Ep. 237 - Dr. Hogan Sherrow

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Big food and be on with Cliffand Bobo. These guys, are you
fav It's so like say subscribe andrade it. I'm stuck and me righteous
one wish today listening watching limb alwayskeep its watching. And now your hosts

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Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay,Hey, Bobes, how you doing?
Oh wait, you're not here.It's just Cliff today, Cliff and all
of our listeners. And then Iguess are a periodic guest host, Matt
Pruet, Hey Matt, how areyou doing today? I'm doing great?
Cool? So yeah, so Bobo'snot going to make it today. Apparently
he is visiting his parents down therein Manhattan Beach and all power and internets

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and all modern stuff went out basicallyjust less than twenty minutes ago. So
he is sitting in the dark,well it would be dark except this sul
daylight right now down in manhatt Beach, hanging out with Fireball and his mom.
And I believe his mom's a listenerto this podcast, So hi,
Alice. Anyway, Yeah, soBoba's not gonna be with us. He
might be able to join us ifthe power comes back on, and if

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it does not come back on.You're just stuck with Cliff and Matt here,
So I don't know, Matt,do you have anything to share before
we jump into things today? No, I'm excited about today's guest for sure.
Oh yeah, it's gonna be agood one. It's going to be
a great one as far as I'mconcerned. You know, this is a
squatch Giving week. I just wantto wish everybody a happy squatch Giving.
I hope everybody enjoys it and hassome good family time. And if you're
not into that sort of stuff,I just hope you have a very,

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very very pleasant week. And ofcourse, other than that, why don't
we hop into the show. Today'sguest we have on doctor Hogan Cherrow.
He is a PhD in evolutionary anthropologyor no evolutionary, yeah, evolutionary anthro
anthropology. He got it from Yale, so that's nothing to sneeze at.
So there's not gonna be any sneezingon my behalf. And he's been all
over the place, all over theworld, working with a huge variety of

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animals, including humans. Seem tome he kind of specializes in behavioral sort
of stuff, and just a shortlittle background here. I met Hogan here
because he came into the museum.So he's obviously a man of exquisite taste
and high curiosity because he came intothe Bigfoot Museum despite having a PhD in
anthropology. Hey, hey, Hogan, welcome to the show. First of

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all, thanks for coming on.We really do appreciate it. Thanks for
having me. I'm happy to behere. Very good, Very good.
Now, I don't want to putwords in your mouth, but did I
more or less int I mean,I was pretty vague in my introduction,
I admit, But did I moreor less introduct introduce you correctly? Yeah?
Yeah, absolutely. I got aPhD in evolutionary anthropology for Yale.
Like you said, I studied chimpanzeebehaviorally cology in the wild for about fifteen

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years and have studied everything from grizzlybears to gibbons to some work on humans.
Right, So I think today onthis show, obviously we're going to
be focusing on the primates in general, because you know, sasquatches are primates.
We're primates, primates for everywhere welook, you know, in some
sort of ways, and what oneprimate has, like behaviorally speaking, is

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often echoed in other species, andI thought that would be an interesting conversation
because and now correct me if I'mwrong again, and feel free to do
that for as long as you knowme, feel free to correct me if
I'm wrong. But you are notone hundred percent sold the sasquatches are real
animals. But perhaps you're open tothe idea. Is that an accurate depiction
of your belief system? Yeah,I grew up here in the Pacific Northwest.

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My dad was a hunting and fishingguide, so I've spent my entire
life basically in the woods here whenI'm not off on some other continent,
and have loved the sasquatch lore forever. Have always loved the idea that sasquatches
out there, but am pretty skeptical. But I also, as I used

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to always tell my students when Iwas teaching, never say never in biology,
because as soon as you do,somebody's going to catch a selacant off
the coast of Madagascar, and yourwhole idea of things that's going to be
shot. So I keep an openmind, and as you should in science,
if we get new data that's that'scompelling and convincing. Then you shift

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your your thinking on things. Okay, so since you're not, you're not
You're not there yet with the bigfootthing, which is totally understandable. I
encourage everyone, including our listeners,to be very skeptical about everything because if
you look at the media, it'sfull of hogwash. If you look at
the Internet, it's full of hogwashin general. And people are out there
proclaiming very loudly about ridiculous things theyclaim sasquatches that they are able to do

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and all this stuff. So there'slots of reasons to remain skeptical. But
for you personally first and then secondly, for the scientific establishment in general,
what do you think are the biggestobstacles between you and an acceptance of a
theoretical acceptance of the species. Soyou personally and then the scientific establishment me
personally, probably is is maybe alower bar for my personal thoughts than it

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would be for you know, consensusamong say biologists or or evolutionary anthropologists.
For me, I think it wouldbe some sort of really compelling evidence,
and I guess, like most people, I would like to have some sort

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of personal experience with that. Iwill say, when I was visiting you
in the in your museum that someof the prints that you showed me,
some of the casts that you hadmade were very thought provoking, I'll put
it that way. They definitely werenot easily explained and really thought provoking.

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So I really appreciated that for thescientific community. I mean, you know,
it's been people have been saying foryears, it's going to take a
body. I don't. I don'tdon't think necessarily it would take a cadaver
or even a body part, asmuch as it would take what was it

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a month or so ago, youguys had had an episode where you were
talking about the DNA project back atI think North in North Carolina. Yeah,
that Darby Orchid is like the firstuniversity sponsored DNA study out there that
might unravel the Sasquatch mystery for everybody. So you think DNA might be able
to do that for us? Well, I think for some folks that would

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be compelling that there's something out there. But but I do think they're kind
of you know, the old schooldied in the wool. They want to
they want a body to examine folks. Still, it's hard to say what
would convince the science. You know, when you say the scientific community,
because it's not. It's not onehomogeneous voting block. You know. They

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they they've all got their different perspectives. I mean, if you go and
talk to a morphologist, they wantthey want body parts. A geneticist is
they're cool at DNA. And soI think, you know, it depends
on what discipline they're coming from thatsort of thing. I think it will
take a lot though. Yeah,and you know, the neat thing about
that, and and the sad thingand also in some ways, because there's

