Ep. 297 - Fossil Footprints, Savage Squirrels, & Decorative Drones!

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and on with Cliff and Bobo.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
These guys, are you fav It's so like say subscribe
and raid it.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Live Stock and.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Greatest on Yesterday listening watching limb always keep its watching.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, Bobo, what's going on? Man? I want yourself Cliff,
nothing man, just living life, doing the thing, you know,
doing the museum deal, working out all the weekends now
until we get a We're gonna put feelers out for
a new employee. Anybody listening wants to apply to the
North American VIC the Center to be a cashier. Feel free.
It's a weekend gig. The pay is low, but the
benefits are high. And I don't mean like health or

(00:52):
anything like that. Health are a retirement. I mean Squatch benefits.
Lots and lots of stuff going on there all the time.
You were going to learn a lot. But for most
superoroking looking for weekend coverage at this point. So I
am there every weekend. Anybody wants to come in and
say hello to me and tell me how great the
podcast is. Feel free do it on a Saturday or Sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Call it Bigfoot College, and you charge him to come
there and do that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Right, We don't pay you. You pay us. You give
us your time. You get to work the cashier at
a Bigfoot museum.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
You know that. That reminded me of you saying this.
I lurk on a few online forums and I saw one.
There was a thread that was I met Cliff from
Finding Bigfoot, and the poster said, my wife and I
were out in Sandy, Oregon today and saw a unique
museum next to a pub. I think it was called
the North American Bigfoot Museum or close. Walked in, paid
the fee, We got to talking to the guy behind
the counter, and damn, this guy was a bigfoot genius.

(01:43):
I asked why in the hell he wasn't hosting a
TV show. He looked at me, smiled and said I
did for like eight years. My jaw hit the floor.
Super nice guy, and I can't say enough nice things.
If you're out that way, check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Cool.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Later in the thread, someone says he has a podcast
with Bobo called Bigfoot and Beyond. It actually my favorite
bigfoot podcast, and another person or the original poster replied
and said, listen to my first episode on the way home.
It was hooked for an hour. Another person replied and
said Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo, And then
another person replied and said these guys are your favorites,

(02:17):
and another person you like share, subscribe and rate it
five stars. The final reply says, I'm so glad that
we've got pigeons in here.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's really funny.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
That warmed the heart for sure, that's great.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, they're probably listening now. So if you did that,
that's awesome. I love it. I love it. I love
leaving the pigeons continue to leave Easter eggs all over
the place. Well, other museum news, Bobo, you sure you're
not coming up for the gig here Matt Prut speaking
gig because we sold out of Matt Pruit tickets in
less than one day, like seven hours after I put

(02:57):
them up. All of the in person tickets were sold. Now,
mind you, I only put them out there for museum members.
And then, don't get me wrong, podcast members, I love
you too, But you know, this is a museum event
and museum is hosting it, and we're doing a thing
at the museum. It's a museum event. So I put
it out to the museum members.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
First.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
They grabbed every single ticket for in person stuff with
Matt Pruitt, Bobs, I would encourage you to consider coming up.
I know that you have schedule obligations and stuff like that,
but you know, something goes sideways. We're up there with
open arms, so come on up.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
Look before you answer that, Bobo, let's not I have
no delusions of grand or here. I think the reason
those sold so quickly is because when we talked about it,
Bobo said multiple times that he might be there. I
think that's probably that's a much more likely reason that
people want to be there then that I'm going to
be there. I think people are like, oh, Bobo might

(03:50):
be there, and that's why they're so if Bobo now
says I'm definitely not going, did maybe a lot of
people ask for refunds.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
No, No, if you can, it'd be great to see it.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Oh, thanks, But I mean Pruit's still over two thousand books.
I mean, there's there's a lot of people that want
to see pru It.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Whether you make it or not, Bobo, anybody who does
show up is going to see a lot of people
that they have heard and read about it. I'm going
to tell you what names I have verified are coming.
But there are some Bigfoot royalty showing up so and
probably a good handful of them. So Matt Pruit's maybe
on the pedestal that evening, but there's a lot of
people gathered around looking up at them.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
So I think we should have like a life size
cardboard cutout of Bobo and just put an iPad where
the face is and have Bobo live stream and we'll
just walk that around with us.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
My god, why don't I have a life size cut
out of Bobo in the museum? What have I done
with my life? Do not have that?

Speaker 4 (04:41):
Just put an iPad on it and so like he can,
he can FaceTime with his face there, So it's like
you can walk up and talk to Bobo in person.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Oh wow, Matt, you might know this. Are there AI
that can simulate voices?

Speaker 1 (04:53):
There?

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Probably are, right, Yeah, of course there are. Let's get
one and make Bobo say ridiculous things.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
I don't think you could properly try a large language
model on Bobo. I think Bobo's too vast to be
captured by zeros and ones.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Thank you, brutt How do you capture growls and zeros
and ones stomach growls. That's not what I was thinking of,
but that's funnier. So this week is a topical episode
where we kind of go through in our regular lives
and keep up on the news in various ways. Anytime

(05:26):
we see an article that Bobo, Matt and I just
we see an article that may pertain to something to
do with bigfoot that we think is interesting, we send
it in and Matt Brute compiles all of these and
once every month or two or three or blue moon
or whatever, we get together and we talk about the
articles and kind of share them and our thoughts on them,
why they're important, and what we can learn from them

(05:46):
or anything like that. So we've got a handful of
them tied up today, so let's see what we can
do with them. Bobo, would you like to choose one?
Or Matt would you like to choose one to start with?

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Oh, let Matt take the autors.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
I think it'd be good to start with the one
point five million year old fossilized footprint find because a
lot of our listeners sent that one in as well,
So you had sent it in as soon as it
posted online because it's obviously right up your alley and
the alley of the discussions of this podcast. But I
think a lot of listeners had the same idea because
multiple people sent this in.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
That was a particularly interesting one to me. I really
really liked it because I'm not only a footprint footprint guy,
I'm a hayleeu anthropology guy. I really really like that
sort of thing. And you know, of course, the lea
totally footprints are the most the most common widely known footprints,
fossilized footprints of hominin's. They doctor Meldrerim wrote an article

(06:38):
on those, pointing out the evidence from midfoot flexibility and
all that sort of stuff. And then so when any
any other footprints fossilized footprint stuff show up, I am
always looking at them. I'm always trying to find pictures
of the footprints to see do they show evidence of
mid tarsl flexibility. And this one, this was such an
interesting article to me because not only were fossilized hominin

(07:03):
footprints found, but two different species were found in the
same fossilized you know, river bed or lake bed or
whatever it was, silt bed anyway, two different species of
hominin of human ancestors were found living at the same
time in the same place. In fact, the scientists in
this particular find are pretty sure that these footprints were

(07:27):
not only found at the same place, but basically laid
down within a few hours to a few days apart.
And that is based on an analysis of the silt.
And it's not silt, it's rock now, but it was silt.
But you know, by looking at the rock they can
learn a lot about the silt. The silt would have
been washed over one another, but apparently they stepped in

(07:47):
such a way, maybe on top of each other or
so close to another, that the silt was actually like
if it had been left, say a month, almost certainly
some silt would have washed in and washed a lot
of these away. That was not the case in the
so we have very strong evidence that two different species
walk through this area within a few easily within a

(08:08):
few days of one another. Now a few days might
be a week or something depending on weather conditions. Back then.
What was going on we know almost nothing about all this,
but it is super super interesting to me at least.
The two species, if you're wondering about it, were Homorectus
and a paranthropists, which you know got my eyebrows up

(08:28):
pretty quick there, because I'm I like the idea of
Sasquatch as possibly being a paranthropist of some sort, and
so whenever something like that pops up, I pay extra
close attention. But Homo erectus and paranthropists boise I specifically,
by the way, this is a paranthropist boise eye. These
two species are are pretty well known to be some

(08:51):
of the most successful hominin species ever basically outside of humans,
you know, especially during the Plsis epic, you know, the
era there, both of these species were very widely dispersed,
you know, particularly home Erectus. I mean home Erectus was
found all the way from Indonesia to Africa, you know,

