Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum (Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science)

Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum is a Full Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University. He is an expert on foot morphology and locomotion in primates. His book “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science” discusses some of the evidence for the existence of a Sasquatch. We discuss that evidence, connections with recent government UFO disclosures, giant skeletal remains, being interviewed by Joe Rogan and more!

0:00:00 - Intro
0:00:13 - Dr. Meldrum Health Update
0:05:43 - Defining Science  & Occam's Razor
0:12:58 - Pseudoscience
0:21:57 - Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti & Skunk Ape
0:27:55 - Dr. Jane Goodall & Sasquatch Evidence 
0:33:10 - Sasquatch Behaviors
0:42:40 - Annunaki & Giant Skeletal Remains
0:45:20 - Hot Air Balloons & Looking for Evidence
0:49:06 - Sasquatch Footprints
0:54:10 - Hair & DNA Samples
0:58:40 - Underreporting Accounts & Taboo
1:03:36 - Video Evidence & Hoaxes
1:14:55 - Best Place to Find Sasquatch
1:20:55 - Being Interviewed by Joe Rogan
1:23:00 - Existence of Sasquatch & Witnesses
1:27:10 - Aliens, UFOs, Portals & Sasquatch
1:34:53 - Outro

Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science book link:
https://www.amazon.com/Sasquatch-Legend-Science-Jeff-Meldrum/dp/0765312174

Chuck Shute link tree:
https://linktr.ee/chuck_shute

Transcript

Chuck Shute: 0:13

Go. Hi. Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. I know I've been trying to get you on the show for for some time now is busy. Yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 0:24

yeah it does it kind of piles up and then having been sidelined for a number of months that really kind of put everything into a long long wait list.

Chuck Shute: 0:34

Oh, no, I'm sorry to hear that. Were you sick? Yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 0:37

I was on the inaugural Alaska Bigfoot cruise. And I I'm, at my age, as do many men was managing a fib, which included blood thinners, and unfortunately, spring a leak I must have had an aneurysm or something. My wife and I caught a terrible flu while we were on the ship, and it was accompanied with a very violent cough. And they attribute a rupture of one of my abdominal arteries to this violent cough. And I nearly bled to death. They barely had to be evacuated off by Coast Guard Cutter and, and lots and lots of units of blood later they they eventually flew me down to Bellingham, and did a procedure to to seal the clot or seal the bleed. And by the time they were done, they used 15 units of blood. That's that's two and a half people.

Chuck Shute: 1:41

Wow. Well, I'm glad you made it through that. Yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:44

me too. I'm very sorry. It was scary. It was very scary, scary for my wife. She was a real trooper, hold and hold and everything together. And then. So basically, I was left once once. I mean, I mean it devastated. I was in kidney failure, my heart was really traumatized my liver and pancreas were having problems because of that. And they, you know, I was was temporarily diabetic wasn't producing insulin. And so it was a real, real shock to the system totally drained my strength and stamina. I mean, it was amazing, the muscle mass just melted off so fast and lost a lot of weight, which was a good thing in in, you know, in the near the near sighted aspect of it, but it was, I mean, that was back in September, I took a whole semester leave of absence, and basically just convalesced and just took it one day at a time, those first couple of months were, were pretty bleak. But, you know,

Chuck Shute: 2:52

are you 100% now because you seem fine. I mean, it's not? Well, you're gonna have, you know, speech problems. And so

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 2:59

right, no, I'm sure I mean, I do have gaps in the memory a little bit, both of events during but also a little, sometimes a little trouble with recall, noticeably slower than it used to be. So I mean, there was probably some impact there. But no, I'm but I'm not 100% I'm still I've got issues, you know, because that you talk about receiving 15 units of blood, it wasn't like I had a gaping wound and blood was leaking out into the, you know, onto the floor into pan, it all ended up in my abdomen. And I was too weak for them to do another surgery, open surgery to go in. And, and because all this other thing was done with catheters, it was up through the artery. So they left it and basically your body can resorb the plasma very quickly, but you're left with that madaket with the red blood cell mass as which, which you know, is a hematoma, a big clot. And so I was I was dealt, they said it was about the size of two fists, at least back in my retroperitoneal space behind behind the guts in the abdominal against the abdominal body wall. And so they said, you know, your body's just going to have to resorb that like it would any other bruise except it's going to take a while and it's going to be a shock to your system. A lot of the lot of byproducts and things for a while and so that's been the challenge now they want me to go and I'm scheduled here to go in for a follow up for another CT and an echocardiogram to see how how the hearts the heart seems to be doing good. They put me on some new meds that really helped and adjusted some things and so I'm on the pharmacological side of it, with the exception of you know, a lot of these. A lot of these medical medications have a side effect of fatigue. EEG and muscle weakness. And so when you start compounding them as they do, you get the short end of the stick. So that's, that's my biggest complaint or concern right now is you know I just walking across a football field is, is is an effort now and so I've just got it. But they said I couldn't lift anything over 10 pounds until I had this until they cleared me after this CT the next week, so we're writing I'm crossing my fingers that things everything held together.

Chuck Shute: 5:34

Well, that's amazing that you can recover from this. And it seems like the doctors did some amazing things. I mean, oh, yeah. Back to like, what I want to talk about, like just science, how sciences is so amazing the things that they can do. But what are your thoughts on on just the definition of science? Because I feel like it's it's kind of changed. People don't understand, you know, there's all this talk of misinformation or disinformation. The scientific approach is exploring and learning from things and I feel like it's never ending.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 6:04

Well, right. And sometimes that part, the exploration, the curiosity that the question stage gets, gets ignored or soft peddled or, you know, even even kind of gets considered not yet scientific. And the emphasis is on the mythology, methodology. I mean, you know, you'll hear the scientific method method, repeated, and that is a philosophical standard, you know, a handrail, but in practice, the way we experience nature, the way we act, and, you know, everything, if we're dealing with the physical side was still part of nature, we can, nature can be far beyond the life sciences, but it there is a standard to which we strive to, to have reproducibility, objectivity, and so on quantification. Those things are all important elements, but but still, it is experiential. But I tell people, you know, you the experience is the start. Beginning, and and I'm not satisfied with just your story, your anecdote, because there are so many factors, so many subjective aspects. And that's another dimension of scientific research is the the science of, of human perception, human recall, human memory, you know, as we were just talking about? Yeah. So, yeah, it's, I think that's the most important thing is that you hold yourself to a standard of, of objectivity of documentation, so that someone else can replicate that experience or experiment, or observation. If it's just as simple as that, without that ability to replicate, it remains a personal experience, and you're free to interpret it or to internalize it or imbue it with whatever meaning you want, because no one else will necessarily have that same. And if it's that unique and individual of a of an experience, it may be the same for them. That's one