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no blessing without being a curse insome sort of way, you know.
So the a thing about that isif somebody, say Darby in his study
over their North Carolina University get getssome sort of DNA that they go,
no, this is it, thisis the it's a done deal. That'll
mean a lot to geneticists. AndI had that conversation with doctor Todd Dissattel
out there when he was at NewYork University. He's in Massachusetts at a

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different institution. Now, Yeah,he's a good friend. Oh really,
well, my god to say sayhello, we'd love to have him on
the show sometimes too. I haven't, I haven't spoken to him. For
a few years. But I wastalking to him and say, you know,
if if you did get solid DNA, it would mostly mean stuff to
DNA nerds, and then the restof us be going, well, I
believe you, because you're in aposition of authority, but what does that
mean to us? And really thenext few steps would be okay, Well,

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they would go out and they wouldobtain a specimen. So the first
domino to fall might be the DNAthing, but it won't be the last
domino. Because you can only tellso much about an animal by its DNA
or a or a hair or somethinglike that. You kind of have to
have a body in some ways tolearn about what they're doing, because an
animal's anatomy reflects its behavior so strongly. Well, and you know, I

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mean a great example of that isand you and I talked a little bit
about different hominin species when I wasvisiting you. There A great example of
that are the Denisovins. You know, that population that has been identified simply
by DNA, and they don't haveany strong morphological markers that would distinguish them.

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They don't have enough samples, andso you have a lot of speculation
of what they were like, whatdid they do? And we just know
they were a different kind of human. We don't know anything beyond that at
this point. So I think that'sa great example right there. The other
thing you're going to I think you'llget, let's say hypothetically that there is

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that they do discover DNA that pointsto a primate species in North America that
cannot be identified as any other,and it's really solid, and let's say
it was Todd's lab. That doesn'tTodd. Todd is a fantastic scientist and
has a great reputation. Even there, you would get people who would push

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back and say, how old isthe DNA and how are you proving that?
What you know? And so you'dhave speculation and speculation. So you're
absolutely right, it's it may bethe first domino, it won't be the
last one. Now, a lotof different dominos will fall with that.
Type specimen will be collected. Infact, I mean, I hate to
say it, numerous type specimens willbe collected. I don't think there's any

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way around that, because I ofcourse a long term ecological study is going
to have to be undertaken to studythem, and gosh, I mean scientists
aren't going to take you know,my data. Maybe my data is because
I have I'm associated with the museum, even though it's my museum. They'll
probably take doctor Meldrum's data. They'llprobably maybe some of the stuff on the

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BFRO might be useful. But Ithink from the scientific perspective, virtually all
of the information that has been collectedbeforehand may be of slight interest. But
they're going to start from ground zerobecause they don't know the quality of the
investigators who collected it. What doyou think about that thought? Oh,
absolutely, it'll again, you know, hypothetically, if there's this evidence out

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there and then people are able toactually identify a population and start and then
you start around the process of studyingit, it'll be similar, I think
to the early days before George Schallerwent to study mountain gorillas, and people

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had been there. There had beennaturalists who had gone in and tried to
observe about a gorilla populations. Therehad been people who had written books about
them, but there wasn't a scientificstudy where the methods are clearly laid out
and can be repeated. And that'sone of the big keys is is you

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know, people have to be ableto go in and use the same methodology
and a different observer get the sameresult for something to be scientifically valid.
So I think that's that's where thatkind of quality control would would come in.
Now, of course, now we'renot dealing with you know, like
atoms for example, We're not dealingwith a plant species. We're dealing with

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highly individualistic well animals, intelligence,sentient animals, And I think I think
it's very I don't think I thinkit's very reasonable for me to make that
assumption about sasquatches, because I thinkthat's also true of all the other great
ape species, that they are individuals, and they all have their own temperament
and experience that builds their personalities andwhatnot. What sort of experiments can you

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envision that are repeatable that would beapplicable to something like an unknown great ape
species. I wouldn't say experiment somuch as like when we do behavioral ecology
studies, you go in with aset methodology, You've got it laid out.
Let's say you're going to do well, here's here's a here's a great

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one that I think could be implementedin areas like you and I discussed where
you talked about the area that thatyou go to. If you set up
transsext studies where you're walking the samepath every every single month, you walk
the same set course and you're recordingevery single animal that you see in that

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in that course. If you dothat over enough time, you get a
large enough sample size where now youcan have a sort of snapshot of what
animals are in that ecology. Andthat's something that I think could be adopted
by groups right now that are outthere trying to trying to find good evidence

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of sasquatch. They could start usingthose same methodologies. Those are all published,
Those are all really easy to findwhen we do. A primatologist named
Gene Altman in the seventies laid outguideline for behavioral observation that most people still

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use some form of today, whereyou go in and either you're doing timed
samples so every fifteen minutes you're recordingeverything that you observe, or you're doing
scan samples, or you're doing onand on. There are lots of different
ways to do it, but thisis a way to have a structure where

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I can do it and then twoyears later you can go into the same
area and you can do it,and then we can compare results. Now
you're comparing apples to apples and notapples to oranges. Stay tuned for more
Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Now. One of the as you'retalking about this, because I'm always
looking to up my game always,you know, there's I I'm always trying
to do a better job than I'malready doing, and especially with simple things,
you know, because the simple thingsare easiest to implement. As I'm
listening to you and thinking, okay, well, I'm kind of doing that.
Now. I've got a place Icall the mud Road. I go
there, I walk it. It'sreally it's easy to get it out of

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there. You can find footprints there. I found them many, many times
there. Think I found cast threeprints there this year, for example,
but back in February, almost ahere ago now, And I'm thinking,
well, that's all fine and good. But I think the Sasquatch I personally
believe, and I don't have evidenceof this, but this is just what
I'm going with. The Sasquatches knowwhere people walk there and they may cross

