Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something.
Speaker 2: Just because my dog.
Speaker 1: Something killed your dog.
Speaker 2: My dog.
Speaker 1: We're flying through the air over the tree. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.
Speaker 1: All I saw was my dog.
Speaker 2: Coming over the fence and he was dead.
Speaker 3: And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
Speaker 3: any cars.
Speaker 1: All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.
Speaker 3: Sat, what are you putting?
Speaker 2: We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Speaker 2: Did you see what it was?
Speaker 3: It was?
Speaker 2: It was standing enough.
Speaker 1: I'm out here looking through the window now and I
Speaker 1: don't see anything.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 1: Jesus Quice, you better.
Speaker 2: Hello, hit thebody out here when I'm out there. I
Speaker 2: thought of a venus about Tex forty nine.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Easy him out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm working right.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 2: You know, there are some people who leave a mark
Speaker 2: so deep, so genuine, that their absence feels almost impossible
Speaker 2: to comprehend. For me, one of those people was doctor
Speaker 2: Jeff Meldrum. I first met Jeff back in March of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, when I was just a fledgling podcaster
Speaker 2: trying to find my footing. He didn't have to say
Speaker 2: yes to being on my show, but he did graciously, humbly,
Speaker 2: and from that moment on he set the tone for
Speaker 2: the kind of person I'd come to know him to be.
Speaker 2: Just a few short years later, I found myself standing
Speaker 2: beside him on stage sharing that moment with Jeff Cliff Barrockman,
Speaker 2: and Michael Freeman at a conference in Idaho. It was
Speaker 2: surreal the same man I'd admired for years was now
Speaker 2: a colleague, a friend, and a mentorstime I saw Jeff
Speaker 2: was back at the end of July at the Smoky
Speaker 2: Mountain big Foot Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We had just
Speaker 2: finished setting up our booths and Jeff was sitting quietly
Speaker 2: off to the side. I carried over the plaster casts
Speaker 2: of footprints from our property, hoping to get his take
Speaker 2: on them, as I always valued his eye for detail.
Speaker 2: We sat and talked for a while about his upcoming retirement,
Speaker 2: about life, and about the things that still fascinated him most.
Speaker 2: He joked about trying to convince his wife Lauren, that
Speaker 2: he needed more space at home to store his ever
Speaker 2: growing collection of casts, since he'd be losing that massive
Speaker 2: lab space at the University. I remember laughing, but I
Speaker 2: also remember feeling that something was different. Jeff still had
Speaker 2: that kindness in his eyes, that thoughtfulness in his words,
Speaker 2: but there was a quiet heaviness there too. Still, as always,
Speaker 2: he was giving with his time, generous with his spirit.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that it would be the life
Speaker 2: last time I'd ever see him. Since his passing, I've
Speaker 2: watched as countless people have paid tribute to him, students, colleagues,
Speaker 2: fellow researchers, and fans from all around the world. I
Speaker 2: didn't rush to do the same, because, to be honest,
Speaker 2: I needed time, time to sit with the loss, time
Speaker 2: to process what Jeff meant to me personally and what
Speaker 2: he meant to this community. So tonight I want to
Speaker 2: honor him in the most fitting way I can think of,
Speaker 2: by going back to where it all began. What you're
Speaker 2: about to hear is our very first conversation, fully remastered
Speaker 2: from that original Sasquatch Odyssey interview we recorded back in
Speaker 2: March of twenty twenty one. This is my way of
Speaker 2: saying thank you, Jeff for your kindness, for your brilliance,
Speaker 2: and for the legacy you've left behind in the study
Speaker 2: of Sasquatch and in the hearts of all of us
Speaker 2: who were lucky enough to know you. Welcome to the show, Doctor.
Speaker 1: Meldrim, Thank you pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure and it's an honor to get to
Speaker 2: speak to you. I wanted to jump right into this
Speaker 2: journey that you've been on basically since the nineties. I
Speaker 2: know before that something got you interested in the subject
Speaker 2: of Sasquatch and sent you on this path. Can you
Speaker 2: walk me and the audience into your first introduction to
Speaker 2: these things? What happened? Did it piqued your interest?
Speaker 1: Certainly? It began back when I was a youngster, about
Speaker 1: ten years old in the fifth grade. As I recall,
Speaker 1: at that time, it just happened that Roger Patterson began
Speaker 1: his public airing of the documentary, which showcased the sixty
Speaker 1: second film clip from Bluff Cree. One of the premiere
Speaker 1: showings was at the Spokane Coliseum, where I lived at
Speaker 1: the time. The kids at school were all a buzz
Speaker 1: about the announcement that appeared in the paper, and I
Speaker 1: had never heard of Bigfoot or Sasquatch before that, but
Speaker 1: was always fascinated in all things prehistoric. Went through the
Speaker 1: dinosaur phase, was fascinated with the questions of human evolution
Speaker 1: even at that age, cave in and so forth. This
Speaker 1: just seemed to embody all the mysteries prehistoric man and
Speaker 1: all that wrapped into one package long story shorts. We
Speaker 1: were there for one of the showings. My dad took
Speaker 1: myself and my younger brother, and I know the rest.
Speaker 1: Just one thing fell into another. I guess the other
Speaker 1: thing that really the course was The next year in
Speaker 1: sixth grade was a unit on primates, and because of
Speaker 1: an open minded, excellent to sixth grade teacher when someone
Speaker 1: equipped that Bickfoot would be a primate, rather than just
Speaker 1: dismiss it as myth or fable, she had us evaluate
Speaker 1: it based on how it was described by suppose that
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses films. We determined that it seemed to have those
Speaker 1: characteristics that we were enumerating to define primates, so she
Speaker 1: included it on a litany of examples of primates that
Speaker 1: we were going to Then, in turn, Doo reports on it. I,
Speaker 1: by the quick draw action of my hand shooting up,
Speaker 1: got picked to do Sasquatch along with another classmate. It
Speaker 1: turns out that our librarian was the niece of John Green,
Speaker 1: and had herself quite an extensive little file with the
Speaker 1: newspaper clippings and magazine articles and a brand's banking new
Speaker 1: copy of John Green's On the Track of the Sasquatch.
Speaker 1: That was my introduction early on was Roger Patterson's book,
Speaker 1: followed by John Greens On the Track of the Sasquatch.
