Speaker 1: Big Food and bed.
Speaker 2: With Cliff and Bubo.
Speaker 1: These guys are your favorites, so like say subscribe and
Speaker 1: raid it five star and me today listening watching limb
Speaker 1: always keep it Squatching.
Speaker 3: And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay.
Speaker 2: Hey boats. What's happening man? Do just living man, just
Speaker 2: working at the mill of the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: That's about. Oh yeah, you saw the mill when you
Speaker 2: were over here, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's a nice one, a little nice Alaska now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just just like chipping away at the logs, man,
Speaker 2: I think we got h another two or three or
Speaker 2: more done. Kind of an interesting thing happened in the
Speaker 2: way I mean with the mill. I mean, this isn't
Speaker 2: a mill podcast, but it's kind of cool anyway. So
Speaker 2: you know, I live next to that big chunk of BLM, right,
Speaker 2: there's one dude that lives up on that BLM land
Speaker 2: and I did not know this, and we've had some
Speaker 2: stuff the big some bigfoot stuff has happened over on
Speaker 2: that BLM land and only one house up there. Really
Speaker 2: there's two houses, a rental house and the guy who
Speaker 2: lives up there. It's about a hundred hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: acres that the guy owns and the rest of it
Speaker 2: his public land for quite a while, quite a ways.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I've heard some stuff around the house. I
Speaker 2: think we have bigfoots every once in a while. I
Speaker 2: probably noticed them two times a year, maybe three year
Speaker 2: or four if you include Melissa's noticings as well. And
Speaker 2: I think I mentioned this on the podcast about a
Speaker 2: year and a half ago or something. I remember it
Speaker 2: was winter, maybe it was. I don't think it was
Speaker 2: his past winter. I think it was the one before.
Speaker 2: My neighbor was walking her dogs over there, and she
Speaker 2: was walking down the road and there was still snow
Speaker 2: in the ground walking down the road, and then at
Speaker 2: some point there was like a series of knocks, like
Speaker 2: really loud knocks when she's walking her dogs, and her
Speaker 2: dogs all looked as she goes, oh, that's weird, you know.
Speaker 2: And this woman doesn't believe in sasquatches. She thinks I'm
Speaker 2: a weirdo, right, and I may or may not be
Speaker 2: a weirdo, but that you know, she also doesn't believe
Speaker 2: in sasas watches. So she's and she goes, ah, okay,
Speaker 2: that's odd. Something must have fallen out of the train
Speaker 2: and she walks another you know, half mile or mile
Speaker 2: down the road, just walking her dog. Soon her thing
Speaker 2: comes back and at the same place that happens again,
Speaker 2: bam bam bam bam bam or something like that. And
Speaker 2: that time she said, no, that's scared the hell out
Speaker 2: of her. Basically, you know, she didn't think that sasquatches
Speaker 2: are real. She probably still doesn't, but she can't explain
Speaker 2: what she heard. It's clearly not anything falling, and it
Speaker 2: really scared her. And I got a text from her
Speaker 2: when she was still in realized, like, Cliff, you know
Speaker 2: how you feel about these things. This just happened, And
Speaker 2: I went ooh, you know, cause that's right next door, man,
Speaker 2: That's like a mile from my house, you know. So
Speaker 2: I sit down there on the side by side and
Speaker 2: walk around for like an hour and a half. I
Speaker 2: don't find anything long and short of it, but so,
Speaker 2: you know, so stuff happens out there, basically is my point,
Speaker 2: you know, on the other side of it, you know,
Speaker 2: like another two miles down that same road, when there's
Speaker 2: actually people living. Everybody has like five to twenty acres.
Speaker 4: That sort of thing.
Speaker 2: We got a report in the Museum from twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: A woman saw one walking through her yard at like
Speaker 2: four point thirty in the morning while she's having coffee. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. You know. I knew it was
Speaker 2: a good area. That's why I chose this property when
Speaker 2: I bought it. Right What I didn't know is that
Speaker 2: the property owner up there he had never seen anything.
Speaker 2: He said, he's heard some really weird noises. He doesn't
Speaker 2: know what they were, you know, women screaming and stuff.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, it could be cats. He goes, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. Maybe you know, but still, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's heard some stuff he can't explain up there, but
Speaker 2: has never seen anything or whatever. He told me that
Speaker 2: that property used to be a nursery for exotic species
Speaker 2: like non native, non organ native species, which is why
Speaker 2: he was down on my property recently with the mill
Speaker 2: doing stuff with the neighbors. Because he had a chestnut
Speaker 2: tree on his property, and chestnuts are very rare because
Speaker 2: of a blight that happened back east and all that
Speaker 2: other stuff, you know, So he had some really unusual
Speaker 2: trees and endangered tree and chestnuts, great wood for outdoor
Speaker 2: furniture and all this other stuff. So he was milling
Speaker 2: up a chestnut tree on his property and he's, you
Speaker 2: know's were their handful of other ones. And of course
Speaker 2: chestnut trees make chestnuts. Bears and other animals love chestnuts.
Speaker 2: But still, I thought that was kind of interesting. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: isn't that something that whole property there was actually a
Speaker 2: nursery for non native species, thus in creating a larger,
Speaker 2: you know, variety of you know, plant life and stuff.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. That's an area I got to continue looking into.
Speaker 2: And you know, that's the first time I'd ever met
Speaker 2: that particular neighbor because he is like a mile and
Speaker 2: a half down the road or something. But he did say, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you ever want to come walk around on the
Speaker 2: property and look for your big friends, you're welcome to
Speaker 2: ooh yeah, very cool. So anyway, so that's kind of
Speaker 2: interesting news because I know they're near my house sometimes
Speaker 2: I just don't know when, unfortunately, But still, how cool
Speaker 2: is that exotic plant nursery you know, decades and decades
Speaker 2: and decades ago right next door that might be drawing
Speaker 2: in a slightly higher number of animals that are looking
Speaker 2: for a variety of plant life. You know, I know
Speaker 2: there are a lot of bears over there, you know,
Speaker 2: all the neighbors and stuff. They go bear hunting and
Speaker 2: stuff over there. So anyway, I thought that was kind
Speaker 2: of cool.
Speaker 4: Well, I got rid of the trailer.
Speaker 2: No, say it isn't true, or say it is, because
Speaker 2: I know I got rid of the trailer. I was
Speaker 2: thrilled about that. But what happened? Tell us about it.
Speaker 3: I wanted to play some sad piano music because this
Speaker 3: is a sad day.
Speaker 2: Indeed, can you play some triumphant marching music.
Speaker 4: As you can get it for?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry for your lost, Bobo. I think it's a
Speaker 2: loss for all of us here on Big Fin and beyond.
Speaker 4: It's starting to rain earlier this year than that, you know,
Speaker 4: the usual war rain was on the way, and I
Speaker 4: was like, I just got to get rid of it.
Speaker 2: You're a big man, Bobo, you really are.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It was it was tough. I mean I was
Speaker 4: having second thoughts to the whole time. I was like,
Speaker 4: I could just cover it with the tarp and fix
Speaker 4: it up when I can, and I like that gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Well, it's good, it's good that you did that. You know,
Speaker 2: loving something is about letting it go. Yeah, good for you, Bob.
Speaker 2: So I'm so sorry for your loss.
Speaker 4: So I'll miss him for her, I.
Speaker 2: Can't say the same, but man, I really feel for you.
Speaker 4: Write on something else. What we got this week for it?
Speaker 3: Well, it's that time of the month or bi monthly
Speaker 3: or whenever we feel like it to do our topical episode.
Speaker 3: And so you guys always send me articles that you
Speaker 3: come across online or things that pop up in the
Speaker 3: news feed that are tangentially Sasquatch related or ape related
Speaker 3: in some way, and then whenever it's time for one
Speaker 3: of these episodes, I just compile them all send the
Speaker 3: email over. So you should have gotten that email, and
Speaker 3: we got a list of squatchy relevant items to go
Speaker 3: through today.