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the roads, but they're not.But if they're in the area, they're
could be observing the roads. Howdo you deal with a or are there
any methodologies that come to mind wherethat one might be able, I might
be able to implement in these researchareas that somehow accommodate for the subject of

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the study studying the observer back.Yeah, that's a that's a good question,
man, that's a hell of aquestion. It's I think honestly that
behavioral observation gets more and more challengingthe more intelligent the species is and the

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more aware the species is that you'restudying. And that's why, you know,
for really good behavioral studies we gofor full habituation. For example,
the chimpanzees I studied for years addingGo Go and Kibali National Park in Uganda.
They're the if you've seen the Netflixseries Chimp Empire, they're the chimps

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from that series. They were justexpertly habituated to the point where you could
be as close to them as youwanted to be. For a lot of
the especially a lot of the males. Males are less skittish than the females
typically, but a lot of thefemales got there too, where you could

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be as close to them as youwanted, so you could make all sorts
of observations, and they just wentabout their day for the most part.
You know, every once in awhile, you'll be on a trail,
they'll come walking down a trail.You've got this meeting of the primates,
and you just kind of stand stilland they walk around you like you're another
tree or something. And there wereand there were some who were old enough

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when they started getting habituated, theywere never going to be habituated, so
you're gonna have that variation in apopulation. There were some that were babies
when they started habituating, and theywere almost over habituated, like they were
too used to humans. So yougot to you gotta keep your distance,
and and we had some really goodrules about making sure we never got too

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close to them, making sure thatwe kept a good distance from them.
One, because we don't want tobe had that observer effect on their behavior
if we can avoid it. Theother part, too, is that,
of course all the grade apes aresusceptible to all the respiratory diseases that we
get, and very often they don'thave the same immune responses, so it

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can be dangerous that way. Butyeah, I think there are that's a
real challenge. I think in yourcase, if you're out there looking for
something that that may be observing you, you know, and I would say
this is this is similar to alot of folks who do work on bears,

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bears, wolves, the a lotof the carnivores big relatively big brains.
They're they're good observers of what's goingon. They'll watch you and and
a lot of times they will simplyavoid you. There again, and I've
heard you say this on your onyour previous show and on this podcast that

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you know and you just talked aboutyou went up and walked and didn't see
anything. You just gotta you justgotta kind of know that there are days
when you're not going to get anything. But I think if you're out there
long enough, and this is wherelong term studies on any large animal are
really important. If you're out therelong enough walking the same track where they

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get used to you were, youwere doing the same path and and usually
it's a it's a transect. Andwe could talk about more more about that
off offline or something of like largergrids to set up. But if you're
walking that then they can get usedto your presence. And that's why that's

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another part of the reason why doingit at the same time every time that
you go out, Like I hada colleague of mine in Africa who did
a census every single month, andhe started at four thirty in the morning,
simply because the first time that wasdone, it was started at four
thirty in the morning, and sohe kept that up. And it had

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been that particular census had been goingfor over a decade. But they had
this amazing long term track of howmany animals you know, of each species
they saw each month, and thatgave them an indication of how the ecology
is doing overall health wise, butalso how those individual species are doing.

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Does it have to be a visualsighting of the animal or can you count
tracks as far as that goes well, I think uh, I think that
depends on what your your goals areand what your methodology is. From the
beginning, the judge the ecosystem.Though, if I'm finding bear tracks,
that's probably a pretty good sign,but I would have to see a bear

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to make it count to judge anecological health for example. Yeah, so
so a lot of them will.Uh, you have different categories. So
you have presence of the animal andthat can be vocal, so auditory presence
or by the tracks. And thenand then you have another category in your

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database of sighting. Yeah, forwhat I've heard about about sasquatch, I
think that the different sounds, thehowls, the tree knocks, you would
do a category for each of those, and then and then also record,
you know, for if you seea cougar, if you see whatever,
whatever the case is, how manydeer you see, how many squirrels you

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see. The main thing is beingincredibly vigilant about like not just going yeah,
another chipmunk, but doing a tickmark for all of them. Right,
you know that advice is on smackdab square on to probably the best
bigfooting advice I'd ever been given bya good friend and a witness and someone

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who has lived at a place wheresasquatches were frequenting. Or when I say
frequenting, it could be like onceor twice a month, not actually that
frequent, but for bigfoot that's prettyoften. You know. His name's Dennis
Fole. He has been a gueston the podcast. Then he told me
one time, the best thing youcan do is go to the same place,

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dress the same way, drive thesame car. When you're there,
do the same routine, go tobed at the same time, do everything
the same time, and over manymany many months, probably many years,
they will eventually get used to youand perhaps let their guard down a bit,
which sounds to me like exactly whatyou're talking about here. Yeah,
if you know, if anyone outthere really wants to is you know you're

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budding budding squatchers out there for me. Read Jane Goodall's book In the Shadow
a Man. Read her book TheChimpanzees of Gombe, which is filled with
data tough in some in some placesfor some folks to read through, but
where she describes what it was likethe first three years that she was at

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Gombe and how you know she wasout following chimps just relentlessly. She and
her field assistance, I mean thesite where I worked at for years.
The two main researchers there are justincredible scientists and incredible primatologists and have set

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up this really great regiment and fieldassistants are out with the chimpanzees every single
day, and the field assistants allhave uniforms that have been provided to them,
so they're wearing the same basic clothesevery day. They go out with
their backpacks, they've got their clipboards, they've got the same gear every day.