(09:12):
so there was they were extraordinarily successful. Paranthropist boise has
only been found in Africa so far. But I wouldn't
be a bit surprised if they kind of wandered outside there,
you know, I wouldn't expect an archaic common in the
color within the lines, so to speak, you know. But
also something of note in this article as well is that,

(09:32):
you know, for the most part, most evidence of any
of these extinct species come from bones. You know, when
bones can kind of move around, Like if an animal
rots away and there's a pile of bones there, rain
can come and wash them away. Scavengers can move them
before or after the meat is rotten away. So footprints
are one of the only ways to actually study any

(09:55):
level of behavior that you can actually be sure of
in a way because fossilized bones before they were fossilized,
even after it could wash away and move probably pretty
good distances. But footprints don't do that. Footprints stay where
they were put. So I guess those are the big
three takeaways for me after this one is that two
hominin species lived at the same time and same place,

(10:17):
just like today, human beings are alive here, and sasquatches
are alive here, and probably some other critters over there
in Asia and Africa and Australian stuff. So humans are
not the only biped standing so to speak. That has
never been the case, I would argue. And second of all,
these things were found within a few hours of one another,

(10:39):
and it gives us a little bit of insight into
their behavior and how they walk as well. So pretty
cool stuff, man, pretty cool stuff. With this article.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
I was excited about it, absolutely, I think given this
location there at Lake Turkana, which is sort of it's
eastern Africa, but it's sort of northeastern. You know, the
fossil record for paranthropists ends there around one point four
million year years ago, and so the younger fossils, the
ones that are more recent to us in time, like
zero point six million years ago roughly, are more southerly,

(11:08):
like South Africa, et cetera. So this was kind of
at the tail end of at least they're represented tenure
in the fossil record in eastern Africa. It at least
pos us some interesting questions like maybe the emergence of
something like Homo erectus on the scene created enough competitive pressure,
some sort of competition for resources that drove them out

(11:29):
of the air, because that's again right at the tail
end of when we see their fossil record dry up
in that part of Africa, which is really interesting.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
You got to wonder how much Homeorectus and paranthropists would
have even competed, though what level competition because Homorectus, we
don't know if they were closed, we don't know if
they were hair covered or any of those sort of things,
but we do know they use fire and you know,
if they're using fire, that means they're probably using different
food sources cooking meat, for example. And the tool use

(11:57):
is probably vastly different as well. There's some evidence of
paranthropists probably used tools, but there's absolute evidence that home
Erectus did. So you got to wonder what those different
adaptations that they picked up along the way, how much
overlap there was, how much competition for various resources. There
had to be some, of course, you know, because there's
even competition today between Homo sapiens and sasquatches, you know,

(12:20):
for like deer for example, you know, the species that
humans like to hunt. They're those same species as sasquatches
like the you know, so you gotta figure there's probably some.
But I think that given the adaptations of like the
jaw and the teeth and the chewing apparatus and paranthropists,
they were probably going after largely different food items with

(12:42):
some overlap, I'd guess.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
Oh, so that I would expect that there'd be some
degree of overlap. I just think it's interesting that you
have this cooccurrence that you can date in time that
immediately precedes the sort of end of their fossil record,
in that or the end of the paranthropene fossil record
in that area. So it doesn't mean necessarily that they're correlated,
but I think it at least poses a question.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
It's interesting and super cool.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
I think it's cool that they used three D scanning
and reproducing things in three D models as well, that
technology which we're using on a smaller scale. You know
with our phones that you would turn me on a
scan averse as an app to be used in the field.
And so I know three D scanning has been used
in fossil sites and to study tafonomy for quite a
long time, and there were three D scans even of

(13:27):
the Latoly site that some of those papers include that stuff.
But it's still cool to see that being used in
the fact that US squatchers are using a smaller scale
of that to some degree too.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, you know, looking at the photographs that accompanied this
article as well, these photographs of some of the prints
in the ground, I love them because obviously I'm a
kind of a footprint kind of guy, right, but a
lot of these if I saw a sasquatch cast like this,
maybe by now I'd be much more open to them.
But you know, ten years ago I would have said,
I had this look right to me, I think it

(14:00):
would fake. And of course you you threw it out
there to you know, a skeptic or someone who was
on the fence about it. They wouldn't think that these
footprints were real. These footprints and I'm looking at I
can like, for for some of these, I can go
through the data set and find three or four five
footprint casts that strongly resemble these, But there's no there's

(14:23):
no one's questioning that these have been hoaxed.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
It would be cool, is if you could uh put
a big foot for like some prints impressions in like
mixed in like you know, like you didn't have an
inside job, but have like a real anthropologist present it
to people say like, look at these footprints, we found
this other hominid, and you know, every one of those
actions would be like, oh, yeah, you can see that
this lines up with that, Like this is obviously like

(14:48):
a bigger version as it evolved more, you know, like
that if they looked at the traction from that point
of view, they'd find so much similarities.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, it's a very interesting stuff, you know. And a
lot of these footprints, like this one of the similarities.
But that I'm seeing in this photograph here is that
the heel seems almost too narrow in some of these,
thus giving it kind of a fan shape when you
look at the front part of the foot of the
ball and the toes, and a lot of these the

(15:15):
toes are quite well splayed, and it's very triangular, very triangular,
kind of like the fan shape. I talk about the
fan shape sasquatch footprint gas a lot the stuff from
like Lori Hamilton or some of the stuff from Jimmy
houckin the Biologist. Some of the Freeman stuff looks like that,
very fan shaped, and these have the same the same signature,

(15:36):
I suppose, very very interesting stuff, and it's it's always
great to compare. And a lot of these just show
four toes as well, which is another very common thing
with sasquatch footprints. A lot of a lot of footprints
don't have all five toes showing in them, and a
lot of bigfoot researchers go the extra mile and think
that the animal itself only has four toes. That's nonsense.

(16:00):
Squatches have five toes, and they say, well, what about
an accent or cutting it off? Yeah, maybe, but It's
probably more likely that the Sasquatch just has a very
flexible foot, as we are pretty sure they do, and
the toes in the press, and that must be the
case with these things too. Of course, these are very
very old footprints. Do anything could happen, but a lot
of these. I'm looking at a composite photograph of one, two, three, four, five,

(16:22):
nine or ten footprints right here, and one two, three
of them show all five toes. Three that's it. The
rest of them have three or four toes visible because
of the substrate, because of the way their feet probably
interact with the ground, and of course because of the
age as well. But I think the bigfoot community probably

(16:42):
needs to let go of this idea that four toed
prints mean a four toed animal. It's not true. Stay
tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
I think Bubba had a great point about putting evidence
in front of people independent of context. It reminded me.
First of all, you know, Roderick Sprague wrote a bit
about those the carved stoneheads found in the Columbia River,
and so yeah, when Sprague was trying to get analyzes
from some zoologists about it. He sent it around to

(17:21):
a number of people for their opinions, and what he
wrote about it was, quote, he said, some zoologists described
the carvings as looking quote extremely monkey or ape like,
asking where are they from? When the location was indicated,
the reaction from these zoologists was either one of anger
or of a concerted effort to erase their former comments.
And so I always thought that was a fairly interesting take.

(17:43):
And it reminded me too of you know, someone that
I knew that recorded what might have been red wolf
vocalizations in the interior highlands, you know of the like
the Washita Range, where there used to be red wolf's historically,
but now they're fairly restricted to eastern North Carolina. And
so this person had sent it around and one red
wolf biologist was like, oh those sound really does sound

(18:05):
really compelling? Yeah, where'd you get that?

Speaker 1 (18:08):
That?

