting you. There A great example of
that are the Denisovins. You know, that population that has been identified simply
by DNA, and they don't have any strong morphological markers that would distinguish them.
They don't have enough samples, and so you have a lot of speculation
of what they were like, what did they do? And we just know
they were a different kind of human. We don't know anything beyond that at
this point. So I think that's a great example right there. The other
thing you're going to I think you'll get, let's say hypothetically that there is
that they do discover DNA that points to a primate species in North America that
cannot be identified as any other, and it's really solid, and let's say
it was Todd's lab. That doesn't Todd. Todd is a fantastic scientist and
has a great reputation. Even there, you would get people who would push
back and say, how old is the DNA and how are you proving that?
What you know? And so you'd have speculation and speculation. So you're
absolutely right, it's it may be the first domino, it won't be the
last one. Now, a lot of different dominos will fall with that.
Type specimen will be collected. In fact, I mean, I hate to
say it, numerous type specimens will be collected. I don't think there's any
way around that, because I of course a long term ecological study is going
to have to be undertaken to study them, and gosh, I mean scientists
aren't going to take you know, my data. Maybe my data is because
I have I'm associated with the museum, even though it's my museum. They'll
probably take doctor Meldrum's data. They'll probably maybe some of the stuff on the
BFRO might be useful. But I think from the scientific perspective, virtually all
of the information that has been collected beforehand may be of slight interest. But
they're going to start from ground zero because they don't know the quality of the
investigators who collected it. What do you think about that thought? Oh,
absolutely, it'll again, you know, hypothetically, if there's this evidence out
there and then people are able to actually identify a population and start and then
you start around the process of studying it, it'll be similar, I think
to the early days before George Schaller went to study mountain gorillas, and people
had been there. There had been naturalists who had gone in and tried to
observe about a gorilla populations. There had been people who had written books about
them, but there wasn't a scientific study where the methods are clearly laid out
and can be repeated. And that's one of the big keys is is you
know, people have to be able to go in and use the same methodology
and a different observer get the same result for something to be scientifically valid.
So I think that's that's where that kind of quality control would would come in.
Now, of course, now we're not dealing with you know, like
atoms for example, We're not dealing with a plant species. We're dealing with
highly individualistic well animals, intelligence, sentient animals, And I think I think
it's very I don't think I think it's very reasonable for me to make that
assumption about sasquatches, because I think that's also true of all the other great
ape species, that they are individuals, and they all have their own temperament
and experience that builds their personalities and whatnot. What sort of experiments can you
envision that are repeatable that would be applicable to something like an unknown great ape
species. I wouldn't say experiment so much as like when we do behavioral ecology
studies, you go in with a set methodology, You've got it laid out.
Let's say you're going to do well, here's here's a here's a great
one that I think could be implemented in areas like you and I discussed where
you talked about the area that that you go to. If you set up
transsext studies where you're walking the same path every every single month, you walk
the same set course and you're recording every single animal that you see in that
in that course. If you do that over enough time, you get a
large enough sample size where now you can have a sort of snapshot of what
animals are in that ecology. And that's something that I think could be adopted
by groups right now that are out there trying to trying to find good evidence
of sasquatch. They could start using those same methodologies. Those are all published,
Those are all really easy to find when we do. A primatologist named
Gene Altman in the seventies laid out guideline for behavioral observation that most people still
use some form of today, where you go in and either you're doing timed
samples so every fifteen minutes you're recording everything that you observe, or you're doing
scan samples, or you're doing on and on. There are lots of different
ways to do it, but this is a way to have a structure where
I can do it and then two years later you can go into the same
area and you can do it, and then we can compare results. Now
you're comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges. Stay tuned for more
Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages.
Now. One of the as you're talking about this, because I'm always
looking to up my game always, you know, there's I I'm always trying
to do a better job than I'm already doing, and especially with simple things,
you know, because the simple things are easiest to implement. As I'm
listening to you and thinking, okay, well, I'm kind of doing that.
Now. I've got a place I call the mud Road. I go
there, I walk it. It's really it's easy to get it out of
there. You can find footprints there. I found them many, many times
there. Think I found cast three prints there this year, for example,
but back in February, almost a here ago now, And I'm thinking,
well, that's all fine and good. But I think the Sasquatch I personally
believe, and I don't have evidence of this, but this is just what
I'm going with. The Sasquatches know where people walk there and they may cross
the roads, but they're not. But if they're in the area, they're
could be observing the roads. How do you deal with a or are there
any methodologies that come to mind where that one might be able, I might
be able to implement in these research areas that somehow accommodate for the subject of
the study studying the observer back. Yeah, that's a that's a good question,
man, that's a hell of a question. It's I think honestly that
behavioral observation gets more and more challenging the more intelligent the species is and the
more aware the species is that you're studying. And that's why, you know,
for really good behavioral studies we go for full habituation. For example,
the chimpanzees I studied for years adding Go Go and Kibali National Park in Uganda.
