Speaker 1: Greetings everyone, it's map pro It here. Obviously, we're all
Speaker 1: reeling and very heartbroken at the news of the loss
Speaker 1: of doctor Jeff Meldrim, who was a huge influence on
Speaker 1: all of us but a dear friend to both Cliff
Speaker 1: and Bobo. Usually on Fridays we re release old episodes
Speaker 1: that we call classics, but this morning I decided that
Speaker 1: I think it would be better to release this bonus
Speaker 1: episode that we recorded with Jeff Meldrim back in March
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three. So this was originally recorded then
Speaker 1: after we recorded what was our two hundredth episode. This
Speaker 1: was originally just for members of the podcast, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to put it out here on the main feed.
Speaker 1: I know that Cliff and Bobo will have a lot
Speaker 1: to say about doctor Meldrim and his tremendous contributions to
Speaker 1: the field at some point in the very near future,
Speaker 1: but in the meantime, here's an interview that the main
Speaker 1: listenership hasn't heard, and we hope that everyone enjoys This
Speaker 1: discussion remembers Jeff and celebrates the many, many contributions that
Speaker 1: he made to this field.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3: Okay, everybody, welcome to Beyond Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff
Speaker 3: and Bobo, and we really appreciate your membership. Today we're
Speaker 3: a continue our conversation with doctor Jeff Meldrim for our
Speaker 3: two hundredth episode. Jeff, thank you so much for sticking
Speaker 3: around for a membership section.
Speaker 4: We really appreciate it. Glad too, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 3: In the main episode, we're having great. I was enjoying
Speaker 3: the conversation, so I'll call it and call it great,
Speaker 3: A great conversation about various bits of anatomy and details
Speaker 3: like that. There's a couple other bits I wanted to
Speaker 3: ask you about, and then we want to talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about research, modern and all that sort of
Speaker 3: stuff and potential. But as far as anatomy goes, one
Speaker 3: of the things I didn't get a chance to ask
Speaker 3: you is about their eyes, because much has been made
Speaker 3: about their eyes with eyeshine or eye reflectivity and all
Speaker 3: sorts of stuff, and their night vision. But some people
Speaker 3: Daryl Collier, for example, was on our show and he
Speaker 3: mentions that from his observations, maybe not visual, but he's
Speaker 3: had several his observations of sasquatches an area X, he's
Speaker 3: starting to think that perhaps they don't see as well
Speaker 3: at night as people give them credit for. Do you
Speaker 3: have any thoughts on that or i reflectivity to pede
Speaker 3: and lucidum or anything like that.
Speaker 4: Well, sure, if we just first establish an anatomical baseline.
Speaker 4: So the rule sort of is that higher primates, monkeys
Speaker 4: and apes do not have a reflecting membrane that to
Speaker 4: pay them lucidum, and that was seen that the loss
Speaker 4: of that seems to correspond to to the evolution of
Speaker 4: the fhovia Centraali's the focal point where there's an area
Speaker 4: of the retina that is relatively well much more sparsely vascularized,
Speaker 4: so you don't have the interference of the basku that
Speaker 4: you realize that our photoreceptive cells are at the back
Speaker 4: of the retina. We have kind of a back ass
Speaker 4: word design where the light has to come through several
Speaker 4: layers of cells being diffracted by the nuclei and other
Speaker 4: cell structures and as well as the vasculature. So we've
Speaker 4: evolved this phobious centrallis an area and you may have
Speaker 4: heard the macula macula that surrounds it. Macular degeneration is
Speaker 4: a condition that plagues some people, but that area is
Speaker 4: much more sparsely vascularized, and the overlying layers of cells
Speaker 4: is thinned out, and the depression has therefore more surface
Speaker 4: area and a greater concentration of cones, which are much
Speaker 4: more sensitive to visual acuity. There's a much higher ratio
Speaker 4: of innervation. Each nerve has fewer receptors, and so it's
Speaker 4: much more specific in its response to discrete information, you know,
Speaker 4: discrete photons and so forth. Anyway, so there's that, So
Speaker 4: there's that distinction. The lower primates, the lemurs and lorises
Speaker 4: and so forth, they have the reflecting membrane, and many
Speaker 4: of them are dedicated nocturnal species. Now there's a couple
Speaker 4: of interesting exceptions. There are a couple of monkey. There's
Speaker 4: a monkey, a South American monkey, the darakuli, the owl monkey,
Speaker 4: which has secondarily re evolved nocturnal behaviors. But in the
Speaker 4: with the lack of a tapatom, what they have done
Speaker 4: the strategy is to just greatly increase the absolute size
Speaker 4: of the eye, so it's light gathering capacity relative to
Speaker 4: the organism itself is greatly enhanced. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's really an app salute quality. It's not dependent
Speaker 4: on the size of the organism. The other example is
Speaker 4: the tarsire, which is kind of this in between. It's
Speaker 4: a very primitive, you could say, a very primitive monkey.
Speaker 4: It kind of straddles the division between the lemurs and
Speaker 4: lorises on the one hand and the monkeys on the
Speaker 4: other hand. But in any case, it's similar to monkeys
Speaker 4: in that it has lost it's to pay them as
Speaker 4: well and has a phobia. But it is also nocturnal
Speaker 4: and as a result, its eyes, because it's a small
Speaker 4: little critter, you know, hamster size, its eyes have gotten enormous,
Speaker 4: so big that one eye is bigger than its brain.
Speaker 4: It's huge. They're huge to for that light gathering capacity.