Speaker 1: And then shortly thereafter I got hold of a copy
Speaker 1: of Ivan Sanderson's A Bomb Snowman Legend comes a live
Speaker 1: boy once the fire was lit. Then I went after
Speaker 1: it with a lot of gusto and started my own
Speaker 1: collection of clippings. I was always scouring through other books
Speaker 1: that mentioned things about the Yetti and Bigfoot. Of course,
Speaker 1: I found out there was another Bigfoot in Idaho. Once
Speaker 1: I moved to Idah, we shortly thereafter moved to Boise
Speaker 1: found out about the renegade Indian by the name of
Speaker 1: Bigfoot who was shot by Star Wilkerson down in the
Speaker 1: Awahi Desert. It was a kind of all encompassing obsession
Speaker 1: with the subject matter.
Speaker 2: It definitely sounds like quite the introduction. When did you
Speaker 2: get the opportunity to dive into the footprints and the
Speaker 2: castings and what was your introduction to that.
Speaker 1: Eventually I read Grover Krantz's book A Big Footprints, in
Speaker 1: which footprints and casts figure very prominently. Grover was an
Speaker 1: anatomist and that was where his attention tended to focus
Speaker 1: was on the physical trace of the creature in the
Speaker 1: form of the footprints and footprint casts. Of course, he
Speaker 1: was very involved with the investigation into the Bosberg cripplefoot incident,
Speaker 1: and that was what really tipped the scales for him.
Speaker 1: He was just so impressed by the subtleties of anatomy
Speaker 1: that were evident in that either pathological or traumatized individual
Speaker 1: that he felt it tipped the scale definitely decidedly for
Speaker 1: him by involved in as an academic. It started just
Speaker 1: a little bit before my first real big exposure to
Speaker 1: footprints and casts myself. I was capped to help with
Speaker 1: the evaluation of a piece of video footage that was
Speaker 1: shot down in the California Redwoods and the Jededi Smith
Speaker 1: National Forest, and this became known as the Playmate video.
Speaker 1: It was shot by a documentary crew with a guest
Speaker 1: hostess who had been the Playmate of the Year on
Speaker 1: a previous occasion. It unfortunately got a lot of insinuation
Speaker 1: and so forth the comic relief if you will, as
Speaker 1: a result of that. But it was an interesting piece
Speaker 1: of video footage to kind of peak my curiosity, because
Speaker 1: when I was recruited to analyze it, I thought, all
Speaker 1: this would be a fun exercise to identify the zipper.
Speaker 1: The more I scrutinized it, less I felt I could
Speaker 1: see any kind of red flag that it was not
Speaker 1: the real deal. And there were some really striking parallels
Speaker 1: and convergences, in fact in the shape confirmation of the
Speaker 1: body form with Patty from the Patterson Gimlin film specifically,
Speaker 1: and so that had set the wheels in motion. It
Speaker 1: was just an interesting cascade of coincidences that there are
Speaker 1: such things. On the return from that, we actually went
Speaker 1: and visited the site in northern California and did all
Speaker 1: kinds of on the site forensic measurement and analysis in
Speaker 1: concert with the reviewing and analysis of the film. The
Speaker 1: fellow I was working with, the late Richard Greenwell, formerly
Speaker 1: the International Cryptology Society. Richard handed me a little book
Speaker 1: about Bigfoot of the in the Blues, namely the Blue
Speaker 1: Mountains of eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. That was written
Speaker 1: by Vance Orchard. That was the second stepping stone, because
Speaker 1: that focused on the exploits of Paul Freeman, West Summerlind
Speaker 1: Vance Orchards, and Bill Lowry and other characters in that
Speaker 1: area surrounding Walla, Washington. It was in the course of
Speaker 1: actually writing a review of that book for Richard Greenwell
Speaker 1: for his journal, that I came into direct contact with
Speaker 1: Paul Freeman in West Summerland and these other principal personalities
Speaker 1: in this book. Was there on an occasion had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see some of Freeman in Summerland's casts firsthand.
Speaker 1: Freeman happened to have found some footprints that very morning.
Speaker 1: This is too coincidental for to the odds, but I thought,
Speaker 1: what we got to lose, Let's go out and take
Speaker 1: a look at least, and so we did. And man,
Speaker 1: here was this long line of extremely fresh tracks that
Speaker 1: had been laid down in the hours of the previous
Speaker 1: night or early morning, thirty five forty five clear footprints
Speaker 1: in the mud. It just really bowled me over. As
Speaker 1: a backdrop, my academic profession is teaching human gross anatomy,
Speaker 1: but my research focuses on the evolution of human bipedalism,
Speaker 1: especially those adaptations of the lower extremity, particularly the foot
Speaker 1: With that the analysis of fossil footprints and contemporary human
Speaker 1: and non human primate footprints in order to carry out
Speaker 1: comparative anatomical analyzes of those specimens. I know footprints. I
Speaker 1: think I'm in the position to scrutinize these and know
Speaker 1: what I'm looking at. It was sobering because these were
Speaker 1: very compelling pieces of evidence. I'll leave it there at
Speaker 1: some time for some more questions.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by that because I've heard you talk about
Speaker 2: that in the past, and that these guys had no
Speaker 2: idea that you were coming. Your trip was completely unplanned.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: These footprints were that you got to examine some of
Speaker 2: the questions that I've gotten from folks that listen to
Speaker 2: the show. One of them was talking about the dermal ridges.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about the dermal ridges?
Speaker 1: Doctor Krantz drew attention initially to these, or at least
Speaker 1: publicized it widely. There was actually an account by a
Speaker 1: group from Idaho, a crypto zoology club up at the
Speaker 1: College of Northern Idaho. They had investigated an account of
Speaker 1: footprints that were found there the cast that was made
Speaker 1: showed evidence of dramatoglyphics. They didn't take it much beyond
Speaker 1: just acknowledging. Noting that presence, Doctor Krantz went to great
Speaker 1: lengths to consult with other latent fingerprint examiners, students of
Speaker 1: dramaticglyphics in anthropology, and so forth, and published a couple
Speaker 1: of papers that quite interesting. I had mentioned this because
Speaker 1: some of the footprints that I had received from Paul
Speaker 1: Freeman and West Summerlin showed evidence of dramatoglyphics above and
Speaker 1: beyond the ones that Grover had drawn attention to, and
Speaker 1: I'd mentioned this in the documentary that aired, and a
Speaker 1: latent fingerprint examiner in Texas, officer Jimmy chilcut took note
Speaker 1: and sat up in his chair. He was not only
Speaker 1: a very skilled fingerprint expert and analyst, but he was
Speaker 1: also very interested in the distribution of distinguishing characteristics of
Speaker 1: different ethnic groups of human populations. To better appreciate that
Speaker 1: very and understand it, he had taken it on himself
Speaker 1: to start studying up on actually collecting an extensive collection
Speaker 1: of non human primate traumatoglyphics. He would go and make
Speaker 1: arrangements to go into the zoos. For example, when the
Speaker 1: primates were undergoing their annual veterinary examinations and were anesthetized,
Speaker 1: he would come in and while they were still asleep,
Speaker 1: he would fingerprint their hands and feet. Had quite a collection.
