Speaker 1: Big Food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These
Speaker 1: guys are you favorites, So like to say subscribe and raid.
Speaker 2: It five star and me.
Speaker 1: Greatest on Yesterday and listening watching Lin always keep its watching.
Speaker 1: And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay. Hey, Bobo,
Speaker 1: this is a special episode. We have brought back doctor
Speaker 1: Jeff Meldrim for our two hundredth episode. He was our
Speaker 1: guest on our one hundredth episode, so we figured every
Speaker 1: one hundred episodes we can subject doctor Meldrim to Cliff
Speaker 1: and Bobo for an hour or so. So Jeff, thank
Speaker 1: you very very much for coming back for our second
Speaker 1: one hundredth episode, our two hundredth episode. We really appreciate
Speaker 1: your time.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm honored, privileged. Yeah, thank you very much for
Speaker 3: the invitation.
Speaker 1: Hey, Jeff cool, Well, you know, I've got a wholelistic
Speaker 1: questions and things we can talk about, and if there's
Speaker 1: anything you want to talk about, of course we want
Speaker 1: you to jump into. But you know, you've become the
Speaker 1: scientific figurehead in a lot of ways, in the same
Speaker 1: way that doctor Krantz was for so long, and you
Speaker 1: knew doctor Krantz, of course, but he was wasn't he
Speaker 1: as an osteologist. Wasn't his specialty bones.
Speaker 3: He was a classic physical anthropologist, and so that included
Speaker 3: a number of disciplines that he published in regularly. He
Speaker 3: was a paleoanthropologist, so he worked with the both the
Speaker 3: discovery of and identification and analysis of fossil hominin bones,
Speaker 3: skeletal remains, and so also as a classical physical anthropologist,
Speaker 3: I'm sure he did teach the Human Osteology course, which
Speaker 3: is an in depth treatment of the skeletal system of
Speaker 3: the human species and for both evolutionary but also archaeological objectives.
Speaker 3: He was also very talented anatomist and applied that talent
Speaker 3: to forensic reconstructions of crania from partial remains. So his
Speaker 3: Gigantopitheicis skull is an example of that. He also did,
Speaker 3: you know, the only kind of working model of what
Speaker 3: meganthropists might have looked like based on its very large
Speaker 3: and robust mandible remains. So based on the correlation of
Speaker 3: form and function, he could take a few bits and
Speaker 3: estimate what the remainder of the skull may have looked like.
Speaker 3: And I think he you know, exhibited some real talent
Speaker 3: and insight in that respect. He was kind of a
Speaker 3: renaissance man in many ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost like a generalist in a way, it sounds like.
Speaker 1: And the reason I thought he was an osteologist is
Speaker 1: because several of the people I've met of my own
Speaker 1: age group who took classes from him apparently all took
Speaker 1: osteology classes.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's a pretty standard fair in an anthropological curriculum.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, now you brought up meganthropists, of course, and I
Speaker 1: want to touch base on that in a little while.
Speaker 1: But now contrasts that with your own field of study,
Speaker 1: because you know, doctor Krantz really laid a foundation for
Speaker 1: all scientists who are going to come after him. And
Speaker 1: right now you're standing on that shoulder, on those set
Speaker 1: of shoulders. But you've been able to have been able
Speaker 1: to expand on what doctor Krantz did because of your
Speaker 1: own specified study area.
Speaker 2: So how do you differ exactly?
Speaker 3: Well, I came at physical anthropology from a slightly different perspective.
Speaker 3: At the time I entered into Grat graduate school, there
Speaker 3: was rather a glut of anthropologists and or, at least
Speaker 3: maybe better way to say, it was a dearth of
Speaker 3: openings for employment and at in academic positions, and so
Speaker 3: one an alternate pathway. Instead of the classical anthropological degree
Speaker 3: that included the disciplines the subdisciplines of archaeology, social, cultural linguistics,
Speaker 3: and physical I instead was a cohort at an institution
Speaker 3: where physical anthropologists had been recruited into departments of anatomy
Speaker 3: at medical schools to teach human gross anatomy in the
Speaker 3: health professions programs in medical school, physical therapy school, and
Speaker 3: so forth. And so my degree was actually an anatomical
Speaker 3: sciences So rather than having with an emphasis with an
Speaker 3: emphasis in physical anthropology, so rather than having the classic
Speaker 3: for sub discipline anthropological training, which would really better suit
Speaker 3: me for employment in an anthropology department, I got this
Speaker 3: degree which then afforded me the opportunity to teach human
Speaker 3: gross anatomy regional gross anatomy at the graduate level in
Speaker 3: medical schools and there. Like I said, there were programs
Speaker 3: like that that were popping up in various places, and
Speaker 3: Sunny Stonybrook was one, Duke was one where I did
Speaker 3: a post doc, and others Johns Hopkins, UCLA and other schools.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so it was a little different. So I
Speaker 3: basically had the first two years of medical school elbow
Speaker 3: to elbow with one hundred and twenty medical students. You know,
Speaker 3: I think there were six of us in my cohort
Speaker 3: of anthropology students. And when then subsequently, as those medical
Speaker 3: students would go into more and more clinical courses, we
Speaker 3: would go into classes in evolutionary biology, in osteology, in
Speaker 3: comparative primate anatomy, and so forth, and so more of
Speaker 3: the basic sciences that touched on anthropology and ecology and evolution.
Speaker 3: And so it was a great experience. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was really it was a tough program though. I mean,
Speaker 3: of the six, I think only two of us completed
Speaker 3: the program.
Speaker 1: What was it around this time that you became interested
Speaker 1: in bipedalism and the anatomy of feet or it sounds
Speaker 1: at some point or another you kind of zeroed in
Speaker 1: on those particular aspects.
Speaker 3: You're right, No, you're absolutely right, And in fact, that's
Speaker 3: what motivated me to go to this particular program. The
Speaker 3: faculty there had published this seminal work called the Locomotive
Speaker 3: Anatomy of Austrolopithicus a forensis that was published in the
Speaker 3: American Journal of physical anthropology, and it was just a
Speaker 3: quite exhaustive treatment of the skeletal remains attributed to this
Speaker 3: early bipedal hominin. And it was that, you know, that
Speaker 3: that latent interest in bipedalism, which was probably initially seeded
Speaker 3: by the interest in Bigfoot, you know, another bipedal primate,
Speaker 3: that that motivated me to pursue that. And you know,
Speaker 3: as you go along, your opportunities across your path that
Speaker 3: that afford the chance to kind of branch out a
Speaker 3: little bit and do some different things as well. And
Speaker 3: so I mean along the way, for example, I got
Speaker 3: interested in locomotive behavior. You're in primates, both living and fossil,
Speaker 3: much more broadly than just human bipedalism actually, and I
Speaker 3: would note that it's a kind of a tight not
Speaker 3: a closed shop, but it's a it's a narrow niche
Speaker 3: because of the rarity of hominine fossils. So really, unless
Speaker 3: your professor was actually had access to the to the
Speaker 3: fossil sites and was participating in the discovery of new material,
Speaker 3: you rarely had the chance to do any of the
Speaker 3: initial examination, analysis, and so forth study of those fossils.