Speaker 4: So having said that, with that in mind, what do
Speaker 4: we have. Oh one other anecdote, a behavioral anecdote, and
Speaker 4: that is there was an effort to habituate chimpanzees in
Speaker 4: Uganda to human interaction in order to try to exploit
Speaker 4: some eco tourism industry and a researcher that you may know,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you ever met Owen Caddy.
Speaker 3: I did meet him very briefly. I can't say I
Speaker 3: have a relationship with him, but I met him well.
Speaker 4: Owen was over in Africa with the Peace Corps, and
Speaker 4: then when his stint was done, he stayed on and
Speaker 4: got a job as a park ranger in a Uganda
Speaker 4: excuse me park and they were tasked with this job
Speaker 4: of trying to habituate the chimps. The problem was the
Speaker 4: chimps had been so traumatized by all the warfare that
Speaker 4: was going on in the country that they had become
Speaker 4: behaviorally nocturnal. That is, they would come out in the
Speaker 4: twilight hours of the evening to forage and then you know,
Speaker 4: they would then bed down in the middle of the
Speaker 4: night and get up before dawn and forage. And but
Speaker 4: during the daytime they stayed out of side. They stayed
Speaker 4: in thickets or hidden way up in the canopy, and
Speaker 4: so they had real trouble finding them. They were so elusive,
Speaker 4: but they eventually did were able to interact with them.
Speaker 4: And you know, my question was, well, were they stumbling
Speaker 4: around in the dark, like did they have white canes?
Speaker 4: And he said no, it was really quite amazing. They
Speaker 4: were actually quite adept at getting around by starlight or
Speaker 4: by moonlight. And you know, you think about it, we
Speaker 4: get so used to all this light pollution. If you've
Speaker 4: ever had the chance to be out in the outer
Speaker 4: doors for a long period of time, your eyes and
Speaker 4: your ability to see, do you know you accommodate. I
Speaker 4: guess nothing is really enhanced. It's just you're powers of
Speaker 4: navigation and interpretation of what you're experiencing. And you learn
Speaker 4: how to see too. Because because of our focal point,
Speaker 4: because of that phobia and the concentration of cones, that
Speaker 4: means that that area is less sensitive to dim light,
Speaker 4: to gray scale light. And so you'll notice this if
Speaker 4: you go out in the dusk, say you're going out
Speaker 4: in the parking lot to your car, and you drop
Speaker 4: your keys. If you look straight for them, straight at them,
Speaker 4: or where you think they are, you see this kind
Speaker 4: of a wispy, kind of ghostly mist that sort of
Speaker 4: obscures your vision at that point. If you look just
Speaker 4: to the side of your keys, so that the image
Speaker 4: of the keys falls more on your peripheral vision, where
Speaker 4: there's a much higher proportion of rods, you can see it.
Speaker 4: You can't see it quite as clearly as you would
Speaker 4: in daytime, you know, on your focal point, but you
Speaker 4: can see it. Try that experiment home and you'll be
Speaker 4: really quite amazed.
Speaker 3: One of the things we used to teach newcomers on
Speaker 3: finding Bigfoot, and we had the trump around on logging
Speaker 3: roads all nights is a it's a technique called averted vision,
Speaker 3: which is something I picked up from my amateur astronomy pursuits.
Speaker 3: When you're looking at faint and nebu lee or galaxies
Speaker 3: or anything like that, they don't contrast against the dark
Speaker 3: background very well. So it sounds like a very zen
Speaker 3: thing to say, is that if you want to if
Speaker 3: you want to see it, don't look at.
Speaker 4: It right exactly. And it's a technique that you have
Speaker 4: to a skilled you kind of have to develop a
Speaker 4: little bit. It's because it's counterintuitive. It's not a natural
Speaker 4: thing to do. But once you discover it, you you
Speaker 4: can pick up on it anyway. So with all that
Speaker 4: in mind, the plasticity of behavior in the chimp, which
Speaker 4: is otherwise a diurnal you know, lacking the to pay them,
Speaker 4: and the strategy exhibited by those very few species who
Speaker 4: have secondarily gone back to knock internality by simply increasing
Speaker 4: the absolute size of the eye. Now think about sasquatch,
Speaker 4: So what what might be Maybe the capacity is much
Speaker 4: greater and as far as sensitivity and into the infrared.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know of any studies that have
Speaker 4: really engaged that. The questions have really never been asked
Speaker 4: where that that kind of data has been collected for
Speaker 4: great apes or monkeys, to be quite honest, to see
Speaker 4: what kind of variation. We have a limited number of
Speaker 4: species to draw from anyway, and you can't You've got
Speaker 4: to avoid falling into the trap that chimps and gorillas
Speaker 4: and rings represent all of apeedum. They don't, you know,
Speaker 4: They're a narrow, narrow sample, you know, could be a
Speaker 4: very skewed representation of the different strategies that other apes
Speaker 4: have evolved. Anyway, But take size. If if that cranium
Speaker 4: scales up to the size of a sasquatch, and the
Speaker 4: eyes have scaled isometrically, in other words, they've kept the
Speaker 4: same proportions, they've gotten really big. The eye of a
Speaker 4: sasquatch would be like the size of a tennis ball,
Speaker 4: and much like the increased size of the owl, monkey
Speaker 4: or the tars here, it would have greater light gathering
Speaker 4: capacity than would a human under the same circumstances.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what I think of a tars here
Speaker 3: as well, they're cute little guys. They are hanging in
Speaker 3: the trees and stuff. But one of the things that
Speaker 3: stands out is sure they have big eyes, but the
Speaker 3: almost the entirety of their eye is taking up by
Speaker 3: the iris, which which is just a muscle for opening
Speaker 3: up the lens anyway, or focusing the lens and opening
Speaker 3: up the aperture of the eye, rather.
