July 31, 2008
MQ: Hairy Man
This is one of a number of MonsterQuest episodes that revolve around the animal commonly known as "Bigfoot". Since there are reports of such a creature not only throughout the United States and Canada, but also elsewhere around the world — not to mention legends dating back centuries or more — MonsterQuest has dedicated episodes to specific locations and legends. In this case, they focus on the many Native American legends surrounding the "Hair Man" (known to different tribes by various other names as well).
One piece of historical evidence that seemed rather interesting was a number of ancient wall paintings. Some of these paintings are believed to be over one thousand years old and they seem to depict a hairy creature larger than a man. The most compelling piece of ancient art contains renderings of a number of other animals alongside the hairy man, all painted true-to-size — and the size of this hairy man was over eight-feet tall. Experts say the inclusion of all of these animals together strongly suggests the hairy man was something the natives saw regularly, just like the other animals depicted, and not a legend or fable meant to be part of a tale.
MonsterQuest followed two expeditions: One along the Klamath River, having been the first team granted permission to investigate on the Yurok tribe's land in northern California; the other to set up hanging bait (salmon) and camera traps in a different location.
The river expedition utilized "call blasting", a technique where recordings believed to be of bigfoot calls are played repeatedly in the hopes of eliciting a response. To maximize their chances, the team decided to drift down-river with their motor off at night. They brought along parabolic microphones to record directional audio from any potential responses and a thermal camera to scan the shorelines as they moved downstream. Unfortunately, during the night they ran aground and ended up having to call it a night and pitch camp when a number of crew were forced to jump into the water (getting their clothes soaked with freezing water) to free the boat.
The second expedition took ATVs into an area that had seen few human visitors since access roads had been blocked during a storm. They had some of the best sites, camera traps, and bait setups I've seen but in the end the best picture they got was a bear climbing a tree to get to the salmon they had hanging twelve feet in the air.
MonsterQuest also had some of the audio believed to be bigfoot calls analyzed. The end result had two of the calls classified with high probability as local animals, however one call left the reviewer mystified as it didn't match anything they had in their database. I should also mention that I was a little taken aback by his assertion that one of the calls was an elk. I don't know much about elk but I'd be a little shocked if they made this sort of shrill vocalization that the reviewer attributed to them.
Several witnesses also told their stories, which were by-and-large fascinating. Here are some of them, in brief:
A wildlife veteranarian was walking through the woods when he heard a "whooping" call, to which he responded, but heard no further reply. In his opinion there was no local animal that could or would make such a call, which he considered to be distinctly primate. This seemed to be his most impressive experience, he did not even see the animal, but that one call alongside his knowledge and expertise left him convinced there is an animal out there to find, and that scientists should take it more seriously.
One bigfoot researcher had done some call blasting years ago about 20 miles away from the river expedition. He sat in his truck with the engine off and communicated with a spotter (wearing night vision equipment) by two-way radio. In the distance behind him another partner blasted supposed bigfoot calls whenever he stepped on the brakes and the truck's brakelights went on. At one point he heard a noise off to his left, which he thought was a bear.
At the same time, his spotter saw what he had thought was a tree stump near the truck just stand up and move alongside, staring at the vehicle. In the darkness, sitting in the driver's seat, this researcher couldn't see the animal but after hearing his spotter on the radio he decided to get out of there. He started the truck and stepped on the brakes while turning the key and also when changing gears — eliciting two calls from his call blaster, who had no idea anything out of the ordinary was going on. The spotter reported no reaction from the animal, who seemed intent on the vehicle before walking off into the woods.
One woman was on a camping trip with her husband when, at one point early in the night, she looked up from what she was doing for a moment and saw reflective eyes peering down at her from a height that seemed so odd, she thought there must have been an embankment in that direction she had forgotten about. Later she saw the creature in full silhouette, and realized it was not a bear or any other such animal.
While out by himself fishing, one witness reported having rocks the size of basketballs hurled in his direction from the opposite bank of the river. Frightened, he decided to get back into his canoe and head home, and while he was doing that he heard a growl emanate from the far shore, where the rocks had come from. He never saw the creature, but rock throwing is typical behavior only of primates, (they do it to warn off intruders in their territory) and this creature managed to throw very large rocks over sixty feet.