They're the if you've seen the Netflix series Chimp Empire, they're the chimps
from that series. They were just expertly habituated to the point where you could
be as close to them as you wanted to be. For a lot of
the especially a lot of the males. Males are less skittish than the females
typically, but a lot of the females got there too, where you could
be as close to them as you wanted, so you could make all sorts
of observations, and they just went about their day for the most part.
You know, every once in a while, you'll be on a trail,
they'll come walking down a trail. You've got this meeting of the primates,
and you just kind of stand still and they walk around you like you're another
tree or something. And there were and there were some who were old enough
when they started getting habituated, they were never going to be habituated, so
you're gonna have that variation in a population. There were some that were babies
when they started habituating, and they were almost over habituated, like they were
too used to humans. So you got to you gotta keep your distance,
and and we had some really good rules about making sure we never got too
close to them, making sure that we kept a good distance from them.
One, because we don't want to be had that observer effect on their behavior
if we can avoid it. The other part, too, is that,
of course all the grade apes are susceptible to all the respiratory diseases that we
get, and very often they don't have the same immune responses, so it
can be dangerous that way. But yeah, I think there are that's a
real challenge. I think in your case, if you're out there looking for
something that that may be observing you, you know, and I would say
this is this is similar to a lot of folks who do work on bears,
bears, wolves, the a lot of the carnivores big relatively big brains.
They're they're good observers of what's going on. They'll watch you and and
a lot of times they will simply avoid you. There again, and I've
heard you say this on your on your previous show and on this podcast that
you know and you just talked about you went up and walked and didn't see
anything. You just gotta you just gotta kind of know that there are days
when you're not going to get anything. But I think if you're out there
long enough, and this is where long term studies on any large animal are
really important. If you're out there long enough walking the same track where they
get used to you were, you were doing the same path and and usually
it's a it's a transect. And we could talk about more more about that
off offline or something of like larger grids to set up. But if you're
walking that then they can get used to your presence. And that's why that's
another part of the reason why doing it at the same time every time that
you go out, Like I had a colleague of mine in Africa who did
a census every single month, and he started at four thirty in the morning,
simply because the first time that was done, it was started at four
thirty in the morning, and so he kept that up. And it had
been that particular census had been going for over a decade. But they had
this amazing long term track of how many animals you know, of each species
they saw each month, and that gave them an indication of how the ecology
is doing overall health wise, but also how those individual species are doing.
Does it have to be a visual sighting of the animal or can you count
tracks as far as that goes well, I think uh, I think that
depends on what your your goals are and what your methodology is. From the
beginning, the judge the ecosystem. Though, if I'm finding bear tracks,
that's probably a pretty good sign, but I would have to see a bear
to make it count to judge an ecological health for example. Yeah, so
so a lot of them will. Uh, you have different categories. So
you have presence of the animal and that can be vocal, so auditory presence
or by the tracks. And then and then you have another category in your
database of sighting. Yeah, for what I've heard about about sasquatch, I
think that the different sounds, the howls, the tree knocks, you would
do a category for each of those, and then and then also record,
you know, for if you see a cougar, if you see whatever,
whatever the case is, how many deer you see, how many squirrels you
see. The main thing is being incredibly vigilant about like not just going yeah,
another chipmunk, but doing a tick mark for all of them. Right,
you know that advice is on smack dab square on to probably the best
bigfooting advice I'd ever been given by a good friend and a witness and someone
who has lived at a place where sasquatches were frequenting. Or when I say
frequenting, it could be like once or twice a month, not actually that
frequent, but for bigfoot that's pretty often. You know. His name's Dennis
Fole. He has been a guest on the podcast. Then he told me
one time, the best thing you can do is go to the same place,
dress the same way, drive the same car. When you're there,
do the same routine, go to bed at the same time, do everything
the same time, and over many many many months, probably many years,
they will eventually get used to you and perhaps let their guard down a bit,
which sounds to me like exactly what you're talking about here. Yeah,
if you know, if anyone out there really wants to is you know you're
budding budding squatchers out there for me. Read Jane Goodall's book In the Shadow
a Man. Read her book The Chimpanzees of Gombe, which is filled with
data tough in some in some places for some folks to read through, but
where she describes what it was like the first three years that she was at
Gombe and how you know she was out following chimps just relentlessly. She and
her field assistance, I mean the site where I worked at for years.