Speaker 4 (18:08):
He told them, and they said, oh no, well then
it can't be because there are no red wolves there.
And it goes back to that circular logic of like, well,
what would it take to convince you that there might
be red wolves there? Oh, well, I'd need to have
some kind of evidence. Well, what about this is this evidence? No, No,
that can't be because they're not there. So it would
be interesting, you know, if you could, if you could

(18:28):
put sasquatch tracks regardless of scale, because obviously, if someone
sees something sixteen seventeen inches long, they're immediately probably going
to be circumspect. But if you had let's say, three
D scans and just said, hey, take a look at this,
what do you think? You know, you wouldn't want to
deceive them and say they were found in a fossil
lake bed in Africa or something like that. But it
would be interesting because it is the case that as

(18:50):
soon as they hear in North America like, oh, well
that can't be because there's no such thing.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, it reminds me of that bigfoots are not real
because it cannot be real. Right, as simple as that,
that's all the argument you need. You're not doing it,
not doing well enough, you know. Yeah, I'm loving these footprints, man,
looking at these photographs. Everybody should check these out.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
I always put all the articles links to the articles
in the show notes, so people, if you open up
the episode description, you will see the links to each
of these articles that we're discussing.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, it might be fun for you know, I still
haven't put my my, uh my presentation together for squatch
Fest at the end of the month. I'm kind of
hemming and hahn which direction to go, because I've got
a couple of fun things I'd like to talk about.
But you know, an hour presentation doesn't give you much
to talk about at the end of the day. It
might be kind of fun to put a couple of
these up there and put comparative sasquatch footprint casts next

(19:35):
to them that strongly resemble them.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Oh, that would be very cool.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
It'd be interesting, and of course it wouldn't it wouldn't as
strongly resemble the home erectus ones. Well, have a couple
of home erectus footprint finds already, to my knowledge, is
the first Paranthropis footprint point. I mean, maybe there's others,
but well, I know there was that other There's that
other one that was last year, maybe about a year ago,
the Laya totally tracks, you know, not not the most

(20:00):
famous one, but there are others. There's another two or
three other sites I think of Leotoli tracks at least,
and they went back and uncovered them. I think we
did it for a topical episode of remember, right, those
may or may not be paranthropists, so it'd be interesting.
And you know what, with Homo erectus and paranthropists being
two of the most successful species or you know, in
this case genus, it makes me wonder like maybe those

(20:23):
are the best contenders for longevity as well, like maybe
we should be looking at some of these almaistes and
whatnot in that part of the world in eastern Europe,
and keeping Homo Erectus in mind for possible contenders. Since
they were home Erectus was by far the most successful hominin.

(20:44):
They were around for a long time.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
They had a massive span as well. One of the
most interesting things because obviously, when you're positing an ancestral
candidate for the North American sasquatch coming over Ourgia as
the most likely route to come from Asia, even if
they originated outside of Asia, let's say, but at least
they most likely came from Asia, and it seems like

(21:07):
a long distance to people, and so people tend to
think of those distances being covered in migrations as if
you know, like a whole population gets up and marches
from one place to the other over some massive distance.
But there's some rough math that's been done. Roughly speaking,
if you look at the fossils of Homo erectus in
Africa and their emergence into Asia, which is a very

(21:31):
like Southeastern Asia, because you know, they were all the
way into Java and other parts of Indonesia and all
over southeastern Asia, seems like this massive movement. So people
would posit like, oh, they somehow migrated, but actually if
you do the math to account for that movement, they
only needed to move roughly between five and ten miles
once every generation, pretty wild like, so it wasn't like

(21:54):
they were marching across these you know, landscapes and epic
vistas on this epic quest to get across the world.
It's like they were just slowly expanding their populations, you know,
bit by bit. To account for the span of time
from Africa to Southeast Asia.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, there's chilling and staying put, having babies and dispersing,
you know.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
I think another article Bobo had brought up before it
was one of Bobos that he submitted, was pretty interesting
if you wanted to go to one of Bobo's next
was about the carnivorous squirrels.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Oh yeah, I love it. I love it. Boba, you
want to? You want to? You want to kick that
one off for us?

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah. The reason I brought this up, Okay, it's about
in the Bay Area East area of California, up behind Oakland.
Up in that area, they thought that squirrels were vegetarian,
but they discovered these ones ground squirrels chasing and killing
voles and predatory behavior ever recorded before. Experts say it

(22:49):
fundamentally changes their understanding of squirrels, which clearly have more
omnivorous and flexible diat than had been assumed. This was shocking,
said Scrolls. For doctor Jennifer Smith of the University of Wisconsin.
We've never seen this be here before. Squirrels are one
of the most familiar animals to people. We see them
right outside our windows. We interrupted them regularly. But they
started seeing this and the first time they noted it

(23:09):
was in Contra Costa County in twenty ten. And when
the person reported that, the people are like, no, like
you're crazy. Then they Over the next several years they
saw forty two percent of the times that squirrels encountered boles,
they predated on them and killed them. In ate them.
I found this interesting because they said not in this

(23:31):
arkle I read here, but I read it this is
just a little yahoo come dance to one. But I
read the one of the science. It was just like
when the Bigfoots, when the rabbit showed about in the
Desah areas of California in the seventies and.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Eighties in the Analope Valley.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Right, yeah, I got a little squash reports it was
because of the uh because of that, and then they
said full populations were up four hundred percent in these
areas where the squirrels were eating them. And as interesting
because they said that the rabbit population was up four hundred
percent out there, and that's not really related. But anyways,
so that they said it was because partially as they

(24:09):
were competitive, goals were there's too many of them as competitors.
And also that they just that animals adapt their diet
to what is available, like more than they thought, which
which I thought was interesting because the dentition of a squirrel,
you know, it's teeth, and how bigfoot, how carnivorous they
can be. But people always report, like we talked about

(24:30):
in just the last episode, how their whole skull and head, jaws,
and muscles and everything is set up for grinding and
and you know, processing urbivore or more diet. But we
know that they predate on elk and deer and everything else,
I mean, anything else they can grab. So it's just
one of you know, if that's if that was an
adaptation to what was going on then or you know,

(24:51):
I just thought that was interesting on that point.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
I think there's a whole host of animal behaviors that
we're only now discovering, even in species that we think
we understan and fully. I mean, I wrote a bit
about the book about orangutan hunting actively hunting slowlors is, gibbons, rats, squirrels,
et cetera. And it tends to be in response to
environmental changes. With orangs, because they're frugivores, it would happen

(25:16):
during times of like fruit shortages due to any number
of factors, whether it's a seasonal thing or it's due
to like human activity, etc. And that's a fairly recent discovery.
I think that was like late twentieth century, maybe the
nineteen eighties or something like that. So it makes sense
in a sort of far away place like Indonesia to
discover something new and rare in a rare ape species.

(25:38):
But it's wild to think that there's anything left to
be discovered about squirrels in North America, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, in the Bay Area, in the East Bay.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
But it's pretty bad ass at the same time because
it does say that, you know, they were stalking and ambushing,
which in a lot of other animals, those are learned
behaviors that take generations to sort of formulate and to
be implemented. You know, tigers are a great example of that.
So it's pretty amazing that I guess, like Boba said,
maybe in the last couple of decades, maybe since twenty ten,
but spiking now in twenty twenty four, that they've adopted

(26:11):
and learned and employed these behaviors successfully. So that's wild.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah. Of course, whenever there's too much of any sort
of animal the other animal, as Bobo noted, like in
the Antelope Valley back in the seventies, when all those
rabbits showed up, suddenly there were bigfoot reports there, right,
So it's one of the things that I look for,
at least when I'm looking for a bigfoot spots where
there's too much of a certain kind of animal, and
that kind of sort of thing isn't easily observed. Have
to be out there or hear about it through the

(26:35):
grape vine and go check it out. But I remember
talking about that sort of thing always brings to mind
of report I took many many years ago. It's probably
still in the Vfurro database. In the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
there was a biologist who saw this sasquatch while hiking
uptrail during the summer at a ski resort. It's like

(26:57):
Sierra something ski resort. I don't know. I'm sure you
can find it on on the BFRs side if you look.
But this guy was hiking up to this meadow to
do a survey. He's a biologist, like I said, do
a survey at the plants. And he saw what he
thought was a tall, thin female sasquatch on the way
up and whatever else. And when I was talking to
him afterwards, I said, I was asked, you know, of course,

(27:17):
how big was a book, you know, book colorosa hair
and all that sort of stuff. But I asked him,
was like, so you don't notice anything unusual, like where
there are too many of a certain kind of plant?
Because he's a biologist, why, I asked, I think, like
too many of a certain kind of plan or is
there anything unusual about the you know, the balance of
nature that you saw on the way up or down?
He goes, yeah, now that you mentioned it, that's there
is something. All these little creeks that I was crossing

(27:40):
had more brook trout in him than I've ever seen
anywhere else in my entire life. In fact, you could
practically walk on them. I've never seen so many in
any place in my entire life. As oh, well, isn't
that something so again, when when too much of something
shows up, the animals are not going to be that
far behind, whether it's sasquatches or squirrels in this case.