Chuck Shute: 8:42

explain this, because I heard you talking about this as interesting outcomes razor, which, for people who don't know, I think there's a misconception you're saying because people think that that's the you're just looking for the simplest explanation, but you're saying no, you're looking for an exception to the most common explanation,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 8:58

right? Alright. So as I said, this, this methodological approaches is very philosophically based, it's kind of abstraction. And part of that abstraction. Karl Popper was the, the author of this this parsimony, the Principle of Parsimony, is the proper term outcomes razor Aachen explained it in a way that that earned him that moniker, aka his razor on the principle but, but basically what it says is, I mean, well, let me back up. In the philosophical approach, the purist approach to science is that we cannot prove with 100% 100% Certainty anything there because there's always the opportunity to experience an exception. And you just cannot examine all possible cases. And so you're connected illusion is of necessity, tentative, and and constrained. And so the the more efficient way to proceed in hypothesis testing is not to look for every single piece of evidence that supports it. But just find that one exception, one exception that disqualifies it, and then you can fall back and huddle and re examine your hypothesis and modify it accordingly. But what it says is, one is not justified in unnecessarily multiplying factors, which means you're not justified in unnecessarily elaborating and creating this convoluted, complicated extrordinary seemingly explanation for for an observation, you're obliged to hypothesize the simplest explanation first, and then try to knock the legs out from underneath that, as you proceed along evermore complicated explanation. Well, experience in history has told us has shown us repeatedly that usually, the generally accepted then explanation eventually for something is not the simplest nature, especially in biological systems is very complex. And, and evolution doesn't follow the shortest distance from A to B, because it has no foreknowledge of what b is. So it's bouncing around in the current circumstances. And we just happened to observe it arrive at B. As far as the timing of it goes. So when people say So unfortunately, that all comes razor has been been sort of seeing here, and here's where I have to struggle sometimes to grab those words that used to just roll off my tongue. It's been distorted into the commonly recognized saying the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. Absolutely false. It's the it's not there's no value judgment, there's no there's no prioritization in terms of the probability of correctness. It's purely what we got heuristic, a rhetorical method of ordering in a logical way, the simplest to most complex explanations in order to efficiently falsify them and arrive at what is then deemed to be at least in the for the time being the correct answer. Yes. Yeah.

Chuck Shute: 12:40

Yeah. Cuz I mean, I read your book, or I listened to it on audiobook I was at double speed. So I might have missed some things. But I mean, you break this stuff down, and it's very tactical and, and some of the stuff I don't even understand. But you know, when you when you google your name, and you look at your, your name up, it says, like, I mean, you're accused of pseudo science. All right, is that why? Because I read your book, and it sounds like it's regular science. I don't know. What's the difference? Exactly.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 13:08

Well, that's that's the kicker. That's the funny irony of it. If you turn right around and ask such an accuser to define pseudoscience, they wouldn't be able to do it. You know, there's an end if you try to look ups you'll get either these extremely long verbose diatribes treaties on on this, that and the other or you get this kind of, well, it's not good science. So it has to do with things like you know, has it been peer reviewed? Is it generally accepted by the by the mainstream, which is ridiculous. I actually, this is just to illustrate how this can can get a foothold. I served on an ad hoc committee to appointed by the faculty senate to revise, review and revise the university's policies on academic freedom. And there were like four or five of us on this committee, and a couple of us were, were expressly appointed to the committee by the chair. Because we were involved in what was perceived as controversial subject matter in our research. And so they wanted to include our perspective, because we had been the brunt of sort of anti intellectual freedom, academic freedom. And so, but as we were putting the pieces together, we have kind of sort of divided and conquered and each of us took kind of a section, and this one member had sort of the summary statements, which she was ready to modify as we submitted our sectional bits, but she had done her research and had had glommed on to a number of things. And one of her points right there near the top was The university professors should be teaching that which is generally accepted by the consensus of their discipline. And I said, What? That's the antithesis of what we're, I mean, science is not determined by consensus by majority vote. And and so to that saying that, because, you know, I'm one of the few voices who actively advocates for the examination of the possible existence of relic hominoids, that I should not have that academic freedom to pursue that or to even mention it from from the lecture. And because it's not generally accepted by my discipline. I said, That's ridiculous. She was quite embarrassed when she had just lifted it from another source, which was true, it was addressing what they thought was academic freedom. And you know, where were the boundaries drawn? And so, yeah, to level pseudoscience, and yet offer no specifics, see there, they easily cast that label, but they don't give examples. Well, some some tried to, I mean, for example, in print, you'll see, there was one author who denigrated a paper I published, I presented in a in a International Symposium. And then it was published in the Proceedings of that as a peer reviewed paper, not just as an summary, abstract and precis of the presentation, it was it was a full blown paper reviewed by five anonymous reviewers, as well as input from the editors and the symposium organizers and so forth. And it was published in the sponsoring entity of this International Symposium, which was the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. And so this was published in their, in their journal, their in house published journal, The Bulletin, which was, you know, not just a newsletter or anything, it was a it was a full blown bonafide journal and yet, this author who has no acumen, no credential, no experience in, in academia in this regard, says, Well, this was kind of seems like an awfully unusual place to publish an important scientific paper. Important by whose standard, you know, important by whose expertise, I mean, these were, I presented this to a room of some 75 of the world experts on tracks and traces of sin azoic mammals, and, you know, to a rapt audience who were extremely interested, I had plaster casts out on display on the side of the room in which they were extremely intrigued. And, you know, these are people who are expert in the identification and analysis of fossilized footprints of various animals. And so, you know, not just a crowd of enthusiast or somebody so that's just me just one example of the of the, you know, soft morick pronouncements of these people in the name of, oh, you're just doing pseudoscience you know, it's just I always find it's instead of grappling with the content of the paper and criticizing any any aspect any assertion any proposition any evidence presented. No, they just step back and it's the principle of of it. Here's one more I was you know, on this one, it depending on how you want to split hairs, I guess. The same people same review or same organized so forth, encouraged me that they were so intrigued by this presentation, that i They encouraged me to to attach a label what's called an econo taxon pack that's what the published paper eventually was. And it no tax on which is the name of the track or the trace, for which there are no known skeletal remains fossilized remains of the track maker or trace Lieber. Now in the case of Sasquatch, we've got a potentially living species, and technically by the bylaws, by the guidelines of this, of this system of taxonomy. It should only apply to extinct forms with fossilized footprints. But this was kind of a special case. And it wasn't my behest that I participated. I was an invited presenter. That was and I was, you know, entered Genetically encouraged to pursue this establishment of a Gnomon. Because what it does is it, it puts a handle on the data it on the on the footprints, it establishes a holotype with certain characteristics that, that dictate a description and diagnosis that differentiates it from other tracks other. And in this case, although it wasn't an extinct species, the track maker was unrecognized, and hence unknown to science. And so they thought this was a really interesting special case. And yet there's a real vociferous detractor on on a particular web website Facebook page, that is who, who just went on and on and on about how ridiculous and he labeled this just as simply pseudoscience and, and it violates the, the Canon so to speak. But does he address the content anywhere? No. He does. He does. He, you know, counter the statements of the reviewers. No, you know, so it's just he's, he's fixated on his of his, you know, grasp of the of the rules up, you violated the rule. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you know, the elephant, ignoring the elephant in the room, because there cannot be elephants in this room.