The two main researchers there are just incredible scientists and incredible primatologists and have set
up this really great regiment and field assistants are out with the chimpanzees every single
day, and the field assistants all have uniforms that have been provided to them,
so they're wearing the same basic clothes every day. They go out with
their backpacks, they've got their clipboards, they've got the same gear every day.
You know, it's not new people coming in, because the chimps do
notice that. I mean when I first got there, I think physically I
might have been the largest mass human that they had seen up until that point.
And so they definitely responded a little differently to oh, what's this new
animal in the forest that's bigger than the other ones. And actually we had
a former NFL offensive lineman who went and visited one of the researchers at that
site, and apparently the chimpanzees responded almost like they do when a buffalo comes
into the forest. When that came walking through, you know, he was
six six three twenty plus, and and that was something that they had never
seen before. See, Yeah, I think I think that's great advice.
Something you said just also resonates with me because another piece of it or another
maybe not advice, but a little tidbit shared to me by Dennis Fole.
Again, Dennis told me that there was a situation out in Colorado where a
family started seeing a sasquatch on the property occasionally. Little girl ran into it.
First was it was licking the sap off of a cut log apparently in
this log pile. When she ran across it, the two encountered each other
from at a short distance, and she they both turned and ran. Basically,
she came inside talking about the monkey man, and of course mom and
dad were going, that's that's cute, sweetie things. And then like within
a couple of days, the female who was living there, the adult female,
the woman was, started finding footprints in her garden outside of her windows,
you know, so the thing was coming around to look inside their house.
In that they figured it out pretty quick, and over about a year
or more. I think they ended up casting I don't know. I saw
pictures. I never counted them. I would say forty to sixty footprints or
something like that, like quite a few, quite a few. Yeah,
And so Dennis was studying that, if I remember right back in the day,
and he said that first three or four times he showed up, they
would say, you know, he lives in Colorado as well. The first
time he's show up like nothing would happen, He'd spent the night there,
nothing happened, This would happened, happened many many times. And then they
clewed in and say, oh, you know what, he parked a couple
of miles down the road and then got a ride to the house by the
owners and that's when activity started. So again, the Sasquatches were aware that
a new person was there and then didn't act accordingly essentially, or did act
accordingly according to their own behavior and didn't really put on you know, didn't
give an indication of their presence until they were much more clandestine about it.
Yeah, well that makes sense for an intelligent animal. But you know what,
another none or thought came to me while you were talking about doing the
same thing every single time. It's very and I'm in contact with a couple
of different I don't like to say habituators because in bigfoot land, that's taken
on a life of its own. It means all this other stuff. And
I think in a more appropriate term is like a long term witness, you
know, I think that's a much more appropriate term. But uh, I
work with a couple of long term witnesses and it seems that when the routine
is broken is when they get like actual visual sighting reports where because again the
Sasquatches know the family that lives there and they've got it all wired, and
when they do something out of the ordinary that seems like that's very often when
a sighting might occur, or at least let me let me actually, that's
perhaps exactly backwards. Sightings seem to occur. When there is a sighting,
it is very often in conjunction with the family or the individual breaking the behavior.
So perhaps a good way to go forward would be to set behavior down
and do the same thing as you were saying, and then once that routine
is established every third or fourth time, do something different in the middle of
it and surprise any potential observers. And maybe that would be an interesting way
to run across one of these things. Yeah, it'd be interesting to know
what the nature of those sightings were, because my guess is, again,
if you've got a large intelligent primate, they're curious about why you're doing something
different, They're curious about what went wrong there, and so you might get
you know, like I would say, in the in African apes, you'll
see this where sometimes they'll kind of check you out a little more like,
well, that's weird, you know, if you want to anthropomorphize what's going
on in their in their brain, they kind of have a quizzical look where
they're well, huh, and I know, oh that like for example,
I know, you know, for when the rainy season hits and the first
time someone breaks out their parka and they haven't worn a parka all. You
know, they've been there for several months and there they haven't worn a parka,
and now suddenly they put a park on. All the chimps want to
take a look and see, like, what is that thing? Is it
the And then then I think they come to the realization that it's the same
weird animal that keeps following us every day and doesn't seem to eat and doesn't
seem to want to kill us. So I guess it's okay, h which
is? Which is? That's kind of how I always characterize like when they
become habituated, is when they get to the point where they realize, oh,
they just don't seem to do anything, so we'll just ignore them.
I ed always tell my students they've got more important things to do. Like
they've got to they've got to eat, they've got to find mates, they've
got to avoid real predators. They've you know, they've got a jockey for
in chimp and z case, they have to jockey for position within the society.
So you know, they they you can only be bothered with this weird
thing that's following you around for so long. Yeah, if it's not important
to your trip, then why you know, then it's not important at all?