Speaker 4: Open up the aperture of the pupil. And that was
Speaker 4: the next point I was going to make, is that
Speaker 4: is that with that eyeball the size of a tennis
Speaker 4: ball and then an iris or a pupil that can
Speaker 4: open up remarkably largely. And many people you know, have
Speaker 4: talked about sasquatch eyes being these dark, deep dark, you know,
Speaker 4: almost alien eyes. And if you've looked at the tars here,
Speaker 4: that isn't that isn't blinded by the photographer's flash at night.
Speaker 4: Its eye, its pupil is enormous, like you said, it
Speaker 4: nearly fills the whole visible portion of the of the eye.
Speaker 4: And so so yeah, I think those combinations would allow
Speaker 4: a sasquatch to and and clearly they're not strictly and
Speaker 4: absolutely only nocturnal. I mean, when was Patty encountered, you know,
Speaker 4: in the afternoon. So I think that there again there's
Speaker 4: some behavioral plasticity as well, and it may be that
Speaker 4: the nocturnality is as well. It could be one of
Speaker 4: two things, at least avoiding interaction with humans, but also
Speaker 4: partitioning the large omnivore niche with bears which have rather
Speaker 4: maybe just to offset your activity profile. That is a
Speaker 4: well documented strategy that other sympatric species species that occupy
Speaker 4: the same region utilized in order to differentiate similar niches.
Speaker 4: Is dividing up the activity profile, the daily activity profile
Speaker 4: when you're out, so that you're not out at times
Speaker 4: that you're going to be in direct competition with or
Speaker 4: interaction with a competing species.
Speaker 5: Hey, Jeff, have you heard about people talking about there
Speaker 5: being the secondary eyelid that comes out from the side
Speaker 5: like a reptile. And then also the person I heard
Speaker 5: talking about said like astrolopithesene or some early hominid hominids
Speaker 5: had that same feature.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 4: Well, I haven't. I haven't heard that, and there'd be
Speaker 4: no way to infer that from the skeleton. We don't
Speaker 4: even have a good There isn't a good correlation between
Speaker 4: the bony orbit and the size of the eyeball across
Speaker 4: species comparisons. You know, So some people have looked at
Speaker 4: you look at a Neanderthal skull, and their orbits are
Speaker 4: noticeably larger in proportion to their skull than are human orbits.
Speaker 4: And some have said, well, that's because they must have
Speaker 4: had bigger eyes and they were nocturnal predators, see they
Speaker 4: evolve nocturnality. Well that's possible, but when you go and
Speaker 4: look at a whole array of other species of primate,
Speaker 4: great apes and monkeys, there isn't a real tight correlation
Speaker 4: between those those two measures. So you're you know, you're
Speaker 4: going out a limb. But as far as the third eyelid,
Speaker 4: that nictitating membrane, you know, like your dog has, you
Speaker 4: you know there, it's not present in primates. It's it's
Speaker 4: very rudimentary in humans and great apes, it's just not
Speaker 4: it doesn't slide across. We had a dog who was
Speaker 4: just hated to have its fingers toenails clipped and so.
Speaker 4: And he was big enough and strong enough. It was
Speaker 4: hard to handle and you'd get scratch. He wouldn't bite
Speaker 4: or any but he'd scratch and claw and and so
Speaker 4: my my wife would slip him a happy pill sedatium
Speaker 4: a little bit, and for like the next eight hours,
Speaker 4: his his third eyelid would come over about half It's
Speaker 4: like he lost control of it and it would come
Speaker 4: over about halfway across his eye. It was the funniest
Speaker 4: looking thing. The poor guy was so spaced out. But
Speaker 4: as far as I know, primates don't have that quality,
Speaker 4: that feature.
Speaker 5: Have you heard anyone any witnesses describers. I've heard some
Speaker 5: good witness descriptions up close studying as they said, they
Speaker 5: definitely saw that.
Speaker 4: And did it? Did it go across like a windshield wiper?
Speaker 4: I mean, is that did they notice it like that
Speaker 4: or was it just.
Speaker 5: I guess when they blinked that that the what do
Speaker 5: you call it, the nictitating nictitating membrane? Yeah, slid across, Yeah,
Speaker 5: that would go That would be like almost all it
Speaker 5: would be like halfway across whatever.
Speaker 2: Then the top one would come down.
Speaker 4: Well, I could I could go back to literature and
Speaker 4: look in my my familiarity with anatomy doesn't include any
Speaker 4: description of that feature being present in I we'd have
Speaker 4: no way to assess it from the fossil record obviously,
Speaker 4: and it's certainly not present in humans, but it could look.
Speaker 3: If the nocturnal tendencies, because they're certainly not strictly nocturnal,
Speaker 3: the tendencies of sasquash be nocturnal, have developed some sort
Speaker 3: of a greater nocturnal vision in low light vision, and
Speaker 3: it's it's based almost solely on just a different design
Speaker 3: of the eye, like a larger eye, a larger perhaps
Speaker 3: pupill area opening that sort of thing. Let alone, it
Speaker 3: could change the shape I mean, I guess owls have
Speaker 3: a different shape of their eye that like almost like
Speaker 3: a cylinder, which somehow amplifies the light for them. But
Speaker 3: if that those are the things going on, then this
Speaker 3: red eyeshine that is often reported, could that be a
Speaker 3: different a different expression of the same sort of thing
Speaker 3: where you take a picture with the flash and you
Speaker 3: know Grandma has red eyes at Christmas.