Speaker 1: He contacted me. Eventually came up from Texas to Idaho
Speaker 1: and spent a couple of days in my lab. I
Speaker 1: just turned him loose at first and let him find
Speaker 1: his way without biasing him by pointing any particular things out.
Speaker 1: And pretty soon he calls me into the lab and
Speaker 1: he has all the most pertinent examples laid out on
Speaker 1: the benchtop from the collection. We started to go through them,
Speaker 1: and it was really quite interesting to have his perspective
Speaker 1: on them. Now, it's been a little bit of a
Speaker 1: mixed bag because a couple of the specimens had features
Speaker 1: that were similar to dramaticglyphics. But I think we're all
Speaker 1: convinced now are artifacts of the casting process under certain conditions,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's very hot and dry, the soils are powdery,
Speaker 1: like the dusting logging roads from northern California there back
Speaker 1: in the sixties, when a couple of these specimens, that
Speaker 1: attention has been drawn to by chillcut were made. If
Speaker 1: you pour plaster that has been mixed in hot water
Speaker 1: or warm water, if your two liter bottles been sitting
Speaker 1: out in the sun or whatever, it tends to set
Speaker 1: up very abruptly. It kicks, they call that when it
Speaker 1: sets up well. Especially then on top of that, when
Speaker 1: it hits the very dry, powdery substrate, it wicks water
Speaker 1: away very quickly, and that causes the plaster to kick,
Speaker 1: so you can get some of these weird features. It's
Speaker 1: like people I've probably seen something very similar. If they
Speaker 1: make pancakes on a good hot grip and you pour
Speaker 1: that batter, it cooks very rapidly. But the batter that
Speaker 1: you continue pouring flows over the top of that cooked
Speaker 1: edge and makes another cooked hedge and another, and you
Speaker 1: flip the pancake and it has these concentric rings around
Speaker 1: the outside. Everyone's seen this at some time or another.
Speaker 1: That's the same principle in a way, the same effect,
Speaker 1: but a different principle. The principle here is the water
Speaker 1: sucked out and the plaster kicks, and then the more
Speaker 1: fluid plaster flows over and hits that substrate that dust
Speaker 1: and kicks again. Point being, there are some examples that
Speaker 1: are simply artifact. But to dismiss all of them as artifact,
Speaker 1: I think is missing the boat is throwing the baby
Speaker 1: out the bath water, because we have some very interesting
Speaker 1: ones that were poured under the opposite conditions, very wet
Speaker 1: saturated cold soils that were wet clay shoulders of a
Speaker 1: road right underneath a melting snow bank. So the ridge
Speaker 1: detail there is very real.
Speaker 2: And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to sea. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these messages.
Speaker 1: Plus I've observed it in the field the tracks that
Speaker 1: I examined in ninety six, this long line of tracks
Speaker 1: thirty five to forty five I nailed down and there
Speaker 1: was still ridge detail visible in some of the tracks,
Speaker 1: but by the time we got back had been drizzling
Speaker 1: rain off and on all afternoon. The ridge detail under
Speaker 1: those conditions is very transient. The weather and the gravity
Speaker 1: literally pulls the detail out, flattens it out, if not
Speaker 1: washes it out. So by the time we actually made
Speaker 1: some plaster casts, some representative casts, those details had been obliterated.
Speaker 1: We are no no longer visible. People say, why don't
Speaker 1: you have repeat appearances where you can identify based on
Speaker 1: the No. Unfortunately, because they are not extensive, they're very rare.
Speaker 1: They're not present in a lot of examples. We don't
Speaker 1: have repeat appearances of individuals that show the same areas
Speaker 1: preserving ridge details. So you could look at that spot
Speaker 1: and see it and be satisfied with it or identified
Speaker 1: it as the same individual. We can recognize individuals in
Speaker 1: the basis of morphology. We've got ample, numerous repeat appearances
Speaker 1: of individuals where a given geographical area, being that there
Speaker 1: are very few sasquatch, if you find footprints, the odds
Speaker 1: of those footprints being from one of those very few
Speaker 1: number of individuals is very high. You're likely to find
Speaker 1: footprints of those individuals. Again, that's the case, especially in
Speaker 1: somewhere like the Blues, where there's been an inordinate number
Speaker 1: of footprint casts made because of the conditions that prevail
Speaker 1: the many roads that are undeveloped, that are just simply
Speaker 1: bladed codes. In the summertime, they're dusty, and those fall
Speaker 1: and spring their muddy and clayey fine dust turns into
Speaker 1: a really nice clay that picks up fine details. We've
Speaker 1: got lots of examples of repeat appearances of recognizable individuals
Speaker 1: in that sample from the Blues of Washington.
Speaker 2: I think you touched on something that's key is the
Speaker 2: actual population of these things across North America. Do you
Speaker 2: have a best estimate on what you think the actual
Speaker 2: population that's currently in North America would be.
Speaker 1: I do Ballpark anyway, or at least the western part
Speaker 1: of North America that I'm more familiar with. And it's
Speaker 1: based on a number of inferences. It's layered cake of explanation. Basically,
Speaker 1: it rests upon factors of their natural history and also
Speaker 1: factors of the biogeography. We have hints about their behavior
Speaker 1: and natural history. For example, most of the sightings and
Speaker 1: footprints or solitary individuals. So it's most like I believe,
Speaker 1: I'm convinced I've concluded that they're solitary. They might most
Speaker 1: closely represent or approximate something like an orangutan. When you
Speaker 1: look at the great apes. Every species of great apes
Speaker 1: has a different social structure. No two are alike. So
Speaker 1: the orangutan, rather than say a guerrilla, has a harem.
Speaker 1: A dominant male guerrilla controls access to a group of
Speaker 1: females by directly defending his group, whereas an orangutan male
Speaker 1: controls access to females in his neighborhood. By controlling the
Speaker 1: real estate, he broadcasts his presence, his dominance, and essentially,
Speaker 1: quote unquote defends a territory, or at least advertises his
Speaker 1: presence in the territory. When the females are receptive, they
Speaker 1: come looking for him for companionship. That's more likely, I think,
Speaker 1: and it fits the anecdotal evidence too of visual encounters
Speaker 1: and behavior of solitary individuals. We I have also some
Speaker 1: indirect evidence that points to a large home range, probably
Speaker 1: on the order of a thousand square miles, which isn't exceptional.