Chuck Shute: 21:39

Right. Oh, yeah. Cuz there is a lot of evidence obviously, we'll we'll get to that. And then just, you know, obviously, you got to sort through a lot of the other stuff. That's the hoaxes and things, but when we talk about the book is called Sasquatch, or a legend of Sasquatch, is what it's called.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 21:53

It's about Sasquatch. Pulling legend meets science, but okay,

Chuck Shute: 21:56

legend meets Sasquatch. So you call this creature of Sasquatch in the book. But there's other terms. There's Bigfoot. And then a Yeti. I think that's more like we're talking about in the snow version. And then the Skunk Ape. Is that more like the south like Florida? Version?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 22:11

Yeah, unfortunately, there's a lot of names that have and well, it's not unfortunate. It's a matter of fact. And it's, it's actually interesting because what it shows how widespread these experiences have been and how regional names have popped up. And I prefer Sasquatch a bit over Bigfoot because Bigfoot had become such a tabloid term and it was not taken seriously as you know, whereas Sasquatch it has deference to while it's still an Anglo anglicized term, it has deference in reference to the Native American traditions of the wild man of the woods figure entity. Skunk Ape is just a southern expression that focuses in on on the perceived stench that often accompanies these things. I don't think that they stink as a rule that I think they're capable and I discussed in the book, but in a very biological sense, great apes have very well developed axial glands and and the producer that can especially in the large males produce a very musky, locker room smell. gorillas have been described, emitting this when the male is agitated and defending his his harem and his little family there. Diane Fossey described her first encounter with just this stench that almost bowled her over when the when the silverback bluff charged her. So there's that so then there are other names though. You mentioned Yeti, and the misconception Not to put you on the spot, but the misconception that it is a snow creature. Its footprints are often found, as it crosses passes Alpine passes in the snow, but it seems to occupy the subtropical the temperate forests, high elevation forests in the valleys of the Himalayas and trend Somalia ranges. Its footprint is very distinctive in that the few credible examples we have and they are few. There are so many things that are attributed to the eddy anything that you can't interpret otherwise, must be a Yeti. And so melted out sublimated, distorted prints of other animals bear, for example, are frequently attributed falsely to the Yeti. There's a version in the Russian Siberian mountains in the Mongolian ranges. That sounds by its description to be more human like not so gigantic in stature, very muscular covered with hair but In attempts to talk to the locals, the locals consider it just a form of backward people, sort of the hillbillies hillbilly. And it could be a relic Neandertal or something like a dentist's oven. Rhea Neandertal relative, and then you have the little ones. Down in, especially in Southeast Asia. There have been reports of smaller forums and other places like in Africa. There is an interesting tradition that does isn't widely publicized. These might be relic Australopithecines, the Homo floresiensis of the island of Flores in Indonesia, recently discovered, compass should have upset the applecart. And it did briefly. It did briefly the mat, one of the editors and the managing editor, I guess it was at the time, but Henry Gi, for nature, wrote a editorial and talked about the significance of this discovery of this diminutive hominin that survived, at least until 50,000 years ago, and saying, gee, maybe there's a kernel of truth to the Yeti or to the to the Sasquatch. Maybe it's time now for cryptozoology to come in out of the cold. We should maybe give these these stories. I mean, ignoring the fact that there's so much evidence, that's the thing.

Chuck Shute: 26:30

Yeah, that's what I asked you, because there's different terminology. And then I mean, into like, what a Sasquatch is pronouns and things.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 26:39

So well, and it's as if just one quick thought to insert it's as if science is finally catching up to the, to the phenomenal. And because, you know, 3040 years ago, we saw human evolution is this single file procession, one species giving rise to another to another. Now we see that there is a bushy family tree, that there were lots of branches and lineages living contemporaneous with one another. And that that fossil record has now shown us that many of these other parallel branches were persisting until had persisted until remarkably recently, if not to the present. You know, that when you've got something that's supposedly extinct only 50,000 years ago, why is it so outlandish to suggest, hey, the locals have been telling stories about these things all along, and they live up in the mountains, and they're very rare. And you know, well, now there are places there are hooks to hang these concepts of other relic populations. See, I can talk to my colleagues about relic hominoids. As long as I don't drop the word Sasquatch.

Chuck Shute: 27:53

And when you talk about, you know, people who believe in this, and in the Native Americans, I think that's a big piece of it, because I think everyone's heard of Jane Goodall, the chimp expert, and she, I think you said that she 100% believes in a Sasquatch, not necessarily due to the scientific evidence, but due to so many stories that she's heard from different tribes and Native Americans who've seen and interacted with one.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 28:18

Right. Right. And not to dote on words too much. But, you know, I'm often asked do I believe in Sasquatch, and I'm very, very quick to sort of deflect that and say, No, it's not a matter of belief. Now, and she used that term, unfortunately, I, in my opinion, a little bit loosely. And she made the comment, I want to believe she's romantic at heart, you know, and that that is one dimension every scientist has has that fiber somewhere. You know, I mean, there's there is a lot of romanticism to the pursuit of knowledge as yet unrevealed. And but having said that, she's also very aware of the evidence of the data. I mean, she provided an endorsement on my book and appears on my book cover, where she discusses her her conviction that there is something to this and cites the experiences with Native Americans as one piece of supporting evidence that there is this tradition, this, this cultural tradition, that that bolsters and runs parallel to the ongoing revelation of of more and more information, suggesting, you know, it's like one of my predecessors said something is making these footprints. Yeah. You know, I'm not quite sure, but some Yeah. Well,

Chuck Shute: 29:52

so when we talk about the evidence, I interviewed a lot of musicians. And I had a lot of people say like, oh, like, you know, there's no good music out there. Well, there's a lot of good news. is like, but you've got to wade through bad music. And I feel like that's the same with this. It's like, there's a lot of evidence, but it's like you have to wade through all the bad evidence. So some of the other things that people may be seeing, obviously, the hoax is a lot of that. But in some of the stuff it just even so interesting if this is real, because people say, Oh, well, some of these creatures could be apes, escaped either from the zoo or someone's private collection, which I also find fascinating. And then also people say that, possibly some of these sightings are, what would you call like feral humans? Which I also find fascinating if that's, yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 30:39

yeah. And there's, and there certainly is the possibility that, that some examples, rare examples can be attributed to those explanations. I mean, down in in Florida, I mean, there's there's documentation of apes and monkeys having been either released intentionally because there's, you know, an owner, pet owner can't take care of them anymore, or hurricanes that have decimated a zoo, and the animals scatter and escape into the surrounding countryside. And in places like Florida, or eastern Texas, you know, the deep south Louisiana, there are places where these animals probably could survive whether they generate a sustainable reproducing population is another question. But they may be at the root of some of these isolated examples. Now, obviously, a human a feral human is more likely than not someone under those conditions may be there as a result of some mental handicap or deficiency. And as a result, their behavior may be very unnatural. In that sense, but But obviously, a description would be different. Now, you go back into some of these historical documents, and there's some great books that have called lots and lots of interesting newspaper accounts and so forth, going way back into the early 1800s. And, and in the course, there, they had no word Bigfoot or Sasquatch. And, and understanding knowledge of the great apes like gorillas and chimps was very meager if it existed at all, especially out in the frontier. And so if something like a Sasquatch were encountered this very anthropomorphic figure, it might be interpreted, or described as a wild man. I mean, we talked about this, you know, Sasquatch means wild man of the woods. It doesn't say this, a gorilla like entity that walks up, right? Like, you know, it's just, you categorize you, you lump things together that you observe with things that you're familiar. And the resemblance to a person, by comparison to all the other woodland creatures would be very stark and impressive to an observer back then, and as it is now.