(28:03):
And there's one more thing before it before I passed
the mic, so to speak. Is there's a photograph in
this particular Yahoo News article of a squirrel holding a furry,
delicious chunk of a vole and eating it and like
pulling like the fat and stuff away, or that the
meat away, and it's all stretching out. But I don't
know if you guys are looking at the same picture

(28:24):
or not, but man, what a bad ass look and
squirrel that is look a left ear, left ear is
like half missing. Like that thing's gnarly. That thing is gnarly.
But I guess when your food fights back, as you
know pretty much all carnivores have to deal with, that's
bound to happen eventually.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
It is pretty bad ass. That said, you know, successful
kills often involved decapitation, so they're pretty ruthless little warlords.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, and of course they're not the only one. What
about deer deer in elk They don't get enough credit
for being for being the monsters that they are as
well either. Like again, I'll go back. I mentioned this
during my life presentation sometimes. But there's an amazing video.
In fact, I'm not even sure we should post it proved,
but it's up to you if you want to do
it or not. But there's this amazing video on YouTube.

(29:08):
Everybody knows what a body farm is. I assume where
you know, you could leave your body to science and
they'd leave your corpse out in various conditions, and science
forensic scientists come and study how it decomposes, and that
helps police officers solve crimes and cold cases and all
that sort of stuff, you know, forensic science stuff. These
are called body farms. I think there's one in Tennessee there.
I think there's one in Texas. Maybe they seem to

(29:28):
be more prevalent in the South.

Speaker 4 (29:30):
Yeah, the major ones it associated with the University of
Tennessee outside of Knoxville. I actually had a chance to
go there in I think it was two thousand and seven,
but I didn't get to go. But some people that
you know that I took that tracking course, the Joel
Harden tracking course, with a couple of my Georgia friends.
They had an invite to go there as part of
a tracking sort of like a search and rescue training

(29:50):
thing and open invite, and I really wanted to go.
But maybe I'm glad, maybe just a blessing that I
didn't go see that, because they described some of the
things they saw. It was pretty gnarly.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, you can't unsee that stuff, that's for sure. Well,
and of course that's also where doctor Grover Krantz left
his body after he died and to kind of get
pecked by bugs and insects and stuff.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
And we didn't tell them why we brought it up.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
No, no, no, I'll get there. But yeah, now, of
course Krantz's bones are in the Smithsonian, but his body
was actually taking care of one of these body farms,
so we can keep on teaching. But anyway, there's this
video from one of these places, and of course they
have to tie the bodies down a lot of times
because they would be dragged away by scavengers of various source.
But in one of these videos, taken by a trail
cam at one of these body farms, is a deer

(30:37):
standing over a human corpse kind of pecking at it,
and like at one point, if I remember right, it
looks up at the camera and actually has a human
rib bone in its mouth. Yeah, an entirely new perspective
on BAMBI. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and Bogo. Will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
There's two different videos of deer like hunting and killing
and eating snakes snakes.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
I've seen one with mice in it before. I didn't
know about the snake one. That's cool.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, there's a pretty big snake too.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
The one got that's crazy. I hadn't seen that. I
have to check that out.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
And of course part of the reason they do this
is that calcium is a very very rare commodity in
North American forest, especially if you're a herbivore, So they
have to get the calcium an unculate, right, So you
have to get the calcium from somewhere, otherwise you can't
grow those antlers.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah you need antlers for sure.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, who doesn't, sobum might haven't grown back since I shed.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
You have to wonder if anyone's ever observed this behavior
and tried to report it and wasn't believed, Like, Hey,
I saw a squirrel hunt and kill a rodent and
decapitated and people, Yeah, sure you did, buddy.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
You know what I mean, you know it.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
The professional wasn't believed at first. But you know, as
you say, the reason I brought up the whole thing
about the squirrels was because relating to Bigfoot, well is
do you think then that was a later adaptation, whether
it became more carnivorous, like started eating like way more
meat after they'd already evolved into this giant plant mastricating
giant head.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:13):
That's the kind of the theory that I floated in
the book, was that, you know, it could be the
case that due to the same pressures that cause ranus
to shift to hunting pressure or the same pressures that
you get put on chimpanzees in places where they become
more reliant on hunting. You know, I try to pull
examples from the known apes to say, like, well, under

(32:34):
these circumstances, and some of those are due to human
conflict or competition, and so you know, I'm using the
gigantipithecus model in the book. But gigantos shared the landscape,
you know, they were sympatrick with Homo erectus for over
a million years, and there would have been overlap with
Homo sapiens.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
You know.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
The most recent Gigantipithecus fossils in Asia are from the
Lang Tren Cave in northern Vietnam. Those are roughly like
eighty to one hundred thousand years old, and then zero
dongs here in cave are the oldest Homo sapien remains,
which are dated somewhere between like one and one hundred
and twenty thousand years old. So there is some overlap,
especially assuming like that wasn't the very first human who

(33:12):
showed up there, and that wasn't the very last gig
I guess that died there, you know what I mean?
So I try to lay out, like, here's all these
factors that might have driven these generalist herbivores to start
exploiting meat as a food resource, and we see that
in these other well documented the known apes, and all

(33:32):
those factors could easily apply, or any combination of all
those factors. So yeah, I would think that that would
be the case.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, particularly like traveling in more temperate regions where fruit
would probably be more scarce, I would think than tropical
regions for example. Maybe I'm way off on that, but
it seems to me. There's a lot of berries and
that sort of thing, but it seems to be that
fruit in general is just a bit more rare once
you get about a forty fifth parallel, you know, certainly.

(34:00):
All right, well, let's go onto another article here. This
one is we found it on earth dot com and
the title is Chimpanzees can plant adapt their use of
tools just like humans. And for me, like you know,
I'm not one to underestimate apes, I don't think very much.
I know how amazing they are, I know how human
like they are, and also how ape like humans are.

(34:22):
You know, we're all family, so to speak, and so
in a way I almost struggled with this in a
way because to me, finding out that chimpanzees, okay it
can use and discern which tools are the best and
adapt to them, to me, it's like a no dumb moment.
But at the same time, and my big takeaway for that, well,

(34:42):
let me talk about the article I guess first. So basically,
they found that chimpanzees, when presented with a bunch of
different kinds of stones, they would choose the best stone
for that particular job. Okay, Now, even if the stones
weren't from that location. So they would introduce stones to
an area with a bunch of nuts, for example, then

(35:04):
breaking of nuts by stone is a known chimpanzee behavior, right,
So they would introduce a bunch of stones that were
not necessarily from that area, and a variety of shapes
and sizes and this and that and whatever, and the
chimpanzees would go through and choose the ones that they
felt would work the best, and to their surprise, they

(35:26):
often chose correctly. And also to their surprise, if the chimpanzee,
halfway through the task decided that this isn't doing it,
they would find the right kind of tool that would
help them do it better. And I guess the big
takeaway for me is that even though it seems like no, duh, Yeah,

(35:47):
of course, of course they're going to do that. Anybody
would do that, you know, but you know, for a
lot of scientists, chimpanzees aren't necessarily buddies, you know. Anybody
isn't a person, you know, they aren't people enough to
do that. But at the same time time, of course
they would, of course they would. But and so I
started thinking about it's like, why is this really science?
Like why is this news? And I realized, oh, it's

(36:08):
actually because of the science that this is news, because
it is observed and documented and measured. Now, things that
are obvious may not be scientifically it's not like they're
not scientifically true. I'm having a hard time describing this.
The things that are obvious that you wouldn't think would
need to be proven, Sure, go the extra mile when