Speaker 1: There are grizzly bears, for example, a male grizzly bear
Speaker 1: can easily defend or a patrol an area of that size.
Speaker 1: So then when you take other clues, like we know
Speaker 1: that there's quite an alignment with the bioclimatic factors associated
Speaker 1: with sasquatch reports as well as with black bear distribution.
Speaker 1: There's been a paper published that kind of shows that
Speaker 1: remarkable parallel. So if we use that kind of as
Speaker 1: a rule of thumb and look at the areas where
Speaker 1: black bear survive are found, the types of habitat variables
Speaker 1: they need they're a large omnivore. Sasquatch presumably the large
Speaker 1: omnivore based on reports of the food items that they
Speaker 1: take and heat about everything that isn't nailed down, it
Speaker 1: seems with all that taken together, let's just take Idaho,
Speaker 1: for example, how many home ranges of a dominant male
Speaker 1: could you fit? How many thousand square mile plots would
Speaker 1: fit in the areas of Idaho that support bear populations.
Speaker 1: Others such as John Green, was one of the first
Speaker 1: to point out a remarkable correlation between precipitation levels and
Speaker 1: sasquatch reports that agrees well with bear as well. Again,
Speaker 1: you have to have a habitat that's producing enough greens
Speaker 1: forbes and so forth, as well as fruits and other
Speaker 1: small mammals, and while not that they can feed upon.
Speaker 1: You do that for Idaho, and you come up with
Speaker 1: about twelve or fifteen plots, just depending on how you
Speaker 1: slice it. There's a lot of heterogeneity in the topography
Speaker 1: and in the patchiness of the forest, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: each of those plots then represents you know, let's just
Speaker 1: say five for easy maths, five times, let's say fifteen.
Speaker 1: It is seven five Sasquatch. A lot of people push
Speaker 1: back to say, oh, that can't be, that's not enough.
Speaker 1: Let's just double it. Then still at one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Then compare that to thirty five thousand black bear in Idaho.
Speaker 1: When you consider that thirty five thousand versus one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty or even three hundred will make it so
Speaker 1: you can even compare orders of magnitude more easily. You
Speaker 1: start to realize how rare and how elusive these animals
Speaker 1: really are, why we don't find bodies and bones, and
Speaker 1: why encounters are so infrequent, The credible ones, the substantial ones.
Speaker 1: We have a proliferation of hopeful accounts of encounter, discoveries
Speaker 1: of footprints, but the credible, solid, substantial ones are much
Speaker 1: rarer and fewer between. So if you were to repeat
Speaker 1: that process across the other states, it's surprising even the
Speaker 1: state like Washington, half the state is staged for us
Speaker 1: essentially like Idaho, like southern Idaho, and so until you
Speaker 1: get to the cascade, so really the area is further
Speaker 1: restricted in Washington and Oregon. In northern California, go up
Speaker 1: to British Columbia. British Columbia has one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: thousand black bear estimated, So there's a lot more terrain.
Speaker 1: Then you look at black bear distribution. If you look
Speaker 1: at a map black bear range across North America, go
Speaker 1: across the boreal forest down around the Great Lakes, down
Speaker 1: New England and backside of Appalatia down hook up into
Speaker 1: the four corners of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma. In that
Speaker 1: area there you've got it. Now. Of course back east though,
Speaker 1: if you start looking at the black bear numbers as
Speaker 1: well as their distribution, you may have black bear distribution
Speaker 1: through all those areas I talked about. I'll get it wrong,
Speaker 1: and some will get me on this because I can't
Speaker 1: keep them straight. I have to always look them up.
Speaker 1: But they're some of those southern states. South Carolina that
Speaker 1: probably has about five thousand black bear, not thirty five thousand,
Speaker 1: just five thousand. So that says even though there's some habitat,
Speaker 1: it's rather restricted and it doesn't support a large population.
Speaker 1: There's a much larger human population development. There's fewer large
Speaker 1: tracts of uninterrorrupted, undisturbed habitat. So you put that all together,
Speaker 1: what you come up with a couple of thousand, several
Speaker 1: thousand in Western United States and Canada, I would put
Speaker 1: it at two or three thousand. Then across Boreal Canada
Speaker 1: and down into eastern United States, I would put it
Speaker 1: at maybe another thousand.
Speaker 2: It's always fascinating to me that the naysayers, the folks
Speaker 2: that don't think these things exist, that's the go to.
Speaker 2: There's never been a body, There's never been real evidence
Speaker 2: there has been live in North Carolina. We were hiking
Speaker 2: a couple of winters ago and ran into a saw
Speaker 2: and two cubs on our property. It's not a common occurrence,
Speaker 2: but that they're here. I go back to the Patterson
Speaker 2: Gimlin film. I know you saw that as a child,
Speaker 2: and you've had an opportunity now as an academic to
Speaker 2: look back at that film. What do you think about
Speaker 2: the Patterson Gimblin film. Do you think it stood the
Speaker 2: test of time?
Speaker 4: I do, Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: I've said it before. I'm as confident as I could
Speaker 1: be short of having stood there on the sandbar with
Speaker 1: those fellows and observed it firsthand. If I had just
Speaker 1: the footprints to go by, I would be convinced in
Speaker 1: the credibility of that claim. To have the footprints the
Speaker 1: film and all the anatomy that goes with it, and
Speaker 1: the kinematics of locomotion. One of the things that most
Speaker 1: impressive to me, a theme that I have emphasized in
Speaker 1: concert with the fiftieth anniversary and since, is the fact
Speaker 1: that you have to continually remind yourself. This was shot
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, and based on what was conventional
Speaker 1: wisdom and anthropology in nineteen sixty seven, that creature couldn't exist.