Speaker 3: So I had to kind of come at bipedalism from
Speaker 3: from the side door, you know, through through the mud
Speaker 3: room and back into the up the hallway. And so
Speaker 3: I was actually my doctoral dissertation was on terrestrial adaptations
Speaker 3: in in in monkeys, in African monkeys and looking at
Speaker 3: adaptations to terrestrial quadrupedalism, and then I could compare and
Speaker 3: contrast that from you know, from a more theoretical practical
Speaker 3: perspective with bipedalism. And it was actually a very effective
Speaker 3: way because those features that were held in common were
Speaker 3: those that were common to walking on the ground versus
Speaker 3: clamoring and climbing in the trees. And then those that
Speaker 3: were distinctive between bipeds and quadrupeds were those features that
Speaker 3: were unique to the adaptations for walking on two legs.
Speaker 3: So anyway, so along the way I dabbled in I
Speaker 3: got interested in South American primate evolution because of the
Speaker 3: again the opportunity of working with my mentor in the field,
Speaker 3: and then on another occasion, when I was doing a
Speaker 3: post doc at Duke, the opportunity to dabble in some
Speaker 3: DNA sequencing and approaching the reconstruction of the phylogeny or
Speaker 3: family tree in this case South American monkeys by way
Speaker 3: of looking at the genes in living primates was another.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was a very different departure for me,
Speaker 3: But one I wasn't going to say no to my mentor,
Speaker 3: and two it was a great opportunity to learn a
Speaker 3: technique that, as it turns out, I didn't end up
Speaker 3: pursuing that further, but it placed me in a very
Speaker 3: good position to, from a more informed stance, be able
Speaker 3: to evaluate the publications of the studies that others were
Speaker 3: doing in an area that it was still of real
Speaker 3: interest to me. That was the evolution of South American
Speaker 3: primates as an adaptive radiation. So you know, principles of
Speaker 3: evolution stribology that have been applicable to a variety of
Speaker 3: different species in different continents and so on. So it's
Speaker 3: all it's all good.
Speaker 1: So since he specialized somewhat in locomotive adaptations and primates
Speaker 1: in general, that would explain why maybe you picked up
Speaker 1: the idea of the midfoot flexibility and Krantz noticed it
Speaker 1: but didn't put the terms on it per se, I think.
Speaker 3: Right well, and he didn't characterize the features correctly, and
Speaker 3: that was you know, a bit of a misdirection unfortunately.
Speaker 3: But if you look in his book Bigfootprints or the
Speaker 3: Evidence of bigfoot Sasquatch with the renamed second edition, you
Speaker 3: know there's a diagram in there where he tries to
Speaker 3: account for that mid tarsal pressure ridge. He didn't, of course,
Speaker 3: he didn't recognize it as a mid tarsal pressure ridge.
Speaker 3: He recognized it as a pressure ridge, but tried to
Speaker 3: explain it as you know, a push off from the
Speaker 3: foe foot of a very flat a very flat foot.
Speaker 3: But he did not eliminate the the existence of an
Speaker 3: arch entirely. He he and and this is why he
Speaker 3: had to hypothesize that the toes were very short. You know,
Speaker 3: our our toes have shortened remarkably by comparison to chimpanzees
Speaker 3: and gorillas, and even in comparison to the intermediate state,
Speaker 3: the intermediate links found in some early bipedal hominins like
Speaker 3: the Australia Pithesenes, which still had rather long and somewhat
Speaker 3: curved pedal digits foot digits of their feet toes.
Speaker 4: Jeff, excuse me, what about those tribes that have never
Speaker 4: worn shoes? And you say, those guys are those big,
Speaker 4: gnarly you know, spread feet and toes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they still have have very healthy.
Speaker 2: Arches though to leg so the tow short no.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's I mean it's they appear to be
Speaker 3: a bit longer because they are a little more extended
Speaker 3: and splayed, perhaps, whereas our toes are so compressed from
Speaker 3: shoe wear. And you know, typically most modern shoe wearing humans,
Speaker 3: their little toe is is curled on its side. Now, thankfully,
Speaker 3: shoe wear these days is more sensible than it was
Speaker 3: even fifty years ago. You know, the point he showed
Speaker 3: toed dress shoes and so forth, very confining footwear. But
Speaker 3: and even you know, cowboy boots, there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of accommodation there because the boot that has a pointed
Speaker 3: toe is usually a longer toe. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: a longer toes so you could keep it in your stirrup. Basically,
Speaker 3: it was the strategy nowadays that you know, these these
Speaker 3: fancy fashionable dress shoes have really law toes and the
Speaker 3: pointed toes of the shoe, the pointed tips of which
Speaker 3: extend out beyond and so they don't know the toes
Speaker 3: aren't crushed into that little conical tip. But nevertheless, no,
Speaker 3: it's interesting because when the Victorian era physical anthropologists struck
Speaker 3: out to study all the various ethnic diversity that was
Speaker 3: out there, they thought that they would find these poor,
Speaker 3: unshod native tribes would display very poor foot hygiene, foot conditions,
Speaker 3: that they would have fallen arches, that they would have
Speaker 3: all kinds of ailments of the joints and so forth,
Speaker 3: because they didn't have the benefit of Western supportive footwear.
Speaker 3: And of course what they found was just the opposite.
Speaker 3: That the human foot responded very well, and the arches
Speaker 3: were healthy and were high, the toes were splayed, the
Speaker 3: pads pointed down towards the ground like they were supposed to.
Speaker 3: They were very much fewer foot ailments amongst these barefoot
Speaker 3: tribal peoples than there were amongst the Western Europeans. So
Speaker 3: in any case, so Grover was his argument was that
Speaker 3: Sasquatch had even shorter toes, which kind of fed into
Speaker 3: this image that.
Speaker 2: Was the result.
Speaker 3: Of the Patterson Gimlin film site footprint casts that where
Speaker 3: the toes looked kind of like peas in the pod.
Speaker 3: This is why not to digress too far, but this
Speaker 3: is why Renee to Hinden had such trouble with the
Speaker 3: tracks from the Blues is because these individuals had sometimes
Speaker 3: less soul pad extending up under the toes, as is
Speaker 3: a variable trait in human populations as well. So the toes,
Speaker 3: in Rene's words, looked like sausages, and he used that
Speaker 3: as a very disparaging description, these fake sausage toes.
Speaker 2: Nobody likes the sausage party, that's.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, a bunch of Vienna sausages. When Grover modeled
Speaker 3: the human or the sasquatch foot, then he envisioned with
Speaker 3: even greater mass, there would be more bending stresses on
Speaker 3: these toes as they walked and pushed off, and so
Speaker 3: the toes would naturally be even shorter than in the
Speaker 3: human foot relative to foot length.
Speaker 1: And that's because he was using the human foot model
Speaker 1: of pushing off at the heads of the metatarsals and
Speaker 1: the toes as opposed to the entire fore part of the.