Chuck Shute: 33:11

Yeah, would know these creatures B, do you feel like they'd be nocturnal or mostly nocturnal? Is that why they're harder to see? I mean, I know there's some footage of them during the day. But would they? Would they be both? Or how did that how would that work? Yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 33:24

I think I think they're very flexible. I think they're very generalized in their diet and their behavior in their, in their ranging in that the resources are probably quite dispersed and seasonal. So yes, there. For a lot of these things, we don't have a lot of hard data, we have the accumulation of a lot of anecdotal data. And so John Green, who was a journalist and an enthusiast investigator, but very, very level headed, feet planted on the ground type of a no nonsense investigation. But he attempted to try to gather some of these statistics. And he demonstrated that from the many reports that he was able to assemble, there was about an equal distribution of daytime encounters and nighttime encounters. And he argued then, if you consider humans are much less active at night, humans have a much more restricted Field of View at night and travel patterns at night. Then the fact that there are almost as many sightings at night as there are in the day says that this represents a much larger activity pattern. And so the thought is that yes, there probably largely nocturnal in their behaviors, but not precluded from from being out and about the day if we compare to some Something more familiar like a black bear. When When Black Bear habits are characterized by bear biologists, they're kind of what they call crepuscular. They're active in the dawn and the, and the dusk hours. But everyone, you know, can attest, just go online, look at YouTube videos, bears are out and about during the daytime to on occasion. And so those are the peaks of activity probably when they're getting down to business, but, but they're out and about, and for one reason or another, and the same applies to Sasquatch, and

Chuck Shute: 35:36

they'd be harder to find because now would they live in like a cave or something like because? I mean, there's you never see the bodies like would they do like deep into caves? Or?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 35:48

Yes, the lack of physical remains is obviously one of the biggest roadblocks right now to acknowledging the existence generally. And I don't think it's a damning thing itself. And the explanation, you know, may be characterized as apologetic by the naysayers by the critics. But it makes perfect sense if you stop and think about it. These are large bodied apes, they have aspects of an ape natural history, longevity, slow reproduction, slow development, and maturation, so forth. So a death in a population, we I estimate, and without going into the details of how I arrived at this is not just plucked out of the air, and others have arrived at similar figures of about one to 200, black bear for every Sasquatch, and it turns out, black bear and Sasquatch, have remarkably coincident habitat, not surprising to large omnivores, with that are capable of eating of wide variety of resources out there. And so they require that level of productivity of the forest. And so there's certain habitats that are that are conducive to support those populations, but very different strategies. Black Bear are much more numerous, they only live to be maybe 20 years old 1520 25 tops. Whereas Sasquatch being a large bodied ape, if it's that similar to other large bodied apes 45 to 60 years wouldn't be an unthinkable at all. But reproducing very infrequently bears Well, once they're mature will reproduce almost every season. Whereas a great ape, like an orangutan reproduces every one for five to seven years. So there's a big space in between because a lot of investment in the early development and maturation of that offspring before the mother can be distracted by the needs of another newborn. So having said that, what does that do with with how many dead Sasquatch? Well, how often does the death occur? I mean, bears much more frequently, and bears are hunted. And that's where you find the carcasses. Dr. Krantz, my predecessor used to ask audiences How many of you have ever seen a bear skeleton in the wild that wasn't hit by a car shot by a rifle? And he in his tenure of asking that? By show of hands? Never did he have anyone? I don't ask it religiously. When this question comes up. I'll ask it. And in all those times, I've had two examples two or three examples of people who found and in one, they were almost certainly shot and had died as a result of a hunter. Right.

Chuck Shute: 38:48

So even a bare skeleton is pretty rare to Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Is it possible that the Sasquatch could also be cannibalistic? It cannibalistic after the Sasquatch dies? Maybe the other Sasquatch, eat them? So that would be

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 39:02

right that that question comes up. And again, when it comes to addressing those I fall back to, you know, a contextual establish the context. And just like we did with the death, you know, we talked about a lot of aspects of the natural history, we'll talk about potential for cannibalism, or maybe burying their dads and other ones.

Chuck Shute: 39:25

I was gonna say, too, if they're part of like, maybe they're to that stage where that could be a thing. I mean, yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 39:30

then but that even in human prehistory that came very, very late. And all the controversy now about hormone Milady, intentionally bearing these specimens in the cave of bones. I mean, extremely controversial because it does not fit the pattern even Neandertals. It's question whether they were intentionally buried or just were interred when cave ins occurred. So going back to this question, the all the evidence point relates to Sasquatch being a rather solitary creature in that most sightings, almost all sightings and footprint finds with the exception of females with offspring are of solitary individuals. And so it seems to parallel that social organization of the orangutan, for example, so an animal like that, I mean, unless an animal has some sense due to illness, or you know, it's feeling decrepit, or whatever, and vocalizes to attract its con specifics to it, at the time of death, I mean, that that just invokes the notion of too much ritual for the level of intelligence that that is, presumably attributable, are evident in these things. They don't have any tools. They don't have any homebase. They don't have fire, they don't have language. I mean, they have nothing that differentiates homo and especially Homo sapiens, from the rest of the animal kingdom, likewise with cannibalism, so one dies, well, there aren't a troupe of Sasquatch, about to take advantage of that food source and cannibalize and disperse and, and get rid of the dispose of all of the remains of that creature. So more likely, that's done by the normal scavengers, the coyotes, the back rats, you know, the ravens and magpies and, and then the maggots and all that other things, all the other janitorial service that we find in the forest. And so, to clean up the Nile six, yeah, yeah. So I mean, you don't have to, you really don't have to resort to extraordinary that's the thing. If you just keep in context, the extreme rarity, and the relative intelligence, you know, not necessarily something bigger or more intelligent than a gorilla, maybe a little bit more intelligent, but not much more. I mean, there's a little bit of space between gorillas and early hominins say like Paranthropus but it's only, I mean, you could fit it 50 cc's of brain matter. And, of course, it's more than just volume, obviously. But but those, that intelligence is usually reflected in the surrounding, in the way in which an animal modifies its environment to suit its needs. And those modifications are our me, unless you put stock in the teepee structures and, and, and other stack rocks and things like that. That's about as far as it goes.

Chuck Shute: 42:36

Yeah. Well, I had this guy on a few weeks ago, and I went to like bible school and stuff, but he was talking about the Annunaki. And I don't remember learning about that. So then I started doing more research. And he's got this movie. And they talk I mean, he, you know, show some evidence for the there was used to be these giants roaming the earth, which I thought was just sounded so strange to me. But there is a lot of these articles, it appears to be more in like the 1920s or something where they find these bones that look like giant human bones. And then later they say, No, no, no, it was a these are dinosaur bones, or these were large ape bones or something. Is there any connection there? Do you think some of those bones could have been a Sasquatch?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 43:20

Well, sure, certainly, there's the remote chance of that, although the place in which those types of fines were made are oftentimes not in the typical habitat, at least now that you would assume you know, out in the plains in the Badlands of South Dakota or whatever, excuse me. But you're right, there's almost without Arden meat without exception. Those are explained as either bones of other animals like mammoths. Matt, the mammoth femur is often taken that mammoth skull because of that nostril, that the fuse nostrils in the center of the forehead where the trunk comes up, taken as a Cyclops, because there aren't fully enclosed orbits. The eyeball is just kind of sitting in a little depression there and a little bit of bone processes and soft tissue surrounding it, but or they're outright frauds. I mean, this was a popular newspaper sales tactic. You know, use the stories. And the Cardiff Giant was a very publicized example that has been explored historically where, you know, it was it was made out of stone, so of course, they had to make up some, some you

Chuck Shute: 44:46

don't think that somebody's come like, what they found something that they weren't supposed to find, and you don't think some government organization or someone is coming in and changing the story for the press?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 44:56

No, no, I mean, I've worked in museums, I rifled Through cabinets and drawers as I was doing research. And, you know not to say that I've looked everywhere and looked at everything, you know, but I haven't found the warehouse, the Indiana Jones warehouse with the crate, and the lost art

Chuck Shute: 45:14

to find knack of it. But what about because you talk about, you know, one of the best ways to look for this would be balloons that, you know, taking hot air balloons and roaming the forest and things. Do you think that's what the Chinese were doing? Because they found those spy balloons? Were they looking for stuff like this?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 45:33