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You know, it's not new peoplecoming in, because the chimps do
notice that. I mean when Ifirst got there, I think physically I
might have been the largest mass humanthat they had seen up until that point.
And so they definitely responded a littledifferently to oh, what's this new

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animal in the forest that's bigger thanthe other ones. And actually we had
a former NFL offensive lineman who wentand visited one of the researchers at that
site, and apparently the chimpanzees respondedalmost like they do when a buffalo comes
into the forest. When that camewalking through, you know, he was

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six six three twenty plus, andand that was something that they had never
seen before. See, Yeah,I think I think that's great advice.
Something you said just also resonates withme because another piece of it or another
maybe not advice, but a littletidbit shared to me by Dennis Fole.
Again, Dennis told me that therewas a situation out in Colorado where a

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family started seeing a sasquatch on theproperty occasionally. Little girl ran into it.
First was it was licking the sapoff of a cut log apparently in
this log pile. When she ranacross it, the two encountered each other
from at a short distance, andshe they both turned and ran. Basically,
she came inside talking about the monkeyman, and of course mom and
dad were going, that's that's cute, sweetie things. And then like within

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a couple of days, the femalewho was living there, the adult female,
the woman was, started finding footprintsin her garden outside of her windows,
you know, so the thing wascoming around to look inside their house.
In that they figured it out prettyquick, and over about a year
or more. I think they endedup casting I don't know. I saw
pictures. I never counted them.I would say forty to sixty footprints or

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something like that, like quite afew, quite a few. Yeah,
And so Dennis was studying that,if I remember right back in the day,
and he said that first three orfour times he showed up, they
would say, you know, helives in Colorado as well. The first
time he's show up like nothing wouldhappen, He'd spent the night there,
nothing happened, This would happened,happened many many times. And then they
clewed in and say, oh,you know what, he parked a couple

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of miles down the road and thengot a ride to the house by the
owners and that's when activity started.So again, the Sasquatches were aware that
a new person was there and thendidn't act accordingly essentially, or did act
accordingly according to their own behavior anddidn't really put on you know, didn't
give an indication of their presence untilthey were much more clandestine about it.

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Yeah, well that makes sense foran intelligent animal. But you know what,
another none or thought came to mewhile you were talking about doing the
same thing every single time. It'svery and I'm in contact with a couple
of different I don't like to sayhabituators because in bigfoot land, that's taken
on a life of its own.It means all this other stuff. And
I think in a more appropriate termis like a long term witness, you

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know, I think that's a muchmore appropriate term. But uh, I
work with a couple of long termwitnesses and it seems that when the routine
is broken is when they get likeactual visual sighting reports where because again the
Sasquatches know the family that lives thereand they've got it all wired, and
when they do something out of theordinary that seems like that's very often when

(26:41):
a sighting might occur, or atleast let me let me actually, that's
perhaps exactly backwards. Sightings seem tooccur. When there is a sighting,
it is very often in conjunction withthe family or the individual breaking the behavior.
So perhaps a good way to goforward would be to set behavior down
and do the same thing as youwere saying, and then once that routine

(27:04):
is established every third or fourth time, do something different in the middle of
it and surprise any potential observers.And maybe that would be an interesting way
to run across one of these things. Yeah, it'd be interesting to know
what the nature of those sightings were, because my guess is, again,

(27:25):
if you've got a large intelligent primate, they're curious about why you're doing something
different, They're curious about what wentwrong there, and so you might get
you know, like I would say, in the in African apes, you'll
see this where sometimes they'll kind ofcheck you out a little more like,

(27:47):
well, that's weird, you know, if you want to anthropomorphize what's going
on in their in their brain,they kind of have a quizzical look where
they're well, huh, and Iknow, oh that like for example,
I know, you know, forwhen the rainy season hits and the first
time someone breaks out their parka andthey haven't worn a parka all. You

(28:11):
know, they've been there for severalmonths and there they haven't worn a parka,
and now suddenly they put a parkon. All the chimps want to
take a look and see, like, what is that thing? Is it
the And then then I think theycome to the realization that it's the same
weird animal that keeps following us everyday and doesn't seem to eat and doesn't

(28:32):
seem to want to kill us.So I guess it's okay, h which
is? Which is? That's kindof how I always characterize like when they
become habituated, is when they getto the point where they realize, oh,
they just don't seem to do anything, so we'll just ignore them.
I ed always tell my students they'vegot more important things to do. Like

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they've got to they've got to eat, they've got to find mates, they've
got to avoid real predators. They'veyou know, they've got a jockey for
in chimp and z case, theyhave to jockey for position within the society.
So you know, they they youcan only be bothered with this weird
thing that's following you around for solong. Yeah, if it's not important
to your trip, then why youknow, then it's not important at all?

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Really then that in that sort ofway. And certainly we don't represent
food to sasqua I mean to chimpanzees, hopefully not to most sasquatches. So
yeah, I think we're just itemsof curiosity, I think to a lot
of the great apes. I wouldimagine stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond
with Cliff and Bogo will be rightback after these messages. One family lives

(29:44):
up in the Port Angeles area inWashington. I work with them quite often.
I found I found in cast footprintson their property just a few months
ago, and there and then they'vebecome very very good friends of mine over
the years as well. They wereout on there on the on the driveway,
I guess outside their home at likeone in the morning. You know,
they've got a little girl that livesthere, but they're never out at

(30:07):
one in the morning. But theywere out one in the morning, lying
on the back on their backs watchingthe Percy meteor shower, you know,
a few months ago, beautiful nightand everything. And I guess they got
approached by one of these things.They didn't see it that night, but
that they're pretty sure that's what itwas. They heard some noises off in
the brush and then like like stompingand stuff like bluff charging in a way,
or just kind of a bunch ofheavy noises that seemed out of character

(30:32):
for the other possible animals in thearea, And so they said, whoa,
what the hell is that? Andthey all went inside, you know,
obviously, because sasquatches are scary nomatter what people think about them.
They're frightening animals when they're actually there. And then they heard a weird noise,
which that's something I want to askyou about. They heard a noise
that they interpreted, if I remembercorrectly, as almost sounding like laughter.