(36:31):
you have data to support it. You know. It reminds
me of when doctor Anna Nakaris was asking me about
sasquatch behavior and I was telling her and she goes, well,
how do you know this? And I go, well, this
and this and this and just yeah, but where's your data?
And I realized, oh, shoot, I don't really have data. Necessarily,
I have accounts, but data isn't really data until well,
I guess it is. But you got to crunch it,

(36:52):
you got to analyze it, you got to do the
work with the data to make it mean something. And
to me, oddly enough, that's the takeaway from this article,
for me at least, is that things that seem obvious
may still need to be supported with evidence. Otherwise you're
just talking out your butt, you know, at the end
of the day, like, of course sasquatches do this, of
course they do that. Well, how do you know that, Well,

(37:15):
because everybody knows that. Well, a lot of those things
aren't true. Well because I saw this once, you know once.
To say that they do this implies that the entire
species does this. And so even something as obvious as
a very intelligent animal like a chimpanzee would choose the
appropriate tool for the job or change its strategy if

(37:38):
the initial choice wasn't the right one. Even if something
as obvious and the written as that still needs to
be supported with data and evidence. Otherwise, again, you're just
talking about what you feel and nobody cares. You know,
your feelings don't go very far in science. They need

(37:58):
supporting observations and to make it not true because it's
true anyway. Again, science doesn't tell you what's true. Science
tells you what's supported by evidence. We can see what's true.
But you know, science isn't the dictator of what is
true and what's false. It's what we can learn out

(38:18):
of what is true and what's false. You know, am
I making sense here? Or what helped me out? Guys?
Am I making sense?

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Or what?

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Can you clarify what I'm trying to say? You guys
don't be well enough.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
For something to be considered scientifically valid, it needs to
be not only documented but quantifiable.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, all right. I should have just passed the mic
to you to be in with and could endit this
podcast in a half hour ago.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
No, no, no, I know it's es deefinitely worth talking
those things through and talking them out, because, yeah, there's
a number of things that we could probably bring up
as an example that are you know, within the known
category colloquially but maybe not scientifically validated to the standard
that other things have been validated or at least verified

(39:02):
via data that's quantifiable. And there's a number of things
that just cannot be studied. Like I end up talking
about this a lot because we focus a lot on
instinct and what things are innate and hardwired instincts, and
what things are learned, you know, nature versus nurture. You
know certain learned complex behaviors. And the reality is like,

(39:22):
you cannot observe instincts, they're unobservable. You can observe behavior
from which you can infer an instinct, especially if you're
looking at a population that spans across multiple environments, multiple ecosystems,
let's say. And if a behavior is stable regardless of
the environment, then that's more likely to be an instinct
versus if it's more labile, that it's context dependent, it

(39:46):
only occurs in certain environments and not others among the
same species, then it's more likely to be learned. But again,
you can't observe an instinct. You can't prove the existence
of an instinct. You can only infer it from observing, documenting,
and quantifying instances of behavior. And so I think things
like this do point to maybe both nature and nurture,

(40:08):
and the fact that it is shared across closely related
species suggests or from which we can infer that maybe
those things predated the last common ancestor between ourselves and chimps.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
And of course this whole breaking of nuts sort of thing,
you know, this whole nutcracker sort of observation or the
behavior that they're observing as President's sasquatches as well. I mean,
some of the best stuff that I've seen came out
of that the NEWAC paper. Forgot what that's called, but
you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 (40:41):
The washer Tap Project monograph. And I've seen some of
those nut crushing stations. I've seen several of them down
there in Area X, and they are pretty remarkable to see,
and it's hard to find an alternative explanation other than
that something with hands was responsible for that. Given the
location of some of these, it's like, I don't think

(41:01):
it was people. And then some of them are in
not obvious places, but in places they are easy to
see from old road beds and things like that, where
you know, I guess someone who really skeptical could say, well, yeah,
person did this, but it's like, for what reason, to
what end? But then we've found ones that were well
away from anything, kind of in the heart of big

(41:22):
thickets in secondary drainages that feed to the main creek,
where you're like, oh, here's another example, Like that's pretty bizarre.
So I can link to the paper there, because yeah,
most people who are interested in the subject should read
that paper. And the paper's pretty scientific and for that reason,
intentionally sterile. I mean, there's a lot of exciting things
outlined in that paper, but it doesn't quite read like

(41:43):
a narrative because it's presented like a monograph that details
an observational field study. But if you want the story,
the narrative version, you know, my good friend Mike may
Is his book Valley of the Apes to Search for
Sasquatch and Area X is a fantastic read. So I'll
put links to actually both of those the read pdf
document that the NAWC offers, and if you want to
read Mike's book, I'll link that as well.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, and just whatever it's worth, we have autographed copies
of that in the date of an ABC store.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
That's the link I'll put in. Everybody wins, yeah, yeah.
And then our next to last article, we do have
an article that Bobo submitted that's well in keeping with
one of my favorite books on the evolution of apes altogether.
So if you want to set up that article.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah, they had a recent discovery, well not that recent,
but I guess the skull was found in twenty fifteen.
It's really well preserved in the Anatolian section of Anatolia
Mountains of Turkey, and it's kind of There's been a
lot more theory coming that Hominin's actually originated out of
Europe and dispersed back into Africa. They found this skull,

(42:50):
it's like eight point seven eight point seven million years old.
They is the best guess on that, and they're part
of the earliest known group of hamas, which includes not
only African airs like chimpanzees, banevas, and girls, but also
humans and their fossil ancestors. So yeah, that theories gained
in traction, and especially with this this skull, because it

(43:12):
suggests not only that Hominin is not only evolved in
western and central Europe, but spent over five million years
evolving there and spreading to eastern Mediterranean before eventually this
person into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments
and diminishing for us.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah, I've got a problem with that though. They're not
using the word hominin correctly, they're using hominin as a
derivative of a larger group.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
I was just gonna say that I caught that. Sorry,
I to need to cut you off. But no, no, no,
I probably cut you off. I apologize no, because I
was like, I was questioning myself. I'm like, you know,
Nature and Science magazine can't get this wrong like that,
there's this whole article in a doubt.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
Well, I think we're seeing like the Earth dot com version,
so it's like their reporting of the the source article.
And so yeah, very often people get those things wrong
and they don't differentiate between hominoids, hominids and hominins. In
popular media, that gets screwed up very often, and then
that sort of misunderstanding gets applied colloquially, and so I

(44:13):
end up spending a lot of time sort of clarifying
that for people, the various differences and trying to find analogies.
You know, that work. I end up because I'm food motivated.
I try to explain to people, well, you know, it's
like all hominins are hominids and hominoids, but not all
hominids are homin ends, and not all hominoids are hominids.
And so it's like all eminems are chocolates, but not

(44:34):
all chocolates are minems, and all chocolates are candy, but
not all candies are chocolates. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Right? What a confusion exactly? Then you get it or
you're done. I guess.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
The first time I heard of hominids and hominids was
to meet your Bayanov, the great late Russian researcher for
the omissey what they call them, the Russian snowman. Yeah,
so they called them the snowman. But where when did
that start? The hominid hominid?

Speaker 2 (45:14):
It's fairly recent, I think, because there's been a lot
of back and forth over the last few decades.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Even I think the Russians introduced it. I think like
those guys like Dmitri and his crew, I think they
might have actually been the guys that started that.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Well, they didn't originate that the nomenclature, because the nomenclature
was used for you know, the living apes, including humans
and fossil apes, and then there were there's older taxons
or taxa that I still see, like pongd is a
now obsolete tax and that I still see people use
that you would have seen in print like the eighties
and maybe even the nineties, but is now considered obsolete.