Speaker 2: Well let's just hit them in order or something from
Speaker 2: according to the email that will work for me. Okay,
Speaker 2: well the first one here, the first one is, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is all over the news. Of course, we happen
Speaker 2: to get it from a website fizz dot org, as
Speaker 2: in like physics phys dot org. It's the science website.
Speaker 2: I get a lot of stuff from these guys, really
Speaker 2: really good source for science news and all that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff. And the title of this one caught my eye.
Speaker 2: Smallest armbone in the human fossil record, sheds light on
Speaker 2: the dawn of Homo flurisiensis. Now, of course, Homo fleurixiensis
Speaker 2: is is an important topic for bigfooters. For anybody interested
Speaker 2: in this kind of subject like bigfoots and yeties and stuff,
Speaker 2: you really really ought to be looking into human evolution.
Speaker 2: It is just full of good information that is directly
Speaker 2: pertaining to the sasquatch subject, you know, because clearly sasquatches
Speaker 2: are related to us and just like all the other
Speaker 2: ape species. So if you're a longtime listener a Bigfoot
Speaker 2: and Beyond, you know that we've had doctor Fourth on
Speaker 2: doctor Gregory Fourth on the podcast before he wrote a
Speaker 2: couple of very very important books because he's a very
Speaker 2: well respected anthropologist and he is a proponent of the
Speaker 2: idea that some small hominin unknown species of upright ape
Speaker 2: is still alive on the island of Flores, which is
Speaker 2: super important because that's where the fossils for Homo fleuresiensis
Speaker 2: come from. Homo fluresiensis made big news back in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands. At some point, they.
Speaker 4: Never cauught them in those articles they'd ever say in
Speaker 4: one respective scientist it's worked on the island, even they
Speaker 4: were alive one hundred years ago. They never mentioned that
Speaker 4: in any of the articles.
Speaker 2: No, he's largely ignored, unfortunately at this point, super unfortunate
Speaker 2: because he has such important things to say. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, totally. I don't get it, and I
Speaker 2: don't get it. And you know, in this article they
Speaker 2: have a certain leaning. I see a certain maybe not agenda,
Speaker 2: because that suggests something a little bit more nefarious. But
Speaker 2: but well let's get into basically. The article basically tells
Speaker 2: us that, okay, they kind of give a background on
Speaker 2: Homo floresiensis. These things were small, they're about three feet
Speaker 2: tall a little bit more. And a new species was
Speaker 2: based on one individual specimen that was unearthed in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three from a cave called lang Bua. I
Speaker 2: think it's I don't know, that's how you pronounce it
Speaker 2: sounds right? Yeah, Well, thank you, thank you. I am
Speaker 2: not even close to fluent in Indonesian, so I think
Speaker 2: you for your help there, bobo. Yeah. So in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three they unearthed are an individual of a
Speaker 2: new species and they named it Homo fleuriesiensis after the
Speaker 2: island of Flores, right, Flores fluriesi ences And after much
Speaker 2: wrangling and going back and forth, they've kind of settled
Speaker 2: on this idea that it probably went like the fossils
Speaker 2: are from about fifty thousand years ago, but it was
Speaker 2: a singular specie or singular specimen from the species, right,
Speaker 2: so oh, we need to learn more. So obviously they've
Speaker 2: been digging around quite a bit in that general area
Speaker 2: since then, and at some point they ran across elements
Speaker 2: of three different individuals from a site about thirty or
Speaker 2: so miles to the east at a place called Mata
Speaker 2: Mangay I think Mennge. I'm not sure if it's Mangay
Speaker 2: or Mange, I'm not sure, but either way, about thirty
Speaker 2: miles to the east they ran across three new individuals,
Speaker 2: but at first they mostly had teeth. By my reading
Speaker 2: of it, they mostly had teeth. They didn't know much
Speaker 2: about it, and the teeth that they had looked like
Speaker 2: it was kind of like Homo fleuresiensis, maybe a little
Speaker 2: bit more archaic, a little bit earlier in the fossil record.
Speaker 2: They had some The dentation is kind of similar to
Speaker 2: homorectus in some ways. But they kept digging around and
Speaker 2: they finally found some post cranial fossils. Post cranial, of course,
Speaker 2: is the way people say fossils from below the skull.
Speaker 2: Post cranial makes sense right below the skull. So in
Speaker 2: other words, they got something else besides a tooth or
Speaker 2: a mandible or a part of a cranium. And this
Speaker 2: was a small segment of an armbone. Now, based on
Speaker 2: what they learned from Homo threes diensists and some other
Speaker 2: general you know, palewanthropological measurements, they're guessing that this particular
Speaker 2: individual that they have the armbone for was about one
Speaker 2: hundred centimeters tall. That's about thirty nine inches tall, you know,
Speaker 2: something like that, just a meter shall we say a
Speaker 2: meter tall, a little bit more than a yard. Well,
Speaker 2: it's interesting, and it was super interesting to them because
Speaker 2: it is smaller. It's six centimeters shorter than what they
Speaker 2: guess at the first specimen of Homo three dances was.
Speaker 2: Now you said, well, you're saying, well, six centimeters that's
Speaker 2: not very much, and you're right, it's not. So the
Speaker 2: question is does this represent some sort of sexual dimorphism?
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't even know, now that I'm
Speaker 2: saying that out loud, I don't know what the sex
Speaker 2: of that first specimen was, so anyway, or does it
Speaker 2: just show us some sort of you know, genetic variation
Speaker 2: within the species, because I mean, obviously, like I'm five
Speaker 2: foot eight, Bobo's about nine foot ten or something like that.
Speaker 2: So there's obviously a lot of you know, within the
Speaker 2: same species, there's a lot of variation. And you figure
Speaker 2: out it's only six centimeters, but now consider that this
Speaker 2: thing's you know, about one hundred centimeters. That's a six
Speaker 2: percent difference. That's pretty big, you know, that's a five
Speaker 2: or six percent difference between these two species. That's pretty big,
Speaker 2: you know. So I don't know, I don't know. But
Speaker 2: the article it really seems to side with this idea
Speaker 2: that the Homo three dances species is coming from Homo erectus.
Speaker 2: But I'd like to point out that that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 2: That's not necessarily true.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's really interesting that these new finds
Speaker 3: are six hundred and fifty thousand years older, roughly speaking,
Speaker 3: and are actually smaller, and yet they still try to
Speaker 3: make the case that, well, it looks like whatever because
Speaker 3: they're still making the case that these were descended from
Speaker 3: Homo erectus as a consequence of something akin to island
Speaker 3: dwarfsm And now that they can look so much further
Speaker 3: back in time and see that, you know, they're still
Speaker 3: small back then, and actually even smaller that they're like, well,
Speaker 3: it appears that some Homo erectus ended up on this
Speaker 3: remote Indonesian island about a million years ago and then
Speaker 3: rapidly underwent a dwarf asm, which is like, now, the
Speaker 3: further back in time you look to still see this
Speaker 3: really diminutive size sort of indicates that they probably were
Speaker 3: somewhere close to that size prior to arriving on this island,
Speaker 3: at least that would be my interpretation of that. So
Speaker 3: I found that kind of funny. You ever read doctor
Speaker 3: Meldrim's early I wouldn't quite call it a rebuttal, but
Speaker 3: it's sort of like his way in on what he
Speaker 3: felt was like a premature designation of fluoresciences to the
Speaker 3: genus Homo. He recently actually reposted that online, but the
Speaker 3: article the version that he posted are like screenshots of
Speaker 3: the PDF, so it's not like something I can link to.