Speaker 1: There was no accommodation, There was no context or place
Speaker 1: to allow for the existence of another bipedal hominin. That
Speaker 1: was counter to the accepted paradigm, the notion that the
Speaker 1: hominin niche was so particular and specific there could be
Speaker 1: only one species in it for the old ecological axiom
Speaker 1: one niche, one species, and so we were it. We
Speaker 1: were the principal species in that niche. So now we
Speaker 1: know that that was hogwash, That was ridiculous, very egocentric
Speaker 1: even to consider that. Really, we know that the hominin
Speaker 1: family tree was very bushy, it wasn't very limited and
Speaker 1: restricted in membership, and that many of those branches on
Speaker 1: that bushy tree have persisted alongside us until more recently
Speaker 1: than anyone would have guessed fifty years ago. The story
Speaker 1: that I repeat often it is my favorite example of
Speaker 1: that context was John Napier, who was one of the
Speaker 1: first to view the film from the scientific community in
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian. He was impressed enough to write a book
Speaker 1: about the subject matter. Although on the topic of them
Speaker 1: film he came down on the naysayer side, but he
Speaker 1: had troubled defending that position and justified it ultimately by
Speaker 1: saying that when he looked at the figure, he said,
Speaker 1: from the waist up, it looked like an ape, but
Speaker 1: from the waist down it looks like a human. He said,
Speaker 1: it's inconceivable that such a hybrid would exist in nature,
Speaker 1: so it must be false. That book came out in
Speaker 1: seventy two. Shortly thereafter, within the few years in the
Speaker 1: mid to late seventies, more fossils of Austrolopithecus afarensus were discovered,
Speaker 1: particularly the postcrania, the pelvis, the knee, the ankle, and
Speaker 1: so forth. It was very clear that they had a
Speaker 1: lower extremity that showed many of the hallmarks of modern
Speaker 1: human bipedalism. But in a little, small package. How is
Speaker 1: it that little package described to the popular press. From
Speaker 1: the waist up, it looks just like a chimpanzee. From
Speaker 1: the waist down, it looks like a short, hairy human.
Speaker 1: Isn't it curious how nature has combined expect a combination
Speaker 1: of traits. That was the lynch pin. That was the
Speaker 1: sticking point for Napier in accepting the credibility of the film.
Speaker 1: That was the only thing he could settle on to
Speaker 1: justify his irrational premise because it was because it was
Speaker 1: based on a false premise that there could be only
Speaker 1: one species, and the experts at the time tried to
Speaker 1: justify their rejection of the film by saying some really
Speaker 1: funky things, some really silly things about the way the
Speaker 1: creature walked, if they had hair on its breasts, etc.
Speaker 1: That were just in twenty twenty hindsight, are embarrassing that
Speaker 1: these experts did not understand the most fundamental principles about
Speaker 1: anatomy and locomotion.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder if Napier had been introduced to Lucy,
Speaker 2: maybe he might have had a different opinion on the
Speaker 2: film exactly.
Speaker 1: That's usually my follow up. What if he'd waited just
Speaker 1: a couple of years, or if the writing the book
Speaker 1: took a couple of years longer, in other words, and
Speaker 1: it overlapped the discovery of Lucy. Would he have had
Speaker 1: a different opinion of the film when you've spoken out
Speaker 1: more positively about it? As it was, he came down
Speaker 1: positively on the potential existence of sasquatch based on the footprints.
Speaker 1: It was the footprint evidence that really drove it home
Speaker 1: for him. But he got a few points wrong in
Speaker 1: that arena as well. But I think that was just
Speaker 1: because he was working with a very limited sample, and
Speaker 1: therefore differences between individuals seemed more start more distinctive than
Speaker 1: they really were. With three hundred footprint casts instead of
Speaker 1: a dozen, you can see the continuum of variation amongst
Speaker 1: the population.
Speaker 2: I interviewed so many people, and we've had conversations about
Speaker 2: the evidence. I think the Patterson Gimlin film did a
Speaker 2: couple of things. It clearly put the subject on the map,
Speaker 2: but it's such such a high bar for anything that
Speaker 2: came after. We've got blob squatch or we've got footprint evidence. Sure,
Speaker 2: but that's just not enough. I just don't know where
Speaker 2: we go from here. It's so frustrated to me that
Speaker 2: without the body or without the absolute proof you do
Speaker 2: have hoaxers. That leads me into my next question. I
Speaker 2: know you've seen enough tracks and you've seen enough cast
Speaker 2: what do you look for and how do you go
Speaker 2: about proving that a track is in fact from a
Speaker 2: sasquatch or a hoax.
Speaker 1: The hoaxes seem to be few and far between. There
Speaker 1: have been some dramatic example. There was a flap of
Speaker 1: hoaxers who were taking advantage of the droughts and the
Speaker 1: drawn down reservoirs because they seem to like those mudflats
Speaker 1: that were easy to put on stompers and go trapsing
Speaker 1: across large tracts of land. We had one here in
Speaker 1: Idaho as well, the ones that cliffs examined down in
Speaker 1: Oregon that Derek Randall's and a few other people were
Speaker 1: involved with. Like I said, those are few and far between,
Speaker 1: but by far the more common distraction that I have
Speaker 1: to sit through. The chaff thats sit through are just misidentifications.
Speaker 1: A lot of those are human. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who get caught up and they like to
Speaker 1: go out to places where modern day humans walk around
Speaker 1: barefoot in the mud. For whatever reason, it feels nice
Speaker 1: and cool, squishing up between your toes or whatever. Even
Speaker 1: in sometimes inexplicable areas where you might not walk barefoot,
Speaker 1: there are people who do. And there are some hallmarks
Speaker 1: of the human foot, namely the arch, the differentiated ball,
Speaker 1: the proportions of the toepads, the narrow heel breadth to
Speaker 1: length ratios that are just unmistakable. There are signs of
Speaker 1: shoe wear that are unmistakable in the compressed toe positions.
Speaker 1: Especially the little toe is subject to getting squished in
Speaker 1: and sometimes turned completely on its side, even when the shoes.
Speaker 1: Often walking around barefoot and mud still shows up. It's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward to point those out. I tell people circumstances
Speaker 1: taking into account are considered. If it walks like a
Speaker 1: duck and e quects like a duck, it's a duck.
Speaker 1: If I can't differentiate this from a human track, I
Speaker 1: don't care. If you found it on the moon, it
Speaker 1: still would be a human footprint based on the criteria.
Speaker 1: Unless we have juvenile sasquatch, they're going through a phase
Speaker 1: where they mimic human footprints. I guess we could come
Speaker 1: the conspiracy to explain that, but I can't envision any
Speaker 1: natural process by which a sasquatch would go from. And
Speaker 1: we have little sasquatch feet, baby infants, juveniles, they look
Speaker 1: like little broad flat footed displayed toed sasquatch. Why they
Speaker 1: would go from that to a holy human looking appearance
Speaker 1: and then broadened back out and flatten the arch again
Speaker 1: as adults. Just doesn't make any sense to me. So
Speaker 1: that's the big thing.
Speaker 2: And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these messages.