Another witness was camping by himself near a river when he saw a dark shadow descend from the hills on the far bank, walk to the water's edge and kneel down as if washing its hands or drinking. The man estimated that even kneeling down the creature was easily as tall as he was, and after it finished what it was doing it looked at him briefly and then walked back up the hill — apparently following a series of switchbacks, which the witness believed showed this animal was intelligent.
These are all terrific stories, but unfortunately they are pretty much the only thing we can take away from this episode. That, and what I would consider to be some excellent investigative techniques, but alas no evidence to speak of.
Filed under MonsterQuest, Posts by Logisti
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Comments on MQ: Hairy Man »
J. @ 3:06 pm
I'm not sure what I think about the one alleged bigfoot recording being an elk, but on the Klamath recording that he said sounded like a coyote I definitely had to disagree.
Here's that recording if anyone wants to listen to it for themselves.
It was a downer that no evidence was collected, but they are going to have other bigfoot-centric shows in the future.
The one I am most looking forward to is the one where they revisit the remote cabin in Canada. It's the same place they got the DNA from in the first season. Maybe lightning will strike twice.
Ryan @ 3:37 pm
Indeed, primates like to throw rocks… among other things. If this "hairy man" can throw basketball sized rocks, I would hate to be on the business end of another popular projectile of primates.
Logisti @ 6:55 pm
@J: That was the cabin with the screwboard? Wasn't there something about that DNA, that it didn't match human, but was close? Obviously one could assume an error in the test, but in that case what would a human be doing stepping on that screwboard (and wasn't there hair also? Unless it was a hobbit…)
Even then, there is still the possibility the sample was contaminated with human DNA when it was being collected or handled, but if contamination could be ruled out, that seemed like some pretty impressive evidence.
J. @ 8:16 am
Logisti: Yep, that's the one. The episode name is Sasquatch Attack?.
The primate DNA they got from the tissue and blood off the screws is, to quote the show, "identical to human DNA except it had one nucleotide polymorphism. That nucleotide that was different is a difference that is shared with chimpanzee's."
And the guy examining the hair they got said "it's almost like it came from a wild human."
I agree, if the samples it were not contaminated somehow, then that is very good evidence.
Actually, I just checked out the schedule and a repeat of the episode comes on at 8 AM and then again at 2 PM on Tuesday, August 5th. I am not sure of the timezone, probably eastern, but check your local listings.
I'd like to read your review of that episode. Hintity hint hint.
Patrick @ 10:06 am
Let's see if this works, I'll try and paste the entire upcoming schedule of MQ. Not only are they going back to the Sasquatch cabin, they are going to have another episode on the Giant Squid.
…
[Moved to it's own post in the MonsterQuest forum by Admin]
Jenn @ 8:37 pm
"@J: That was the cabin with the screwboard? Wasn't there something about that DNA, that it didn't match human, but was close? Obviously one could assume an error in the test, but in that case what would a human be doing stepping on that screwboard (and wasn't there hair also? Unless it was a hobbit…)
Even then, there is still the possibility the sample was contaminated with human DNA when it was being collected or handled, but if contamination could be ruled out, that seemed like some pretty impressive evidence."
I'm skeptical of the DNA test. A single nucleotide difference in the sequence suggests it's human — I think that's well within inter-individual variation. Plus, the guy who ran the PCR said he did a second DNA purification step, then did a re-amp of his first PCR reaction; PCR is so sensitive that even if a tiny amount of his own DNA contaminated the first reaction, he would get a strong reaction during the re-amp.
Plus, I was freaking out when, as he was describing what he was doing, there was footage of him setting up a PCR reaction. And he wasn't wearing gloves.
Yikes!
J. @ 6:15 pm
If it is contaminated by human hands, then why is the nucleotide one that is shared with chimps?
Also, Curt Nelson, the one doing the DNA tests, said there was only a one in five thousand chance it was human.
Jenn @ 7:04 pm
(Incidentally, I should mention that I used to tech in a lab where I did DNA sequencing, for the purpose of mapping evolutionary relationships — although admittedly, I worked with insects, not apes.)