Speaker 3: But I do have all these screenshots. In fact, I'll
Speaker 3: post them for members and maybe in the meantime I
Speaker 3: can email him and say, hey, is there a link
Speaker 3: to a PDF or a link to a written article
Speaker 3: online so we could post it easily for people to
Speaker 3: read the text without having to see like four different
Speaker 3: image files. But you know, Meldrim has been making this
Speaker 3: case for a long time that Noah doesn't seem like
Speaker 3: having descended from erect is the most likely or the
Speaker 3: more parsimonious hypothesis here.
Speaker 2: Well, Also, doctor Meldrim's not alone in this, you know,
Speaker 2: either in that stance. I know when Darren Naish was
Speaker 2: here visiting and we had them over for dinner, I
Speaker 2: think we had a conversation about HOMEO three sansus came up.
Speaker 2: I think it was here, might have been in the
Speaker 2: field when we went out to the woods. But he said,
Speaker 2: he said straight out, and if Darren, Darren, if you're
Speaker 2: listening and I'm incorrect, let me know. But he said,
Speaker 2: straight out, no, these are australopithesnes.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I thought that was just fascinating. And of course when
Speaker 2: this article hit the you know, digital news stand, just
Speaker 2: in case Jeff missed it, I sent it to doctor Meldrum.
Speaker 2: I said, hey, do you see this and uh, and
Speaker 2: he pointed out that, uh, Debbie argues paper on morphometrics
Speaker 2: of the skull linked it to more primitive forms, you know,
Speaker 2: and I know doctor Meldrim's one hundred percent with that.
Speaker 2: And then so I said, Debbie Argue, I know that name.
Speaker 2: I can't place it. So actually, I just like a
Speaker 2: week a couple of weeks ago, I bought her book
Speaker 2: and it is in Q to be read very very soon.
Speaker 2: So I'm really interested in reading what her book is
Speaker 2: about her conclusions in the book, and I need to
Speaker 2: I probably need to dig up her paper paper on
Speaker 2: this and take a look.
Speaker 4: The reason.
Speaker 2: You know, with all these articles that we do on
Speaker 2: our topical discussions and whatnot, we talk about the article
Speaker 2: a little bit, we talk about what we find interesting,
Speaker 2: and then at the end we always try to tie
Speaker 2: it back into sasquatches, you know. And for me, the
Speaker 2: big find here, okay, the big find here is that
Speaker 2: a primitive for lack of a better term, like an
Speaker 2: archaic form of Homo escaped Africa pretty early, pretty early,
Speaker 2: because you know, we know that Homo erectus escaped Africa.
Speaker 2: Lots and lots of Homo erectus fossils are found in Africa,
Speaker 2: but they're also found in other places, and in fact, everybody,
Speaker 2: most people, I think I've probably heard of Java Man.
Speaker 2: That was the type specimen, that was the holotype for
Speaker 2: the species Homo erectus, and it was found in Java,
Speaker 2: hence the name Java Man. So the very holotype, the
Speaker 2: very first specimen of Homo erectus was found in Indonesia,
Speaker 2: so very very interesting, you know, and of course home
Speaker 2: Erectus isn't really I wouldn't really call that an archaic species,
Speaker 2: you know, very very successful. They were, you know, five
Speaker 2: feet tall, five and a half feet taller, so they
Speaker 2: use fire. They were very pretty pretty advanced, you know,
Speaker 2: they weren't. Aren't that far from us honestly back in
Speaker 2: time and in other ways as well. Probably, But the
Speaker 2: fact that they're legitimate scientists, you know, are pointing out
Speaker 2: that Homo fleur is the insists is pretty our kick.
Speaker 2: If they're not australopithescenes, they're early early homo habilists. That
Speaker 2: is significant because it shows that kind of inhuman homonym
Speaker 2: hominin's with an N at the end remember hominin. Just
Speaker 2: remind everybody hominin with an N is any human relative
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be an ancestor, but it can be
Speaker 2: relative that is on the family tree at any point
Speaker 2: since chimpanzees and humans last shared a common ancestor. Stay
Speaker 2: tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo
Speaker 2: will be right back after these messages. But anyway, fleur
Speaker 2: is ensists in Indonesia, on the Island of Flores, and
Speaker 2: perhaps other places too. Well, well, you look at the
Speaker 2: Philippines with Homo luzon ensists. Probably something very similar. An
Speaker 2: early archaic hominin did in fact radiate out of Africa,
Speaker 2: and that is super important because it lays the foundation
Speaker 2: for sasquatches essentially. You know, back in the seventies or whatever,
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies, when all the paleoonthropologists were saying, no, no,
Speaker 2: big butt isn't real because it can't be real, you know,
Speaker 2: there are One of the reasons they had is that, like,
Speaker 2: we don't have any early human fossils anywhere else except
Speaker 2: for Africa. Basically, you know, maybe Java man was discovered
Speaker 2: at that point. I don't know when that came up,
Speaker 2: but still you hear what I'm saying, because sasquatches are
Speaker 2: clearly rather archaic. You know, they probably have a fairly
Speaker 2: small brain despite their large size, you know, proportionally small brain.
Speaker 2: They don't show any signs of fashioning tools, really nothing
Speaker 2: that we can be pointed to. They don't have stuff,
Speaker 2: which is kind of one of the defining characteristics of humans.
Speaker 2: And a lot of ways they're just simply not humans. Right,
Speaker 2: there's something else. They're sasquatches, you know, they don't have
Speaker 2: to be human like you respected their sasquatches and the
Speaker 2: fact that an early archaic hominin did radiate out of
Speaker 2: Africa is significant for the sasquatch argument, I think very much.
Speaker 3: So Again, I do find I mean, they do give
Speaker 3: some lip service. Two competing theories. I mean, there's a
Speaker 3: quote in here.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Another theory is that the hobbit, you know, which is
Speaker 3: referring to homofluoresciensis, is a late surviving remnant of a
Speaker 3: more ancient hominin from Africa that predates Homo erectus and
Speaker 3: was small and stature to begin with, in which case,
Speaker 3: possible candidates include Homo habilists or the famous Lucy Australopithecus saparensis.
Speaker 3: So at least they do sort of nod to that,
Speaker 3: But you know, it ends on that quote from Professor
Speaker 3: Brumm saying, quote, the new fossils strongly suggest that the
Speaker 3: Hobbit story did indeed begin when a group of early
Speaker 3: Asian hominins known as Homo erectus somehow became isolated on
Speaker 3: this remote Indonesian island perhaps one million years ago and
Speaker 3: underwent a dramatic body side reduction over time. So again,
Speaker 3: the further we look back in time, they're pushing that
Speaker 3: dwarfism into a smaller and smaller timeframe to say, well,
Speaker 3: they arrived perhaps a million years ago, and by seven
Speaker 3: hundred thousand years ago they were what'd you say about
Speaker 3: thirty nine inches tall. That is a pretty dramatic change
Speaker 3: in a very short amount of time. So I do
Speaker 3: think it seems more parsimonious that like, well, no, it's
Speaker 3: probably the case that they were of small stature before
Speaker 3: they arrived on that island, but time will tell.
Speaker 2: And also the older specimens is the ones that the
Speaker 2: article is really about, the seven hundred thousand year old
Speaker 2: ones versus the fifty thousand. They're smaller.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we don't know, to your earlier point, whether
Speaker 3: this is an example of sexual dimorphism or if it's
Speaker 3: maybe associated with age, because there's just not enough information here,
Speaker 3: you know, if we're talking about subadults or juveniles versus adults.
Speaker 3: But if there were more of the same on both
Speaker 3: ends of the distribution, you could make the case that
Speaker 3: will this suggests that they were actually growing larger over time,
Speaker 3: that they were trending towards a larger size. But I
Speaker 3: think with just these isolated cases, it's hard to make
Speaker 3: that proposition. But at least it suggests that that possibilities open.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And of course, at this point, the jury is honestly
Speaker 2: still out, and I think that should be pointed out
Speaker 2: because we just don't know enough about the evolutionary history
Speaker 2: of Homo floresiensis because we have so few specimens of
Speaker 2: human ancestors. In general, we have very very few specimens.