(30:53):
I know, apes smile. Iknow apes probably laugh. Tell me about
that, Like, what do youknow about ape? After and maybe senses
of humor, because sasquatches just seemto exhibit such a thing. Maybe not
laughter, but they certainly I interpretsome of the things that people have reported
to me as perhaps having a senseof humor, because I know my dog

(31:14):
does I see my dog having asense of humor sometime. Yeah. So
some non wild examples that are reallygood videos that you could check out easily
on YouTube is look up cocoa tickling, you know the you know coco,
the gorilla, the sign language gorilla. Yeah, that was actually one of

(31:36):
her favorite things since she was ababy, was she would ask to get
tickles. And when she does,and I've seen I've actually seen chips do
this do this behavior in the wild, her response is like an open mouth
with the lips kind of covering thecanines and almost like a silent laugh,

(31:59):
like you know, everybody's got thatfriend that when they go to laugh,
they just don't make any sound andyou just and you look at him like
what's wrong with you? Initially untilyou get used to it. That's what
I've seen happen. And it's notreally so much like like we would interpret
it, where there's sort of thepunchline or a specific event that causes that.

(32:25):
It's more enjoyment of an activity.So, for example, one day,
I was out with about thirty malechimps and we're out just kind of
hanging out and they're grooming and doingtheir thing, and this one of the
largest male chimps in the community,one of the highest ranking also highest ranking

(32:47):
males. He started playing chase withone of the juvenile males around a tree,
just grabbing his foot and they werejust chasing each other in a circle
around the tree, and he justkept grabbing his foot over and over,
and they both were doing this laughwhere they both were going and with their

(33:13):
teeth covered, showing that they wereenjoying the activity. And there was no
threat because I mean, that bigmale could have destroyed that juvenile in a
heartbeat if he'd wanted to, andhe was showing that he's not a threat.
He wants to play. And thatwas one of the first times that
I saw them what I would calllaugh in the wild. But they definitely

(33:35):
do that. But I haven't hearda laughter from any apes that is similar
to a big belly laugh by ahuman or anything like that. I don't
know of any animals that have thatkind of. And I think that's probably
because humans have taken humor and laughterto a whole different level than most of

(34:00):
their animal than probably every other animalwhere you know, I mean, we
have people who make millions of dollarsevery year just by making us laugh,
Like it's a it's a treasured skilland art form among humans and a noble
profession. For sure. It doesmake sense that apes making sounds that have

(34:21):
some sort of like repetitive nature thatjust reminds us of laughter, because you
know, humor is so context dependent, and it's really context dependent within like
the human social or almost even likepsychosocial realm, that it would be a
stretch to think that what would befunny to a human would be funny to
a sasquatch. But you could imagineif they did engage in producing sounds like

(34:42):
something like a pant hoot in acertain situation, that someone might hear that,
you know, and think that itwas analogous to laughter. Oh the
thing is laughing at me, whenit's really you know, like you said,
anthropomorphizing that. So I know peopleclaim experiences along those lines, but
probably just hearing what are very differentvocalizations that are motivated by a very different

(35:05):
sort of emotional basis or tied tosome other portion of the limbic system that
has nothing to do with like abstracthumor. Yeah, the thing I interpreted
about the Persea shower story I justkind of relayed to you is I think
that the family broke the routine.They were not in the place where they
were to be expected at the timewhen the thing walked by. If assuming

(35:25):
it was a sasquatch, which Ithink it probably was in this case,
the family was doing stuff that wascompletely out of the ordinary, laying on
their back on a blanket one inthe morning in the dark, looking up.
I think it probably like they're going, what the and so like,
if it was a sasquatch, itmay have just said this is not your
time and place here, like thisis my time and place here, did

(35:49):
some stuff that sounded scary because itsounded like very large animal doing breaking stuff
and all that sort of thing,and they all went inside. And then
maybe that was a victory thing likeyou know, oh I got got got
you inside sort of thing. Maybeit was a laugh. I don't know.
I don't know, but but itseems I interpret it is more like
you don't belong here right now.You know better than this. We have

(36:10):
an agreement get inside. That's howI kind of took it. But I
don't know, again, that's justanthromro morphizing even more so. Well,
and you know, we there's there'sdefinitely a long history of that. I
mean, the first chimp that evergot shot up into space. When he
came back, they reported that heenjoyed space travel so much he couldn't you
couldn't wipe the smile off his faceand completely misunderstandable that that's a fear grimace

(36:35):
in a chimpanzee. He was scaredout of his mind. And and so
you know, but to us,there there's no bigger indication that that you've
enjoyed your time. And uh andso yeah, I think I think there's
something to what both of you guysare saying. I mean, I think
I think absolutely, Matt, there'sthere's times when we put on you know,

(36:57):
we do that with with our dogs, do that with animals in the
wild. But then there's also Ithink Cliff, you're hit on something with
any big animal. I mean,you know, I don't know if that
was a sasquatch, it could havebeen a black bear. Black bear comes
in and there's humans on the porchwhen they're not normally there, it's gonna

(37:20):
stomp its feet and make noises andtry and scare away those things that aren't
there at night, because now they'redangerous. But I also think there's the
interesting thing about the apes is thatthings like tickles, things like summer salting
down a trail, which I've watchedseven male adult male chimpanzees do as they

(37:44):
were walking down a trail from onefood source to another for no reason at
all. One of them started someresulting, and the other six started following
his lead, and we're all justsummersaulting right in a row, and they
all were laughing the whole time.They all were doing that open mouth the

(38:05):
whole time, playing chase, tickling. All those things are things that quite
honestly, are enjoyable to every primateexcept maybe like a tarsier. But I
would bet that even tarsiars find itenjoyable. But humans definitely do. And
so that's what I find kind ofinteresting, is that where there's this,

(38:28):
they are obviously enjoying themselves. Theyare obviously making sounds that they don't make
in other context, that they're alltaking as friendly sounds and in the case
of the seven adult males somersaulting likethat's just a waste of energy for a
wild animal, but they're doing it, and it wasn't like there was a

(38:53):
tumbling team that taught them, howyou know. So those things to me
are really interesting, how you havethat kind of universality of things that are
enjoyable. I've even taken reports ofjuvenile sasquatches doing somersaults while playing with each
other. So yeah, universal throughall the primates. So, speaking of

(39:14):
noises, I want to talk alittle bit about language because there's a big
debate in the bigfoot world whether sasquatchesare talking to each other or not.
Certainly they're communicating, I mean,and again, forgive me, but I
am talking from a position where Iam confident sasquatches are real. So I'm
gonna basically say certainly they're communicating,even though to be more cautious that if
I had a PhD, i'd watchmy what do what I say a little

(39:35):
bit more, but I don't.So so just so you know, I'm
gonna forgive the way I speak,but I'm I'm confident of my own delusion.
I guess so anyway, sasquatches arecommunicating to some degree, because if
they are, if they're out theredoing wood knocks or whoops or these long
howls as I believe they do,they're they're probably not doing it to themselves.
They're not talking to themselves. Sothey're communicating in some way or another.