Speaker 4: Right exactly so, so a very large pupil opened up
Speaker 4: would and and if if there is you know, the
Speaker 4: right perspective by the viewer, they might see that highly
Speaker 4: vascularized retina, which in the absence of it to pay
Speaker 4: them where there are you know, molecules that help to
Speaker 4: reflect and depending on which what the molecular profile is,
Speaker 4: there's a yellow eye shine or a blue eye shine
Speaker 4: or a green eye shine. It just has to do
Speaker 4: with whatever crystals, whatever molecules are in the tapayed them.
Speaker 4: But in the absence of that, the pinki the phenomenon
Speaker 4: you described that, you know, the photographer's bane of pink
Speaker 4: eye that seems to particularly afflict those with lighter colored,
Speaker 4: less pigmented irises. But also when the pupil is dilated,
Speaker 4: there's more tendency for a pink eie effect. You know,
Speaker 4: it doesn't really if the flash is fast enough and
Speaker 4: short aperture time, exposure time, then sometimes the constriction of
Speaker 4: the pupil doesn't eliminate it. Yeah, that would now people
Speaker 4: who argue that they are self illuminating, that their eyes
Speaker 4: glow in like in the daylight. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 4: stop and think about it. It h if such a
Speaker 4: phenomenon did occur, it would make no sense for it
Speaker 4: to occur within the eyeball. If you if there was
Speaker 4: tissue within the eyeball that could self illuminate, it would
Speaker 4: just scramble any incoming visual signal. I mean, it'd be
Speaker 4: like someone shine in a flashlight in your eye. Now,
Speaker 4: So the only thing that would make sense is if
Speaker 4: there was something in the say the iris, that was
Speaker 4: illuminating in response to the light or something or I
Speaker 4: can't imagine any mechanism or any selection pressure for uh
Speaker 4: for for self illuminating irises. But then again, if if
Speaker 4: our earlier discussion about extreme enlargement of the pupil is
Speaker 4: true to the point that it feels the visible you know,
Speaker 4: covers the visible the iris is pulled back completely, then
Speaker 4: that does that explanation doesn't work very well because you
Speaker 4: wouldn't you know, there wouldn't be much iris left there
Speaker 4: to illuminate to give off light. So I'm my experience
Speaker 4: has been and I hate to make generalizations, but drawing
Speaker 4: upon my direct experience when people have shown me eyeshine,
Speaker 4: I mean, we had one experience where the witness you know,
Speaker 4: immediately pointed out eye shine, Oh there, look there it is,
Speaker 4: that was it, and he claimed, you know, these eyes
Speaker 4: were eight feet up in the air. Well, we went
Speaker 4: and investigated, and there was a recent duff of snow
Speaker 4: quarter inch of wet snow on the ground, and we
Speaker 4: found that they weren't eight feet up in the air
Speaker 4: because it was a slope that you couldn't see from
Speaker 4: our vantage point that once you got there, the eyes were,
Speaker 4: if anything, were on the lower branches of this tree.
Speaker 4: And guess what was right underneath the tree? A set
Speaker 4: of raccoon tracks, as clear as could be. And I go, okay, well,
Speaker 4: let's just you know, evaluate this. We we've saw glowing
Speaker 4: eyes that were very characteristic of a reflection from a
Speaker 4: night vision to pay them, lucid them and it was
Speaker 4: close to the ground, and there are raccoon tracks, but
Speaker 4: no sasquad tracks. What do you think you saw? And man,
Speaker 4: it was tough to get him to admit, oh, it
Speaker 4: was probably just a raccoon. But that's been my experience
Speaker 4: is that people overinterpret their what they see.
Speaker 3: And belief is a real strong drug. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 3: really is. Well, Belief confriended with evidence is a is
Speaker 3: a paradigm shaking moment. A lot of people aren't very
Speaker 3: uncomfortable with that, I think.
Speaker 4: Especially when you have a dose of ego mixed in
Speaker 4: for levining.
Speaker 3: Now, Bob, but you want to ask about some research
Speaker 3: and whatnot, do you anything right off the cover. I
Speaker 3: can take the lead on this one because I've got
Speaker 3: a couple of things I'd like to ask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go go ahead, Well.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Jeff, as far as current or future research
Speaker 3: or even past research, what do you think is valuable?
Speaker 3: And my own my own, my own position, of course
Speaker 3: is people should enjoy the subjects in whatever way they
Speaker 3: are most interested, if they want to take stories from people,
Speaker 3: and and that's that's great, do that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: But but what do you think is going to push
Speaker 3: the ball a little further down the field in the
Speaker 3: absence of a type specimen?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's and that that ultimate question, that's really the
Speaker 4: you know, the brass ring. That's the take home message.
Speaker 4: And I think that the best well I've I've often
Speaker 4: advocated that I think there's there's two lines of two
Speaker 4: directions of research that will possibly push it forward, push
Speaker 4: the question for and that is short of a type specimen,
Speaker 4: a DNA voucher, there already is a DNA specimen, a
Speaker 4: voucher specimen of DNA that can be replicated and sequenced
Speaker 4: and identified as an unknown And see, that's that's part
Speaker 4: of the problem, right.
Speaker 2: There is that in gen Bank.