Speaker 1: Then right on its heels. As you talked about blob squatches,
Speaker 1: we should come up with another term for ambiguous footprints,
Speaker 1: because people see tracks that are old, or they're even tracks,
Speaker 1: see features that resemble a footprint. I get lots of
Speaker 1: images of erosional artifacts that there's no sign of an impression,
Speaker 1: no sign of compression of soil or compression of those
Speaker 1: pebbles and stones beneath the foot, but rather they're just
Speaker 1: washed out. Sometimes it's just an outline from a pile
Speaker 1: of pine needles that get washed into a ridge and
Speaker 1: that strikes a somewhat oval looking appearance in a bare
Speaker 1: spot of dirt and becomes a footprint. And then of
Speaker 1: course the common animal track that is sometimes mistaken for
Speaker 1: sasquashed because of its distinctive toepads. Is a bear, the
Speaker 1: hind foot does have an elongated heel pad usually comes
Speaker 1: to a taper unless it's a very big bear, and
Speaker 1: fills out and rounds out as the weight gets pushed
Speaker 1: down on that heel bone the calcaneus. So basically in
Speaker 1: enumerting those things, I've pointed out some of the distinctions.
Speaker 1: When we talk about a sasquatch footprint, if it's an adult,
Speaker 1: it's a big, broad, flat footed, flexible mid footed print
Speaker 1: with large toe relative size of the toes and toepads
Speaker 1: that tend to be a little more similar in size.
Speaker 1: Not al was not completely and Grover drew attention to
Speaker 1: where there's a little bit of variation in that. But
Speaker 1: compared to a human where the lateral toes are like
Speaker 1: little grapes, compared to this big plum of a big toepad,
Speaker 1: the distinction is quite visible and can be appreciated. There
Speaker 1: should be a big, broad heel. Sometimes one of the
Speaker 1: tells of a fake foot is an existing footprint might
Speaker 1: be extended and flared to make it broader across the forefoot,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they inexplicably leave this little narrow heel. It
Speaker 1: makes it look like a swim fin, and that's obviously
Speaker 1: very un likely unnatural. It's the big broad heel pad
Speaker 1: that is one of the principal weight distributors of this
Speaker 1: massive animal, an animal that say, given patty size that
Speaker 1: could weigh anywhere from seven hundred eight hundred pounds, a
Speaker 1: big eight and a half foot in male is going
Speaker 1: to be twelve hundred pounds the side of a moose.
Speaker 2: What is your opinion on the DNA evidence, doctor Meldrum.
Speaker 2: There's been some studies out there, There's been tons of
Speaker 2: DNA evidence, there's environmental DNA. Is DNA evidence enough? What's
Speaker 2: your opinion on what's been collected? The samples coming back
Speaker 2: with mixed reviews.
Speaker 1: Whether it's enough or not will be a bit of
Speaker 1: a test case, because to my knowledge, there is no
Speaker 1: precedent for acknowledging a novel species, not differentiating between two
Speaker 1: closely related species for which skulls and skins exist in
Speaker 1: museum drawers, but a novel species on the basis of
Speaker 1: DNA alone. Now there's more and more debate that we
Speaker 1: should knowledge the existence of a potential novel species on
Speaker 1: that basis rather than requiring the lethal collection of a specimen,
Speaker 1: especially when it's a rare and endangered species, where the
Speaker 1: impact of the collection of a specimen itself could be catastrophic.
Speaker 1: That said, to my knowledge, there is no DNA evidence yet,
Speaker 1: at least not recognized or useful claims to the contrary. Notwithstanding,
Speaker 1: I don't think those claims have any merit. The situation
Speaker 1: I think that we're in is the DNA of the
Speaker 1: squatch is probably very similar to US. I don't put
Speaker 1: any stock in the claims of hybridization. I think there
Speaker 1: have been good reviews written of that data and that
Speaker 1: evidence that refuted resoundingly. The thing that we're up against
Speaker 1: is a creature that is probably very closely related to us,
Speaker 1: and therefore may only differ in a percentage point or
Speaker 1: less in the total sequence. As such, to make it
Speaker 1: short and sweet, this makes the example I think very
Speaker 1: graspable for your listeners, and that is, imagine you had
Speaker 1: an advance calendar, and a most an advanced calendar have
Speaker 1: twenty four windows leading up to Christmas. You open up
Speaker 1: the little door or a little window pane, and you
Speaker 1: get the treat right. Well, imagine you had an advanced
Speaker 1: calendar that had one hundred windows. So of course that
Speaker 1: one percent difference isn't necessarily going to be behind just
Speaker 1: one window. But for the sake of our illustration, we
Speaker 1: could make thousand windows and spread that one percent into
Speaker 1: ten different windows. Let's just make it simple. One hundred
Speaker 1: windows and behind one window is the golden ticket. There's
Speaker 1: the sequence that has the marker that distinguishes humans from sasquatch.
Speaker 1: In most of the studies that have been done so
Speaker 1: far that haven't had other unfortunate complications to cloud their credibility,
Speaker 1: they've been rather superficial. Imagine that you have a study
Speaker 1: with funding that only permits you to open up ten doors,
Speaker 1: ten of the hundred. So what are the odds that
Speaker 1: the ten that you open are going to include the
Speaker 1: one door out of one hundred that as that marker
Speaker 1: in it? And if you don't find that marker, what's
Speaker 1: the conclusion you're going to draw Everything you look at
Speaker 1: will be exactly identical to modern human So we've had
Speaker 1: two possibilities presented. It's either contaminated through mishandling, or it
Speaker 1: has been just misidentified that it's just simply a human
Speaker 1: hair for example, or whatever. Tissue. The third possibility is
Speaker 1: what I've just described, that you just haven't tested enough
Speaker 1: to come to a definitive conclusion one way or the other.
Speaker 1: So the jury should still be out rather than pronounced that, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just human. So that's more unfortunately where I think
Speaker 1: we're at. So it means we need to have good samples,
Speaker 1: but we also need to have the wherewithal the funding
Speaker 1: and someone who's willing to put in the time. I'm
Speaker 1: an effort because it will become a more involved process
Speaker 1: to do a genomic test that is exhaustive enough to
Speaker 1: be sure that you have found those particular markers.
Speaker 2: It was a brilliant analogy because I hear that often
Speaker 2: from people there's DNA that should prove it. It's not
Speaker 2: that simple if you follow the scientific method. That's the
Speaker 2: reason that I love what you do so much is
Speaker 2: because you look at it from that lens. Because people
Speaker 2: get frustrated, and I understand the frustration. But there is
Speaker 2: a process that has to be followed. It's not just
Speaker 2: as simple as I think it exists.