Speaker 2: I think that's an important thing for all of us
Speaker 2: to remember. But you know, the first specimen that was
Speaker 2: unearthed in two thousand and three, that individual, Okay, we
Speaker 2: had one individual from that cave, just one, and now
Speaker 2: we have I think ten other fossil specimens, ten other
Speaker 2: bones if you want to say, you know, teeth or bones,
Speaker 2: and of four additional individuals, and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Of the of the four new ones, all of that
Speaker 2: stuff is our teeth and mandibles and cranium except for
Speaker 2: a partial armbone. So the jury is still we have
Speaker 2: a lot of learning to do about Homo flre exiances.
Speaker 2: Still we have five individuals documented in the fossil record now,
Speaker 2: just five out of the potentially thousands that have existed
Speaker 2: over time. So we'll hang out, wait and see. But
Speaker 2: all of this stuff, I think really is fantastic for
Speaker 2: the idea of relatiominoids in that part of the world.
Speaker 2: It really really says something about how little we know
Speaker 2: and how much we still have to learn, and especially
Speaker 2: about the possibility of relict species. You know, small numbers
Speaker 2: of these things hanging on and far flung corners of
Speaker 2: the world, just hanging on by a thread, a few
Speaker 2: hundred or maybe a thousand individuals at the most, basically
Speaker 2: living under the nose of the humans that live there.
Speaker 3: Hey, Bobo, since you booked Gregory fourth, have you stayed
Speaker 3: in touch with him at all? Like I'd be curious
Speaker 3: to hear what he thinks about this, like have you
Speaker 3: emailed back and forth with him?
Speaker 4: No? I haven't.
Speaker 3: This might be a good opportunity to say, hey, what
Speaker 3: do you think about this? Or because I'm in the
Speaker 3: same boat with you, Whereas I'm frustrated at how few
Speaker 3: times his name is mentioned, because you know, he wrote
Speaker 3: this incredible academic book that's one of my favorite books
Speaker 3: about mystery apes, Images of the Wild Man in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 3: but then that newer book Between Ape and Human which
Speaker 3: is just amazing, and yeah, he's he makes a pretty
Speaker 3: compelling case. And it's just very sad and frustrating that
Speaker 3: he wouldn't be asked to comment on some of these things,
Speaker 3: because he's one of the few people that's spent a
Speaker 3: tremendous amount of time there getting contemporary stories and his
Speaker 3: familiarity with these fossils themselves.
Speaker 4: He's unique. Yeah, pioneer, he's like they can go to
Speaker 4: That's like in the analysism, both sides of it, they
Speaker 4: just ignore him.
Speaker 3: Well, it just goes to show the same sentiment expressed
Speaker 3: by Krantz and Binnernagel and Meldrum that you do sort
Speaker 3: of become a black sheep, so to speak. Would you
Speaker 3: stick your neck out and say, hey, there might be
Speaker 3: something to these stories. And you would think that, well,
Speaker 3: the more evidence that emerges that suggest that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: it is an interesting that the stories of this diminutive
Speaker 3: hominin happen to be in a place where fossils of
Speaker 3: diminutive hominins are being unearthed, should give it some weight
Speaker 3: or credence. But people are silent.
Speaker 4: Nobody, I mean, out of the thousands and thousands of
Speaker 4: researchers on these subjects, and it's not a very big area.
Speaker 4: You think people would be all over that and no home.
Speaker 3: Or even media because you think about, you know, the
Speaker 3: way that the media will chase some of these things
Speaker 3: down for like a streaming documentary series or even a
Speaker 3: network TV series. Now, I don't know how difficult it
Speaker 3: is to film in Indonesia. I know you guys filmed
Speaker 3: there for Finding Bigfoot. But you would think that if
Speaker 3: the scientific community doesn't want to pay attention, that some
Speaker 3: media company would be like, oh, this would be an opportunity.
Speaker 3: Let's go to flores with Gregory Fourth and get some
Speaker 3: of these eyewitnesses on camera and see some of these locations.
Speaker 3: But it just doesn't seem to be a lot of interest.
Speaker 3: I do think it's there's a market difference between the
Speaker 3: way that it grips you in terms of the concept
Speaker 3: of an eight foot tall, you know, eight hundred to
Speaker 3: one thousand pound ape is pretty terrifying, whereas like the
Speaker 3: diminutive ones maybe not so much. So it's not as
Speaker 3: gripping a narrative. So maybe that's part of it, is
Speaker 3: that they're not quite monstrous enough.
Speaker 2: Well that's why Reality TV, as much as it makes
Speaker 2: me cringe, reality TV, unfortunately, is seen as the vanguard
Speaker 2: of research in this area. Unfortunately, you know, Lauren Coleman
Speaker 2: pointed out, it's like, yeah, most of the funding for
Speaker 2: any sort of exploration of these topics is now coming
Speaker 2: from Reality TV that has no like, absolutely zero obligation
Speaker 2: to tell the truth or to do real science or
Speaker 2: anything like that. It's only only for entertainment purposes. And
Speaker 2: it's really a shame in that way, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And there is something really gripping about
Speaker 3: seeing those places and seeing the people involved. Like I
Speaker 3: know that a lot of the claims made by Lee
Speaker 3: Berger about the Rising Star Cave and some of the
Speaker 3: fine there and the implications of those finds are yeah.
Speaker 2: The home on the Leady's subjects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're hotly contested. But I would encourage everyone
Speaker 3: to watch that Netflix documentary if you have Netflix, called
Speaker 3: Cave of Bones, so that you're basically in the cave
Speaker 3: and you're seeing it, and you're seeing these great moments
Speaker 3: with Lee Berger and John Hawks and the others involved,
Speaker 3: and you know, I think they make a really compelling case.
Speaker 3: And time will tell whether their interpretations are correct or not.
Speaker 3: But most of the people I know who are like, oh,
Speaker 3: I reject their interpretations. I always ask, well, have you
Speaker 3: seen the documentary and they've all said no. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: you should see it, because it's one thing to read
Speaker 3: about the finds in text and read the rebuttals and texts,
Speaker 3: and it's another thing to sort of take a digital
Speaker 3: virtual journey there. And it's a compelling thing. And I'd
Speaker 3: love to at least take a virtual journey to Flores
Speaker 3: and see this stuff and hear from those witnesses too.
Speaker 2: So absolutely there was some talk for a moment amongst
Speaker 2: academics to go do an excavation at the cave, in
Speaker 2: which okay, and I is it the new ags. I
Speaker 2: don't remember that the name of the tribe. It's in
Speaker 2: the other side of the island, Nage, the Naga. Thank
Speaker 2: you as kind of close. I'm a visual guys, picturing
Speaker 2: in my head, so yeah. At those people there who
Speaker 2: claimed that the Ebu Gogo was around until about two
Speaker 2: hundred years ago also claim that the lasts of the
Speaker 2: Ebugogo were killed in a cave, which is an interesting
Speaker 2: thing and now that I think about it, because there's
Speaker 2: all sorts of stories here in North America from the
Speaker 2: native people about Sasquatches being killed in caves and burnt
Speaker 2: and seal off the caves and was allowed to go
Speaker 2: into that sort of stuff. But there is a cave there,
Speaker 2: and there was some talk by some PhDs I know
Speaker 2: of going there and excavating that cave, but they could
Speaker 2: never get the funding and they ran into a lot
Speaker 2: of problems with permits. Actually I remember that was a
Speaker 2: big deal as well. The permitting process was very, very difficult.