(45:48):
Everything that was once pongd is now housed under hominid,
and so orangutans are not considered pongids. They're hominids like gorillas,
et cetera. And then outside of that you have lesser
apes which are hominoids. Homonoid includes the lesser apes, the
great apes, the humans, human relatives, et cetera, of human
ancestral relatives, and so that nomenclature does change quite a

(46:11):
bit over time. First it was Boris Porsnev, the original
Russian researcher into mystery apes, and he positive the term
relict homanoid to include, like, wherever these things fall on
that family tree, they will be homonoids, whether they're discovered
to be hominids or homin end's, at some point they'll
all be under that larger umbrella of hamanoid. And you know,

(46:33):
Meldrim sort of resurrected that term probably maybe fifteen years
ago something of that nature, not only with you know,
he later titled his journal The Relict Homanoid Inquiry, but
you know, with that same thing in mind, giving a
tip of the hat to portionev, but also saying like,
no matter what these things turn out to be, whether
sasquatches are ranked index, the migoid, Yairen, whatever the case

(46:56):
may be, they will certainly all be hominoids, no matter
where else. They all higher up on that branching. So
I think Dimitri might have been putting the cart before
the horse to refer to some of those things as Haminen's.
So I think portionive was key to he had the
right idea. And Porsiv's book has recently been translated into

(47:17):
English and published. But to further confuse the matter between
the Almasi Almahsti the Captar, you know, these these various
Asian and Central Asian mystery apes, the Barmanu, et cetera,
which are markedly different than the sasquatch in many ways.
When Porsiv's manuscript was printed in English, they called it
the Soviet Sasquatch. So it's like they did portion of

(47:40):
a disservice. But it's a great read. I recommend everyone
read that. I'll put a link to that in the
show notes too.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
I'm surprised how big these things were there, between fifty
and sixty kilograms, so like one and ten to one
hundred and thirty five and forty.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Pounds, which is the chimpanzee size.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, big, big chimp. The fossil suggests that anadol Luvius
lived in a dry forest environment and likely spent us
with a significant amount of time on the ground.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
I was going to say one of my favorite because
they referenced David Began here at the University of Toronto.
Because as soon as I saw the headline of the
article you sent, I thought, oh, this is right up
Began's alley, because Began wrote a book a number of
years ago called The Real Planet of the Apes, and
he's one of the major proponents and makes an extremely
compelling case for you know, what we would call modern apes,

(48:29):
or apes in the modern sense, having evolved in Eurasia
rather than in Africa, even though you know primates came
out of Africa, but whatever turned into modern apes having
occurred in Eurasia. And he wrote a great book about
It's one of my favorite books about the apes. And
so as soon as I opened the article, and you
see Professor David Began from the University of Toronto, you know,

(48:50):
and professor alias Savim a Role I might be mispronouncing
that from Ankara University led the international team of researchers
who conducted this study, and you know Began and someone
I would love to speak to at some point in time,
just because I loved his book so much. It's a
really fascinating insight, and he does have a bit of
a Bigfoot reference in there. In fact, he's been featured

(49:12):
in a few Bigfoot documentaries. I can't remember if it
was something like Monster Quest or I've seen him in
some of these one off things and even in the
Real Planet of the Apes. He says, quote, I hesitate
to bring this up, but well, we all know about
the reports of a gigantic bipedal ape roaming the forests
of the northwestern wilderness of North America and parts of
northern Central Asia. And then he goes on to describe

(49:35):
it a bit, and he says, there's no evidence of Bigfoot,
but I am among some I suspect many professionals who
wish that this were not so. And so he's got
a little bit of hopefulness and he says, you know,
I conclude with some sadness that there's no evidence of Bigfoot,
but I hope to be proven wrong, and I look
forward to the feedback from the community of believers. So
it seems like he's somewhat open. So he's someone I'd

(49:57):
love to talk to. So maybe a listener in Toronto
will pass this along that we're celebrating his work.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Heah, what else can I ask for from a working
primatologist is an open mind about the evidence. Because I
think the primatologists themselves, some of which listen to this podcast,
I might say, so hello, are probably the first to
admit that they haven't been exposed to a wide breadth
of evidence, and certainly not enough to move the dial,

(50:24):
you know. But that's where we come in, a fairly normal, sober,
pretty intelligent group of people who are advocating for evidence.
Because I say it all the time. It's a Terrence
mckinnic quote, but I say it all the time. The
truth can withstand the scrutiny. Come on in, take a
look at the evidence. Let's get to the bottom of this.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
Absolutely, and I do. I reference Becan's book in my book.
It's just such a great book. So again I'll link
that in the show notes. I think anyone who's interested
in this stuff should read David Began's book, but this
article will obviously be linked there as well.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
It's on the bookshelf behind me right now.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
It's a great one.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Okay, Well, you know that brings us to our last article,
and this is the I have to admit this is
my favorite. Then could we have a very special treat
for everybody today too that goes along with this. But first,
let's let's talk about the article. The article is actually
a press release more than anything else. Here's the title
right here, Hangar one Publishing author Tom Powell issues a

(51:22):
formal statement amidst drone, citing speculation. Now, of course everybody
knows about all the drones of her New Jersey and many, many,
many other parts of the country. My wife was following
this pretty closely for a while because she's a big
UFO fan, and New Jersey got most of the press.
But apparently this was happening in other places throughout the
United States. I know that a bunch of stuff was

(51:43):
seen outside of Eugene, Oregon down here. There's some up
in Washington or Seattle where else, probably a few other
handful of places that I'm forgetting right now, but the
drone thing, which has kind of died down at this moment,
but they're still going on. Apparently this sort of thing
is still going on. Of course, many many of these
drones are just normal aircraft, right, many many of them,

(52:05):
but not all of them. And even scientists and the
pilots and the military folks and the governments and stuff,
even they admit that, like, yeah, there's the you know,
some of those are just normal things and people are
panicking over nothing, but there's there's something going on. And
of course that everybody knows that. These these hearings were
going on because politicians in New Jersey in the area

(52:27):
were going, hey, government, you're not really doing anything about
this stuff. But if these are not ours and you
say they're not ours, they say, you say that they're
not this or that, but you're not telling us what
they are. But you're saying, oh, but don't worry about it.
That's not a lot of that's not a lot of
you know comfort. I suppose we don't know what they are,
but you don't need to worry about it. Well, that's

(52:49):
that's not good enough. Right, that's that's ridiculous, So that
the article here, I'm going to read some of this
stuff just because it's it's awesome. Tom Powell addresses recent
drone citing speculation. Of course, Tom palif you're new to
the program here, he is a kind of a prolific
author about weird stuff. He started out as a big footer.

(53:09):
In fact, he started out as flesh and blood bigfooter,
and I think he got kind of bored with it
and found other things to look into and started exploring
the weird side of stuff, went paranormal, and now he's
kind of all over the place paranormalist. We just had
him on the podcast for the second time, just a
couple of months ago, maybe this past summer, if I
remember right. We had him on years and years and

(53:30):
years ago when we were first starting out as well.
He's a good friend of everybody's on the podcast and
one of our favorite people in the world, let alone
in the paranormal community, right, which I don't really consider
myself in the paranormal community at all, but I know
a lot of the people out there, and I you know,
as long as we're not weird and poshy about it
and stuff and defensive. I love it, and Tom is
really the poster child for that. He said, clap, I'm

(53:52):
so glad you're doing the ape thing. That means I
don't have to. There's way better things to look into.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
He's encouraging of my work, and I'm encouraging of his work.
It's just awesome. So here's the press release though Portland, Oregon,
December third, twenty twenty four. Renowned paranormal phenomena research and
Hanger one publishing author Tom Powell has issued a formal
statement addressing recent speculation regarding the connection between mysterious drone

(54:18):
sidings and the release of his latest book, Planet Strange.
While the timing has led to considerable speculation, I want
to be absolutely clear that neither I nor anyone associated
with my work has any involvement with the recent drone incidents,
states Powell. These sidings, though coincidentally aligned with themes explored

(54:39):
in Planet Strange, are entirely separate from my book's release
and promotional activities. The statement comes in response to growing
social media speculation linking the unexplained aerial phenomena to the
book's publication, Planet Strange, which examines various paranormal occurrences in
their potential local origins, was released several months before the
reported drone sightings began. So, uh yeah, so that's the