Speaker 3: Foot exactly exactly, you know. And so when this first,
Speaker 3: you know, first, it kind of came to mind as
Speaker 3: I was looking at some of these blue mountain tracks
Speaker 3: which had fairly long toes and the footprints that I
Speaker 3: examined at five points, I've drawn attention to that one
Speaker 3: example where the toes have curled remarkably as they flexed,
Speaker 3: gripping the mud as it slid, with mud extruding up
Speaker 3: between the toes. But you get the profile of the
Speaker 3: first and second toe, and that little toe on that
Speaker 3: fourteen and a half inch ish foot is as long
Speaker 3: as my pinky finger, and that's pretty, you know. So
Speaker 3: imagine toes on that foot that are as long as
Speaker 3: my fingers on my hand, and combine that with, you know,
Speaker 3: the musculature of the lower extremity and something as big
Speaker 3: as this creature probably was, and that's a powerful, grasping,
Speaker 3: prehensile foot. So then the other thing that kind of
Speaker 3: got it going was there were two other things. One
Speaker 3: was looking at the Bosbird cripplefoot, because you know, Grover
Speaker 3: had actually attempted to do a skeletal construction or inferential
Speaker 3: reconstructure outlining on that diagram and on actually etching on
Speaker 3: the physical cast his interpretation of the of the foot,
Speaker 3: and he had the toes very short. But as I
Speaker 3: looked at more details of the flection creases and so forth,
Speaker 3: and where the joints would be based on the contours
Speaker 3: of the outline of the foot, it didn't work. It
Speaker 3: didn't work. You had to have a toe that was
Speaker 3: much much longer. And then that combined with those individuals,
Speaker 3: particularly some of the examples on the Blue Creek Mountain
Speaker 3: trackway that had a very decided flection crease across the
Speaker 3: ball of the foot, this split ball that has gotten
Speaker 3: you know, various I've actually got this old diagram that
Speaker 3: was drawn by Ivan Sanderson where he tried to interpret
Speaker 3: and I should publish it as just a short article
Speaker 3: because it's of such interesting historical significance. I think as
Speaker 3: these investigators tried to grapple with this otherwise inexplicable anatomical characteristic.
Speaker 3: But I mean, if you look at your own at
Speaker 3: the palm of your hand you have, and you flex
Speaker 3: your fingers just a little bit at the knuckle, you
Speaker 3: see it throws up a crease across the palm of
Speaker 3: your hand where the tissue of the palm extends beyond
Speaker 3: that joint up under the proximal filangies the first bones
Speaker 3: in your fingers. Well, in the sasquatch tracks as well
Speaker 3: as in human footprints as well human feet there's evidence
Speaker 3: of that of an extension of that soulpad to varying
Speaker 3: degrees up underneath that first bone. In some individuals it
Speaker 3: goes almost up to that first interfalangeal joint. Well, when
Speaker 3: those toes flex, then they create a crease right across
Speaker 3: the soul at the mid ball at the heads of
Speaker 3: the metatarsals as they join the digits where your knuckles
Speaker 3: the corresponding position of where your knuckles are in your hand.
Speaker 3: So in the toes flex, it throws up a crease
Speaker 3: just like that. And in fact, if you go and
Speaker 3: look at your birth certificate, if you have an inked footprint,
Speaker 3: you'll find that you, like almost every human baby has
Speaker 3: that flexion crease on its foot when they're born. But
Speaker 3: as the arch develops, as the infant starts to walk,
Speaker 3: that soulpad fills out some more with more connective tissue
Speaker 3: and less baby fat, and you get an elaboration of
Speaker 3: the connective tissue under the ball of the foot at
Speaker 3: that metatarsal falangel joint, and it fills out, and so
Speaker 3: in most people it pretty much disappears.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 1: Bogo will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: God, I was in a store or something.
Speaker 1: I remember I was standing next to the sky or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I think we exchanged a few words or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that he had a tattoo of these
Speaker 1: two feet on his arms. And I looked at him
Speaker 1: and go, well, those aren't human. Those are clearly said,
Speaker 1: so you're into sasquatches. And he goes, no, those are
Speaker 1: my infants. Those are my baby's feet. And he wasn't
Speaker 1: super happy with me, and he didn't exchange many more
Speaker 1: words after that either. So but to your point, though,
Speaker 1: and actually doctor Krantz made that same point in this
Speaker 1: book now that i'm thinking of it.
Speaker 3: About the split ball.
Speaker 1: No, No, about specifically how infant human feet probably more
Speaker 1: strongly resemble sasquatch feet.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I think there was talking about the proportions too, particularly.
Speaker 3: I'll have to go back and look in a long
Speaker 3: time since I've read that, And every time I go
Speaker 3: back and reread, I discover something else he said that
Speaker 3: I've since forgotten.
Speaker 4: But David Ellis's baby footprint, you authenticated that, right, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Well, I would never claim to authenticate, but I mean it.
Speaker 3: I'm impressed foremost by the huge heel. It's got an
Speaker 3: enormous heel and well developed heel pad already which is
Speaker 3: not typical of the most human babies, and so that
Speaker 3: that seems quite interesting in itself. So I think there's
Speaker 3: a really good possibility. Yeah, that's a good example. We
Speaker 3: have others in the collection. I have some of the
Speaker 3: the little feet that Paul Freeman investigated that we're well now.
Speaker 3: Now the prevenience is little clear to me because I
Speaker 3: originally thought that it was at the at d Duck
Speaker 3: Springs and was found just just prior to the shooting
Speaker 3: of that footage there. But now I'm told to know
Speaker 3: it was a different it was an earlier segment.
Speaker 2: That's a different one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, that that footage right before the most common
Speaker 1: version of the Freeman footage is out now that shows
Speaker 1: those footprints in the ground that you're referring to. I
Speaker 1: believe I've successfully identified those as those same juvenile prints
Speaker 1: that you're speaking of that were cast on Gifford Peak.
Speaker 1: I believe it's called Gifford Peak in the previous April
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, by the shape of the casts
Speaker 1: in the ground drawing, you know, with the redit I
Speaker 1: look looking at the copies that I have, you can
Speaker 1: identify them as Oh, those are the same individuals those
Speaker 1: are the actually those are the same casts. So that
Speaker 1: was actually from Gifford Peak the previous ninety two I
Speaker 1: think in April, I remember correctly.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, all right, Well that's good to know because
Speaker 3: with all the you know, with all the discussion about
Speaker 3: the subject of the Freeman video scooping up an infant
Speaker 3: and in the parting shots there, I had often wondered
Speaker 3: if if those were the tracks of the infant that
Speaker 3: he had just taken note of prior to going around
Speaker 3: to the other side of the of the pond there.
Speaker 1: But definitely could be. But the videos from a few
Speaker 1: months earlier, so.
Speaker 3: Right, And you're absolutely right. I mean, that's when I
Speaker 3: saw that video and realized that they were that he
Speaker 3: had taken casts. That was the first thing I did,
Speaker 3: is it got the cast out and compared to the video,
Speaker 3: and you're you're absolutely right, they are in fact from
Speaker 3: that sequence, which is always nice to establish, you know,
Speaker 3: to have documentation of the footprints in the ground and
Speaker 3: swill as the casts resulting casts.
Speaker 1: So well, speaking of anatomy, I thought, I thought we
Speaker 1: could go down a couple other rabbit holes here. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about handprints for a minute and Sasquatch handprints, of
Speaker 1: course a different than Sasquatch hands are different than humans
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Shorter, stubby, your looking fingers,
Speaker 1: because the webbing is extended, the thumb is in a
Speaker 1: different position. It doesn't flex across the palm like ours.
Speaker 1: It goes more directly into the ground. Because of these differences,
Speaker 1: what behavioral differences can we infer?
Speaker 3: That's a great point because you know, this often comes
Speaker 3: up when people are suggesting that the Sasquatch are extremely intelligent.