Really then that in that sort of way. And certainly we don't represent
food to sasqua I mean to chimpanzees, hopefully not to most sasquatches. So
yeah, I think we're just items of curiosity, I think to a lot
of the great apes. I would imagine stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond
with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. One family lives
up in the Port Angeles area in Washington. I work with them quite often.
I found I found in cast footprints on their property just a few months
ago, and there and then they've become very very good friends of mine over
the years as well. They were out on there on the on the driveway,
I guess outside their home at like one in the morning. You know,
they've got a little girl that lives there, but they're never out at
one in the morning. But they were out one in the morning, lying
on the back on their backs watching the Percy meteor shower, you know,
a few months ago, beautiful night and everything. And I guess they got
approached by one of these things. They didn't see it that night, but
that they're pretty sure that's what it was. They heard some noises off in
the brush and then like like stomping and stuff like bluff charging in a way,
or just kind of a bunch of heavy noises that seemed out of character
for the other possible animals in the area, And so they said, whoa,
what the hell is that? And they all went inside, you know,
obviously, because sasquatches are scary no matter what people think about them.
They're frightening animals when they're actually there. And then they heard a weird noise,
which that's something I want to ask you about. They heard a noise
that they interpreted, if I remember correctly, as almost sounding like laughter.
I know, apes smile. I know apes probably laugh. Tell me about
that, Like, what do you know about ape? After and maybe senses
of humor, because sasquatches just seem to exhibit such a thing. Maybe not
laughter, but they certainly I interpret some of the things that people have reported
to me as perhaps having a sense of humor, because I know my dog
does I see my dog having a sense of humor sometime. Yeah. So
some non wild examples that are really good videos that you could check out easily
on YouTube is look up cocoa tickling, you know the you know coco,
the gorilla, the sign language gorilla. Yeah, that was actually one of
her favorite things since she was a baby, was she would ask to get
tickles. And when she does, and I've seen I've actually seen chips do
this do this behavior in the wild, her response is like an open mouth
with the lips kind of covering the canines and almost like a silent laugh,
like you know, everybody's got that friend that when they go to laugh,
they just don't make any sound and you just and you look at him like
what's wrong with you? Initially until you get used to it. That's what
I've seen happen. And it's not really so much like like we would interpret
it, where there's sort of the punchline or a specific event that causes that.
It's more enjoyment of an activity. So, for example, one day,
I was out with about thirty male chimps and we're out just kind of
hanging out and they're grooming and doing their thing, and this one of the
largest male chimps in the community, one of the highest ranking also highest ranking
males. He started playing chase with one of the juvenile males around a tree,
just grabbing his foot and they were just chasing each other in a circle
around the tree, and he just kept grabbing his foot over and over,
and they both were doing this laugh where they both were going and with their
teeth covered, showing that they were enjoying the activity. And there was no
threat because I mean, that big male could have destroyed that juvenile in a
heartbeat if he'd wanted to, and he was showing that he's not a threat.
He wants to play. And that was one of the first times that
I saw them what I would call laugh in the wild. But they definitely
do that. But I haven't heard a laughter from any apes that is similar
to a big belly laugh by a human or anything like that. I don't
know of any animals that have that kind of. And I think that's probably
because humans have taken humor and laughter to a whole different level than most of
their animal than probably every other animal where you know, I mean, we
have people who make millions of dollars every year just by making us laugh,
Like it's a it's a treasured skill and art form among humans and a noble
profession. For sure. It does make sense that apes making sounds that have
some sort of like repetitive nature that just reminds us of laughter, because you
know, humor is so context dependent, and it's really context dependent within like
the human social or almost even like psychosocial realm, that it would be a
stretch to think that what would be funny to a human would be funny to
a sasquatch. But you could imagine if they did engage in producing sounds like
something like a pant hoot in a certain situation, that someone might hear that,
you know, and think that it was analogous to laughter. Oh the
thing is laughing at me, when it's really you know, like you said,
anthropomorphizing that. So I know people claim experiences along those lines, but
probably just hearing what are very different vocalizations that are motivated by a very different
sort of emotional basis or tied to some other portion of the limbic system that
has nothing to do with like abstract humor. Yeah, the thing I interpreted
about the Persea shower story I just kind of relayed to you is I think
that the family broke the routine. They were not in the place where they
were to be expected at the time when the thing walked by. If assuming
it was a sasquatch, which I think it probably was in this case,
the family was doing stuff that was completely out of the ordinary, laying on
their back on a blanket one in the morning in the dark, looking up.