Speaker 2: And of course the area is just politically turbulent, I
Speaker 2: think is a good way to say it, in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways. So I guess that's probably some of
Speaker 2: the challenges that these scientists face nowadays, whether they're working
Speaker 2: on flues or anywhere else for that matter, down in Indonesia.
Speaker 2: But I would like to see something come from that.
Speaker 2: Let that come to fruition at some point, because two
Speaker 2: hundred years ago there might be bones still, there might
Speaker 2: actually be legitimate bones of what they claim to be
Speaker 2: ebigogo if that story is true, you know, if it's
Speaker 2: not like twisted bolk tales of some sort.
Speaker 4: Well, the problem is in those caves is the baths
Speaker 4: in there. They're wan it's so hot on the pH scale,
Speaker 4: it just burnt. It just eats all that stuff up.
Speaker 4: And those staves are littered with baths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that might that might be the case, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, do you guys?
Speaker 3: Remember we had Pat Spain on the podcast and he
Speaker 3: had mentioned having worked with someone who said that Fluoresiensis
Speaker 3: was still around at least until the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 3: he could prove it. Yeah, I think if I remember
Speaker 3: the story correctly. He passed away shortly thereafter, and Pat
Speaker 3: never found out exactly, you know, he never got him
Speaker 3: to elaborate on that, But that's always stuck in my
Speaker 3: mind after since we had him on the podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, there you go.
Speaker 2: That's a that's the first article. Nice rousing discussion about that.
Speaker 2: That's cool. Indeed, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond
Speaker 2: with Cliff and Bobo. Will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: Should we go to the next article?
Speaker 4: What do you think the Spain Great Ape Law?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, do you want to summarize this boger, do
Speaker 2: you want me to do it again? Or what do
Speaker 2: you think?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just basically, yeah, like they're they're trying
Speaker 4: to decide what kind of rights, like more like human
Speaker 4: rights they're going to grant to the great apes. And
Speaker 4: I think also was it some of their not just
Speaker 4: great great apes, but did they include a couple other
Speaker 4: monkies or lesser apes?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's it's a This specific article is only
Speaker 2: addressing what they call the Great Ape Law or the
Speaker 2: Hominid Law. Essentially, there has been talk I think in
Speaker 2: Spain this law is going to be in Spain if
Speaker 2: it goes through. But there's also talk in Portugal about
Speaker 2: including cetations and I think that's a great idea Wales
Speaker 2: and dolphins in other words, if you don't know what
Speaker 2: cetaceans are for our listeners. But basically, what has happened
Speaker 2: that the Spanish government just kind of is now asking
Speaker 2: the public and experts in particular for input. They call
Speaker 2: it a consultation period, so they'd like to pass a law.
Speaker 2: They're talking about what this law might look like. So
Speaker 2: now they're going to experts and saying, hey, give us
Speaker 2: your input here so we can sculpt something that's appropriate
Speaker 2: for the animals. Because we're legislators, we don't know anything,
Speaker 2: so like, experts, tell us what you think about this,
Speaker 2: and of course the public as well, because the public
Speaker 2: are the ones that have to probably vote on this
Speaker 2: if there's voting involved, or at least influencing their legislators.
Speaker 2: So basically the bottom line is that Spain has recognized
Speaker 2: that great Apes probably deserves some higher level of protection
Speaker 2: because of their higher level of of awareness of cognition
Speaker 2: in general, and they are trying to pass a law
Speaker 2: that basically gives great apes some sort of very basic
Speaker 2: human rights. Human rights. I mean, we're not talking about
Speaker 2: healthcare or something like that, or clean water necessarily, it's
Speaker 2: more along the lines with better protection that mostly stops
Speaker 2: them from being exploited commercially and other items that conflict
Speaker 2: with their dignity. Now, dignity is a pretty loose and
Speaker 2: squishy term to be used.
Speaker 4: In a law.
Speaker 2: I get, But I think this is a fantastic idea.
Speaker 2: Fantastic idea because it seems that whenever I go to
Speaker 2: any bigfoot conference or I'm doing a talk or something
Speaker 2: like that, it always comes up. It always comes up that,
Speaker 2: you know, sasquatches are people and should be treated as such,
Speaker 2: and like, they're clearly not people. They're not Homo sapiens,
Speaker 2: homost sapiens, aren't covered in hair, they don't grow to
Speaker 2: eight feet tall. They're clearly not almost apiens, right, And
Speaker 2: in fact, I even counter that, and I'm sure, much
Speaker 2: to the chagrin of some of the people listening and
Speaker 2: probably at the conferences as well, that I think it's
Speaker 2: disrespectful to treat sasquatches as humans because they're not humans
Speaker 2: and they have different needs than human beings, do you know.
Speaker 2: And I always use my dog as an example. I
Speaker 2: love soci I love my dog, you know, second probably
Speaker 2: only to my wife, right, But if I treat her
Speaker 2: as a human, they could end up killing her because
Speaker 2: chocolate and onions and stuff like that kill dogs, you know,
Speaker 2: and she surely wants chocolate. I'm not going to give
Speaker 2: it to her right, But anyway, Yeah, it's I think
Speaker 2: inappropriate to treat sasquatches as humans and any great but
Speaker 2: great apes. They are kind of humany, just like humans
Speaker 2: are definitely kind of ap and I think that this
Speaker 2: law recognized, or this this proposal of a law recognizes that,
Speaker 2: and it is a huge step forward for the protection
Speaker 2: of apes and maybe cetaceans too, as I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: But it also I'm generally for any law that increases
Speaker 2: human compassion for our friends here about the sasquatch. Oh,
Speaker 2: they're human, they're people, that kind of thing. I had
Speaker 2: a discussion years ago with a very very smart researcher
Speaker 2: and it was brought up that like, no, no, no, Cliff,
Speaker 2: people don't understand how great apes are, how fantastic, and
Speaker 2: how how smart they are, and how aware they are,
Speaker 2: the fact that they mourn they're dead, the fact they
Speaker 2: feel compassion, they work together, they make They don't understand
Speaker 2: how advanced apes are. So we should categorize or we
Speaker 2: should talk about humans. I mean the sasquatches as if
Speaker 2: they're humans, because that's the only way that people are
Speaker 2: going to respect them in such a way to protect
Speaker 2: them and I still grapple with that. Do we actually
Speaker 2: change our language and behavior in order to accommodate the
Speaker 2: people who are just unaware, Like, do we drop our
Speaker 2: actions and language, you know, to accommodate people who I've
Speaker 2: never bothered to learn about these things? And I get it,
Speaker 2: not everybody needs to know about how you know, chimpanzees
Speaker 2: mourn their dead or something like that. That's not a
Speaker 2: very useful thing to know in our society day. I
Speaker 2: get that there's only so much time of the day, right,
Speaker 2: But at the same time, do I need to dumb
Speaker 2: it down? I don't think so. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think we need to educate people to bring them
Speaker 2: up because you know, I get this a lot, actually
Speaker 2: I get this a lot on the paranormal side of people.
Speaker 2: For some reason, you just treat these things as dumb
Speaker 2: apes that were dumb apes or that term, and thinking
Speaker 2: who's the dumb ape?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: It just shows I mean I don't want to throw
Speaker 2: names around like that, but like who, like if you're
Speaker 2: unaware of what the magnificence of the other great apes
Speaker 2: and how they think and what they feel and how
Speaker 2: they do, like, that's the problem is the problem is
Speaker 2: from the people who don't understand apes. It's just it
Speaker 2: kind of chaps my hide in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. And you know, I run into that
Speaker 3: quite a bit with certain terms, and I always define
Speaker 3: terms whether I'm on a podcast or giving a lecture.
Speaker 3: But habituation is a great example, because it's a technical
Speaker 3: term that refers to the modification of behavior by an
Speaker 3: animal after repeated and prolonged exposure to the same stimulus.