Speaker 3: You know, they must be in order to avoid us.
Speaker 3: And then of course there are others who appeal to
Speaker 3: other types of experiences to suggest that there's something else
Speaker 3: going on that would indicate a higher level of mental ability,
Speaker 3: if not human. But they're not quote just aids.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, let's since you open the intelligence thing
Speaker 1: and we're going to be talking about the hands, let's
Speaker 1: also throw in the cranium size and shape into this
Speaker 1: discussion so we can have a more well rounded discussion
Speaker 1: about this, please.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, in that regard not being privy to first
Speaker 3: hand visual observations of Sasquatch cranial proportions, you know, I
Speaker 3: can't say a lot, but I've come to a point
Speaker 3: where I'm absolutely convinced about the credibility of the Patterson
Speaker 3: Gimlin film, and as such, that is admittedly a sample
Speaker 3: of one, but nevertheless it is a sasquatch. And what
Speaker 3: can we learn from looking at it? And one of
Speaker 3: the things that just blows me away is when you
Speaker 3: take a robust australopithesene like paranthropists paranthropist boise eye, which
Speaker 3: existed in East Africa about to one point eight million two,
Speaker 3: about eight hundred thousand years ago in the known fossil
Speaker 3: record anyway, and it stood about five to five and
Speaker 3: a half feet tall. Was robust. When we say robust austrolipithesenes,
Speaker 3: we're talking about their facial cranial adaptations, these heavy jaws,
Speaker 3: extremely enlarged molars and premolars and reduced canines for a
Speaker 3: more side freeing up a side to side what they
Speaker 3: call the phase two of the chewing cycle, the grinding aspect,
Speaker 3: with very very thick enamel and very puffy rounded cusps
Speaker 3: and crusts on the teeth, so indicating indicative of a
Speaker 3: diet of very tough and very hard items. Okay, So anyway,
Speaker 3: if you take the we have remarkably complete examples of
Speaker 3: crania of this species. And you take one of those
Speaker 3: and just scale it to the same absolute size as
Speaker 3: Patty and put it up next to her bust, and
Speaker 3: sure enough, every single bony landmark from the top of
Speaker 3: the head to the receding chin on the jaw blinds up. Now,
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's no small point because the you know,
Speaker 3: the facial proportions on this thing, this robust astrolopithesene, are
Speaker 3: really remarkable. They are an extreme specialization for this what
Speaker 3: we call a dual fagius diet dural meaning as you
Speaker 3: might expect, like from durabol, a very tough, unyielding diet.
Speaker 3: And so you know, some some have compared these robust
Speaker 3: austerlopithesenes to quizin arts. They can, you know, really grind
Speaker 3: up and handle all kinds of food ite and so
Speaker 3: it's it's an extreme adaptation with very deep jaws with
Speaker 3: very flaring angles to the to the mandible, a very
Speaker 3: prominent cheekbones that that flare forward and why to provide
Speaker 3: attachment for the chewing muscles on the side, the massi
Speaker 3: muscles that it even has a bit of a crest
Speaker 3: on its skulled for increased attachment of the anterior fibers
Speaker 3: of the temporalis muscle, which is the second of the
Speaker 3: two large, very large principal chewing muscles, the temporalis and
Speaker 3: the mass anyway, so point for point, I mean it's
Speaker 3: not just a queer coincidence. I mean that correlation suggests
Speaker 3: that the sasquatch has a similar type of diet and
Speaker 3: has those same extreme craniofacial adaptations.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 1: Bobo will be right back after these messages. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the anatomy reflects behavior in some way, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it has to of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course it does. I mean sometimes there are lags,
Speaker 3: sometimes there are things that aren't really tightly correlated with
Speaker 3: the current behavior, but it's pretty lockstep. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is how paleoanthropologists go about reconstructing the anatomy and behavior
Speaker 3: in fur behavior for these extinct species is by drawing
Speaker 3: analogy to the same correlations that exist in other living species.
Speaker 3: And so one of the interesting correlations to this, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned, the reduced canines that allows that side to
Speaker 3: side grinding. Is it it interesting that the most credible
Speaker 3: sightings of sasquatch, where the observer has been privileged to
Speaker 3: see the teeth from a gaping smile or an open mouth,
Speaker 3: there's usually an absence of projecting canines like you would
Speaker 3: see in a bear or in a gorilla or an orangutan,
Speaker 3: you know, And so that correlates with the you know,
Speaker 3: the fact that that that most witnesses who do see
Speaker 3: the teeth comment on the squared off human like appearance
Speaker 3: of the teeth without fang like canines projecting. That is
Speaker 3: exactly the anatomy that would be correlated with the facial
Speaker 3: skeletal adaptations and proportions that that are seemed to be
Speaker 3: a present.
Speaker 2: So that's interesting.
Speaker 3: So in the same way we go from that then
Speaker 3: say to the tools. Oh, well, I guess we were
Speaker 3: talking about get off on a different branch. We were
Speaker 3: talking about the intelligence. And so if you do that
Speaker 3: same correlation, that same alignment of the skull, it is
Speaker 3: the correlation is valid not only for the facial skeleton,
Speaker 3: but for the cranium as well that houses the brain.
Speaker 3: And rather than having a massive globular spherical cranium to
Speaker 3: accommodate a human proportioned brain. It looks just like the
Speaker 3: robust australopithesene in that regard as well. And these robust
Speaker 3: australopithesenes were barely you know, bipedal gorillas or gyms in
Speaker 3: that regard. Their brain was maybe fifty cubic centimeters ccs
Speaker 3: bigger than that for a chimpanzee. So you know, sasquatch
Speaker 3: would have an absolutely largeranium because of its more gigantic size.
Speaker 3: But nevertheless, the proportion of brain to body mass would
Speaker 3: be the same. The encephalization quotient, you know, when you
Speaker 3: take a ratio of brain size to body mass, would
Speaker 3: be on par with that of the known grade apes
Speaker 3: or early hominins like the robust australopitheesenes, which were just
Speaker 3: you know, a half step half notch greater. So then
Speaker 3: go back to the hand question again, and you pointed
Speaker 3: out some of the distinctions. I mean, the limited record
Speaker 3: we have of hand prints and casts thereof seem to
Speaker 3: consistently indicate a hand that lacks the adaptations associated with opposability,
Speaker 3: with that potential for fine precision grip like you use
Speaker 3: when you hold a pin or pick up a needle.
Speaker 3: You know, that requires the action of opposition, bringing the
Speaker 3: pads of the thumb in direct opposition to the pads
Speaker 3: of the other digits, particularly the index finger. Obviously, now
Speaker 3: those movements, those fine, finely controlled movements, have selected four
Speaker 3: specializations of the muscles at the base of the thumb
Speaker 3: which give that thumb kind of a drumstick looking appearance.
Speaker 3: That's called the theen r pad or the theenar muscles,
Speaker 3: And that feature seems to be uniformly absent from the
Speaker 3: sasquatch and in fact, instead of the thumb being set
Speaker 3: at a ninety degree rotation to the other digits. So
Speaker 3: if you look at your hand right now, you flex
Speaker 3: your fingers, they cross your palm, but your thumb is
Speaker 3: facing ninety degrees across your palm. So when you flex
Speaker 3: your fingers, it doesn't flex your thumb. It does not
Speaker 3: move in the same orientation that your other fingers does.