(55:02):
Jedda goes on. You can read about it. We'll be
posting this with the show links and stuff. So just
to be clear everybody, Tom Powell himself has come out
to say he has nothing to do with the recent
drone signings in New Jersey, so everybody can relax about that.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
Yeah, but that's exactly what I would expect a Macavelian
intergalactic mastermind to say.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Yeah, everyone will say, like what, Tom Poll's I kept
hearing this, Tom Pole's behind this, Tom Pole's behind it.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Well, you know what we don't. You don't have to
listen to me, as I tell everybody almost every week here.
Don't believe me, go look it up for yourself, fact
check me. I'm wrong all the time. Let's let you
probably heard enough of us by now. Let's go straight
to the source. Let's go out to the field. Our
roving weird, our senior weird correspondent, Tom Powell, is actually
on the line right now. Okay, So here we are
with Tom Powell, our official senior Beyond correspondent, Senior Weird

(55:56):
correspondent here on Bigfoot and Beyond. Thank you Tom for joining.
I understand you have some thoughts on a certain topic.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
I have thoughts on many topics.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Exactly, And I wouldn't mind making this like a regular
feature whenever you have something to add, for something that's
in the news or something you want to add. I
think it would be a fantastic opportunity for you to
come on and share your thoughts with us, because it's
a lot of fun to talk to you all the time.
You're always up to something weird.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Don't get me started.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Sometimes I don't want you to stop, let alone start.
You know, well, you know that everybody's paying attention right now.
I guess to these New Jersey drones. I mean, I
don't know what if our listeners have been paying attention.
It seems like everybody has. All these drones are flying
over New Jersey. There's panic in the streets. People are
saying they're UFOs. God knows what's going on. The Government

(56:44):
of Courses in full denial mode. Matt Moneymaker has been
tweeting and putting things on Facebook about plasmoids that there's
just all sorts of crazy stuff out there right now.
Maybe you don't have this thing nailed down, but you
have some thoughts on this, and I'd love to know
what they are.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Okay, Well, I could summarize the whole thing in two words,
Christmas drones. Christmas drones. So you used to live in Portland,
do you remember that Christmas ships. They'd sail around with
a million lights on, blasting their horns. They weren't stealth,
you know, they weren't trying to sneak into submarine pens

(57:22):
and blow them up. They were out there advertising their thing.
They were the Christmas Ships, and they would sail up
and down the Atlanta River, the Columbia River wherever, and
everybody would go out and enjoy the lights. Well, it
was a seasonal thing, and I think there are perhaps

(57:43):
paranormal entities who wish to sort of like join in
on that. They must know it's Christmas and so they're advertising.
I mean, I mean, look look at the situation. They're
not being stealth. There's a million YouTube videos and these

(58:05):
things are advertising their presence, and in most cases they're
flashing red and green lights, which is like an FAA requirement.
But they don't behave like aircraft. But they're certainly not
being stealth. Now, and think about this for a minute.
You know, you have to apply some rules of logic.
If they're not being stealth, then they can't be for

(58:27):
an adversary. Adversaries. Foreign adversaries would not come in with
lights on, nor would advanced military come in with lights on,
Nor would they test their stuff in public. They would
test it all over secret bases at night. And they
admit this thing. So g could it be all these

(58:50):
private hobbyists who bought drones at Best Buy? No, because
the things are way too large in many cases, and
they have very long flight times and their flight characteristics.
They're not hobbyists. If it's a government thing, then it
would have to be a psyop in other words, a
psychological operation. But it doesn't really square with that either.

(59:17):
And so once you eliminate these other possibilities, the only
other one is what could be called paranormal. You could
call it otherworldly. Most people go, oh, well, it's aliens then,
and it's like, well, it is, but it isn't. It's
what might be most accurately described as introp worldly. In

(59:43):
other words, they aren't necessarily coming across space to put
up these aerial displays just after sunset. They could be
entities that already live here or are already here and
stead form but are staying out of sight.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo will be right back after these messages. Now, are
you talking like quote unquote interdimensional whatever that means, or well.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Can guess whatever that means. But you know the problem is,
we don't really have the right word, and alien is
definitely not it. But on the other hand, that's definitely
what it is. It is not advanced military, it's not
foreign adversary, it's it's not private hobbyists. It's it's probably
not SYOP because it has too many layers. Syops come

(01:00:43):
and they go as soon as they're over with. And
if there was a SYOP, it would be for a
reason like they want to change the laws and restrict
drone use and things like that. But here's the problem.
The things that are being observed are ultra sophisticated. They're silent,
they of a detection and encounter, They do not emit radioaids.

(01:01:03):
Their ultra long flight times and their flight characteristics defy
you know, conventional physics, so that leaves us with alien,
even though that's the wrong word. If they come from
within the Earth or are somehow manifested by the Earth itself,

(01:01:24):
which is this guy a hypothesis, then that's where I
think you have to find a new word, which could
be something like human antecedents, intra earthly entities, not inter
as in from another Earth, but from somewhere within this Earth,

(01:01:45):
or intra dimensional intra terrestrial. In other words, it's my
view that they're emanating from the Earth. And one of
the reasons for this is because the objects when they
are photographs, do not look like outer space craft, you know,
the classic flying saucers for the most part. But but

(01:02:09):
Moneymaker is right that you have these plasmoids as he's
calling them, and and that is a physics thing. But
the problem is when you approach these plasmoids, then they evade,
they shut off, they and in some cases even disable

(01:02:31):
the you know, sort of attacking drone that the cops
or military is putting up there to challenge them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
So as far as like where they're seen, I mean,
they're they're all over the place. Now, My wife has
been interested, Melissa has been interested in this for a while.
She's been following it. They're not only in New Jersey.
There's been stuff seen in Oregon, in various places all
throughout the country.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Ohio, and it's not new. There is really not much
difference between what's going on now and what they were
calling the Phoenix lights almost a decade ago. And they've
been manifesting in Seattle in similar ways over the summer.
But you know, of course, my joke is that they're
doing this in a more conspicuous way over in New

(01:03:18):
York and New Jersey in places like that because it's Christmas,
and then we respond by scrambling fighters. Well, that's not
exactly the Christmas spirit, folks.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
So the red and green lights have nothing to do
with the fa regulations. They have more to do with
the Christmas season.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Another various two possibility, cliff. But the point is, but
whatever they're doing, they're advertising their presence. It is almost
a bit of humor that they're using FAA regulated lighting
where the red is on the right and the green
is on the left wing. But that's not happening all

(01:03:59):
the time. Like I say, when other drones approach them,
they go blank. They're they're not emitting any noise. They're
not admitting they're not emitting radio waves, and operational drones
generally admit radia radio waves that are used to identify

(01:04:19):
them as drones and so on and so forth, so
you know, they're they're definitely outside of conventional human constructs.
So that brings us to Planet Strange. And you know,
in the book, I did not in any way predict
this phenomenon, but I did sort of explain it, and

(01:04:45):
that is that it emanates from the Earth. They don't
have to be coming from you know, far off regions
of the galaxy or beyond. They did arrive in some
form thousands of years ago and establish themselves here on
planet Earth, but more recently, as within their recorded history,

(01:05:09):
they decided to not manifest and let humanity have the
Earth's surface, but they probably still inhabit the planet in
some form. In other words, there appears to be this
you know, other realm subterranean, which in a way makes
them interdimensional because you know, subterranean is another dimension. We

(01:05:34):
sort of inhabit the surface dimension. You know, we're more
or less two dimensional. We go up and down a
little bit, but not a lot. But if you go
down deep in the Earth. Then you could be arguably
in another dimension, but still come from the Earth. And

(01:05:54):
I mean, it's like, so, how would I even know
or suggest such a thing? And unfortunately the answer ends
up being a very book length question. And that's the
gist of Shady Neighbors. I mean, not Shay Neighbors, sorry,
but Planets Strange. You got to read the book. And

(01:06:17):
there are several lines of evidence that I present in
Planet Strange that suggest the existence of a subterranean realm.
And the question then becomes, well, why are they manifesting now?
And I think my answer is, well, it's time. We