They certainly weren't looking for Sasquatch. They were looking for missile silos and counting airplanes on airfields and or maybe both that's in the need, well, maybe maybe then that would be real covert operation, I'm sure of it. And maybe our government knows, and they were sharing the information with Biden. So that's why it didn't shoot down until it traversed our country. So no, I mean, I, I would do back handsprings if someone came forward with a giant skeleton. And so I mean, my pessimism, my doubt from this should take on more significance to people evaluating and asking these questions. You know, if someone who would really like this to be real, says no, I mean, I just get fed up with the persistent rehearsal of these stories, and claims, you know, the red haired giants and Lovelock cave and, and this, that and the other, and the Smithsonian having this program to get get rid of these make them disappear. It's all just hype. It's all just stories. I mean, they had a documentary series in search of giants spent the entire season. I mean, I, those who live in glass houses I mean, I didn't name finding Bigfoot, but, but I didn't having to do with the creative content. But I spent the whole season searching for giants chasing down these stories. And at least finding Bigfoot actually found some evidence of Bigfoot even though they didn't find Bigfoot. The giant guys, giant hunters never do, except for things that are ultimately, if not immediately, transparently, revealed as contrivance or hoax or imagination. It's, you know, it's like, this'll this'll date me, I've used a made this comment before that, in my day, there was a hamburger commercial. And the little old lady, you know, they open up the Biden in here, quarter size, beef patty, and that little lady in her now iconic voice, where's the beef? Where's the beef? You know, I mean, I'm just saying, show me the beef. Ya know, show me the beef, show me the money. If there is, and I, you know, again, I perfectly understand the recipient reciprocation of that, where, you know, critics of those of us who are convinced that there is something to the Sasquatch question could say the same thing. But we can show the beef. It's not it's not the final conclusive evidence. And that's part of the problem I've had, I've had this dialogue, in exchange with ideological career skeptics. Before previously, you know, I asked them, because after they've denigrated everything, and poo pooed this and that, you know, I say to them, so what evidence what kind of evidence? Would you find worthy of scientific inquiry? Oh, well, you know, you have to have a body. Well, no, I didn't ask what would prove see they jump from A to Z. And they ignore the rest of the alphabet in between. We're not quite dizzy. Obviously, we're not even to x. But, but we've got a lot of the alphabet. Along the way. The footprint. I mean, for me that what drew me in was the footprint evidence and

Chuck Shute: 49:04

yeah, explain the footprints because you do say, I mean, you said you brought these footprints to experts who look at this. Now, there are some things I am an expert. That's the way you are and also all these other ones. Others Yes. Yeah. So that's, that would be peer reviewed, which was one of the things you know, they would say, but you know, there was some people that admittedly used fake footprints to hurt people. But then you talk about this in the book, how some of these footprints were found in spots where it would be really difficult to do to get up there and to put the footprints in these spots.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 49:39

And that's one that's one dimension. One one aspect to bear in mind, I placed much greater priority on the anatomy and the form and the dynamic signatures of the footprint itself because I point that out simply because a lot of people will bring me a foot print photo, and it's absolutely 100% human. It has all The human characteristic, but they found it in this remote out of the way place where they would could not imagine anybody walking around barefoot or in the snow, you know. And, and so one, you have to take their word for that, because that they have no means of documenting that or reproducing that. But you know, and you have to rely on their perception of what's remote. And that varies tremendously with with the, you know, those of us who have been in wilderness areas where it man, if you broke a leg, you're just out of luck fella, because the chances there's no reception, even if you have a satellite phone, the chances of getting a lift out is pretty, pretty slim. Whereas someone else they get down onto a Forest Service, gravel road, and that's remote. There's no Starbucks on the corner. It's remote anyway. So I would much prefer to rely on on the on the prime of facie evidence of the footprint itself. And, and that that tells the story. I mean, it doesn't matter where you find it. If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck and eats like a duck and so forth. And it's a duck. Yeah, well, and you. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 51:22

you analyze these in the book, which, to me, it gets to it's over my head. I mean, you get very tactical but But what you're saying is that you're able to tell and some of these other experts who do the same thing are able to look at a footprint and tell whether it's been faked. Whether it's human, or ape, or other which would potentially be a Sasquatch, will certainly

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 51:43

offer a pretty, pretty confident pretty compelling argument one way or the other. Absolutely. You never say never because all that does is challenge the skeptics to try to come up with and there have been some clever hoaxes the hoaxes, the overt hoaxes are really few and far between, more often than not are the either intentional or giving, you know, giving the benefit of the doubt for the majority of cases, unintentional mis identifications of things, bear tracks, or human tracks. But then there's also this gray area, I mean, a lot of the examples that you see illustrated on the documentaries, and you know, when people come to my lab, and when I do presentations, I mean, I'm trying to make my point with the clearest best examples that are at my disposal. And those are rare themselves, because the conditions and the circumstances for an extremely clear and especially repetitive and a lot and attract way footprints is is rare. And so you get a lot of things that are ambiguous, they're a little more than scuff marks with maybe the hint of a toe or two. And, and so unfortunately, you just your ability to make a conclusive argument, is this just a mis identification of an artifact that has some remote resemblance? Or is it a poor attempt at a hoax scene? You know, where someone's just trying to gain garner attention? Or is it a footprint but just such a vague one that it is really isn't that useful? Other than to bolster this may be like as it's sometimes the case, I just was dealing with one recently the witness read describing all these different things that have been happening and then sending me pictures of a footprints that taken by themselves are pretty Yeah, you know, it's it's not not too convincing the footprints. And so in their mind the footprints corroborate and bolster what they're experiencing. For me though, I'm relying on the footprints sure to corroborate no good compelling footprints to corroborate their subjective storytelling. Which may be true, but I have no way it's their personal experience, right. Other way other than to examine the

Chuck Shute: 54:07

Yeah, but what about to the hair samples? In this part? I may be a little bit misunderstood in the book because, I mean, it sounded like that when you analyze the DNA, this was it was you crossed off the list of bear or elk or other apes? So you've identified a new species or is it just a it's not a comprehensive enough test to know?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 54:28

Well, we're faced with this the the hair which has one of my colleagues Dr. Henner Fehrenbach, who, who kind of took the question of the hair by the horns, the bull by that bull by its horns and he was the lead. He was a professional microscopist and had educated himself a PhD, and capable educated himself in the identification of different hair and availed himself of the various atlases and so forth. But there was a consistent, repetitive appearance of a morphology, which he labeled the gold standard that it was primate and character. It wasn't the typical kinds of guard hair you have with larger forbearing mammals. It was parallel sided blunt tip wearing, it had a lack of a cellular medulla, it was fairly fine 65 microns, which is about average for people hair, human hair, and so on. And so yes, based on that microscopic anatomy, I mean, I'm foremost an anatomist. So I put a great deal of stock in my ability to see and, you know, categorize anatomy in front of me. But but there are others who are not so confident they want to rely on DNA. Unfortunately, one of the, those characteristics I enumerated the lack of a cellular medulla means that there's precious little cellular material other than extracellular protein keratin in the hair shaft, which makes it challenging, there's no mitochondria, there's no remains of nuclei of cells, where the fragments of DNA would be sequestered. So a hair that is shed, without an actively growing root, or a tag of skin from the scalp attached to it is darn difficult to get DNA from, on those rare occasions where DNA has been identified and examined in a rather superficial way, a cursory way, a small subset of a gene or a single mitochondrial gene invariably comes back as human. Well, we probably share at least 98 99%, if not more identical DNA with the Sasquatch, it's that potentially closely related to us, if it is an early hominin, like a Paranthropus or, you know, more closely related than, than the grill or chip potentially. And so it wouldn't be surprising that if you just take one little sample of DNA, it's going to look like human and so therefore, the simplest explanation for that observation is, it's human. Well, you could test your parsimonious conclusion, by sampling more, or by you know, considering the other possibility that it's that it is that there are other genetic factors in play that have influenced the, the appearance of the mitochondria, some genetic introgression, through potentially with crosses with humans rare, though they might be that's a whole nother story and not to not to substantiate the claims of of some that have gone before and made very outlandish claims resulting, or extending from that argument. But so that's that's the challenge we there is, to my knowledge, nothing, no DNA sample out there that we can say, well, yes, we're confident, absolutely confident this is Sasquatch DNA, we may have done it unwittingly. But just it hasn't provided any new information to substantiate that claim that it is novel, that it is a new species that it is Sasquatch rather than human. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 58:36