Speaker 4: Well, that's just it. We don't have any known specimen
Speaker 4: of sasquatch DNA in a gen bank, and so most
Speaker 4: identifications occur by taking the the sample in question and
Speaker 4: comparing the sequence to those that have been cataloged in
Speaker 4: the gen bank. So it's kind of like with identifying hair.
Speaker 4: You know, hair is typically identified by comparing an unknown
Speaker 4: to a known specimen, a catalog specimen. And without a
Speaker 4: known sasquatch hair, all we can conclude is that that
Speaker 4: this hair has primate like characteristics.
Speaker 2: There's a fully sequence genail that's on.
Speaker 4: No, I say, if there was, if there so, so yeah,
Speaker 4: well I'm saying, I'm saying the best you could hope
Speaker 4: for is if you had a sample that indeed was
Speaker 4: with sasquatch. Is that your investigator, your analyst would say, well,
Speaker 4: this is unknown. It matches nothing in gene bank, gen
Speaker 4: bank or gen bank, and so and just like with hair,
Speaker 4: we can say, well, this hair doesn't match any known wildlife.
Speaker 4: It's an unknown. So but but these all these unknowns
Speaker 4: are remarkably consistent and uh and you know, attest to
Speaker 4: originating from some some consistent species, you know. And so
Speaker 4: same with the DNA. If if we got multiple samples
Speaker 4: that were identical to one another, and could not be
Speaker 4: matched to any known sample, then that would potentially represent
Speaker 4: an unknown species. And then what you do is you
Speaker 4: go in and compare it to the gnomes and you
Speaker 4: and there are techniques that allow you to determine what
Speaker 4: its nearest neighbors are, which group does it cluster with,
Speaker 4: based on derived traits derived sequences, and then you know,
Speaker 4: you could say, well this this most closely matches or
Speaker 4: clusters with a clade of great apes, or it is
Speaker 4: most similar to human to the exclusion of all other apes.
Speaker 4: So therefore it's related to humans somehow, like a hominid
Speaker 4: like paranthropists. If it was that the paranthrapist model were
Speaker 4: to hold up, we would assume that there are some
Speaker 4: derived traits that would separate it from all other apes.
Speaker 4: So that's that's the But see, that's going to require
Speaker 4: if we're talking about a creature that is potentially identical
Speaker 4: to humans down to a difference of a half of
Speaker 4: one percent, then you've got to do a pretty complete
Speaker 4: sequence in order to find those scattered markers that only
Speaker 4: account for you know, zero point five percent of the
Speaker 4: gene sequence. Most studies that are tests rather not studies,
Speaker 4: but most tests that are conducted on an unknown sample,
Speaker 4: or you know, a real pretty quick and dirty look
Speaker 4: at one or maybe two spots in the mitochondrial gene
Speaker 4: genome rather collection of genes. And if that, if they're
Speaker 4: even doing complete plow sie, you know, if they do
Speaker 4: more than a say, a thousand base pairs, you're you're
Speaker 4: probably paying lots and lots of money to have that done.
Speaker 5: Do you have a do you have a in your
Speaker 5: back pocket or hidden away? Do you have a sample
Speaker 5: that you're holding onto that you think is most like
Speaker 5: you're really confident would be you know, it could show
Speaker 5: a sasquatch genome.
Speaker 4: No, I don't. I don't honestly. I mean, because we
Speaker 4: what what things we have had in the past. You know,
Speaker 4: we've we've submitted for testing, and and that kind of
Speaker 4: testing usually consumes the sample. So no, I don't, uh,
Speaker 4: I mean there are and and the problem with you know,
Speaker 4: the most common samples are hair, and hair is notoriously
Speaker 4: challenging to get DNA from because of this distinctive characteristic
Speaker 4: of a cellular medula, you know. And I used to
Speaker 4: say this is interesting because I used to say, well,
Speaker 4: that's not you know, some mysterious feature that's not uh
Speaker 4: that that that's that's a known characteristic of some types
Speaker 4: of hair. But as I as I started digging a
Speaker 4: little more and looking through the catalogs, one, there are
Speaker 4: really aren't any species out there in polar bear supposedly
Speaker 4: has hollow hair with an a cellular medulla, you know,
Speaker 4: for insulated qualities. But there aren't really many, if any
Speaker 4: other species. So it is a very distinctive characteristic. There
Speaker 4: aren't many other species that have that characteristic. It is
Speaker 4: a very distinct characteristic of sasquatch. That is remarkably consistent.
Speaker 3: Now, isn't it true that red headed humans have a
Speaker 3: similar structure.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, red red or very blonde, very light, lightly
Speaker 4: pigmented individuals often have a cellular or or at least
Speaker 4: in what they call discontinuous medulla.
Speaker 3: Now would there be a connection there since one of
Speaker 3: the other possible traits of sasquatch hair is it shines
Speaker 3: red when backlit. Is there? Do you think there's a
Speaker 3: connection there any in any way?