(40:00):
But there's this entire other layer ofcommunication that may be going on that
may be language or some sort ofproto language or faux language or something like
that. It might even be justnonsense gibber jabber. Because from my elementary
school teaching days, when I waslearning about language acquisition, that is an
important step towards language with infants,is that the babbling that they do,

(40:25):
or even mothers and fathers that ifthey go do like make noises at their
infant children, that is actually buildingblocks. Those are the building blocks of
language that And I think that ifyou look very closely at human growth,
you know, through their infancy intobeing a child, into young adulthood,

(40:45):
to adulthood, I think you cansee a lot of other eight behavior in
there if you have the eyes tosee it. And I'm curious about your
thoughts of anything, any input youmight have about language in the Great Apes,
because you mentioned Coco about the signlanguage a little while ago, and
there's even a debate in this inthe Anthra in the primatology world, like

(41:05):
is that real language? And Iit seems silly to me at this point
because she comes up with ideas andreacts to things that are novel in her
environment by you know, by usingsign language. It seems like it's language
at this point. But there's thisholdout of like, no, that's just
an animal, it can't be language. What are your thoughts about language and
the Great Apes. Yeah, I'veactually done a fair amount of work on

(41:27):
this, and so a couple ofthings I'll say right off the right off,
the bat apes definitely communicate at alevel that I don't think we can
fully understand. And I don't thinkthey're alone there. I think lots of
animals do that just verbally, notnot not even just talking about body language

(41:49):
or any sort of you know,ultrasonic subsonic sort of sort of communication,
just verbally. I think that thereare lots of things that we don't quite
understand. For example, it seemsthat within the last few years ten years
or so, we've started to getthat chimpanzees make different long calls depending on

(42:15):
the type of food that's available.So if there are monkeys there and they
want to hunt monkeys, it's aslightly different call than if it's a bunch
of fruit, and that may varyin intensity, or it may vary in
the actual type of call. AndI don't think we have the data to

(42:36):
be able to say which of thoseright now. That's just sort of what
we're starting to understand. So there'sthat level where I think, forget American
sign language or using symbols or anythingelse. They've got their own thing going
on. The other thing, andyou know, you said this at the

(42:58):
beginning, Cliff, when you weretalking about individuals, the other thing we
need to remember is that these individualsare going to have different capabilities. To
put it bluntly, there are somethat aren't as bright as others. There's
some that aren't going to catch onas quickly as others, and there are
some that are going to be morecreative than others. So those are kind

(43:22):
of chimpanzees listening aren't insulted right now, by the way. If they are,
they they probably know where to findme, because they're they're pretty special
chips that they're listening right now.Please correct me if I'm wrong, because
I'm not totally certain about this,but I know that there's a large number
of chimpanzee vocalizations that are essentially involuntary, that are like directly tied to the

(43:46):
limbic system, and so they're sortof, for lack of a better word,
like emotional responses, and I knowsome of those seem to be almost
like not deleterious or maladaptive, butyou know, I know that, for
example, there's an involuntary sort ofvocal that they produce if they were to
stumble upon, you know, alarge food resource that you know, would
be more advantageous to the individual ifhe could hoard it for himself, but

(44:08):
instead he produces an involuntary cry andthen everyone, oh, hey, there's
food over there. And so arethere vocalizations that they produce that do seem
to be under voluntary control? Oris that true of any of the apes
or are most of the ape vocalizationsmostly like these sort of involuntary Olympic system
productions. I would say that inthe thirty five hundred plus hours that I've

(44:30):
spent in the forest with chimpanzees,I've watched them constrain them themselves from making
sounds when it could be really dangerous. For example, if they're on a
territorial boundary patrol and they're out andthey say, come across signs of other

(44:52):
chimpanzees where they've urinated at the baseof a tree, or they've defecated,
or they hear them. I've watchedthem come together again that open mouth expression
but silent, where normally if you'rewithin their territory and they have that kind

(45:13):
of excitement level, they're they're makingsmall screams and they're vocalizing to each other.
I've watched them voluntarily control those soundsand restrain themselves. Yeah, there
was one paper i'd read. Ijust pulled it up. I had a

(45:34):
sort of like a reference repository hereabout like differential use of vocal and gestural
communication by chimpanzees in response to theattentional status of a human. And so
it did have a bit of informationabout they did seem to be observed to
modify the use of their vocalizations inresponse to different attentional states of humans,
suggesting that they have some voluntary controlof their vocalizations. Yet historically primate vocalizations

(45:57):
have typically been recognized as byproduct ofaffective states, primarily controlled by the limbic
system, and not under voluntary control. And so I just you know,
I'm sure there's a lot This isfrom two thousand and seven, so there's
probably newer literature too, But Ijust always thought some of those papers were
really indicative that, like, well, if we were looking at apes in
general, then you know, withhumans being exceptions, the norm would be

(46:22):
that most of the vocalizations, orat least a significant amount, are involuntary,
and thus in the Sasquatch, weshouldn't expect that they would have also
developed some sort of like voluntary languageor proto language or something like. I
try to be as conservative as possible, albeit it's hard to do as a
Sasquatch proponent obviously, but you know, to me, it's I would rather