(01:06:39):
are finally progressing, and there's enough people like out there
who are really just doing everything they can to bring
the world into acceptance of this other set of beings,
these intra earthly beings or however you want to call them.
It's time.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Even though this is a very widespread phenomenon, these things
have been seen in very unusual places like what is
it the Picatinny Arsenal, I think in the New Jersey
area Trump's golf course, for example. Is it just is
are they choosing? In your opinion? Of course? Do you
do you think they're choosing these locations for certain reasons,

(01:07:20):
or is it just so widespread that, of course they
would eventually be over there too, because they're everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
And the answer is yes, both of them. And but
you know, what a lot of peoples have observed is
that they come in off the ocean in the evening
as the sun is setting. And there was even one
YouTuber who went out in a boat, spent a lot
of money and wanted to see them maybe emanating from

(01:07:45):
the water, which would not surprise me at all. But
the curious thing is that as this one YouTuber was
going out off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey,
here comes the groans or you know, we call them own.
But again they're the same as the phoenix lights. We
just use this word drone now. And they came in

(01:08:07):
from the ocean and over the land. But he stayed
out there for a number of hours. They never went back.
So where they're going is of course not completely explained
or understood, but there are examples that are right there
on YouTube. Are the things coming out of the water

(01:08:29):
and going into the water, and so it does seem
like they are whatever they call the kind of uap,
you know, unexplained aerial phenomenon that is also a trans
medium or others can go from water to land. But
there are examples of this, which again to me, he

(01:08:50):
suggests that they're emanating from within the planet, but they
probably have several ways of coming and going. Now, remember
long our last podcast, you you were a little bit
disappointed that this new book Planet Strange didn't have more
to do with Bigfoot, and I said, look.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
Oh no, no, I was. I was thankful it didn't
have a lot more than a lot to do a
Bigfoot tom My quip.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
My reply was, well, I did three books. If that's
not enough to cover Bigfoot, and then maybe I just
need to switch gears. Well. Interesting. My good friend Tish
Piquette even a few years ago, I said, I don't know, Tish,
I'm kind of done with this book thing. And she said, oh, no,
you're going to do a fourth book. And you know

(01:09:35):
she's a sensitive of course, and oddly enough she was correct.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Yeah, I'm very insensitive, I've been told. So it works out. Well,
I didn't know it was coming.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
I'm both well. Anyway, So the funny thing is that
it really does cycle back to Bigfoot, because if the
the beings that a generating this phenomenon reside within the Earth,
then they must be aware of the Sasquatch. Because I

(01:10:08):
also advance the idea that the Sasquatch phenomenon also must
emanate from planet Earth, because there would be a need
for privacy and identity that that just doesn't seem to
be available to them on the surface of the Earth.
So I think in the in the in order to

(01:10:30):
answer the Sasquatch phenomenon mysteries, we have to include other
sources and other subjects of information, widen our search. And
then all of a sudden it appears that well, just
like these drones or whatever they are, they're staying hidden there.

(01:10:52):
They don't necessarily want to historically meet us, but suddenly
things have changed. And if that's true, then it's because
perhaps hopefully humanity is becoming more sophisticated, mature, and you know, aware.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Kind of like the hundredth monkey sort of thing, like
you think we're we're we're coming to the tipping point.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
And if that's true, then that's great news for those
of us who follow the Sasquatch phenomenon, because that provides
hope that they too might also choose to manifest sometime
in the fairly near future. Maybe not this week or next,

(01:11:38):
but you know, everything seems to go at its own rate.
But by next summer, I think you're going to be
seeing en uptick in the sasquatch business as well. And
that would, you know, sort of follow with this idea
that we're becoming more aware and worthy of entering this

(01:12:04):
I don't know, call it a galactic community if you want.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Yeah, I might want to call it that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
When I finished Planet Schange, there were several phenomenon that
all have to be considered in order to understand this,
And that's why I say it's book length material. There
is the course of the UFO phenomenon, but then there's
this mound phenomenon that manifests worldwide. The pyramids are an
extremely peculiar thing. Egyptians did not build those. They were

(01:12:34):
never tombs. They were built for something else by entities
that could move enormous amounts of material. Cattle mutilations totally
defied logic, but also factor in in terms of but
for reasons that are really difficult to explain in one
or two sentences. Then there's Bierma triangles, not burm. You

(01:12:55):
to triangle. But Burm you to triangles that manifest worldwide
and what those suggest about things that come and go
from either other dimensions or maybe just subterranean And even
scripture when you look at the historical record, not just
the Hebrew Bible, but other similar documents, Sumerian and so forth,

(01:13:20):
they talk about these exact kinds of things, and then
there's some of them more out there, things like the
moon itself has got some peculiarities. But then you can't
leave Sasquatch out of it. They emanate from the Earth,
and so the Sasquatch is another manifestation of this emergence

(01:13:46):
of entities from within the earth. But it's just one
that I've talked about so much that I kind of
felt like I should maybe give it a back burner
on this book.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
Well, you have always been kind of one of the
people leading the charge for like the grand unification theory
of paranormal you know, like like the gut is a
physics thing where they're trying to unite Einsteiny and relativity
with quantum physics, and then you know that they have
one equation, so to speak. Maybe maybe that's just a
metaphor though, but one one equation to explain more or
less everything.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
Yes, wouldn't it wouldn't it be nice if we could
stitch some of these seemingly separate things together. But I
do feel like when you're not getting the answers you want,
you have to widen the search. You have to consider
other things that you may be excluding for reasons that
are more have to do with bias and prejudice. Then,

(01:14:42):
and and you know, it's kind of like one of
those Sherlock Holmes quotes, if if you eliminate the possibilities,
then whatever remains, no matter how impossible, has to be
the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
I'll tell you what, Tom, I've known you for a
long time, and you've always always give me amazing things
to think about. Sometimes you give me things to lay
awake at night and worry about, But but you always
give me a candy for my brain. Things that. And
if anybody else out there, of course listening right now,
is intrigued by any of this, I would say Tom's

(01:15:18):
book Planet Strange is the best jumping off point you
can get. It's it's it's like watching all of the
I've said it on our main podcast when when you
were on it's like watching all. It's like it's like
binge watching all of the in search of all at once.
And it is so much fun to read. And I'm
so glad that you're involved in this, and and and
also thank you very much for coming on and being

(01:15:39):
our senior weird beyond correspondence, you are more than welcome
to come back whenever you have something to say about
anything that catches your eye or ear.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
All right, well, I'll look forward to uh talking with
you in the future. But everyone has their homework. You
have to read a book. It would be nice if
you could watch YouTube videos and get it, but sometimes
you just have to read the book.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
And you might as well read Tom's. It's well written,
it's a lot of fun. I read it. Everybody knows
that I'm like a stick in the mud, you know,
aper kind of guy. But I read it and I
really enjoyed it, and I think that's saying something. You
buy it, you buy it on Amazon, I of course
prefer you buy it from the North American Bigfoot Center
on our online store. Matt Prue will put the links
in the notes down there.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
I'll get some copies out to you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Fantastic, all right, So there you have it from our
senior Beyond correspondent Tom Powell. Thank you Tom very much
for coming on and uh I've never said this before.
Back to you, Cliff and Bobo. Okay, thanks for that.
Cliff really appreciate you and Powell. I appreciate Palell too.
But Christmas Strones, there's your answer for you, Christmas Strones.
Maybe that's why it's died down by now, because we

(01:16:48):
are well into the first week of January at this point,
right at the end of the So maybe that's why
it's died down because the calladays are over pretty much.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
Here for you. Okay, Well, that's as out a Bigfoot
and Beyond with Cliff and Buba. Thanks for tuning in.
We really appreciate it. And for our member section, we're
going to go over another article that the most received
article we've got was about the two gentlemen that unfortunately
passed away up in Excimnia County out there Mount Hoit area,
going out and getting trapped in the elements and passing away.

(01:17:19):
So we're gonna talk about cold weather preparation and just
preparation in general for going out in the woods with squatching.
So we'll be joining our patreon family over there, So
thank you for listening and until next week, keep it Squatchy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
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at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us on
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(01:17:59):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
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