I think it probably like they're going, what the and so like,
if it was a sasquatch, it may have just said this is not your
time and place here, like this is my time and place here, did
some stuff that sounded scary because it sounded like very large animal doing breaking stuff
and all that sort of thing, and they all went inside. And then
maybe that was a victory thing like you know, oh I got got got
you inside sort of thing. Maybe it was a laugh. I don't know.
I don't know, but but it seems I interpret it is more like
you don't belong here right now. You know better than this. We have
an agreement get inside. That's how I kind of took it. But I
don't know, again, that's just anthromro morphizing even more so. Well,
and you know, we there's there's definitely a long history of that. I
mean, the first chimp that ever got shot up into space. When he
came back, they reported that he enjoyed space travel so much he couldn't you
couldn't wipe the smile off his face and completely misunderstandable that that's a fear grimace
in a chimpanzee. He was scared out of his mind. And and so
you know, but to us, there there's no bigger indication that that you've
enjoyed your time. And uh and so yeah, I think I think there's
something to what both of you guys are saying. I mean, I think
I think absolutely, Matt, there's there's times when we put on you know,
we do that with with our dogs, do that with animals in the
wild. But then there's also I think Cliff, you're hit on something with
any big animal. I mean, you know, I don't know if that
was a sasquatch, it could have been a black bear. Black bear comes
in and there's humans on the porch when they're not normally there, it's gonna
stomp its feet and make noises and try and scare away those things that aren't
there at night, because now they're dangerous. But I also think there's the
interesting thing about the apes is that things like tickles, things like summer salting
down a trail, which I've watched seven male adult male chimpanzees do as they
were walking down a trail from one food source to another for no reason at
all. One of them started some resulting, and the other six started following
his lead, and we're all just summersaulting right in a row, and they
all were laughing the whole time. They all were doing that open mouth the
whole time, playing chase, tickling. All those things are things that quite
honestly, are enjoyable to every primate except maybe like a tarsier. But I
would bet that even tarsiars find it enjoyable. But humans definitely do. And
so that's what I find kind of interesting, is that where there's this,
they are obviously enjoying themselves. They are obviously making sounds that they don't make
in other context, that they're all taking as friendly sounds and in the case
of the seven adult males somersaulting like that's just a waste of energy for a
wild animal, but they're doing it, and it wasn't like there was a
tumbling team that taught them, how you know. So those things to me
are really interesting, how you have that kind of universality of things that are
enjoyable. I've even taken reports of juvenile sasquatches doing somersaults while playing with each
other. So yeah, universal through all the primates. So, speaking of
noises, I want to talk a little bit about language because there's a big
debate in the bigfoot world whether sasquatches are talking to each other or not.
Certainly they're communicating, I mean, and again, forgive me, but I
am talking from a position where I am confident sasquatches are real. So I'm
gonna basically say certainly they're communicating, even though to be more cautious that if
I had a PhD, i'd watch my what do what I say a little
bit more, but I don't. So so just so you know, I'm
gonna forgive the way I speak, but I'm I'm confident of my own delusion.
I guess so anyway, sasquatches are communicating to some degree, because if
they are, if they're out there doing wood knocks or whoops or these long
howls as I believe they do, they're they're probably not doing it to themselves.
They're not talking to themselves. So they're communicating in some way or another.
But there's this entire other layer of communication that may be going on that
may be language or some sort of proto language or faux language or something like
that. It might even be just nonsense gibber jabber. Because from my elementary
school teaching days, when I was learning about language acquisition, that is an
important step towards language with infants, is that the babbling that they do,
or even mothers and fathers that if they go do like make noises at their
infant children, that is actually building blocks. Those are the building blocks of
language that And I think that if you look very closely at human growth,
you know, through their infancy into being a child, into young adulthood,
to adulthood, I think you can see a lot of other eight behavior in
there if you have the eyes to see it. And I'm curious about your
thoughts of anything, any input you might have about language in the Great Apes,
because you mentioned Coco about the sign language a little while ago, and
there's even a debate in this in the Anthra in the primatology world, like
is that real language? And I it seems silly to me at this point
because she comes up with ideas and reacts to things that are novel in her
environment by you know, by using sign language. It seems like it's language
at this point. But there's this holdout of like, no, that's just
an animal, it can't be language. What are your thoughts about language and
the Great Apes. Yeah, I've actually done a fair amount of work on
this, and so a couple of things I'll say right off the right off,
the bat apes definitely communicate at a level that I don't think we can
fully understand. And I don't think they're alone there. I think lots of
animals do that just verbally, not not not even just talking about body language
or any sort of you know, ultrasonic subsonic sort of sort of communication,
just verbally. I think that there are lots of things that we don't quite
understand. For example, it seems that within the last few years ten years
or so, we've started to get that chimpanzees make different long calls depending on
the type of food that's available. So if there are monkeys there and they
want to hunt monkeys, it's a slightly different call than if it's a bunch
of fruit, and that may vary in intensity, or it may vary in
the actual type of call. And I don't think we have the data to