so we've got the footprints, we've got some of the hair samples and then obviously, we talked about the the tribes that have seen Sasquatch, but also what I found interesting was that there's actually a lot of I was witness accounts from Park Rangers at Yellowstone, but they don't report it because they don't want to get chastised.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 58:56

Right, right. I mean, that's that's always kind of been understood as a very real possibility is that you know, people you know, especially people who were like aware of what I've gone through in my professional career, but I've worked closely with people who in turn work closely with those rangers and other organizations like the National Outdoor Leadership School Knowles out of lander, Wyoming, who have people out in the Wind River Range and in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem extensively on training, tracks hikes, camp outs and so forth. They actually receive instructions not to document any encounters. And you know, you wonder, well, is this some conspiracy, some censorship, I think, is just, it's just conservativism they don't want their program and their staff to be questioned, or challenged or you know, or doubted their their veracity. and not so much their, you know, their career threatened but a ranger a park ranger might consider that a potential. My my colleague and good friend, John mines insky, had a very chilling, reprimand from a superior, who basically said, if I see any mention of this in the press, if I see any indications that you're using time or resources, you're fired on the spot. And not only you, but you and you and there were three people in, in the meeting. And it wasn't because I mean, it was clear, based on attitudes of previous supervisors and subsequent this was not a policy. This was a personal a personal concern or fear. This individual was protecting their own reputation, the reputation of their department, but because of the potential for questions about how public funds were being utilized, but it's it was that and I've experienced that, where, where it's purely about reputation, it's purely about, you know, they, they do not want their name associated with this. When when we had gone through a couple of university presidents during my buy tenure here. And when one arrived, it happened to coincide with our natural history museum on campus, the State Museum of Natural History, was running a Bigfoot exhibit. It started off intending to be just a six month short term exhibit and they were very they danced around the subject and incorporated all kinds of Carl Sagan and Michael Shermer quotes and baloney detection kits and so forth. We had a back and forth I, I was excluded from the development committee, even though it was but you know, I played a role in in its conception, but in any case, part of the of the advertising there was this gigantic, you know, all weather banner of a Sasquatch, one of the poses of Patty from the film, and the the logo or the the verbiage said Sasquatch, how do we no big question mark. And they had tried to part part of the theme of the of the exhibit was epistemological. You know, how do we come to know what's the difference between science and faith and religion, and culture and so forth? It was kind of interesting approach. It was I mean, that's how they sort of deflected the the naysayers but here, this new precedent arrives, and this is on one of the prominent buildings right as you come into the main parking lot, this giant picture of a Sasquatch, and he just was was quoted as saying he saw that and he said, never again on this campus or again, you know, without any knowledge of what it was about without any knowledge of the subject matter and or the, the evidence for or against, it was purely the perception. This is the university where that that crackpot Meldrum as

Chuck Shute: 1:03:31

so and so we talked about stories, he talked about footprints to talk about hair, and then there is some video evidence. And I think, to me, some of the more recent ones are more compelling. Like, what do you think about the Stacy Brown and his son? I think they saw I think it was in Florida, or out and it was like a night vision. And

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:03:51

there's actually a thermal thermal thermal, okay. Yeah, which which is even better, because it gives a heat signature, it has some, you have a sense of a person in clothing appears much different than a figure that is devoid of clothing and has a uniform heat signature. Whether it's at all masked by body hair or not, and it can, if the body hair is substantial, or the fur is substantial. First time I looked through a very early model, very clunky, liquid nitrogen kind of cooled receptor. The or not receptor, there's a different term, but in any case, we were looking at our llamas we had pack llamas to help us with our gear. And it was so funny because you could see the ears and the eyes and the nose you know the tongue when it when it came out, but and you could see where the back was shaved for the the panniers and Have saddle gear and the legs but the rest of it all covered with this dense llama wool was invisible to the camera. And and then you know if a person walked over if they had it because it was quite cool at night you had like a parka a puffer jacket or something. You can see the face and the head but then also in the torso disappeared. It was just, it was that sensitive to differences in the heat. Anyway, so, coming back to Stacy's, it's impressive to me, regardless of and they did do some attempts at estimating the size and the speed and step length and so forth. But the fact that it's, it appears that whatever it is, is unclothed completely unclothed is is, you know, worthy of note, I mean, there are intrepid hoaxers who would be willing to dock their clothes and, and strut around even at night in the chill of night. But yeah, those are those are interesting. They're I mean, I think they're certainly worthy. Obviously, this that kind of data is not conclusive. See, we've got the Patterson Gimlin film that set the bar of clarity, visibility duration, so high, and yet, we're still 55 plus years later arguing about it, that everything else that comes in down here, there may be some really intriguing bits and pieces and, and I what I find interesting is when you start lining in some of these things up, there's remarkable consistencies, that subtle sometimes subtle, that appear in maybe not all but in enough and there's overlapping distributions of different characteristics that you know, the way the hand is held the appearance of the palm set of the head on the on the shoulders with the massive trapezius muscle and that forward lean and you know, arm proportions and so forth. big massive muscular arm swinging. All these little subtleties? Some some not so subtle, but that you have to you have to wonder most most of the blatant hoaxes like the guy sitting on the on the mountainside in the golden grass in his copper colored costume. Oh,

Chuck Shute: 1:07:27

was that that was the couple on the Colorado train. Yeah, yeah, that was a hoax.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:07:31

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Those are so transparent. I mean, because you can go right to the internet and download an image of the very costume off the shelf that they're wearing. And the fake, you know, rubber face. And it's no coincidence that in that region, and I don't know exactly where the train line roads are, I didn't go into it, then it's not worth my time, because it's clearly a hoax. Right. But there is a company Sasquatch, RV, camping, company that sell sell recreational vehicles and so forth. And their logo is Sasquatch. And they guess what, one of those copper colored golden colored costumes and they use it in their advertising. So it was obviously one of their or someone who borrowed the costume, just drumming up publicity because in the process of examining it and exploring it, people are going to find their website and it gets them all kinds of clicks and all kinds of shares. And

Chuck Shute: 1:08:32

what about this other one I saw this other one was more recent to was like a man down south, and he's filming the guy or the Sasquatch, I think and Sasquatch is like kind of digging through a tree that one reel or was that a hoax? That's

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:08:46

well I had hopes for that but I mean, I was intrigued by it because of the impression it gave you you use that view from behind it looked like a big back and head of a gorilla. If you've ever seen you know gorilla from that perspective, but then all sudden it stands up. And there's these long, relatively long legs. It was filmed by and posted by a guy named Josh Highcliffe turns out that name Josh high clip is the name of a character in a movie about a guy in the South who has a run in with Sasquatch, apparently it was the film has been released twice so it was released coincident with the airing of this movie. And then after a while, you know I guess to either to drum up more interest in the movie again or to just try to squeeze a little blood out of the turnip and and exploit that interesting piece of footage. They released it again and it can it made the rounds all over again. And there have been some interesting analysis thinker thinker is is very optimistic because he he shows a little analysis of the the size of an adult sigh cypress tree, and how big it is suggesting that this creature when compared to models standing in front of the of the cypress tree that he compares it to, you know, it's a good head and shoulders taller it would seem. That's, you know, a little bit loose. Loose analysis is not real, real stringent and so I don't think I think all the other circumstances make it pretty clear, unfortunately, that it's another hoax.