Speaker 4: Well, not necessarily, because I from my experience and reading,
Speaker 4: it hasn't been particularly redheads so much as it is
Speaker 4: very pale blonde toe heads where there's a lack of
Speaker 4: pigment in the hair. With red heads there is the
Speaker 4: presence of the fail milan and the reddish pigment which
Speaker 4: is present in the sasquatch hair as well. They have
Speaker 4: eumulanin and fail milanin. The yumilanin is the dark pigment,
Speaker 4: fail milan is the reddish. And so you get as
Speaker 4: you it's kind of like you've got these two rheostats,
Speaker 4: you know you can alter, so you get an individual
Speaker 4: that has very little of either. And these are the
Speaker 4: quote white Sasquatch, you know, the rare white Sasquatch. And
Speaker 4: then you go on up and you get the beige
Speaker 4: or buckskin and the reddish reddish brown, dark brown black,
Speaker 4: almost mahogany where there still is a little bit of
Speaker 4: red highlight in there. Interesting is across that entire color spectrum,
Speaker 4: chromatic spectrum, they all have an a cellular medulla, and
Speaker 4: so that's what's different than human, whereas it's usually just
Speaker 4: the very light pale hairs that occasionally have an a
Speaker 4: cellular medulla. Even there it's not consistent oner sent but
Speaker 4: across Sasquatch and I hope we're not cherry picking imposing.
Speaker 4: I don't think we are because in other words, only
Speaker 4: attributing those with an a cellular medulla to be a sasquatch,
Speaker 4: you know, we subliminally or unconsciously accept that as a
Speaker 4: distinguishing characteristic, and so anything that does have a medulla
Speaker 4: couldn't be a sasquatch because there are other features. I mean,
Speaker 4: the hair are approximately sixty five microns across, they have
Speaker 4: parallel sides, they have a blunt tip where there's no taper.
Speaker 4: I mean, the the only other species that has those
Speaker 4: characteristics is human. So that's why we end up with
Speaker 4: this notion that there and this is why I think
Speaker 4: Henna Fahrenbach was a little reluctant to make a more
Speaker 4: take a more conclusive position, was that there's always that
Speaker 4: chance that you have something that is just a misidentified human.
Speaker 4: And he was hoping that the DNA would would you know,
Speaker 4: be the final arbiter for that.
Speaker 5: What's happened with DNA costs since it's been on last
Speaker 5: It's been about a couple of years since we had
Speaker 5: you on what how much does it come down to?
Speaker 6: Know?
Speaker 2: It's always dropping in price?
Speaker 4: Well, I I don't have a real good sense of that.
Speaker 4: I mean, my, my, you know, discussions recently with the
Speaker 4: idea of maybe undertaking an environmental DNA study, it was
Speaker 4: to do it thoroughly and extensively was extremely expensive. I
Speaker 4: mean we're talking about a project, a multi year project
Speaker 4: that would be several many hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 4: to undertake, and I mean I'm sure that we could
Speaker 4: trim that budget somewhat. Some of that was the ambition
Speaker 4: to include postdocs and graduate students in order to do
Speaker 4: the legwork.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't if they if they found something real promising, like well,
Speaker 5: this is this is a unique strand here, would they
Speaker 5: would they just want to do it for free at
Speaker 5: that point, just for the scientific glory.
Speaker 4: Well, if you if you had something that was compelling enough.
Speaker 4: But even getting that first initial undertaking, I mean I
Speaker 4: was shot in the well. I surveyed. I contacted rather
Speaker 4: a number of labs, you know, by calling through the
Speaker 4: literature and finding laboratories at at universities where they were
Speaker 4: doing molecular studies on grade apes and publishing regularly. And
Speaker 4: you know, I figured they would have the expertise, they
Speaker 4: would probably have the manpower, the post docs and so forth,
Speaker 4: because they're an active molecular lab. And unfortunately, because of that,
Speaker 4: they were adamant that they couldn't do even if they
Speaker 4: were interested, and they you know, I didn't get a
Speaker 4: uniform formally positive reception, but even the ones that were interested.
Speaker 4: It's such a dog eat dog funding environment out there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: The latest figures I've heard for National Science Foundation were
Speaker 4: ten percent or less of the submitted proposals were funded
Speaker 4: and so, and that's sometimes that's on the first round,
Speaker 4: you know, blah blah blah, but people argue, but still
Speaker 4: it doesn't go out very high, very very much further
Speaker 4: than that. And so with that level of competition, the
Speaker 4: labs are under extreme pressure to produce and and not
Speaker 4: do anything that would jeopardize you know, that some reviewer
Speaker 4: could could hoist as a red flag for a grant
Speaker 4: renewal or a proposal. So that was the reception I got.
Speaker 4: So that's that's the problem. You know, it's the funding,
Speaker 4: and it's also the willingness of the unless you just
Speaker 4: go to a commercial lab and you contract it, but
Speaker 4: then the costs are inordinately higher than if you went
Speaker 4: through an academic institution with.
Speaker 2: That hit like a million dollars, you think.
Speaker 6: Oh, I don't know if we'd go if it got
Speaker 6: that high for for you know, straightforward test. It's just
Speaker 6: I really think that we're going to have to do
Speaker 6: an extensive nuclear genome in order to find those few
Speaker 6: markers that distinguish and convincingly.
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I mean, I'm fairly active in the
Speaker 3: field and whatnot. I know that I have my own
Speaker 3: biases that tend me towards finding footprints and trying to
Speaker 3: predicts where these things are going and what they're doing
Speaker 3: and whatnot. But you know, the vast major ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent of our audience probably are just amateurs who are interested.
Speaker 3: Where do you think those research efforts should go? Because
Speaker 3: even after the academic exception, acceptance of the sasquatch is
Speaker 3: a real deal. You know, everybody knows they're real animals,
Speaker 3: there's still going to be a role for amateurs at
Speaker 3: some point because you know, academics are teaching, they're doing
Speaker 3: their own research things. But so the chance encounters, which
Speaker 3: is what tends to happen with sasquatches, are still going
Speaker 3: to be happening. What can amateurs do to not only
Speaker 3: move the ball down the field, but also to not
Speaker 3: bruise ourselves because you know, and Darren Darren Nache visited
Speaker 3: my home and I shared a bunch of footprint casts
Speaker 3: with them, and he told me that there's a lot
Speaker 3: of academics out there who are closely watching what happens.