Speaker 1: Therefire does to make it very clear, because sometimes I
Speaker 1: get to this criticism leveled at me that I'm trying
Speaker 1: to convince people on the basis of the evidence at
Speaker 1: hand that Bigfoot exists. It may appear to some people
Speaker 1: who don't understand, as you mentioned a scientific method as
Speaker 1: it is, that I'm trying to do that. But what
Speaker 1: I'm doing is I'm simply just trying to make a
Speaker 1: case that, hey, this is interesting evidence that points to
Speaker 1: a possible hypothesis that needs further testing. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to convince. I understand fully that it requires at
Speaker 1: the very least DNA sequence, a novel sequence, or perhaps
Speaker 1: at least part of a body or a specimen.
Speaker 2: I want to shift gears. Your time is valuable, and
Speaker 2: I want to get these questions in. I want to
Speaker 2: go back to when you got into this subject back
Speaker 2: in the nineties, your expectations going into this. I want
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about any of the backlash
Speaker 2: from the academic community. What has been the repercussions, if any,
Speaker 2: for your pursuit of this through your academic career.
Speaker 1: I was idealistic enough to think that if one comported
Speaker 1: one's self as a scientist and pursuit a question objectively,
Speaker 1: that it would be whereby acknowledged that a worthy undertaking.
Speaker 1: Boy was I surprised by what actually transpired. The community
Speaker 1: of scientists is plagued by the foibles of human nature,
Speaker 1: just like any other community of people. Politics, personalities, prejudice,
Speaker 1: and preconception are rampants, and there are some people who
Speaker 1: seem to thrive on trying to denigrate or put down
Speaker 1: other people. Or maybe they're more genuine or sincere in
Speaker 1: their efforts. They are laboring under preconceptions or existing paradigms
Speaker 1: that don't allow for As I alluded to with the
Speaker 1: Patterson Gimblet film, I've had people say they can't exist,
Speaker 1: therefore they don't exist, and it doesn't matter what evidence
Speaker 1: you think you have. No one and I say that again,
Speaker 1: no one can defend the idea that they can't exist,
Speaker 1: that there isn't a context for them, like something like
Speaker 1: the single species hypothesis that proposes only one species of
Speaker 1: hominin can exist at a time. That's bocum. Now that
Speaker 1: can be thrown out, So you can't defend that. So
Speaker 1: we're left with the second side of that coin, the
Speaker 1: other side of that coin, which is what's the probability
Speaker 1: they do exist? They certainly can, but is the evidence
Speaker 1: persuasive that they do is the context sufficient for them
Speaker 1: both scientifically, theoretically and pragmatically. Under that umbrella comes the questions,
Speaker 1: the objections about the bodies, about reproducing populations sufficient numbers
Speaker 1: that a viable population can they elude our search if
Speaker 1: you're honest with yourself about it, and you're informed about
Speaker 1: the circumstances and the context, and you acknowledge what evidence
Speaker 1: we have that points to, for example, our discussion of
Speaker 1: the population size. When you think about how rare and
Speaker 1: elusive even black bear are, relatively speaking, and yet there
Speaker 1: are hundreds of black bear for everyone's sasquatch. Potentially if
Speaker 1: my inference, my inference model is anywhere in the ballpark
Speaker 1: as far as the absolute numbers, and I think that's
Speaker 1: reasonable given the other aspects. We can also couch our
Speaker 1: conversations or our inferences in terms of the bracketing variability
Speaker 1: evident in the known grade apes, while acknowledging that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be taken as an entirely limiting bracket because our knowledge
Speaker 1: of apes is restricted to just a handful of species
Speaker 1: that are themselves just the tip of the iceberg of
Speaker 1: the variation that existed through the Miocene into the Plioceine
Speaker 1: for grade apes, hundreds of species with all types of
Speaker 1: locomotive adaptations and dietary variation and habitat preferences, of which
Speaker 1: these existing species are just relic populations in the tropical
Speaker 1: refugea even there, as I said earlier about their social structure,
Speaker 1: every living species of grade ape has a different social
Speaker 1: structure than the other just about significant. So anyway, when
Speaker 1: you take all those factors into account, a lot of
Speaker 1: these objections pale. They melt away in the light of
Speaker 1: some informed conversation.
Speaker 2: Just a couple of questions from some of the fans
Speaker 2: of the show. We talked a little bit about the
Speaker 2: academic community, But the question from the listener is are
Speaker 2: there any other academic colleagues that are willing to step
Speaker 2: up and support this type of research, particularly after the
Speaker 2: passing of doctor John Bender. Nigel.
Speaker 1: Certainly there are, and I have conversations dialogue with people academics,
Speaker 1: not just anthropologists or anatomists, but to other persuasions other
Speaker 1: disciplines of science on a regular basis, as well as
Speaker 1: agency personnel, fish and wildlife and forest service. Behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: none of them are really in a position to undertake
Speaker 1: things on a more pragmatic and visible public basis, but
Speaker 1: some of them do support the effort into terms of
Speaker 1: reviewing manuscripts, my online journal, my referee Journal, the RelA
Speaker 1: Commoid Inquiry. I'm just in the process of reorganizing the
Speaker 1: editorial board because we've had a couple of passings like
Speaker 1: doctor bindernegl you mentioned, but also because of competing those
Speaker 1: that have been there. We're in our tenth year now,
Speaker 1: so they've served for a decade. So I'm rearranging, refreshing things,
Speaker 1: and giving other people a chance to participate in helping
Speaker 1: with reviews, recruitment, editorials and commentaries they work with. Doctor
Speaker 1: George Chalier is an honorary member of the editorial Board
Speaker 1: of the journal and lends his support in that way
Speaker 1: by association. And of course my book carries the endorsement
Speaker 1: of doctor Jane Goodall on the cover. She's been supportive
Speaker 1: in her own way whenever the opportunity presents itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are other academics that are quite interesting, and there's
Speaker 1: a new generation. That's what's exciting is I've had some
Speaker 1: exams recently of fresh PhDs who expressed their absolute enthusiasm
Speaker 1: and interest for this subject. But because the old guards
Speaker 1: the shift of paradigms is a glacial process. Thomas Kuhne
Speaker 1: actually said, who is the one who coined the term
Speaker 1: paradigm shifts? Said, sometimes it takes the entire generation for
Speaker 1: the old guard to pass, literally die off, in order
Speaker 1: to clear the way for new ideas to take root
Speaker 1: and flourish.
Speaker 2: And stay tuned for more sasquat chatsy. We'll be right
Speaker 2: back after these messages.