(46:45):
assume that they're producing speech like soundsrather than know it's speech that constitutes language.
That seems kind of a stretch,And I think you're right on.
I think you're right on in thatsense. I think I think absolutely we
should always assume the least complex andthen build from there. Stay tuned for

(47:07):
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff andBogo will be right back after these messages.
What I would say is there isa qualitative and not just a quantitative
difference. There is a quality differencebetween what humans do and what the other

(47:28):
primates do. But when it comesto language, yeah, you know,
Cliff, you talked about those stepsthat are important. My younger daughter when
she was learning to learning to talkand with a dat as a primatologist,
she was raised kind of as alittle chimp a lot of times, like
by the time she was three orfour, she could just climb up me
like a jungle gym and hop onmy shoulder. But when she was learning

(47:52):
to talk and figure out words,you know, one of her first kind
of babbel words that she put togetherwas baba and that's still her name for
me today. She when she wasten months old, she gave me that
name, and we thought it wasjust babble, and we thought it was
just her her trying to put togethersounds. She decided on that, but

(48:13):
it was one of those steps tobeing able to say mama and then everything
else. So so it is important. But I think Cliff, you might
have had specific you know about thelanguage I don't know about, you know,
the purported language with Sasquatch. Iwanted, I wanted to make sure
that we got to what you wantedto talk about there. Well, language,

(48:35):
at the end of the day isessentially symbolic, symbolic thought. These
noises that, these little small mouthnoises that come out of our face stand
for some a larger thing in ourbrains. You know. It's a it's
a weird form of telepathy that wehave. You know. So I'm curious
about number one U Sasquatch or anyape species ability to symbolize real things with

(48:59):
noises. I mean, I thinkthat's easily possible because I can say,
I can say something to my dogand she'll know that I'm talking about a
treat, for example. You know, so that's very reasonable. But like,
did Coco for example, you broughtup Cocoa. Was could you just
have a conversation with Coco or wasit always a direct objects sort of food

(49:20):
response thing or some sort of stimulithat made her feel good, like the
kitten or something like that, oris it like, hey, Coco,
what's up? What's how's it goingtoday and like that level of language.
Yeah. So so there actually beenrecently, within the last six seven years,
there have been some really nice videostudies looking at the language studies of

(49:43):
apes, because you know, theyvideotaped almost all of them starting starting in
the sixties. Most of them havejust hours and hours of tape, and
so people were breaking it down andthey were actually finding that in most of
those, and in the Coco situation, uh, that that they could tell
that they were they could identify placeswhere they were being cued for their responses.

(50:08):
So those researchers came to the conclusionthat like in the case of Cocoa,
I think they also said so forWasho, the female chimp that was
up at Central Washington for years,that they weren't that that wasn't actual language,
It was just them parroting things back. Has there been a situation where

(50:30):
more than one ape, maybe havethe same species of different species have been
taught like say sign language or notseeing I think I would have heard about
this by now. But if thishas happened, but maybe it hasn't.
Like maybe are there two gorillas thathave some sort of rudimentary understanding of sign
language and putting them together. Whatdo they talk about? Okay, So,
so Coco with was ASL, amodified form of American sign language.

(50:57):
Michael was a male that they hadgotten to try and get them to mate.
They wanted Coco to have a baby, see if she would teach her
baby that. They really didn't communicatea whole lot, but I'll tell three
quick little stories that I think kindof illuminate this a little bit. So
while it seems that Coco was beingcured a lot by Penny Patterson, the

(51:19):
woman that worked with her, andI don't think Penny was doing it consciously.
I don't think she was trying torun a scam. I think that
she was doing things with her bodynot even realizing it. Coco was responding.
However, Coco, like I said, they tried to get her to
breed with Michael. She had nointerest in Michael. But William Shatner was
a huge supporter of the Gorilla Foundation, and he went to visit and when

(51:45):
he walked in, Coco said shewanted to mate with him. Well it's
William Shatner. Yeah. The CaptainKirk effect is just you know, eternal.
I guess, but that actually isis a documented story. So whether
or not she fully understood the language, she knew the cues. Washow,

(52:09):
the female chimpanzee that was taught andthen was resided with the fouses up in
Central Washington University for decades, sheactually taught her offspring different hand signals,
so she was teaching something, butagain it's hard to tell what she really

(52:29):
understood. The third one that I'llpoint out is Kanzi, and he's a
bonobo. Konzie actually learned lexicons,not asl He learned lexicons using lexicons,
and he learned it secondhand. Hewas a youngster writing around on his mom's

(52:51):
back and they were trying to teachhis mom and his mom never picked it
up, and his sister, infact, had a limited ability with it,
and Kanzi had an amazing ability withit. And so that's why I
say that individual behavior. Kanzi isa bonobo that I would say if there
are geniuses among banobos, he's won. And I've watched video of Kanzie being

(53:14):
told by someone who's behind a welder'smask, so can't be giving any facial
cues to do things like, youknow, take the Coca cola which he
loves. No plug for coke,but he loves it, and pour it
outside on the pine leaves, onthe pine nettles, which he of course

(53:37):
thinks, you know, is crazybecause it's coke, like why would you
waste it? And you watch himjust look at the person requesting this,
like he's trying to figure out ifhe heard him right. He also does
things like slices up apples and putsthem in aluminum foil. He doesn't start
the fire, but he could cookthem over fire. He also was taught

(54:00):
to flint nap once upon a time. He didn't flint nap like a human
does. He simply used his incrediblestrength and smashed two rocks together, got
a sharp point, and was ableto slice a cord. So that individual
variation is something that's also really hardto figure out when you when you talk

(54:22):
about, you know, do apeshave the ability for language? That's like
saying can humans do calculus? Someof us? I can't. Yeah,
I mean listen, and I'm notone of them. My best friend is,
but I'm not, and so youknow, so, so I think

(54:43):
that's that's something that we always needto keep in mind too. I think
absolutely though the U that the languagequestion is is a really interesting one because
I personally think that most of theapes have some sort of communication, they
may not be able to, youknow, make a call like Matt.