Chuck Shute: 1:10:29

Okay, which ones? Which ones recent more recently, have you seen that you thought could be real?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:10:35

Not many. That's the problem. And I've been doing some interviews, some ongoing interviews, evaluating things that had been pulled off of the internet. And time after time after time, it's pretty clear that they're, they're hoaxes. When you dig into the circumstances, when, when you first look at what's on the screen, you know, and look for straight edges, or hands or seams. I mean, sometimes you slow things down, and all sudden, you'll see the cuff of the costume come up. And there's the there's the sport sock and the sneaker underneath. You know, it's the giveaways dislike, it's like that scene in$6 Million Man in the Bigfoot. When they were wrestling and they go tumbling down the hillside and the Sasquatch, his shirt comes up. You can see the small of his back, and I can't remember if you can see his underwears t shirt, but they didn't edit it out. It's in there. If you look for it. Anyway, you find those things? And they're they're very clear. And

Chuck Shute: 1:11:43

there's just there's a lot. Yeah, there's probably a tie, it's probably hard to see this thing and catch it because it's probably a very good senses where if it hears humans, I'm assuming it's going to be afraid of us and it'll be long gone. Yeah. Yeah,

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:11:57

I mean, most of the most of the snippets that have some potential or are so ambiguous that you can't tell. They are not captured intentionally, just as most sightings are not intentional encounters that are purely happenstance, their photo bomb, someone's taking a picture. You know, the funny ones like they're taking a picture of a family group out in the forest after the picnic. And then right there on the hillside Olson, this rock stands up and walks up over the ridge. It's like, it's like, what was that? And they don't even notice it until of course, much later. And then what was that? So yeah, we're you know, we're left with just a handful. Some of the best are like the Patterson Gimlin film like the Freeman footage, still, I think has a lot of very good potential. Very, very optimistic about it. The the another one that was featured in my book was the Memorial Day footage. And that has some interest in I had, even since writing the book, I had the opportunity to go to that side for a documentary shoot, along with the Mr. And Mrs. Pate, the videographers, the witnesses, and, you know, literally spend the whole day there talking with them, shooting the interviews, but then having the chance to walk up and down that hillside. See what was on the other side of the ridge. Where did it come from? Where was it? Why was it so intent on bolting across that open space to get to the opposite treeline. And it all made sense. It I am quite convinced that that was a, a young probably a either a sub adult or a small female with an infant on her back and it eventually climbed up onto her shoulders and its head sitting right on top of hers, as they go walking into the forest and you go down. And where they were running was not just haphazard. It is a well established game trail. Probably elk from the sign that I could see, frequent that and and when you go down across that hillside and over to the tree line, it just there's opens up there's a little kind of tunnel through the trees a little alley by way and you and it goes over and little notch in the ridge line there that can be kind of rugged and craggy. And from the edge of that you can work your way up in north central Washington and right on the edge of what's the biggest inland temperate rainforest in North America. And from that, that ridge you could look up out across there and see just ridge line after ridge line of densely forested habitat all the way up to through to the Canadian Rockies so you think

Chuck Shute: 1:14:52

that is the best spot if I was gonna go like camping and have that what's the best place I could go that have the Oh, yeah, that's cool. arch.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:15:01

Well, we mentioned earlier, this demonstrated coincidence of bear and Sasquatch habitat. So I've used that kind of as a thumbnail or as a rule of thumb, I meant to say, you know, if there are bear in a region, there's a chance that there could be Sasquatch as well. Not a guarantee, of course, because again, we're talking about a numbers game, you know, I started to use that one to 200 to one. So like here in Idaho, Idaho, it's not well publicized not a lot of reports, but part of that is because they are, there is such extensive wilderness areas. There's a lot of areas that very few people ever go now. It's not like back in the 70s, when the backpacking was all the rage. It's it's less so now there are diehard backpackers. No, no doubt, but the general populace. One, they're just not in a shape to do it like they were 40 or 50 years ago. But in Idaho, 35,000. Black Bear, versus I estimate, if you use that rule of thumb, you know, 150 to 300. Sasquatch. So, you know, you might ask the question first, where where might I go and camp and have a good chance of seeing the bear? Or even minding bear sign?

Chuck Shute: 1:16:26

Okay. And then why there's so many sightings in Yellowstone that?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:16:30

Well, no, no one there and there aren't that many there are more than people had thought. But there aren't that many. I don't want to say that. Because Yellowstone actually is I mean, there are a lot of bear. Yes. But Yellowstone, people have a sometimes a skewed impression of Yellowstone. Much of the habitat in Yellowstone is very mosaic and ranges from sagebrush steppe, to very dense on the windward side, where lots of rain and snow accumulate on the peaks and so forth. And then you get dense Douglas fir forest, and spruce and so forth. But it's patchy, it's patchy. It's not just one huge park of Smokey Bear forest, you know, it's not that at all, and there was extensive burning, a lot of those now are overgrown with extremely dense secondary growth, where you know that that initial recovery makes for very difficult habitat for animals even to get around in for deer to forage. And it's not until those trees get bigger, and some of the the taller the lodgepole pine and whatnot, fill in and start to shade out some of the other trees, smaller seedling Anyway, don't mean to wax up. But I then after considering bear, then consider the history, you know, do some research, where have there been reports. And those may have been? Well, I mean, obviously, it's skewed by the presence of people, you have to have a human and a Sasquatch, in order for there to be an encounter. And the human has to be inclined to make a report to an to a society to a group to a webpage. But finding those on the map will at least give you some idea. Maybe it doesn't indicate the core the most likely place. But it might bracket the place that is the best habitat, but just few people ever venture into there. You know, it's kind of unlike that. But well, I won't give you a lengthy example. But but we have examples where that's actually not just me shooting from the hip. But we have demonstrated well demonstrated half of the argument demonstrated here real is real short, using using the location data from these reports. A colleague who was a GIS tech, took those pinpointed areas with a spectrographic map that characterizes the habitat based on on, you know, literally the spectrographic emissions that have which are influenced by the geology and the forest cover and so forth. And in order to kind of get an average, since the placement of the pin, isn't that precise, really. Nor should it be he takes an area a cloud of pixels around that point and averages that and comes up with a composite signature for potential Bigfoot habitat based on the sightings, especially if you can show that there's rather consistency across the sidings well then, the next step addresses this confounding factor of dependence on a human witness. And he looks at the distribution of that signature across the map, regardless of whether they're reports or not. Well, the one of these exercises was done out of curiosity in northern Oregon, straddling the Cascades, and there's a wilderness area there. And there were reports around the fringe, which had these consistent signatures. But in addition, the entire wilderness area was characterized by that signature pattern. But so few people ever venture into there. There were never any reports of Sasquatch coming from there. Okay, that's probably a great refuge. Yeah. A great, you know, habitat for okay.