be able to say which of those right now. That's just sort of what
we're starting to understand. So there's that level where I think, forget American
sign language or using symbols or anything else. They've got their own thing going
on. The other thing, and you know, you said this at the
beginning, Cliff, when you were talking about individuals, the other thing we
need to remember is that these individuals are going to have different capabilities. To
put it bluntly, there are some that aren't as bright as others. There's
some that aren't going to catch on as quickly as others, and there are
some that are going to be more creative than others. So those are kind
of chimpanzees listening aren't insulted right now, by the way. If they are,
they they probably know where to find me, because they're they're pretty special
chips that they're listening right now. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because
I'm not totally certain about this, but I know that there's a large number
of chimpanzee vocalizations that are essentially involuntary, that are like directly tied to the
limbic system, and so they're sort of, for lack of a better word,
like emotional responses, and I know some of those seem to be almost
like not deleterious or maladaptive, but you know, I know that, for
example, there's an involuntary sort of vocal that they produce if they were to
stumble upon, you know, a large food resource that you know, would
be more advantageous to the individual if he could hoard it for himself, but
instead he produces an involuntary cry and then everyone, oh, hey, there's
food over there. And so are there vocalizations that they produce that do seem
to be under voluntary control? Or is that true of any of the apes
or are most of the ape vocalizations mostly like these sort of involuntary Olympic system
productions. I would say that in the thirty five hundred plus hours that I've
spent in the forest with chimpanzees, I've watched them constrain them themselves from making
sounds when it could be really dangerous. For example, if they're on a
territorial boundary patrol and they're out and they say, come across signs of other
chimpanzees where they've urinated at the base of a tree, or they've defecated,
or they hear them. I've watched them come together again that open mouth expression
but silent, where normally if you're within their territory and they have that kind
of excitement level, they're they're making small screams and they're vocalizing to each other.
I've watched them voluntarily control those sounds and restrain themselves. Yeah, there
was one paper i'd read. I just pulled it up. I had a
sort of like a reference repository here about like differential use of vocal and gestural
communication by chimpanzees in response to the attentional status of a human. And so
it did have a bit of information about they did seem to be observed to
modify the use of their vocalizations in response to different attentional states of humans,
suggesting that they have some voluntary control of their vocalizations. Yet historically primate vocalizations
have typically been recognized as byproduct of affective states, primarily controlled by the limbic
system, and not under voluntary control. And so I just you know,
I'm sure there's a lot This is from two thousand and seven, so there's
probably newer literature too, But I just always thought some of those papers were
really indicative that, like, well, if we were looking at apes in
general, then you know, with humans being exceptions, the norm would be
that most of the vocalizations, or at least a significant amount, are involuntary,
and thus in the Sasquatch, we shouldn't expect that they would have also
developed some sort of like voluntary language or proto language or something like. I
try to be as conservative as possible, albeit it's hard to do as a
Sasquatch proponent obviously, but you know, to me, it's I would rather
assume that they're producing speech like sounds rather than know it's speech that constitutes language.
That seems kind of a stretch, And I think you're right on.
I think you're right on in that sense. I think I think absolutely we
should always assume the least complex and then build from there. Stay tuned for
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages.
What I would say is there is a qualitative and not just a quantitative
difference. There is a quality difference between what humans do and what the other
primates do. But when it comes to language, yeah, you know,
Cliff, you talked about those steps that are important. My younger daughter when
she was learning to learning to talk and with a dat as a primatologist,
she was raised kind of as a little chimp a lot of times, like
by the time she was three or four, she could just climb up me
like a jungle gym and hop on my shoulder. But when she was learning
to talk and figure out words, you know, one of her first kind
of babbel words that she put together was baba and that's still her name for
me today. She when she was ten months old, she gave me that
name, and we thought it was just babble, and we thought it was
just her her trying to put together sounds. She decided on that, but
it was one of those steps to being able to say mama and then everything
else. So so it is important. But I think Cliff, you might
have had specific you know about the language I don't know about, you know,
the purported language with Sasquatch. I wanted, I wanted to make sure
that we got to what you wanted to talk about there. Well, language,
at the end of the day is essentially symbolic, symbolic thought. These
noises that, these little small mouth noises that come out of our face stand
for some a larger thing in our brains. You know. It's a it's
a weird form of telepathy that we have. You know. So I'm curious
about number one U Sasquatch or any ape species ability to symbolize real things with
noises. I mean, I think that's easily possible because I can say,
I can say something to my dog and she'll know that I'm talking about a
treat, for example. You know, so that's very reasonable. But like,
did Coco for example, you brought up Cocoa. Was could you just
have a conversation with Coco or was it always a direct objects sort of food
response thing or some sort of stimuli that made her feel good, like the
kitten or something like that, or is it like, hey, Coco,
what's up? What's how's it going today and like that level of language.