Speaker 3: And I always define it. But then people go, oh,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't say that, because when squatchers hear habituation, they
Speaker 3: think about sasquatches stealing pancakes or knocking on the door
Speaker 3: asking for garlic because of the mythos. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: that's not my problem. It is not my problem that
Speaker 3: the term has been bastardized to that degree. Now I
Speaker 3: will define it in the technical term, but I am
Speaker 3: not going to stop using the correct technical terms just
Speaker 3: because some portion of some subculture community has bastardized the
Speaker 3: term where they're not aware of what it truly means.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I'll do that very often because I
Speaker 3: think it is a disc service to say, well, we'll
Speaker 3: change the nomin Clayton will change the language to accommodate
Speaker 3: these people who just aren't aware of the technical definitions
Speaker 3: of these things or the true definitions of these things.
Speaker 3: And I just don't think that's right, because you wouldn't
Speaker 3: want to deal with someone who cared about you, who said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I'll change the way I deal with Cliff.
Speaker 3: I won't be honest, and I won't use big words
Speaker 3: because he might not like them, Like, well, that person's
Speaker 3: not on your side, you know, And so like I
Speaker 3: am on the audience's side. If I'm in the audience,
Speaker 3: I want the speaker to be on my side, and
Speaker 3: so like, no, I'm so staunchly against dumbing things down
Speaker 3: for people, or assuming that it even needs to be
Speaker 3: dumbed down for an audience when it's like, well, maybe
Speaker 3: one or two people will take issue, but don't punish
Speaker 3: everyone else for that.
Speaker 2: No, And you can tell that by reading your book.
Speaker 2: By the way, you didn't dumb down anything. I have
Speaker 2: to look words up. It was cool. I enjoyed that,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, very much. But anyway, back to this
Speaker 2: article here and again we're going to tie it back
Speaker 2: to Sasquatches, and we already did. I guess, but like
Speaker 2: basically saying we shouldn't be exploiting the apes, and the
Speaker 2: best way to do that are is basically to stop
Speaker 2: like the captive breathing programs. I mean they're not talking
Speaker 2: about necessarily, you know, the ones like the stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: they do specifically mention zoos, but I think zoos definitely
Speaker 2: have to hold a place in society with endangered animals.
Speaker 2: And if I remember right, if I remember correctly, I
Speaker 2: believe all the grade ape species at this moment are endangered,
Speaker 2: some critically so, like the Mountain grill. I think we're
Speaker 2: down to about three hundred individuals, give or take a
Speaker 2: dozen or two. That's pretty low, man, it's pretty low.
Speaker 2: But they're basically saying that, like these things should not
Speaker 2: be held in like shown to the public in some
Speaker 2: sort of exploitive way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people making faces through the glass and slapping the
Speaker 4: glass and making monkey noises and going, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: that's not cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't think we could just eliminate it outright.
Speaker 3: Like I was just an animal Kingdom a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks ago, and I spent the better part of the
Speaker 3: day watching gorillas, you know, while they were active because
Speaker 3: then it got kind of hot and humid and they
Speaker 3: got a bit lethargic. But given the animal trade worldwide
Speaker 3: and in North America, like of course, there are places
Speaker 3: where private individuals have owned animals that are in unsafe
Speaker 3: conditions and they need to go somewhere, and so there
Speaker 3: are sanctuaries. In fact, there was. It might still be open,
Speaker 3: but as of this recording, I'm not sure. I'll have
Speaker 3: to look and see, but there was a gorilla sanctuary
Speaker 3: in North Georgia not far from Blue Ridge actually that
Speaker 3: house such animals. And there's a chimpanzee sanctuary. There's a
Speaker 3: great documentary series right now that's pretty wild that's produced
Speaker 3: by the same guy who did Tiger King. So it's
Speaker 3: along those same sort of like narrative lines called Chimp
Speaker 3: Crazy that I just finished. I would say it's probably
Speaker 3: not for the faint of heart, so viewer discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: But you know, it features a number of those things.
Speaker 3: But I think some zoos or places that are open
Speaker 3: to the public are probably good options for an animals
Speaker 3: like that who need to be rehomed.
Speaker 4: There's a big space, like they crowd them into much.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have a probably with a captive breeding program
Speaker 4: or whatever, or a rescue place if if they you know,
Speaker 4: had acres and acres, you know, but it would be
Speaker 4: so expensive to fence it in. And I'll understand that.
Speaker 4: But maybe, like the zoos, just get rid of some
Speaker 4: of their exhibits and expand, like the primates or tigers whatever,
Speaker 4: you know, the really critically endangered ones that need the
Speaker 4: you know, the variety of the genetics. I could see that,
Speaker 4: but it's to me, it's just a matter of space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big part of it. And I think
Speaker 3: that Gorilla Sanctuary in North Georgia was pretty large, but yeah,
Speaker 3: having some access to the public. It's hard to say,
Speaker 3: because obviously I know how much I've enjoyed and benefited
Speaker 3: from watching those animals, whether it's gorillas or gibbons or
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the apecc in places, or
Speaker 3: orangutans in some places. So of course I understand that
Speaker 3: that probably drives a lot of compassion and maybe conservation issues.
Speaker 3: But maybe for a smaller subset of people than the
Speaker 3: ones you describe, Bobbo, like people who just want to
Speaker 3: go and stare and bang the glass and get a reaction,
Speaker 3: you know, dumb kids and stuff.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying I haven't done it, but I'm just saying.
Speaker 3: But there's nothing like it though, especially in a place
Speaker 3: where they can get close, you know, where they come
Speaker 3: up to the glass and you're just, you know, a
Speaker 3: couple of feet away from something like that. It's a
Speaker 3: really powerful thing to be that close to an animal
Speaker 3: like that, and it changes you, you know, and it
Speaker 3: changes the way you read about those animals or when
Speaker 3: you watch documentaries because now you have this experiential almost
Speaker 3: like participatory element because you've been that close, albeit through glass.
Speaker 2: So I know it changed Melissa significantly. Actually, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I've ever mentioned on the air. I probably have.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a big fan of Melissa, and I
Speaker 2: talk about her. But she was the nighttime janitor at
Speaker 2: the Pittsburgh Zoo for a year or two before she
Speaker 2: finally came out to be with me here in the
Speaker 2: West Coast. And she would start at midnight, get off
Speaker 2: at eight in the morning sort of stuff, and so
Speaker 2: she had the run of the place doing her job
Speaker 2: and stuff. She's doing janitorial work, and if she finished early,
Speaker 2: you know, she like had forty five minutes early. She
Speaker 2: finished all of her responsibilities early in the morning. What
Speaker 2: she would do is she would go in the grilla.
Speaker 2: I can't say inside the grilla enclosure, that's not what
Speaker 2: she did. But the gorillas had a pretty large outside
Speaker 2: enclosure and there was a troop of them out there,
Speaker 2: and then there was like a you know, one of
Speaker 2: these fake cave sort of things where you go inside
Speaker 2: there and there's glass and you know, if you're lucky,
Speaker 2: maybe there's a grilla on the other side. She would
Speaker 2: go in there almost every day that she was, at
Speaker 2: least when she finished her responsibilities early. And there was
Speaker 2: one gorilla name Hope I believe her name was, who
Speaker 2: was kind of a newbie to the troop in a way,
Speaker 2: and the other troop members kind of bullied her and
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff, and Hope would come in
Speaker 2: and like legitimately, Melissa would hang out with Hope for
Speaker 2: like forty five minutes or an hour and they would
Speaker 2: just hang out together on opposite sides of the glass.