Speaker 3: It crosses over the palm at a right angle. And
Speaker 3: so that set sort of predisposes the thumb for this
Speaker 3: opposition positioning. Well, the sasquatch thumb much more like an ape, gorilla,
Speaker 3: or chim the thumb isn't rotated nearly so much, and
Speaker 3: so when the thumb flex is, it really moves in
Speaker 3: parallel to the other digits, and since it doesn't have
Speaker 3: the adaptations for that precision grip, you'll notice a flattening
Speaker 3: of the palm and a lack of the enlargement of
Speaker 3: that drumstick appearance. Those the in are muscles. Now, isn't
Speaker 3: it interesting because the hand lacks the very features that
Speaker 3: we associate with precision grip, with fine grip, which we
Speaker 3: infer as essential to the evolution of tool use, of
Speaker 3: the manufacture of stone tools, for example, or other manual
Speaker 3: activities associated with other sorts of tool use, with the
Speaker 3: use of needle and thread, or you know balls or scrapers, Well,
Speaker 3: scrapers are more power grip. And the correlation being is
Speaker 3: witnesses don't see sasquatch doing or doing those types of
Speaker 3: behaviors or utilizing those tools. Nor do we find an
Speaker 3: archaeological record in North America that is attributed to Sasquatch.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're certainly not making the arrowhead points that
Speaker 3: we find in Native American as a result of Native
Speaker 3: American activities.
Speaker 2: So it's just it's really.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's hard to convey in a brief you know,
Speaker 3: expose a the depth of correlation and consistency that that
Speaker 3: is present here when when you ask the right questions
Speaker 3: and look for the right evident and the things are
Speaker 3: remarkably coherent and have you know, provide examples that span
Speaker 3: at least a half a century and many from a
Speaker 3: time when a lot of these types of things were
Speaker 3: only in their early stages of understanding or development in
Speaker 3: the thinking of anthropologists of the time. And yet someone
Speaker 3: allegedly hoaxed all these things, you know, left this trail
Speaker 3: of breadcrumbs that is so remarkably coherent but actually has
Speaker 3: anticipated what we now understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, then I guess we're underestimating the hoaxer is
Speaker 1: having such foresighted anthropological models in the future.
Speaker 2: Right exactly.
Speaker 3: It's just I mean, this is what really this way
Speaker 3: of thinking, in addition to so much other aspects of
Speaker 3: the evidence, but this way of thinking is what absolutely
Speaker 3: converted me, convinced me, if you will convinced me a
Speaker 3: better word, I guess of the Patterson Gimlin film when
Speaker 3: you look at it and break it down, some of
Speaker 3: the odd combinations of traits that actually anticipated current conventional wisdom,
Speaker 3: but which at the time in nineteen sixty seven were
Speaker 3: counterintuitive to what was considered conventional wisdom and at the
Speaker 3: risk of being redundant. But it's such a prime example
Speaker 3: that bears repetition the writings of John Napier, who was
Speaker 3: a bonafide primatologist an anatomist. He was a physician and
Speaker 3: a trained anatomist. And it's interesting that it's those since
Speaker 3: we started off talking about anatomy, that tend to have
Speaker 3: a more open mind to some of that anatomical evidence.
Speaker 3: I guess it comes through the appreciation of the significance
Speaker 3: of that evidence due to the training and experience. But
Speaker 3: Napier was very focused on the footprints, and in his book,
Speaker 3: which you know, had a lot of negative tones or observations,
Speaker 3: he still the final bottom line was he was convinced
Speaker 3: there was something out there that sasquatch, something was leaving footprints,
Speaker 3: and therefore sasquatch must exist. What exactly it was he
Speaker 3: was able to conclusively state. But when it came to
Speaker 3: the Patterson Gillen film, he was quite negative, not quite negative.
Speaker 3: He had a negative opinion. He did not he could
Speaker 3: not endorse it. And yet he was forthright enough to acknowledge.
Speaker 3: He really couldn't offer a good rationale for that rejection,
Speaker 3: but he said, when he saw that figure on the film,
Speaker 3: from the waist up it looked essentially like an ape,
Speaker 3: and yet from the waist down it had long legs
Speaker 3: like a human or a hominin.
Speaker 2: And a late homonym.
Speaker 3: And he said he just could not conceive of such
Speaker 3: a mosaic, such a hybrid of structure occurring in nature.
Speaker 3: Because so many anthropologists of that time it was kind
Speaker 3: of a all or none that the human condition just
Speaker 3: emerged in its complete, perfected form, if you will. And
Speaker 3: so isn't it interesting? Though, because shortly after that the
Speaker 3: publication of that book, which was in the early seventies
Speaker 3: seventy two, I think in the mid to later seventies,
Speaker 3: was kind of considered by some to be the golden
Speaker 3: age of anthropology, with the discoveries of Australopithegus a Forensis
Speaker 3: and Lucy and sort of the first real glimpse beyond
Speaker 3: going back to the very beginnings of the emergence of
Speaker 3: hominin bipedalism, it was thought at that time, and so
Speaker 3: for the first time we had much more complete hip bones.
Speaker 3: The pelvies, we had the thigh bones, the femera that
Speaker 3: we had knees and so forth, and associated with the
Speaker 3: crania of these australopithesenes. And the statements to the popular
Speaker 3: press were, isn't this interesting? From the waist up they
Speaker 3: look essentially like chimpanzees, but from the waist down they
Speaker 3: look like little Harry humans.
Speaker 2: Well wait a.
Speaker 3: Minute, that was the very lynchpin that Napier proposed to
Speaker 3: negate or to reject the Patterson Gimblin film. And yet
Speaker 3: it anticipated those subsequent discoveries that bore out that otherwise
Speaker 3: inconceivable a nation of trades, and that interesting.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 1: Bogo will be right back after these messages. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the other anatomy like the pelvis,
Speaker 1: for example, and and mid the bent knee gate and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing of the PG film. And now
Speaker 1: the narrowing of the hips. It has to have something
Speaker 1: to do with center of gravity, I would imagine for
Speaker 1: such a massive biped kind of otherwise it'd be teeter
Speaker 1: tottering back and forth and whatnot. And does that also
Speaker 1: probably is where the more inlined inline trackways. The lack
Speaker 1: of straddle in the trackways probably comes from, I'm guessing,
Speaker 1: is the center of gravity issue. Let's address that and
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit and how that ties
Speaker 1: into like the bent knee gate as a shock absorber
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and the high leg lift in the
Speaker 1: swing phase of the gates and things.
Speaker 3: Sure, okay, so let's start with the pelvis then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot there. I'm sorry I throw so
Speaker 1: much at you once.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll just work our way down the limb. And
Speaker 3: the pelvis has gotten a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: sort of misdirection, miss misinformation. The tendency has always been
Speaker 3: to compare us to our closest neighbors and assume then
Speaker 3: that the intermediate taxa were somehow also intermediate in in anatomy.