Yeah. So so there actually been recently, within the last six seven years,
there have been some really nice video studies looking at the language studies of
apes, because you know, they videotaped almost all of them starting starting in
the sixties. Most of them have just hours and hours of tape, and
so people were breaking it down and they were actually finding that in most of
those, and in the Coco situation, uh, that that they could tell
that they were they could identify places where they were being cued for their responses.
So those researchers came to the conclusion that like in the case of Cocoa,
I think they also said so for Washo, the female chimp that was
up at Central Washington for years, that they weren't that that wasn't actual language,
It was just them parroting things back. Has there been a situation where
more than one ape, maybe have the same species of different species have been
taught like say sign language or not seeing I think I would have heard about
this by now. But if this has happened, but maybe it hasn't.
Like maybe are there two gorillas that have some sort of rudimentary understanding of sign
language and putting them together. What do they talk about? Okay, So,
so Coco with was ASL, a modified form of American sign language.
Michael was a male that they had gotten to try and get them to mate.
They wanted Coco to have a baby, see if she would teach her
baby that. They really didn't communicate a whole lot, but I'll tell three
quick little stories that I think kind of illuminate this a little bit. So
while it seems that Coco was being cured a lot by Penny Patterson, the
woman that worked with her, and I don't think Penny was doing it consciously.
I don't think she was trying to run a scam. I think that
she was doing things with her body not even realizing it. Coco was responding.
However, Coco, like I said, they tried to get her to
breed with Michael. She had no interest in Michael. But William Shatner was
a huge supporter of the Gorilla Foundation, and he went to visit and when
he walked in, Coco said she wanted to mate with him. Well it's
William Shatner. Yeah. The Captain Kirk effect is just you know, eternal.
I guess, but that actually is is a documented story. So whether
or not she fully understood the language, she knew the cues. Washow,
the female chimpanzee that was taught and then was resided with the fouses up in
Central Washington University for decades, she actually taught her offspring different hand signals,
so she was teaching something, but again it's hard to tell what she really
understood. The third one that I'll point out is Kanzi, and he's a
bonobo. Konzie actually learned lexicons, not asl He learned lexicons using lexicons,
and he learned it secondhand. He was a youngster writing around on his mom's
back and they were trying to teach his mom and his mom never picked it
up, and his sister, in fact, had a limited ability with it,
and Kanzi had an amazing ability with it. And so that's why I
say that individual behavior. Kanzi is a bonobo that I would say if there
are geniuses among banobos, he's won. And I've watched video of Kanzie being
told by someone who's behind a welder's mask, so can't be giving any facial
cues to do things like, you know, take the Coca cola which he
loves. No plug for coke, but he loves it, and pour it
outside on the pine leaves, on the pine nettles, which he of course
thinks, you know, is crazy because it's coke, like why would you
waste it? And you watch him just look at the person requesting this,
like he's trying to figure out if he heard him right. He also does
things like slices up apples and puts them in aluminum foil. He doesn't start
the fire, but he could cook them over fire. He also was taught
to flint nap once upon a time. He didn't flint nap like a human
does. He simply used his incredible strength and smashed two rocks together, got
a sharp point, and was able to slice a cord. So that individual
variation is something that's also really hard to figure out when you when you talk
about, you know, do apes have the ability for language? That's like
saying can humans do calculus? Some of us? I can't. Yeah,
I mean listen, and I'm not one of them. My best friend is,
but I'm not, and so you know, so, so I think
that's that's something that we always need to keep in mind too. I think
absolutely though the U that the language question is is a really interesting one because
I personally think that most of the apes have some sort of communication, they
may not be able to, you know, make a call like Matt.
You you reference to panthoot earlier, which is my favorite of the chimpanzee calls.
And if you've ever been in a room with Jane Goodall, she will
do it and you better answer to her or her entourage of women in shawls
will give you the death stare. But I'm not sure that they can do
that. And a chimp a half a mile away can understand, Oh,
there are red colabus monkeys here in this tree, and there are youngsters that
we can that we can go after, you know, like we can do
that, but I'm not sure they have that ability. You mentioned hand signals,
and I want to We're kind of running out of time, but I
do want to touch on this before we get going here. You mentioned hand
signals, and and it seems like a reasonable way to go because do apes
in general use hand signals. I mean they do use hand signals to they
I think they point sometimes, they put their hands up various meanings and since
they I believe at least and correct me if I'm wrong. Of course,
since they're using hand signals, I'm curious if there are hand signals that might
be universal amongst all the ape species, or perhaps that translate well between say
humans and chimps, or like some sort of interspecies behavior like that, because
sasquatches have also been reported to display some hand signals when confronted with humans,
whether that's raising their hands and like jazz handing a people like well, running
at them to scare them. Probably a size and you know, territorial thing.
