Bigfoot Ecology

Summary of Points

1) Bigfoot isn't supernatural , it has the same biological urges and requirements as any other animal. One urge is to eat, and bigfoot would be expected to spend significant time finding and consuming food to support their high mammalian metabolic rate and large size. Therefore, evidence like scat and disturbed vegetation should give us physical evidence of their existence.

2) It is suspicious that we don't find bigfoot hair more frequently. Being a large creature that lives in areas with cold winters, we should expect an annual molt like other mammals, and thus large tufts of hair being shed.

3) If we assume that bigfoot is a primate, then we would expect them to be intensely social like other primates. However, all or most physical evidence is of single, solitary bigfoot.

4) How does such a rare and elusive species find one another to breed?

If bigfoot exists, then it must be similar to every other animal in that it has certain biological and ecological requirements, i.e., it must forage, breed, and its physiology and behavior must be adapted to its environment. From this simple premise, one would expect to find tell-tale evidence even if the creature itself was not directly witnessed.

For example, a large animal like bigfoot must not only eat a lot of food, it must spend a lot of time finding that food and consuming it. It must also leave behind a lot of excrement. So why don't we see evidence of bigfoot browsing behavior, such as large sites of disturbed vegetation? Where are the big piles of scat? Mountain gorillas, by way of comparison, must sit and eat for a large part of the day, leaving behind obvious areas of disturbance. Moose are constantly browsing for forage, trampling meadows and dredging through ponds. If bigfoot was real, we should find more evidence of this type and with greater frequency.

It would also be reasonable to come across bigfoot hair more frequently - certainly more often than visual sightings. Like most mammals living in areas with cold winters, bigfoot would surely molt to insure the quality of their pelage (fur) and thus have an effective layer of insulation to last through each winter. With such a large animal, there would surely be a relatively large amount of fur to find, and not just a hair or two, but clumps of it. The lack of more hair as evidence is, in my view, particularly troubling.

And the last point I want to make for now involves the issues of breeding, mating systems, and social structure. We know that primates, especially apes, are intensely social. So why is it that a majority of tangible bigfoot evidence ( (footprints, photo/video) is of a single, solitary individual? Wouldn't it be logical to expect bigfoot to be social like other primates, and therefore shouldn't most evidence involve multiple bigfoot? If bigfoot did indeed exist, we may have to conclude that it is not a primate; this may also be a conclusion to the following paragraph.

A question also arises about how bigfoot find potential mates for breeding. It is known that primates have a drastically reduced sense of smell and instead rely heavily on sound and binocular vision. This is a result of a flattened face (reduced rostrum) which leaves them morpho-physiologically incapable of detecting odors to the extent that most other mammals can. The sense of smell is so reduced in primates that ovulation in females is said to be "hidden" due to the fact that males are unable to detect sexual pheromones and other olfactory clues associated with it. Most mammals can detect ovulation through smell, but not primates, which is why females baboons have evolved the brightly colored butts, which is a visual clue to advertise their reproductive status. So without a highly developed sense of smell, how does a rare and seemingly solitary species find potential mates? The answer would have to be through sight and sound, which leaves us to anticipate that bigfoot vocally communicate over large distances, use traditional or communal breeding grounds (like a lek), or have other distinct visual or auditory systems that would provide us with observable evidence of their existence. However, there is no convincing evidence supporting this.

The basic impulse of all life forms is to obtain energy and nutrients to stay alive with the purpose of breeding. These impulses to stay alive and breed cannot be avoided for any normal (non-neurotic) animal. The point is that no matter how bad bigfoot may want to avoid detection, it would still need to spend considerable time and effort in the search for food, mates, and suitable habitat. This simple fact means that there should be more physical evidence of its existence.