Chuck Shute: 1:20:44

Yeah, there you go. Northern Oregon is beautiful, too. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:20:47

Yeah. In the shadow of Mount Hood, and yeah, all

Chuck Shute: 1:20:49

that stuff. Well, I want to ask you to before I let you go, because I found it so fascinating. You know, doing my research, listen to a few interviews that you've done. You actually got to be interviewed by Joe Rogan, which I think is really cool is I love Joe Rogan person. I know some people will like him. But what was that like being hanging out with him? Because this was a while ago was like 11 years ago. And yeah, more kind of goofy. In the interview, I felt like he was they they were they were bringing up drugs a lot and stuff. But it's still interesting. He, he's still very smart. And he had the curiosity of this topic.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:21:21

Right? Yes, on all those all those points, and I didn't unfortunately, I did not have the chance to really hang out with him. I mean, he arrives at the SAT and leaves pretty pretty abruptly, I was flown in and flown home on the same day. So it was picked up at the airport. Limo takes me to the studio of sorts, and interviews conducted limos waiting for me, takes me back to the airport. And I catch my plane just Nick time making our way through the LA traffic at that time later, later afternoon. But you write about him, he, you know, I was forewarned that he was probably going to bring up the Patterson Gimlin film. And he had a very negative opinion of the film. And so we, you know, I just my attitude was I was, you know, I was going to be the read that would bend in the wind. And so when he got a little more aggressive, I would just acknowledge and so forth, but agree to disagree. And I would offer a counterpoint. What was interesting was his, his sidekick, I can't remember now the trestle. That could have been, I honestly just can't remember. He ended up being backing me up in the points that I was making over and over and over again. And so it was kind of two against against one not that he couldn't hold his own, obviously. But you're right. He was very thoughtful in his questions and comments. And for the most part, not too opinionated. I mean, it was his opinions were based on good arguments for the most part. And it was, it was a fun experience. Yeah, it was fun.

Chuck Shute: 1:23:00

Yeah, I think you should go back on that show. I feel like it was such a long time. And that was it. Not even technically the real but it was like the Joe Rogan questions everything. And so yeah, it's the only but yeah, like that would be great interviews. They've been on the History Channel and stuff. And yeah, that's good for your, your research, right? Oh, sure.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:23:19

Any exposure that that presents the subject is worthy of objective, rational discussion and debate is good exposure. I mean, that's, that's what it's about. I'm not trying to convince people that Sasquatch exists, I'm trying to convince them that the question merits our attention, and and that in the face of so much evidence is very irresponsible, very, very disingenuous to simply as a scientist or as, as a thinking person, turn your back on it, and draw a conclusion. That's an emotional one, or an irrational one, rather than then inform yourself and, and consider it.

Chuck Shute: 1:24:05

Is there a collection of eyewitness account, like I have this book here? Somewhere in the skies, and it's this guy had on my podcast, Ryan Sprague and it's, it's all about UFO and alien eyewitness accounts. It's just like a collection of is there a book like that for Sasquatch with just all the stories and eyewitness accounts of people?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:24:26

Well, not so much just as a strict archive of narratives like that. I mean, there are some, there are regional treatments that are very good. For example, here in Idaho, there's a an author, Becky Cook, who, who has the issue is great at collecting stories and people's experiences. And then she'll put them together and she's got like three or four installments. Now. Bigfoot lives in Idaho Bigfoot still lives in Idaho, and so on. And they're very regional of regional interest. I mean, other books are punctuated Do I mean a great introduction besides my book, obviously, but if you're especially if you're visually inclined Chris Murphy's book published by Hancock house, meet the Sasquatch, or its sequel was no the Sasquatch with just a revised edition. But it takes you through the history introduces you to the investigators, the researchers, the scientists hooves, who have voiced their opinions, their conclusions, good photographs of footprint examples, and it's a great introduction, I would highly recommend that and there are many others, you have to be careful. I mean, obviously, in the past 10 years, the titles have proliferated. Extraordinarily, especially in Age of self publication, there are things that are not worthy perhaps of your time or attention, especially at least not high priority. And likewise, I would caution, there are numerous sometimes very glitzy skeptical treatments that have just proliferated that you need to take with a huge grain of salt, check the reviews, check my reviews, my sort, my online journal is, with under, say my I edit an online journal, the relic hominoid inquiry, you can Google that and find it very readily. It's hosted on the ISU server has a board of editors as well as not just me, it's not my, as one person recently said, my vanity piece. It's not that at all. But one of the things that is a very important element of that journal are very in depth essay style book reviews that really get to the heart of the pros and cons of some of these titles. And some of them are extremely critical myself very critical of some of the skeptical books that have been written that don't do that don't offer good scholarship. So you have to be careful in choosing your titles.

Chuck Shute: 1:27:08

Okay, good to know. And another question I had, just because recently, you know that the government has come out and said that UFOs and aliens is the real evidence of this. Do you have an opinion on that? Does that relate to your research at all? Do you think they have evidence of a Sasquatch? Or is it's totally unrelated?

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:27:27

I honestly doubt they have evidence of his Sasquatch. I don't put a lot of value in these conspiracy theories about, you know, men in black and unmarked helicopters and whatnot, people showing up on people's on investigators doorsteps and demanding their evidence and confiscate it. I mean, I've been doing this for a couple of decades now. No men and black have ever shown up. Or no, no one's ever rifled my files at night while I was out of the office or anything. So either I'm doing a good job of disseminating this information or it's all just a bunch of hooey, I think that the pattern of the recent shift in position towards UFOs has is interesting. I don't anticipate the same kind of thing happening with Sasquatch, because I think the difference, the reason it's happened with UAPs now is the perception and acknowledgement of the possibility of a threat to national security, that these technologies may exist. And whether they're extraterrestrial, or foreign, versus domestic, that that remains to be seen. But the fact that there are things that can fly circles around our most sophisticated fighter jets is, is disconcerting, and that show up at key installations and key events and both on Earth and in space. That's disconcerting. Sasquatch, doesn't rise to that level of a national security threat. Other than maybe to the logging industry and so at some, some perceive, I don't think it's even that. But until that happens, I don't think we'll see a repeat for Sasquatch, as we've seen with congressional hearings on UAPs and UFO levels.

Chuck Shute: 1:29:21

And so yeah, well, and he and Sasquatch. Wouldn't I mean, he wouldn't be an extraterrestrial or have a UFO. But is it possible? I mean, this was like, this is a little out there. But is it possible that he's an interdimensional being that he can and that's why people can't find him is because he's going in through different dimensions.

Dr. Jeffery Meldrum: 1:29:39

Well, as a scientist, you know, I've learned to say that to never say never. I'm not going to say oh, no, absolutely not. I think it's less likely. I mean, again, it boils down to show me the beef. And so in that regard, all that we have, our stories are people's suggestions of I did I have someone who came to my office who came some quite distance to come and show me his photographs of portals where he, he looks into this portal and it was just an optical illusion, you could tell I mean, you could see the surrounding was out in the forest. And there were strong shadows and the sunlight was coming down. And he he perceived this as the opening of a portal. And then in their back in that alcove he thought he could see Sasquatch is plural. And, you know, I just looked at it, and I felt really bad. You'd come all this way. And to have to say, I don't see what you see. I tried to be very, you know, diplomatic and very polite and letting them down. Well,