Speaker 2: Like Melissa would sit down and Hope would come in
Speaker 2: and see her and come over and sit on the
Speaker 2: other side of the glass, and Melissa just it was
Speaker 2: such a powerful experience being right there face to face
Speaker 2: with that, and like, Hope would would do things like
Speaker 2: she would point out wounds on her hand to Melissa
Speaker 2: that the other that the other gorillas had given her
Speaker 2: because they kind of bullied this particular animal Hope and
Speaker 2: like and point out and they you know, and Melissa
Speaker 2: would talk. Melissa is very very compassionate. Obviously, she waves
Speaker 2: the dogs, you know, when she's sad. We go out
Speaker 2: and would take a ride in the car and who
Speaker 2: waves the dogs? I do too, by the way, But
Speaker 2: and she would she actually built a relationship with this
Speaker 2: with this animal, you know, with this gorilla. Hope was
Speaker 2: later actually traded to the Dallas Zoo. Which is kind
Speaker 2: of cool too because I did create Woolheater's conference a
Speaker 2: few years back down in Texas and Texas Pickbook Conference.
Speaker 2: We flew in and out of Dallas, and we we
Speaker 2: we uh managed our flights so we could drop by
Speaker 2: the Dallas Zoo for a couple hours before we caught
Speaker 2: our flight and Melissa got to see Hope again.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she cried like she she actually cried when she
Speaker 2: saw her. It was such a moving experience for her.
Speaker 2: Hope eventually had a baby, and Melissa was thrilled, of course,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately, I Hope got a some sort of bacterial
Speaker 2: infection a few years later and actually died. Hope recognized
Speaker 2: her well, she was far enough away that they didn't
Speaker 2: really come face to face, although we did talk to
Speaker 2: one of the gorilla keepers while we were there and
Speaker 2: kind of explained and you know, and he said, oh,
Speaker 2: if you go up there, you probably see her in
Speaker 2: that and we did. We did, but still it was enough.
Speaker 2: It was enough for Melissa to kind of have a
Speaker 2: little bit of closure in that relationship, which is nice.
Speaker 2: And to this day she can't talk about Hope without
Speaker 2: you know, like weeping essentially, so eventually started tearing up.
Speaker 2: So these these enclosures, these zoos situations absolutely do perform
Speaker 2: a legitimate educational and I don't know, they definitely supply
Speaker 2: something for the public, you know, to appreciate the animals.
Speaker 2: Absolutely one hundred and ten percent, I think, but certainly so.
Speaker 2: I'm not so sure I'd be against necessarily the zoo
Speaker 2: side of things. Although wild captures into zoos, I don't
Speaker 2: think that's cool. I think there's enough animals in the
Speaker 2: zoos now that we can probably do a breeding program.
Speaker 2: So they do mention that any There's a quote in
Speaker 2: here that they talk about the dignity of captive apes,
Speaker 2: and someone says, I find this very interesting. Is in
Speaker 2: my opinion that the mere fact that they are held
Speaker 2: captive and on show to the public takes away their
Speaker 2: dignity entirely. Yes and no, Yes and no. I think
Speaker 2: that's probably a gray area, which is why they're probably
Speaker 2: asking for input into this particular law. But as a
Speaker 2: general concept, I am absolutely in agreement something like this
Speaker 2: needs to happen. It would be fantastic for not only
Speaker 2: the apes, but if they extended to cetaceans, and again,
Speaker 2: any law that increases compassion amongst human beings, I'm one
Speaker 2: hundred ten percent.
Speaker 3: For Yeah, I found the word dignity a little I
Speaker 3: don't want to say off putting, but I just didn't
Speaker 3: feel like it was.
Speaker 2: The proper word. That's squishy.
Speaker 3: Well, it's anthropomorphizing to some degree, but also to say like, well, obviously,
Speaker 3: being on display to the public and having this many
Speaker 3: humans roaming around and trying to excite them through various stimulus,
Speaker 3: it's probably stressful for the animals, and we want to
Speaker 3: reduce the amount of unnecessary stress for these captive animals,
Speaker 3: I think would make a much more compelling case than
Speaker 3: you know, that there's dignity that's being damaged versus how
Speaker 3: much undue stress is being caused by these conditions for
Speaker 3: this animal. And certainly we would all say, well, we
Speaker 3: don't want to inflict undue stress or unnecessary stress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and I did get to meet a
Speaker 2: lot of the zoo keepers and stuff when Melissa was
Speaker 2: working at the Pittsburgh Zoo. We went to the zoo
Speaker 2: a couple times when I was out there at least once,
Speaker 2: and Melissa, you know, built relationships with some of these people,
Speaker 2: and you know, these people are not out to exploit
Speaker 2: the animals. These people are not out to take away
Speaker 2: their dignity, and they do everything they can to make
Speaker 2: their captivity, which is a sad fact, into the best
Speaker 2: experience for the animals. And a lot of these animals
Speaker 2: wouldn't survive in the wild anyway. So yeah, there's some
Speaker 2: gray area in this law because education, clearly, education needs
Speaker 2: to happen. Just the fact that people say to me,
Speaker 2: you treat sasquatches like dumb apes, well, clearly that one
Speaker 2: statement alone screams that the American public and probably the
Speaker 2: world public needs to be better educated about apes, so
Speaker 2: there is some room for there's some gray area I
Speaker 2: think in what could be done here. So yeah, that's
Speaker 2: my thoughts on it. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Speaker 2: Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after
Speaker 2: these messages. Well, let's talk to the next article then.
Speaker 4: But nobos. Yeah, that's about how group cohesion is shaped
Speaker 4: by outgroup threats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically kind of like we're grouping together to deal
Speaker 2: with an outside threat of some sort, Right, that's basically
Speaker 2: the way I read it, is that the way you read.
Speaker 4: It, Yeah, they's kind of what the article talks about
Speaker 4: is how the bonobos are so peaceful, or is the
Speaker 4: pimpanzees are so violent, but they're so closely related and
Speaker 4: we're kind of the same way. We're like the mix
Speaker 4: of the chimp and the bonobo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, in a lot of ways. Now, just just
Speaker 2: in case there's some people who don't know bonobos are
Speaker 2: in fact a species of great ape. You would look
Speaker 2: at one if you didn't know any better, you would say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's chimpanzee. But they're not. There's a lot of subtle differences.
Speaker 2: They're smaller, they're more slender. There's facial differences as well.
Speaker 2: Bonobos are actually the closest living relative I believe to humans.
Speaker 2: I think that bonobos are closer to us than even
Speaker 2: chimpanzees are. I think chimps it kind of is like
Speaker 2: ninety eight point four percent of their DNA is the
Speaker 2: same as ours, but bonobos is ninety eight point seven
Speaker 2: according to this article. And people are saying, oh, that
Speaker 2: means we're almost well, relax, relax. I always like to
Speaker 2: point out we share something like sixty percent of our
Speaker 2: DNA with earthworms, right, and now, all that tells us
Speaker 2: is that all life on the planet is related. We
Speaker 2: all have some common ancestry back there, so everybody can
Speaker 2: relax about that. Where I'm not saying that we're all apes,
Speaker 2: although we are. I say that all the time we
Speaker 2: are apes. Deal with it. So, yeah, Venobo's a our
Speaker 2: closest living relative in the animal kingdom anywhere else. Right,
Speaker 2: And what they're pointing out is that when other great
Speaker 2: apes have some sort of outside threat, what when most
Speaker 2: the apes do is they get together and they kind
Speaker 2: of bond together. Which is a really important subject for
Speaker 2: right now, because you know that's what the politicians are doing, right,
Speaker 2: they're pointing at everybody else and whichever side. And I'm
Speaker 2: not going to be political about anything, but they're pointing
Speaker 2: to the other side and say, look at them so,
Speaker 2: And what that's doing is making that their team bond together.
