almas

[ZERO]

They are an "ape man" said to still exist in Mongolia. I had never heard of them till today.
I think it is interesting that similar legends can be found in widely seperated regions. The Almas, here its the Yowie, America has the bigfoot and many more.
I wonder why so many cultures invented the same legend?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almas_(cryptozoology)

[Cuddles]

People like anthropomorphising. I think the various bigfoot type stories have the same explanation as faries, elves and all the other magic humanoid stories that exist throughout the world. For pretty much all of history, every time something happened, it was given an explanation that involved humans. Sometimes they were big humans that lived in the sky and dropped thunderbolts, sometimes they were little humans with wings, sometimes they were friendly, sometimes they played tricks and so on. The only real difference with bigfoots is that magic and faries aren't generally taken seriously any more, but we since we know apes do exist, that seems an acceptable explanation to some people, even though they are never actually supported by the facts.

[SKIRRID5]

There was a (not very good) book published some years ago about the Almas and other such creatures from that part of the world, by someone called Odette Tchernine.
I am always amused when the believers, asked why there is no hard evidence, rabbit on about how shy these creatures are, and how great at concealment. Then I take another look at the Patterson film, and remember some of the other accounts. On the contrary, rather like the British big cats, Bigfeet seem to display themselves with a cavalier disregard for concealment. They positively seek publicity. Contrast that with truly shy animals like the Scottish wildcat, which is still quite hard to film.
Cryptozoologists are fond of citing the fairly recent discoveries of some fair sized animals. However, once it was definitely known the animals existed, it was possible to seek them out and film them. If Bigfoot existed, we'd have seen it on a David Attenborough documentary!
Regarding the question of population size, is there a zoologist anywhere who could give us a reliable estimate of how many large animals like bigfoot would have to exist to maintain the gene pool and survive as a species?

[Julia]

I don't know if it's the Bigfoot Silly Season (is there any other where Bigfoot is concerned?) but the JREF forums are positively infested with it/him/her/them. One particularly obsessive poster is convinced that Bigfoot broke into his cabin and helped himself to tins of beans...

[bobdezon]

Bigfoot has his own tin opener now?

[Mongrel]

I don't know if it's the Bigfoot Silly Season (is there any other where Bigfoot is concerned?) but the JREF forums are positively infested with it/him/her/them.

I think it's of a clique thing. They go on to a board with their newest shiny proof for the existence of whatever and it gets torn apart by the skeptics. They then rush back to their own boards blubbing about the nasty people and some more people descend onto the boards with even more fuzzy photos and tenuous theories.

[Cuddles]

I think it's of a clique thing. They go on to a board with their newest shiny proof for the existence of whatever and it gets torn apart by the skeptics. They then rush back to their own boards blubbing about the nasty people and some more people descend onto the boards with even more fuzzy photos and tenuous theories.

I dunno, the newest additions were Historian, with his invisible, dimension shifting, bean eating bigfoots, and Creekfreak, with his picture of a helicopter. Even the other bigfooters don't take them seriously.

[Julia]

No, NO! It was Creekfreak whose tins of beans were nicked by a hungry Bigfoot. This is cutting edge cryptozoology, fer pete's sake, let's not misattribute vital bits of evidence...

[Cuddles]

Hmm, you may be right. It's so hard to remember which invisible, non-existent bigfoots are which.

[SKIRRID5]

Further to my last remarks (I do go on, don't I?), on one of those crazy unsolved mysteries sites, regarding mysterious big cats, one lady said that she lives in mountain lion country, but has never seen one. To her, this proves that just because you don't see them, that doesn't mean they aren't there. To me it demonstrates the opposite! As I said before, the big cats in the UK, and the Bigfeet in the US, seem to go out of their way to be seen. There are too MANY reports, if the creatures are as bloody shy as we're told.