Several people have reported a sasquatch just raising one hand. They're not waving,
but they raise one hand almost like as if they were to wave,
like acknowledging the person. Hey Bobo, Oh yeah, Bobo showed up.
By the way, everybody, dude, that was the most frustrating last hour
of my life. That's saying something I was gonna say. That's that's impressive.
This computer came so close to being smashed smash hulk. You know,
I'm so checked. I want I was just I'm so my credit card.
I declined, they're trying to charge me to set up a new freaking account.
And I tried another one and then it was the same company, and
they said, you already started this, dude. It has just been a
nightmare, you know, because if you said universal behaviors, I think I
think smashing things in frustration is the universal behavior for all primates. I've watched
it. I've watched it dozens of times in wild primates. Did you see
the any of those interviews with the chimp do you I don't know if you
guys went over there alorady, but if do you know those chimp Chimp Empire
scientists, and then also if you saw the interviews afterwards where two of them
said they can't prove anything, but they think they have some kind of base
level telepathic ability the chimps. There's some kind of communication going on. It
might be so subtle we don't see it, but they got They said it.
Two of the signs said, it really seems like they have some kind
of non verbal non like they don't have to be looking at each other to
get the message. Yeah. I think we we we talked a little bit
about that. But just so you know, Bobo, the Chimp Empire chimps
are actually the chimps I studied for years in the field. Four of those
guys in the in the series. Four of those chimps are chimps that I
named, and so I was. I was very happy when I got to
see them as stars. Jackson was one, uh, he was the alpha
male in the beginning, and then there was I think Herbie might have been
in there, Herbie Hancock. Any anyone who is a anyone who's a jazz
fan, if they listened to enough of the Gogo chimpanzee names, will very
quickly understand that one of my professors, one of the main directors of that
site, is a gigantic jazz fan, and so has named has named the
chimps after after a lot of different jazz musicians. But yeah, they I
didn't watch the interviews, so, but I probably have been in the field
with most of those folks and we did talk about that that, you know,
chimps have. I'm not I don't know necessarily if there's a telepathic component
as much as it is there's a shared understanding of the situation, and so
they may be playing off of if you're if you're an intelligent enough animal and
you're living with another animal for twenty five years, you get to the point
where you can kind of understand what they're going to do before they do it,
and I and I think that's that's probably what's going on there, Like
how wolves courted a hot kind of thing. Yeah, as as I said
at the beginning of this cliff, you know, in biology, I always
say never say never, because you're going to get proven wrong at some point.
If you're saying never, know, the Sasquatches certainly are. Well.
I'm still I'm still yet to be convinced. But as I said at the
beginning, I'm I'm a very open minded individual because again, I think that
there are lots of possibilities. But clip as we talked about, you know,
I've got my my reasons for my skepticism. When we when we were
face to face there in the museum, do you have a do you have
time to stick around for another thirty forty minutes of conversation? Yeah? I
have time. Okay, why don't we do this? Why don't we shut
down the regular episode right now? We'll record a little extra stuff for our
members and we can talk about some of because you know, primates are horrifyingly
dangerous animals and I'd like to talk about some of the some of those sort
of items that you probably run across in the in the woods out with chimpanzees,
because chimpanzees are just again, these are the things of nightmares, you
know. Yeah, yeah, they're smart and all that sort of stuff,
but they can also rip your arm off, literally rip your arm off.
So I'd like to talk about some of the dangers perhaps you might have been
involved in in the woods. I know you worked with elephants. I'm also
interested in perhaps comparing cognitive abilities between elephants and primates. I've got questions about
that. I've got a couple other questions, And of course you deserve to
get to know Bobo a little bit better as well, So if you can
stick around, we'd really really appreciate it. Yeah, I like steek around
for a bit awesome, Bob. But you just showed up, of course,
and I'm sorry that you missed a lot of the conversation. It was
a good one. But since you're here, you know, why don't you
take us out of here and we can continue the conversation over the member section.
All right, folks, So you guys heard this before I did.
So we want to thank doctor Hogan Cheryl for coming on and giving us some
insight and if you want to hear more of we're going to be on Patreon.
The Patreon support is only five bucks a month, so check them out
there. Check us out there every week for extra episode and until then,
you all keep it squatching. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot
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