Speaker 3: And so the chimp has this very modified pelvis with
Speaker 3: these high blades of the ilium, the you know, the
Speaker 3: hip bones essentially the up on the ridges of the hips,
Speaker 3: not the hip joint. But in a chimp, they are
Speaker 3: are elongated, tall and still very narrow, but they're very tall,
Speaker 3: and they face front to back so that the muscles,
Speaker 3: the gluteal muscles that attach on the back of those
Speaker 3: blades are acting simply as retractors of the hip. They
Speaker 3: extend and extenders of the hip. So when you're climbing
Speaker 3: up a tree, or when you're walking, you know on
Speaker 3: all fours, you don't worried about balance. Then they weren't
Speaker 3: to draw the hip back, draw the thigh back as
Speaker 3: the hip is extended and you're walking forward, all right.
Speaker 3: So the thought was then that that had to be
Speaker 3: modified in order to become bipeedle. Well, as it turns
Speaker 3: out now, which it should have been self evident, it
Speaker 3: really was, but sometimes it just got lost. Gymps have
Speaker 3: been evolving over the same period of time since the
Speaker 3: divergence from a last shared common ancestor maybe in different
Speaker 3: ways that they have been involving, and they have evolved
Speaker 3: these remarkable specializations for arm hanging. They've experienced a shortening
Speaker 3: of the lower back, the lumbar spine, and this elongation
Speaker 3: of these of these hip bones, and obviously the greater
Speaker 3: emphasis on the forelimbs, so their forelimbs are actually longer
Speaker 3: than their hind limbs. And so but now as we
Speaker 3: as the fossil record, you have to remember that chips
Speaker 3: and guerrillas are themselves relic populations that do not reflect
Speaker 3: the totality of ape evolution. We have over well over
Speaker 3: one hundred different species of extinct eight that have been
Speaker 3: discovered in the past half century, and they don't often
Speaker 3: get as much press, you know, as the human ancestors.
Speaker 3: But one thing that has come out of that is
Speaker 3: that some of these also sort of dabbled in bipedalism,
Speaker 3: maybe not a fully committed bipedalism on the ground, but
Speaker 3: because they spent time climbing and standing and reaching overhead
Speaker 3: for resources, their bodies with that tailless torso and had
Speaker 3: a modified, more generalized pelvis that was less like a
Speaker 3: chimp than it was similar to our own. And so
Speaker 3: the the emergence of the bipedal hominins that then committed
Speaker 3: to walking on the ground really probably really didn't have
Speaker 3: to change their pelvis all that much. Now, as far
Speaker 3: as narrowing, the only there really hasn't been a trajectory
Speaker 3: of narrowing so much as it's it's the lack of
Speaker 3: sexual dimorphism, the lack of differences between the genders that
Speaker 3: we see in humans, which is entirely the result of
Speaker 3: our big brains a female pelvis has to have a
Speaker 3: broader outlet in order to accommodate a human infant with
Speaker 3: a relatively large brain by comparison to an ep like
Speaker 3: a chimper gorilla. This is why some of the statements
Speaker 3: that were made about the PG film by the experts
Speaker 3: of the time are so inane and so silly in hindsight.
Speaker 2: They should have.
Speaker 3: Been recognized as such at the time. But one of
Speaker 3: the commentators made the remark, isn't it silly, you know,
Speaker 3: the hoaxers. It's clearly a man in a furst suit.
Speaker 3: It walks like a man, but they've added breasts, so
Speaker 3: you've got this ridiculous combination of a female and male features. Well,
Speaker 3: now wait a minute again, the only reason a human
Speaker 3: female walks like a human female is because of the
Speaker 3: wider breadth of the hips to accommodate the large brain.
Speaker 3: Infant sasquatch, as we've just discussed earlier, have a small brain.
Speaker 3: They have a brain that's not much bigger than a
Speaker 3: chimps or gorillas, and so females wouldn't have white hips.
Speaker 3: Females would have a pelvis that essentially looks just like
Speaker 3: a male sasquatch pelvis, and so a female sasquatch like Patty,
Speaker 3: even though she sports breasts to nurse her offspring, has
Speaker 3: a pelvis that doesn't look much different than her male
Speaker 3: counterpart would, and she would walk like a man. And
Speaker 3: this comes into the next point you made. When the
Speaker 3: commitment to terrestrial bipedalism was made, in order to help
Speaker 3: balance the torso over not three limbs or two limbs,
Speaker 3: but one at a time, there were some changes that pelvis.
Speaker 3: That shorter pelvis, not necessarily narrower, but shorter. The blades
Speaker 3: instead of facing just front to back, curled around to
Speaker 3: the sides. So now the smaller what we call the
Speaker 3: lesser glue teles, the gluteous minimus, and medius, especially the medias,
Speaker 3: are on the sides, and so instead of pulling the
Speaker 3: leg back the lower limb the thigh back retracting it,
Speaker 3: they balance the torso over the support limb. You can
Speaker 3: test this out just next time you stand up and
Speaker 3: take a step or two, put your hand down right
Speaker 3: on the side of your hip, and as you lift
Speaker 3: one leg, you'll feel the muscles on the opposite side
Speaker 3: on the support limb flex, keeping that pelvis and torso
Speaker 3: from dropping to the unsupported side, you know, like a
Speaker 3: drunken soldier. Well, just think about the way a chimpanzee
Speaker 3: walks on two legs. That characteristic and actors try to
Speaker 3: emulate that whenever they don an eight suit, And it's
Speaker 3: that characteristic kind of arms out like a tightrope walker
Speaker 3: and swinging the torso back and forth in a swaying
Speaker 3: motion over the alternating limbs in order to balance the
Speaker 3: pel or the torso over the support limb anyway. So
Speaker 3: one of the ways to address that, in addition to
Speaker 3: the reorganization of the pelvis, is to angle the thigh
Speaker 3: in towards the midline, so your base of support is
Speaker 3: already closer to the center of mass than otherwise. So
Speaker 3: when we walk, instead of a wide splayed gate with
Speaker 3: our feet apart, we place. You know, it's not as
Speaker 3: extreme as a model walking down a catwalk, you know,
Speaker 3: with it where they literally almost cross their feet over
Speaker 3: in front of the others. But it's closer to that.
Speaker 3: And you find too when you take on a heavy load.
Speaker 3: Next time you're backpacking with a heavy backpack, notice the
Speaker 3: way you modify your gate a little bit. And if
Speaker 3: you're at all experienced, you do this intentionally, whereas you
Speaker 3: do tend to walk a little more tightrope because you're
Speaker 3: bringing the center or bringing your line or a point
Speaker 3: of support more directly under the center of mass, and
Speaker 3: you don't have to utilize the muscular effort quite as
Speaker 3: much to balance your helvis and torso over that in
Speaker 3: any case, So then you talked about the compliant gate.
Speaker 3: Humans have adapted, are adopted of a manner of walking
Speaker 3: that maximizes the step length and takes advantage of that
Speaker 3: rigid longitudinal relatively rigid longitudinal large and so together with
Speaker 3: the elongation of of our legs are lower extremities. We
Speaker 3: reach out with a very extended limb and come down
Speaker 3: with a heel strike and then transfer onto that supporting foot.