Speaker 3: And that just made me shuddered thinking about these ten Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's like the representatives who get the media attention. It
Speaker 3: just that just scared me in a way. And so
Speaker 3: what could we be doing as amateurs to help.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, one is continually to educate yourself, you know
Speaker 4: that this was one of the goals of the Field
Speaker 4: Guide was to kind of provide a little leg up
Speaker 4: in that direction, but to uh cultivate and practice you know,
Speaker 4: the most objective and systematic forms of data collection and
Speaker 4: documentation and reporting, and not to just advocate. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think we collect actively shoot ourselves in the foot
Speaker 4: when over eager individuals, you know, for want of another
Speaker 4: click post and repost things that are obviously or have
Speaker 4: been repeatedly debunked, and that that just creates so much
Speaker 4: distraction and interference that it's it makes it that I'm
Speaker 4: sure a lot of things slip between the cracks because
Speaker 4: you know, they're just they're tainted by association kind of
Speaker 4: or lost in the in the fog. So when it
Speaker 4: comes to footprints, you know, just basic things like scale,
Speaker 4: like cultivating good habits of the techniques of photography UH
Speaker 4: and documentation it and and doing the the contextual leg
Speaker 4: work establishing the scene. I mean, if you're if you
Speaker 4: if there's six inches of snow on the ground, wet snow,
Speaker 4: and you find absolutely what appear to be Chris Christine footprints,
Speaker 4: you should be able to track that creature for considerable distance.
Speaker 4: And if all you present is an abbreviated YouTube video
Speaker 4: that shows one or two or three footprints with yours
Speaker 4: trumped all over the place to make the scene almost unintelligible,
Speaker 4: you've done really a disservice, or you've I should say
Speaker 4: you've you've you've not risen to the to the mark
Speaker 4: and uh and you've you've missed the opportunity to perhaps
Speaker 4: document a very compelling case with a large data set
Speaker 4: from which things like gate parameters and associated behavior food scat.
Speaker 4: You know, you find a place where they've urinated, you know,
Speaker 4: and scoop it up in a pint jar or something
Speaker 4: things like that. But so that's that's one thing. And
Speaker 4: then also, obviously one of the other big areas are
Speaker 4: all these quote blob squatches instead of just throwing out
Speaker 4: every shadow, every this or that. If you think, and
Speaker 4: especially if they are items that a photograph that you've
Speaker 4: taken associated with a first hand experience of your own,
Speaker 4: you know, reinforced by that experience. You look at that
Speaker 4: image and it reinforces or you can be confident in
Speaker 4: what it portrays. But someone who doesn't have the benefit
Speaker 4: of that firsthand experience, it must rely on your ability
Speaker 4: to make a compelling case for this questionable image.
Speaker 5: So you're saying, but you just said, Dirk, like soil
Speaker 5: that or a sasquatch, you're in it.
Speaker 2: That's useful these days?
Speaker 4: It could be yeah, if you if you respond quickly enough,
Speaker 4: if we got that sample into ethanol or some other
Speaker 4: way to stabilize the proteins and possible DNA you know
Speaker 4: that could be extracted from that from from slough cells
Speaker 4: or whatnot. I mean, it's a biological fluid, so there
Speaker 4: there are things that could be done with it, presumably,
Speaker 4: but it's it's a narrow window. But a lot of
Speaker 4: it is just to up the ante up the game
Speaker 4: so that the evidence is more compelling, that it has
Speaker 4: much greater contextual establishment. You know, the comparison shots with
Speaker 4: you know, someone standing in the same spot, the picture
Speaker 4: taken from the same place, I mean goes that speaks volumes.
Speaker 4: Not all sasquatch are going to be extra humanly large.
Speaker 4: But if if what your portray train is that narrows
Speaker 4: down the or strengthens the likelihood of it being something
Speaker 4: rather than just a you know, a figure in the
Speaker 4: distance or a fisherman or this that or the other.
Speaker 4: So I guess that I don't know. That's not a
Speaker 4: real satisfy. It's kind of a clumsy answer, But in short,
Speaker 4: it's just up the game and be much more methodical
Speaker 4: in your in your data collection instead of instead of
Speaker 4: peeking through the not hole, you know, offering the notthle
Speaker 4: to art to your viewer to watch the game, knock
Speaker 4: down the whole section of the fans so we can
Speaker 4: really see what's going.
Speaker 3: On, and then of course behave in an appropriate and
Speaker 3: sober manner as far as presentation goes.
Speaker 4: Well, sure, I know it's hard to take a YouTube
Speaker 4: video seriously when it's been then set to some weird music.
Speaker 4: You know, or we Spooky Spook Galley, you know theme song.