"If it is contaminated by human hands, then why is the nucleotide one that is shared with chimps?"
What the professor is saying is that the one nucleotide difference happens to be different in chimps — all chimps will have a different nucleotide at that site. But given that 1 in 5,000 humans also have a polymorphism at that site, suggests that the site has some variability person-to-person. In other words, all chimps have a polymorphism at that site, but so do many humans. Seeing the polymorphism doesn't rule out humans or chimps, although it might rule out a more divergent ancestor, like a fish, bird or reptile (which will have several sequence differences).
Moreover, 1 in 5,000 isn't improbable, it's not even really uncommon. There are 6 billion people on earth — 1.2 million people are walking around bearing a polymorphism at that site. The argument for human contamination is made stronger by the fact that only one polymorphism was observed: assuming the investigators chose a gene suitably variable/recent to distinguish humans from apes, an intermediate species should have had more polymorphisms than just one.
When teching, I would occasionally observe a single polymorphism that varied from individual to individual within a single species, even in relatively conserved genes, so I definitely don't think this was a conclusive test by any stretch of the imagination.
Frankly, for this to have been a stringent test, more than one gene should have been sequenced and compared to chimp and human samples. And the investigator should re-purify and run the sample a couple of times to ensure that contamination didn't occur during the re-amp.
Lindy @ 6:44 am
Yeah………what Jenn said !
J. @ 9:01 am
Jenn said: "What the professor is saying is that the one nucleotide difference happens to be different in chimps"
Unless I am reading it wrong, that isn't what he is saying. He's saying he found that nucleotide in the DNA from the blood off the screwboard. Here's the quotes from the show.
Narrator: Dr. Curt Nelson has also been doing DNA tests on the blood, hair, and tissue samples and suspects there is an unknown substance, or inhibitor, present that is interfering with the DNA extraction. Nelson must first identify the inhibitor and remove it from the sequence. The inhibitor has been identified. The galvanizing on the screws was mixed in with the animal DNA. Nelson can now nudge DNA from the purified samples.
Nelson: Scientific evidence, at this point, is now suggesting there really is an animal there. I cut it out, I re-purified it, and amplified it again using the same primers, and I got a very strong reaction. When I did that I got rid of the inhibitory stuff by running it out that way. And I found it was identical to human DNA, except it had one nucleotide polymorphism. That nucleotide that was different was a difference that is shared with chimpanzees. I got DNA that was primate DNA, and I knew that I might be looking at the DNA of a sasquatch.
Narrator: The DNA says primate, but not quite human and not quite nonhuman primate. One of the base pairs is deviated.
Narrator: Great apes share nearly identical DNA with man except for a 35-base-pair deviation. The Snellgrove DNA sample has only 1 deviation. According to Nelson, there is only a 1 in 5,000 chance this is human DNA.
We do need more DNA evidence to compare it to the above sample and see if there is something to it. Maybe that's what they will get on their second investigation back to the cabin.
Patrick @ 8:21 am
So, have you guys/gals seen this: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/14/bigfoot.body/index.html
A police officer in GA claims to have a Bigfoot carcass, which he and a corrections officer have kept frozen, stuffed in freezer. Supposed to release DNA testing and other info today. The picture reminds me of the mask they put on the Clarence Beaks at the end of Trading Places (the Eddie Murphy movie, not the house show).
CindyLou @ 10:29 am
I have to tell you that I was born in Crescent City California and my dad worked in the logging camps up on the Klammath River. My dad told us the stories on Bigfoot. They had huge barrels full of fuel and in the mornings when the awoke they would find the barrells thrown not pulled, not dragged, but thrown over the cliffs. He said the screams in the nighttime were unforgettable.As I watched this show, I cold only remember many of the stories my dad and mom shared with me while living in that logging camp. I am a complete believer in Bigfoot, not a doubt in my mind anywhere. My dad was one of the most faithful men I ever knew, I don't think a lie ever came out of his mouth, and these stories about big foot were never forgotten in our family. As the woman in the show talked about the logging that was happening in the forests there, the animal did not like it, we are encroaching on his territory, the same way they did on the Klammath River when my dad was int he logging camp in 1957.
CindyLou Vedin Romberg