Speaker 3: But that that extends our our step length. And you know,
Speaker 3: over a long period of walking, and that even if
Speaker 3: you've only gained a couple of inches, you multiply that
Speaker 3: by hundreds of thousands of steps and you've reduced significantly
Speaker 3: the number of individual steps you've had to take to
Speaker 3: cover that that ground. But as a result of that
Speaker 3: extended limb, we have a bit of a jar when
Speaker 3: we when you know jolt, when when our heel strikes
Speaker 3: the ground when it's called the heel strike versus the
Speaker 3: toa and and because of our art, we have two
Speaker 3: points of peak pressure beneath the foot, one at the
Speaker 3: heel strike, and then as you know, the full foot
Speaker 3: is in contact, the heel comes up. And now now
Speaker 3: the point of contact has shifted to the ball of
Speaker 3: the foot, to the metatarsal heads because of that arch,
Speaker 3: and there's another peak pressure point concentrated in that small
Speaker 3: surface area. As we push off ultimately with our big toe, well,
Speaker 3: you increase body mass considerably, and those peak plant pressures
Speaker 3: are something to be avoided. And so one way is
Speaker 3: to not have an arch which differentially concentrates pressure under
Speaker 3: those limited points of contact, and don't have a heel
Speaker 3: strike where you where you're you know, you're actively limiting
Speaker 3: the surface area to absorb all of that weight, that
Speaker 3: and that force, you know, that accelerating force through a
Speaker 3: small area of tissue. Walk in such a way that
Speaker 3: the whole foot comes in contact.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because that's what I was going to be
Speaker 1: my next question, but you've already addressed it. Based on
Speaker 1: the footprint cast evidence, I'm not seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: really deep toe, I mean, are heel impressions, which indicates
Speaker 1: to me, along with witness sighting reports of this sort
Speaker 1: of flapping sound that sometimes they hear with sasquatches running
Speaker 1: through the area or across cement or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've often thought that perhaps they come down rather flat
Speaker 1: footed as opposed to a heel strike, because you know,
Speaker 1: five hundred pounds of weight coming down on a heel
Speaker 1: every single time would do a real number to their
Speaker 1: heel bones, I would imagine.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was just going to say, this is something
Speaker 3: that Krantz kind of explores in his book where he's
Speaker 3: talking about the noticeable breadth to length ratios that are
Speaker 3: distinct for sasquatch, much greater than human and he points
Speaker 3: out that when you allow for that greater breadth and
Speaker 3: the increase surface contact by having a flat foot, the
Speaker 3: surface area, you know, placing the foot more flatly on
Speaker 3: the ground, you your pressure per unit area of the
Speaker 3: foot isn't much different than the theoretical isn't much different
Speaker 3: than what is observed for the human foot, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, right there at the tolerance levels of the
Speaker 3: of the tissue of the skin and connective tissue fatty
Speaker 3: tissue and bone. So you can address the increased forces anatomically,
Speaker 3: but you can also address them behaviorally. And that's that's
Speaker 3: what you were talking about with placing the foot more
Speaker 3: flatly initially instead of a decided heel strike, which you,
Speaker 3: as you correctly point out, seems to be the evidence
Speaker 3: of that seems to be completely absent, largely absent from
Speaker 3: the fossil record or excuse me, the footprint track record.
Speaker 3: In addition, you can soak up some of that impact
Speaker 3: force with the tendons and ligaments in the joints of
Speaker 3: the ankle and the knee and the hip. And this
Speaker 3: is where the compliant or flexed jointed gait comes into play.
Speaker 3: In the biomechanical literature, it's referred to, kind of in
Speaker 3: an informal sense as a Groucho walk. Now, most of
Speaker 3: the younger generation don't even know who Groucho Marx is,
Speaker 3: let alone having seen him on the movie screen.
Speaker 1: Which is a travesty, by the way, a huge It's
Speaker 1: a sign of the downfall of our civilization in my opinion,
Speaker 1: to not know who Groucho Marx is, that's right.
Speaker 3: But Graucho Marx had this funny walk and you know,
Speaker 3: he had this big bristly mustache and round glasses and
Speaker 3: a big cigar that you twiddle there, and he leaning
Speaker 3: way forward and walk with a bent at the waist
Speaker 3: and non flexed hips and knees and so anyway, this
Speaker 3: is what's called the compliant gate. And there have been
Speaker 3: very systematic studies done using force plate to collect data
Speaker 3: of ground reaction forces to show that you can reduce
Speaker 3: the impact forces which are called ground reaction forces, the
Speaker 3: forces the ground is pushing back against the force that
Speaker 3: you're imposing on it, just the way that description works,
Speaker 3: by upwards of eighteen twenty percent. That's that's pretty significant
Speaker 3: when you start talking about, you know, the magnitude of
Speaker 3: forces of a big seven hundred pound paddy walking across
Speaker 3: the sandbar.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So, so walking with a compliant gate combined with the
Speaker 3: broader foot and actually probably larger foot for the overall size.
Speaker 3: I mean, some people have looked at patting and say
Speaker 3: that our feet looked kind of oversize. Well they've probably
Speaker 3: well some of that is optical illusion due to the
Speaker 3: overexposure of the film. But there is something to be
Speaker 3: said for the length to stature ratio.
Speaker 1: I say, that same they say that same thing about
Speaker 1: Homo floresiensis about had much larger feet than its stature indicated.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So see, I think all of that the unique
Speaker 3: human condition really didn't emerge until our skeletons remarkably lightened
Speaker 3: in in weight and mass, and we went from an
Speaker 3: elongated heel that gave greater leverage to a very short
Speaker 3: heel length projecting behind the ankle joint for a speed lever.
Speaker 3: So a little bit of displacement of that proximal or
Speaker 3: that yeah, that proximal part of the ankle or the
Speaker 3: heel bone would translate into a very rapid movement of
Speaker 3: the distal and which is an adaptation for running. We
Speaker 3: are our skeleton, our long legs are you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of the discussion about the changes in the cranial
Speaker 3: base and in our proportions of upper extremity to lower extremity,
Speaker 3: and and you know, just the more light, the lightning,
Speaker 3: the grassilization of the skeleton. These are adaptations for endurance
Speaker 3: walking and running. And we're quite different sasquatch has evolved
Speaker 3: in a very different way.
Speaker 2: I mean, it muscles its way.
Speaker 3: Up and down those mountain sides and you know, it's
Speaker 3: probably capable of bursts of speed, just like a gorilla
Speaker 3: or a chimp. All I was just looking up the
Speaker 3: other day because someone was asking a silver backed gorilla
Speaker 3: can attain bursts of speed up to twenty five miles
Speaker 3: per hour, which is that's a world class sprinter speed.
Speaker 3: But it can't sustain it obviously for a lot. Neither
Speaker 3: can a world class sprinter sustain that for more than
Speaker 3: the one hundred yard dash. But the long distance runners,
Speaker 3: marathon runners don't run at that pace, and I don't
Speaker 3: think a sasquatch would be capable either it doesn't have
Speaker 3: those adaptations, or a gorilla, but sasquatch would be much
Speaker 3: more capable than would a gorilla. And so you know,
Speaker 3: feats of distance, an overnight trek across a gap between
Speaker 3: forest fragments would be something that you know sasquatch could undertake.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably why sometimes we get sign or
Speaker 3: sightings in otherwise odd places, is because there could be
Speaker 3: a like Krantz used to refer to rogue mails who
Speaker 3: are breaking out from their natal territory. They've been forced
Speaker 3: out by the resident male, dominant male, and they have
Speaker 3: to find their own turf and their own females attract
Speaker 3: their own females, So sometimes they strike out through less
Speaker 3: desirable habitat in order to find a place of their own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just kind of cook over that terrain during
Speaker 1: the night when there are fewer eyes out there to
Speaker 1: see them, and they feel safe under the cover of darkness.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that that has given me a
Speaker 1: greater appreciation of just the muscle mass that sasquatches must
Speaker 1: have is doing exactly what you mentioned, which is experimenting
Speaker 1: about experimenting with my own gait while backpacking. You know,
Speaker 1: if I have like a forty pound pack, you know,
Speaker 1: on my back, that's a significant addition to my own weight,
Speaker 1: and I do find myself leaning forward slightly and just
Speaker 1: for you know, just for laughs, I kind of adopt
Speaker 1: the compliant gait, and it sure makes a big difference
Speaker 1: on the impact, especially going downhill, and there's some degree up,
Speaker 1: mostly downhill. But I'll tell you, I am sore in
Speaker 1: the morning.