Speaker 4: It's I mean, why would you do that if you're
Speaker 4: serious and this is a legitimate I mean I've I've
Speaker 4: conditioned myself my thinking to where I realized that in
Speaker 4: this day and age. I mean at one time I
Speaker 4: would say, well, if someone was serious, they would never
Speaker 4: post it on YouTube, they would look up an expert,
Speaker 4: they would take it to a university here. And now
Speaker 4: I realize, no, that people wouldn't do that, right, that's
Speaker 4: the way people think today. But it doesn't surprise me
Speaker 4: that people do that. So I've got to I ward
Speaker 4: off the tendency to just dismiss something that's been posted
Speaker 4: on YouTube, because that's the way people communicate today. That's
Speaker 4: the public bulletin board, you know, the town hall bulletin board,
Speaker 4: so town square bulletin board.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, then that brings up and probably maybe
Speaker 3: the final point before we let you go. I think
Speaker 3: if someone does get good compelling footage, or even mediocre
Speaker 3: pretty compelling footage, what should one do with it as
Speaker 3: far as the release goes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, that's you know, and I can understand when
Speaker 4: people are concerned about you know, some proprietary claim to
Speaker 4: it and I and there are ways, I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: personally not familiar with them, but with all the copyright
Speaker 4: laws that exist, you.
Speaker 3: Don't need to. No, No, you don't need to because
Speaker 3: I know a little bit about that from being a musician.
Speaker 3: If you hold, if you hold the camera, it is yours.
Speaker 3: You don't need to file papers. You don't need to
Speaker 3: do anything. And did you catch that news item where
Speaker 3: there was a sort of baboon or monkey that accidentally
Speaker 3: took a selfie and and that went to court because
Speaker 3: the person who owns the person who took the picture
Speaker 3: owns it. And there can a monkey own a picture?
Speaker 4: How funny?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if you if you photograph, if you if
Speaker 3: you film a sasquatch, it is yours. You don't actually
Speaker 3: have to file papers. You can, but you don't have to.
Speaker 4: Well with that reassurance, then I think that if a
Speaker 4: person is serious, there are individuals like the three of us,
Speaker 4: or there are others out there are who have established
Speaker 4: a reputation of serious investigation and who are very experienced
Speaker 4: and have dealt with a lot of different forms of
Speaker 4: evidence and examples of photographic evidence that you would want
Speaker 4: to seek out their advice and their reaction. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just like with the footprints, you know, I have
Speaker 4: a constant stream. I mean, every day at least there's
Speaker 4: an example of a footprint that comes across my computer screen.
Speaker 4: And you know, the vast majority of them are readily
Speaker 4: attributable to other interpretations or other identifications. But there are
Speaker 4: every once in a while ones that I mean, there
Speaker 4: are those that are so ambiguous you just can't say
Speaker 4: one way or the other. I mean that people are hopeful,
Speaker 4: but every once in a while those there are some
Speaker 4: that are really quite intriguing, and and then hopefully the
Speaker 4: investigator has had the where with, you know, the presence
Speaker 4: of mind to do their own little investigation, shoot as
Speaker 4: many pictures as they can. You know, in this digital age,
Speaker 4: what's what's stopping you from taking dozens and dozens of
Speaker 4: pictures and and walking a little further for and aft
Speaker 4: of the find to see if there's any other sign,
Speaker 4: you know, further along that would would further substantiate.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go, Jeff, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: joining us again for beyond Well, actually there's the first
Speaker 3: thing you've been on. Beyond big thing and beyond our
Speaker 3: membership thing. We really appreciate your extra time and and
Speaker 3: just the wealth of knowledge that you bring to the subject.
Speaker 3: And I would really really appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 4: It's always a learning experience for me too to think
Speaker 4: through some of these things and hear your your questions
Speaker 4: and comments and insights. I appreciate it as well. It's
Speaker 4: got up to doing for me.
Speaker 3: Well, I thought it'd be fun to angle this one
Speaker 3: really heavily towards anatomy, since that is your specialty, and
Speaker 3: it's such an interesting aspect. And if it's so everything
Speaker 3: is so congruent. I guess I keep using the word
Speaker 3: congruent because that's just the way I see it. You
Speaker 3: know that these things, yeah, that they share some anatomy
Speaker 3: and characteristics with chimpanzees and humans and gorillas and and
Speaker 3: whatever's going on here. Like I say it often on
Speaker 3: stage where people can crucify me. Yeah, whatever these things are,
Speaker 3: they evolved here. They have so much in common with
Speaker 3: everything else that we're looking at.
Speaker 2: Why would we go.
Speaker 3: Outside the box in that sort of way, And it's it's.
Speaker 4: Really neat to do that. Yeah, it's always interesting to
Speaker 4: kind of rain the audience back in Have you been
Speaker 4: present when I've shown the various slides that have Like
Speaker 4: there's one where there's a very comely female in a
Speaker 4: bikini walking and I've got walking away from the camera,
Speaker 4: and I've got the partying kind of the shot of
Speaker 4: angled shot of Patty, and one on a vanbam. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, you do something like that and people chuckle.
Speaker 4: But if they'll stop and think, I mean, it's so obvious,
Speaker 4: they become fixated on something like, well, the big toe
Speaker 4: isn't divergent, so it's not an ape, and they know
Speaker 4: to ignore everything else about it. It looks like an
Speaker 4: eight one thing tips the scale, you know, So a
Speaker 4: picture like that, while it's a little tongue in cheek,
Speaker 4: it's really meant to give you pause and consider what
Speaker 4: is it that you're focused on?
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, whatever this thing is, it makes sense in
Speaker 3: context and that that's really striking to me at least.
Speaker 3: So yeah, all right, Bobs, you want to get us
Speaker 3: out of here?
Speaker 2: All right, folks, thank you.
Speaker 5: The Jeff Belgium, the doctor Jeff Belgium from Idaho State University,
Speaker 5: and he's got a cool website you got to check
Speaker 5: out at the relicommoned inquiry at RhI At, Well, it's
Speaker 5: RhI at is U dot E d U, the State University.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: So until next time, folks, keep it beyond squatchy