Speaker 2: You know that that's exactly what they're doing. If you
Speaker 2: don't think we're apes, man, turn on one of the
Speaker 2: news channels and take a look at what they're doing
Speaker 2: and how we as a species respond to it and
Speaker 2: what this is. But bonobos are a little bit different
Speaker 2: in some ways. And I think that bonobos are there's
Speaker 2: a lot of jokes about them and stuff, because they
Speaker 2: actually use sexual behavior to de escalate conflict within their society.
Speaker 2: You know that that sort of thing a.
Speaker 4: Little with humans.
Speaker 2: Hey you think about yeah, think about the sixties like movement,
Speaker 2: you know, the peace love and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: That they were kind of doing the same thing, weren't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that that key takeaway. You know, there's
Speaker 3: a just like a single portion of the article that
Speaker 3: maybe I can quote that to me was the key
Speaker 3: takeaway was that the authors of this paper quote suggest
Speaker 3: that our shared ancestor who roamed the earth five to
Speaker 3: six million years ago might have experienced some group based conflict,
Speaker 3: but as the intensity decreased in Benobo's evolutionary journey, so
Speaker 3: too to the strict the effect. Contrast this with other
Speaker 3: species gorillas, orangutans, champanzees, gibbons, and humans, all of whom
Speaker 3: have been observed killing each other. But Nobos seem to
Speaker 3: have found a way to break this vicious pattern. It's
Speaker 3: not just because they don't commit lethal aggression today, but
Speaker 3: more importantly, they somehow stopped doing it millions of years ago.
Speaker 3: So there is something like markedly different about this great
Speaker 3: ape than the others.
Speaker 4: Well, do you remember reading about recently they came out
Speaker 4: the news study that said bonobos are not quite as
Speaker 4: peace loving as they've been portrayed, and that they were
Speaker 4: more aggressive towards each other than the chimpanzels, they just
Speaker 4: weren't killing each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you brought that up on one of
Speaker 3: the other topical episodes. I have to go back through
Speaker 3: my notes and see which one it was, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I wasn't aware of that until you had brought that
Speaker 3: one up previously. I think that was within the last
Speaker 3: year or so that you brought that up.
Speaker 2: Well, that'd be a good article for a future topical
Speaker 2: discussion as well, so you should send that into us. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, another interesting thing about this particular article and
Speaker 2: the study in particular is that the way they did it,
Speaker 2: like their I guess their experimental design, they played vocalizations
Speaker 2: to see how the apes would would react, which is
Speaker 2: pretty much what a lot of bigfooters are doing. You know,
Speaker 2: they're they're going into an area where these apes are
Speaker 2: living and doing their thing and you know, chilling and
Speaker 2: being apes, and then they play vocalizations from you know,
Speaker 2: unknown vocalization so that these the bonobos would know that
Speaker 2: they're not the same either same species or the same
Speaker 2: same group of bonobos. And all it did is like
Speaker 2: they started they kind of hung out a little bit more,
Speaker 2: and they started being a little bit more social and stuff,
Speaker 2: as opposed to some of the other a species that
Speaker 2: would kind of like look for them and try to
Speaker 2: deal with the intruders and all that. Jazz I thought
Speaker 2: that was kind of interesting and I would love to
Speaker 2: see how a study, i mean, how impossible or next
Speaker 2: to impossible would that study be with sasquatches observing them
Speaker 2: when people are vocalizing nearby, that'd be amazing. But kind
Speaker 2: of have to wonder how Sasquatches deal with that and
Speaker 2: if vocalizing is a threat to a Sasquatch, because I
Speaker 2: always approach the idea of broadcasting vocalizations for Sasquatches as
Speaker 2: just kind of basically trying to trick them into thinking
Speaker 2: that another one's in the area and seeing how they
Speaker 2: react to it. But if I don't sound like the
Speaker 2: known members of their small little family group or whatever
Speaker 2: term you want to use for their groupings, yeah maybe
Speaker 2: I am like a threat to them. But also, I've
Speaker 2: heard so many stories over the years and this has
Speaker 2: never once happened to me. So I got to wonder because,
Speaker 2: you know, as I've mentioned on the podcast lots of times,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to question all of these givens that I've
Speaker 2: been told through the years of Sasquatch behaviors and oh,
Speaker 2: they like this, they do this, and all this other stuff. Right,
Speaker 2: how do we know, Like, unless this happened to me
Speaker 2: and I've directly observed it, I'm kind of just not
Speaker 2: believing what other people say at this point, you know,
Speaker 2: because I've been learning a lot about Sasquatch this last
Speaker 2: few years. But I've been told over the years that's
Speaker 2: that sas if you vocalize, one will come to you.
Speaker 2: You know, they'll go, They'll go two miles just to
Speaker 2: get you. I don't know if that's true. It's never
Speaker 2: really happened to me. But maybe that's what they're doing.
Speaker 2: If that is true to these particular researchers that have
Speaker 2: had that happen, Maybe that has happened, and maybe that's
Speaker 2: what they're doing. They're coming in to check out the
Speaker 2: threat or something like that. But if they're coming in alone,
Speaker 2: what does that say about their social grouping in that way?
Speaker 2: Are they like bonobos? Are they more like chimpanzees? I
Speaker 2: would way rather encounter in eight foot tall binobo than
Speaker 2: eight foot tall chimpanzee.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well, it's impossible to tell because you don't
Speaker 3: have the certainty that there's one within earshot. And that's
Speaker 3: why the lack of response is like, no one knows
Speaker 3: how to interpret it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think that if one did come at.
Speaker 3: You, oh gotcha. Even like the presupposition when people will say,
Speaker 3: like if they're around, they'll come check you out, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. Well, we don't know how many times you
Speaker 3: vocalized and there was one around that didn't come check
Speaker 3: you out, versus, you know, the more likely thing that
Speaker 3: there was just not one in earshot. And so all
Speaker 3: these things are just impossible to tell. Versus if you
Speaker 3: knew you were within a couple of you know, there
Speaker 3: was one within the same acre or two as you,
Speaker 3: and you knew that it was there. Let's say that
Speaker 3: you got to hit from like a thermal drone, and
Speaker 3: so you know you're within one hundred yards of it
Speaker 3: and you vocalize and it just doesn't move, then you
Speaker 3: could make a certain kind of case. Otherwise, like we
Speaker 3: just have no idea. So it does seem like in
Speaker 3: certain times like well, maybe it just happened to be
Speaker 3: close already and decided to check out a novel sound.
Speaker 3: Maybe it did think it was another member of its
Speaker 3: species and so it came to investigate. And if there's
Speaker 3: something aggressive that happens, people will say, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 3: it thought I was the alpha maol and so it
Speaker 3: come to run me off. But it's like, well, maybe
Speaker 3: it came and saw that it was a human, and
Speaker 3: it came to run off a human, you know, once
Speaker 3: it investigated the sound, and instead of finding one of
Speaker 3: its kind to which it might have responded, you know,
Speaker 3: neutrally or in a friendly way. It saw a human
Speaker 3: there and then decided to be aggressive. Who knows, There's
Speaker 3: just no way of knowing, Like they will always do
Speaker 3: this in this context.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I very often comment that is a human thinking
Speaker 2: that is inflexible, not the behavior of sasquatches. Well, there
Speaker 2: you go, folks, another episode of Cliff and Bubble and
Speaker 2: Matt talking about cool articles that are tangentially if not
Speaker 2: directly involved or to relate it to sasquatches. We do
Speaker 2: enjoy these. People are doing a few more of these
Speaker 2: because they're kind of only we don't do them regularly
Speaker 2: like we do the Q and a's. We kind of
Speaker 2: do them semi occasionally. But maybe we need to do
Speaker 2: these a little bit more. I really enjoy these things, so.
Speaker 4: Good feedback on like are the most popular episodes, which
Speaker 4: blows my mind.
Speaker 2: It blows my mind that people listen at all. Honestly, Hey,
Speaker 2: j all right, Well with that, we've got some more
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