Speaker 1: So I suspect it's another decade before this new generation
Speaker 1: has tenure, because right now it's the old guard still,
Speaker 1: even though there have been changes, the shadow, the mindset,
Speaker 1: the early training of these people. They're the department chairmen
Speaker 1: and college deans. They're the diety presidents and the symposia organizers.
Speaker 1: They're the gatekeepers. I experience it when I submit an
Speaker 1: abstract for the professional meetings on this topic. It has
Speaker 1: about a fifty to fifty chance. So far is the
Speaker 1: track record. A lot of it is simply the luck
Speaker 1: of the draw as to who the two people who
Speaker 1: were tapped. So two people, essentially, two people wield the
Speaker 1: power of whether you can discuss your subject matter at
Speaker 1: a national meeting or not. There's something wrong with that system.
Speaker 1: Isn't there absolute, especially when there's no appeals process.
Speaker 2: But it is great to hear from somebody like you
Speaker 2: that there are these fresh faces coming up that are
Speaker 2: interested and are willing to pick up the torch and
Speaker 2: continue the journey. That's great to hear. One of the
Speaker 2: other questions was when and what was your aha moment
Speaker 2: that a living being made the tracks that you were
Speaker 2: either looking at or examining.
Speaker 1: When I was there in southeastern Washington nineteen ninety looking
Speaker 1: at these tracks that Paul Fraeman to take me out
Speaker 1: shown me, I'm taking it all in. I'm taking note
Speaker 1: of all the dynamic features. I'm taking note of the
Speaker 1: pressure ridges, the tension cracks from compression, the toes slipping,
Speaker 1: the toes gripping, dramaticglyphics. It did. It just hit me.
Speaker 1: There was that realization that a sasquatch actually walked by
Speaker 1: here just literally hours ago and the wee hours of
Speaker 1: the morning, probably late on the previous night. Literally the hair
Speaker 1: stood up on the back of my neck. Because it's
Speaker 1: an interesting sensation. I've had something similar in an academic
Speaker 1: context limited to that, but like, for example, the first
Speaker 1: time when I was a brand new gradu student going
Speaker 1: out to Long Island to start my graduate program in
Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History was holding their Ancestors exhibit,
Speaker 1: where they had brought for the first time in many instances,
Speaker 1: all these original hominin fossils from all over the world,
Speaker 1: and they were on exhibit. You set there, look looking
Speaker 1: through this bulletproof plexiglass case at this skull into these
Speaker 1: empty orbits, and realized that was a creature alive three
Speaker 1: million years ago that was on our family tree. It
Speaker 1: could have been a direct ancestor for all we know that.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting sensation when that realization. You're not just
Speaker 1: looking at a rock or an interesting bone, but you're
Speaker 1: looking at the fossil of a hominin now extinct. The
Speaker 1: only other time I had that experience, I think, was
Speaker 1: when the first time I went panting for gold in
Speaker 1: the Sacramento Valley in the mountains outside of Sacramento. And
Speaker 1: when you swirl that around in that little nugget, that
Speaker 1: little fleck of gold glints in the light, it's uha.
Speaker 1: It really does bite you.
Speaker 2: I think Sasquatch has that effect on just about everybody
Speaker 2: who has some sort of an encounter, whether it's a
Speaker 2: vocalization or an actual sighting, it just takes hold. It
Speaker 2: becomes almost an obsession. Last question, I'm in a lot
Speaker 2: of Facebook groups. Obviously I get in these groups. I
Speaker 2: talk to people about their encounters and I have them
Speaker 2: on the show. And one of the big things in
Speaker 2: most of these groups is it whether you're pro Kiel
Speaker 2: or no Kiel. Do you have an opinion on some
Speaker 2: of these groups that are out there to prove the
Speaker 2: existence by taking a specimen.
Speaker 1: I must admit that when I undertook the prospect of
Speaker 1: field research with a Vengeance and I hooked up with
Speaker 1: a he was actually an MD, but he had a
Speaker 1: financial interest in a game reserve in South Africa, so
Speaker 1: he was very experienced outdoorsman big game hunter, but also
Speaker 1: a conservationist and exotic animal breeder, importer, exporter. We started
Speaker 1: off with the intent of the collecting the specimen by
Speaker 1: whatever means practical. It was only after a lot of
Speaker 1: mental raffling with my self ethics questions. Plus there was
Speaker 1: just the pragmatic aspect of if I was really serious
Speaker 1: about doing this and I had any funding that was
Speaker 1: channeled through the university. All my protocols and methods in
Speaker 1: the field had to be approved by Animal Welfare Committee
Speaker 1: a protocol to shoot a sasquat. If they even overlooked
Speaker 1: the subject matter, it would not have gotten past muster
Speaker 1: with the committee. But I came to a change of heart.
Speaker 1: At one point I had conversations with doctor Krantz, and
Speaker 1: I had seen his utterances on the subject and others,
Speaker 1: not just him. It's a funny story, but literally what
Speaker 1: happened or where it came to a head, it's not
Speaker 1: the thing. But I had taken the kids to see
Speaker 1: the Disney Tarzan movie, and if you're familiar with that movie,
Speaker 1: there's two very diametrically opposite characters. There's Clayton, who shoots
Speaker 1: at everything that's moving, and of course he's motivated purely
Speaker 1: out of profit and so forth and personal gain where
Speaker 1: and the opposite was the professor, who was willing in
Speaker 1: the end to give up his entire career and his
Speaker 1: whole life in fact, to stay there and study these
Speaker 1: majestic animals in their natural health habitat. And this little
Speaker 1: imp was sitting on my shoulder and pose the question, Jeff,
Speaker 1: which of these two are you? So I didn't take
Speaker 1: a lot of soul searching. But it was the nexus
Speaker 1: point I guess in my own mental struggles, and I
Speaker 1: turned one hundred and eighty degrees and thought, what is
Speaker 1: the motivation? Why am I so determined to do this?
Speaker 1: And I couldn't justify it. And so from that point on,
Speaker 1: the strategy was to try to get tissue or DNA
Speaker 1: that we could put this question of recognizing a new
Speaker 1: species on the basis of DNA to the test.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much for that honest answer, Doc. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming on the show and answering all
Speaker 2: my questions tonight. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: My pleasure.
Speaker 1: All right, you have a good.
Speaker 4: They say you don't have to go home, but you
Speaker 4: can't stay.
Speaker 3: Step step step chid this child, that child, everything came
Speaker 3: right back, pride back, joy for me, joy staying right,
Speaker 3: you come it right away. Still still stays ss st
Speaker 3: st stusts fact, do not, do't, don't talk about the thesis.
Speaker 3: Still stills us stisst us thess