GrimTuesday said:
thaluikhain said:
Xan Krieger said:
I was gonna say we've discovered some weird animals but this poster explained it way better than I could've. I'd never say never to the mythical beasts because of all the absurd shit we've found already. Life takes crazy forms and you never know what we're gonna find next.
You'll notice that those tend to be extinct, fairly small and/or live in far distant places deep undersea. Certainly, any number of such creatures could conceivably exist, and there are many strange things yet to be discovered.
A large land animal living today in areas frequently visited by humans, however, is very different. Your yeti/Sasquatch/Bunyip/Wild man is something that would be very noticeable, that lives in areas where there are lots of people to notice it, while there are lots of people to notice it around. And yet, never been found.
I think you overestimate the frequency of which people visit those areas. In a post I did earlier, I pointed out that a large portion of Washington and Oregon (and probably British Columbia) are heavily forested with a not insignificant amount of Wilderness Area (where humans never really go). These areas are the most commonly held places where Sasquaches might live. The sheer size of this area would make it super easy for a smallish population of semi-intelligent and reclusive animals, even large ones, to move around the areas with humans. Its kind of like I've gone out in the forest loads of times at all times of the day, and I've only ever seen a deer once or twice (when I'm actually out in the woods, they wonder all over the place) and I've never actually seen a Coyote, so why not, given a huge area, a large omnivorous ape?
Because large omnivorous apes have never been anywhere near North or South America apart from humans anyway. You have to somehow work out how a species of ape made it to the continent several millenia ago. Humans got here two different ways, sailing, and using the land bridge that existed during the Ice age. Obviously any intelligent apes didn't sail here so that leaves the ice bridge that existed several thousand years ago.
The problem with that, is that apes are poorly adapted to cold environments, and would have froze to death long before making it to North America. Humans cheated by using clothes and tools to make the trip. A semi-intelligent ape that doesn't have extensive tool use, would have needed to be uniquely adapted to the cold to make that trip, and there is no bone evidence of any species of Ape from northern Asia to North America. Especially in the north where dead bodies tend to preserve well, we can find the bones of humans, mammoths, and dozens of other large species, but no evidence of any human like apes at all. Unless their bone structure is nearly identical to humans, there's no evidence that any giant apes made the trip over the Atlantic land bridge.
It is kind of telling that big foot sightings dropped off majorly as more and more people started carrying phones with cameras and recording devices attached. Considering how many sightings happened 20-30 years ago, you think that number would have gone up, but as recording devices became more common, sightings dropped significantly.
That's not to say it's impossible, even I'll admit there's a non-zero chance of such a thing existing, but considering all the mental gymnastics you have to go through to explain how a species managed to make it all the way here, avoid significant human contact for thousands of years, manage to restrict itself to a rather small area compared to pretty much every other large mammal species, and maintain a large enough population for genetic diversity; it quickly becomes an exercise in stretching logic to its very limits.
We discover new and fascinating creatures all the time, unfortunately, 99% of those discoveries fall into 3 categories: extinct, in the ocean, or very small. Hiding a large roaming mammal population is a lot different than a new species of insect or fish hiding out in the deep places of the world.