(55:04):
You you reference to panthoot earlier,which is my favorite of the chimpanzee calls.
And if you've ever been in aroom with Jane Goodall, she will
do it and you better answer toher or her entourage of women in shawls
will give you the death stare.But I'm not sure that they can do
that. And a chimp a halfa mile away can understand, Oh,

(55:29):
there are red colabus monkeys here inthis tree, and there are youngsters that
we can that we can go after, you know, like we can do
that, but I'm not sure theyhave that ability. You mentioned hand signals,
and I want to We're kind ofrunning out of time, but I
do want to touch on this beforewe get going here. You mentioned hand
signals, and and it seems likea reasonable way to go because do apes

(55:52):
in general use hand signals. Imean they do use hand signals to they
I think they point sometimes, theyput their hands up various meanings and since
they I believe at least and correctme if I'm wrong. Of course,
since they're using hand signals, I'mcurious if there are hand signals that might
be universal amongst all the ape species, or perhaps that translate well between say

(56:15):
humans and chimps, or like somesort of interspecies behavior like that, because
sasquatches have also been reported to displaysome hand signals when confronted with humans,
whether that's raising their hands and likejazz handing a people like well, running
at them to scare them. Probablya size and you know, territorial thing.

(56:37):
Several people have reported a sasquatch justraising one hand. They're not waving,
but they raise one hand almost likeas if they were to wave,
like acknowledging the person. Hey Bobo, Oh yeah, Bobo showed up.
By the way, everybody, dude, that was the most frustrating last hour
of my life. That's saying somethingI was gonna say. That's that's impressive.

(57:00):
This computer came so close to beingsmashed smash hulk. You know,
I'm so checked. I want Iwas just I'm so my credit card.
I declined, they're trying to chargeme to set up a new freaking account.
And I tried another one and thenit was the same company, and
they said, you already started this, dude. It has just been a

(57:22):
nightmare, you know, because ifyou said universal behaviors, I think I
think smashing things in frustration is theuniversal behavior for all primates. I've watched
it. I've watched it dozens oftimes in wild primates. Did you see
the any of those interviews with thechimp do you I don't know if you
guys went over there alorady, butif do you know those chimp Chimp Empire

(57:45):
scientists, and then also if yousaw the interviews afterwards where two of them
said they can't prove anything, butthey think they have some kind of base
level telepathic ability the chimps. There'ssome kind of communication going on. It
might be so subtle we don't seeit, but they got They said it.
Two of the signs said, itreally seems like they have some kind

(58:07):
of non verbal non like they don'thave to be looking at each other to
get the message. Yeah. Ithink we we we talked a little bit
about that. But just so youknow, Bobo, the Chimp Empire chimps
are actually the chimps I studied foryears in the field. Four of those
guys in the in the series.Four of those chimps are chimps that I

(58:29):
named, and so I was.I was very happy when I got to
see them as stars. Jackson wasone, uh, he was the alpha
male in the beginning, and thenthere was I think Herbie might have been
in there, Herbie Hancock. Anyanyone who is a anyone who's a jazz

(58:49):
fan, if they listened to enoughof the Gogo chimpanzee names, will very
quickly understand that one of my professors, one of the main directors of that
site, is a gigantic jazz fan, and so has named has named the
chimps after after a lot of differentjazz musicians. But yeah, they I

(59:12):
didn't watch the interviews, so,but I probably have been in the field
with most of those folks and wedid talk about that that, you know,
chimps have. I'm not I don'tknow necessarily if there's a telepathic component
as much as it is there's ashared understanding of the situation, and so

(59:35):
they may be playing off of ifyou're if you're an intelligent enough animal and
you're living with another animal for twentyfive years, you get to the point
where you can kind of understand whatthey're going to do before they do it,
and I and I think that's that'sprobably what's going on there, Like
how wolves courted a hot kind ofthing. Yeah, as as I said

(59:57):
at the beginning of this cliff,you know, in biology, I always
say never say never, because you'regoing to get proven wrong at some point.
If you're saying never, know,the Sasquatches certainly are. Well.
I'm still I'm still yet to beconvinced. But as I said at the
beginning, I'm I'm a very openminded individual because again, I think that

(01:00:22):
there are lots of possibilities. Butclip as we talked about, you know,
I've got my my reasons for myskepticism. When we when we were
face to face there in the museum, do you have a do you have
time to stick around for another thirtyforty minutes of conversation? Yeah? I
have time. Okay, why don'twe do this? Why don't we shut
down the regular episode right now?We'll record a little extra stuff for our

(01:00:42):
members and we can talk about someof because you know, primates are horrifyingly
dangerous animals and I'd like to talkabout some of the some of those sort
of items that you probably run acrossin the in the woods out with chimpanzees,
because chimpanzees are just again, theseare the things of nightmares, you
know. Yeah, yeah, they'resmart and all that sort of stuff,
but they can also rip your armoff, literally rip your arm off.

(01:01:05):
So I'd like to talk about someof the dangers perhaps you might have been
involved in in the woods. Iknow you worked with elephants. I'm also
interested in perhaps comparing cognitive abilities betweenelephants and primates. I've got questions about
that. I've got a couple otherquestions, And of course you deserve to
get to know Bobo a little bitbetter as well, So if you can
stick around, we'd really really appreciateit. Yeah, I like steek around

(01:01:25):
for a bit awesome, Bob.But you just showed up, of course,
and I'm sorry that you missed alot of the conversation. It was
a good one. But since you'rehere, you know, why don't you
take us out of here and wecan continue the conversation over the member section.
All right, folks, So youguys heard this before I did.
So we want to thank doctor HoganCheryl for coming on and giving us some
insight and if you want to hearmore of we're going to be on Patreon.

(01:01:46):
The Patreon support is only five bucksa month, so check them out
there. Check us out there everyweek for extra episode and until then,
you all keep it squatching. Thanksfor listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot
and Beyond. If you liked whatyou heard, please rate and review us

(01:02:07):
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