Speaker 2: All that.
Speaker 1: It's just an incredible burden on my feeble little muscles.
Speaker 3: So sure, exactly, Well, that's and that's it, because you
Speaker 3: can no longer simply rely on the joint locking mechanisms
Speaker 3: or the passive tension in the ligaments and joint capsules.
Speaker 3: The tendons can store some elastic energy. Especially see one
Speaker 3: of the very human like characteristics is is very well
Speaker 3: developed Achilles tendon, the calcaneal tendon, and it's kind of
Speaker 3: like it's not exactly like that. We compare it to
Speaker 3: a bungee cord, that connective tissue. Within the way it's
Speaker 3: arranged within the tendon, it allows for a little bit
Speaker 3: of stretch and there's some elastic tissue in there as
Speaker 3: well that helps it to rebound to its original shape.
Speaker 3: But they have found, you know, that these these tendons
Speaker 3: can return a significant fraction of the kinetic energy once
Speaker 3: they're loaded back into the system in propulsion.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The extreme example of this mechanism is the big giant
Speaker 3: red kangaroos in Australia, which once they get up to speed,
Speaker 3: you know, they're basically springing on these relying on these
Speaker 3: on these tendons and the counterbalance the cantilever rather cantilever
Speaker 3: mechanism of their torso and tail, that stiff tail sticking
Speaker 3: back there over the hip each time they hit the ground.
Speaker 3: The tail tends to come down in the to also
Speaker 3: tends to come down, which loads all of the ligaments
Speaker 3: and tendons in the back and the spine and you know,
Speaker 3: big tendons of the muscles for the tail. And then
Speaker 3: that tends to upon recoil, lift the kangaroo up again,
Speaker 3: you know. And and so the force necessary to generate
Speaker 3: the lift for that next step, that next spring rather
Speaker 3: is is in part contributed by the recoil of these
Speaker 3: ligamented structures. So the point is that it's interesting. You
Speaker 3: look at at Paddy, you look at a chimpanzee, and
Speaker 3: they have almost no real significant tendon, and what is
Speaker 3: there is a broad much more what we call appo neurotic,
Speaker 3: a broad tendon that spanning between the calf musculature and
Speaker 3: the heel. But if you look at Patty, she's kind
Speaker 3: of intermediate between a chimpanzee and a human. She has
Speaker 3: a massive broad tendon in the area. The heads of
Speaker 3: the gastroc nemus are discernible, and they're long, but they're
Speaker 3: shorter than they are in a chimpanzee. They're a bit
Speaker 3: longer than they are in the human. And the length well,
Speaker 3: when we say the length I'm talking about the length
Speaker 3: of the fibers that constitute the two gastroc heads. So
Speaker 3: if you're relying on those muscles to kind of load
Speaker 3: the tendon, they don't need to be very long. The
Speaker 3: chimps are long because they move their ankle through such
Speaker 3: a huge range of motion compared to ours when they're
Speaker 3: climbing up and down trees, and so the muscle fiber
Speaker 3: has to shorten through that range of motion. But if
Speaker 3: the range of motion is greatly restricted, and the adaptation
Speaker 3: is to load the tendin so that when the four
Speaker 3: foot hits the ground, see, it would otherwise stretch that tendon.
Speaker 3: I almost ruptured my tenton just to show you the
Speaker 3: kind of the principle, you know. I was out we
Speaker 3: were collecting firewood, and rather than using axe as we
Speaker 3: were and saws, we were just gathering up the dead
Speaker 3: fall and were breaking it on rocks or leaning across
Speaker 3: something and stomping on it. Well, when you do that,
Speaker 3: you need to stomp so that your ankle is right
Speaker 3: over the top, so that the force coming down through
Speaker 3: your leg goes straight through the well like a dummy.
Speaker 3: Was being a little careless, and when I stomped I
Speaker 3: caught the branch with the tip the end of my
Speaker 3: boot out of my toes and it flexed my foot
Speaker 3: up really forcefully, and oh man, it pulled my achilles
Speaker 3: tendon and I had a Charlie horse like you wouldn't believe,
Speaker 3: and I thought I had a vaults. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: how you can a volts tear tear the tendon. Either
Speaker 3: it either it fails internally in the fibers slip and
Speaker 3: then you get this big swollen contusion and potential hematoma.
Speaker 3: Or it literally tears. It can pull it right free
Speaker 3: from the heel bone and sometimes even tears some of
Speaker 3: the bone that those fibers are embedded within, away from
Speaker 3: the heel bone. So I was limping for several days.
Speaker 3: I immediately put some ice on it. Thankfully we had
Speaker 3: some ice in one of the ice tests and I
Speaker 3: could put some ice on of it.
Speaker 1: And no martial arts classes in your background, so well, yeah, not.
Speaker 3: It just took at one moment of a of a
Speaker 3: misdirected the stomp, not aimed quite placed, quite properly, and.
Speaker 1: Man, well you know what, we have a lot, We
Speaker 1: have a lot more questions that at least I have
Speaker 1: a lot more questions to ask. I think Bob has
Speaker 1: been more of a student today and just like sitting
Speaker 1: back listening as I as I as have I, but
Speaker 1: don't Why don't we go in and close down the
Speaker 1: main session. We can go to the member section and
Speaker 1: then I can ask you some of the other questions
Speaker 1: that I have. Are you okay with that, Bobo?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to hear what the latest stuff's going on.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well yeah, why don't we go and do that.
Speaker 1: We'll save that for the members section. So everybody else
Speaker 1: out there listening, I really appreciate you listening. If you
Speaker 1: do want to hear us, continue this conversation with doctor Meldrum,
Speaker 1: or continue a conversation with any of our guests. Every
Speaker 1: single week, you can become a member. Just go to
Speaker 1: Big and Beyond podcast dot com and click the membership
Speaker 1: link and I'll bring you right there and you get
Speaker 1: an extra maybe half hour forty five minutes of conversation
Speaker 1: every single week. And I don't know, reviews are in.
Speaker 1: It seems to be a big hit. People are enjoying it,
Speaker 1: so maybe you're missing out on something. So Jeff, go
Speaker 1: ahead and stick around with us for a moment and Bobo,
Speaker 1: Why don't you close down this episode here?
Speaker 4: All right, folks, Well, thanks for joining us for episode
Speaker 4: two hundred and our special guest today, doctor Jeff Meldrium.
Speaker 4: We appreciate him showing up. We'll see I guess next
Speaker 4: time at the three hundredth episode. Okay, until then, everyone,
Speaker 4: thanks for joining us and keep it squat.
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