141: Bigfoot w/ Elliot Helmer!

Ellen: Hello friends and welcome to episode 141 of Just the Zoo of Us! This week, I am joined by an archeologist and cryptid enthusiast to search for the truth about our most mysterious neighbor Bigfoot. We talk about hominid evolution, cryptid ecology, the importance of oral history and traditional knowledge, and what Bigfoot can teach us about ourselves and our own relationship with nature, wherever you fall on the spectrum of skepticism. This episode is pretty different from what we usually do here on the show. And that is because it's a special occasion. This is the Max Fun Drive. It's the time of year when all the podcasts on the Maximum Fun Network focus our efforts on going above and beyond to ask for your support. This show and the others on the network are artist owned and listener supported, meaning that your contributions keep us going. You can be part of the Max Fun Drive and join now at maximumfun.org/join. I will be back in a little while to tell you more about what that means and what's in it for you. But first, Just the Zoo of Us presents: Bigfoot with Elliot Helmer.

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Ellen: Hey everybody! It is Ellen Weatherford, I'm here with your favorite animal review podcast, Just the Zoo of Us. This week, with it being the Max Fun Drive, we have something really exciting and super different from what we usually do, but something a lot of you have been asking for. So I think you're really gonna like it. This week we're [00:01:30] joined by a new friend, this is Elliot Helmer. Say, hi, Elliot!

Elliot: Hello everybody.

Ellen: I'm so excited to be talking to you. We've been talking, chatting back and forth for a while, and I'm really excited for this episode because it's super different from what we usually do, but I think it's going to be great. And I think everybody's going to love it. Elliot, you're here to talk about a cryptid, which is something we haven't tackled on this show before, but this should not be the only time we talk about cryptids on the show. So opening the door to cryptids on just the zoo of us. So before we talk about our cryptid friend today, let's talk about you a little bit. Elliot, what got you into studying Bigfoot? Like what, how did you get here?

Elliot: Well, Bigfoot is more of a hobby for me. Technically, I'm an archeologist that studies shellfish procurement and the relationships between people and land. But in my free time, I am deeply obsessed with cryptids generally, Bigfoot especially because he's kind of, you know, the poster boy of cryptids.

Ellen: This is THE cryptid. If you've heard of a cryptid you've heard of Bigfoot.

Elliot: Exactly. And it's actually not totally out of left field because I am, I'm an archeologist, and in the United States, archeology is a sub field of anthropology, which is the study of people, but also non-human primates. And so Bigfoot being a non-human primate fits right in with anthropology. And there's actually lots of anthropologists that publish about Bigfoot and have published about Bigfoot. So it might seem sort of out of left field, but [00:03:00] really it's it's right at home. It's my own little side project within, uh, within anthropology.

Ellen: Yeah. What got you interested in Bigfoot? I know you said this is kind of like a personal interest for you. Where did that come from?

Elliot: I've always been one of those little kids that was really into like fantasy stuff. You know, I read a lot of fantasy books. I read a lot of, you know, like the Spiderwick Chronicles and other things where like a little kid goes and finds like magical creatures. That was like a dream. And so I sort of just got into Bigfoot through that general interest in like fantasy creatures, and sort of as I've grown up Bigfoot and cryptids specifically have been something that's really stuck, like my main interests, moving beyond like kids fantasy stuff, just like Bigfoot culture, Bigfoot aesthetics, the culture around like studying Bigfoot and finding Bigfoot, I think is very interesting.

Ellen: It's that element of mystery, right? Like you get that in fantasy media also, but it's that feeling of like wonder and mystery and something being beyond our comprehension that you get just in real life.

Elliot: Yeah. And it's not like there's like some fantasy stuff that's like, there's dragons or this person like, can do magic spells. Whereas like Bigfoot, I feel like could really exist out there in the real world. And so it's like that fantasy thing that you can bring to your everyday life of like, wondering is it, or isn't it, it's not like, you know, dragons or mermaids or something that seem a little bit more fantastical. It's like this could really be here.

Ellen: It may be a little bit different if Bigfoot perhaps had magical powers. Yeah.

Elliot: Yes. Like if [00:04:30] Bigfoot could like teleport and fly and although I was gonna say control the weather, although there are some original indigenous stories about Bigfoot where he can control the weather. So Bigfoot has a lot, a lot to give, like he has a lot to give.

Ellen: But in terms of just like a big guy, that's just like in the woods, that is completely within like the realm of, well, yeah, there's big guys. Sometimes.

Elliot: His core, he is just a big guy that lives in the woods. And even in like, one of the more popular depictions of Bigfoot is there's a, or it's not about big foot, but there's like a X-Files episode about like the Jersey devil and they, they literally just make it a guy in the woods. It's just a guy in the woods and they talk about Bigfoot in that episode where they really are just like, " it's just a guy. He's in the woods."

Ellen: It's just a guy, he's out there.

Elliot: And like that --there are guys in the woods!

Ellen: All the time.

Elliot: One of them could be Bigfoot.

Ellen: This is totally within the realm of plausibility and familiarity.

Elliot: Yes, yeah. Feels much more tangible.

Ellen: With that being said, sometimes people refer to Bigfoot as, like we said, a guy as in, like, there's just the one, like I'm thinking of like a legendary Pokemon. Like there's just the one Bigfoot, but I've also heard people talk about Bigfoot as like a species like, that there's multiple Bigfoot, Bigfeet, Big's Feet, Bigfoots.. So like what, what is Bigfoot? Is it just the one Bigfoot or is there like an idea of there being lots of them?

Elliot: I have [00:06:00] always thought of it more of there being lots of Bigfoots, is how I'm going to go with the pluralization because Bigfeet just sounds weird. But I think that it's like, especially if you're thinking about Bigfoot more as like a tangible animal, like something that exists in like that could exist in the real world, it makes more sense for there to be multiple because otherwise then you would have to accept that there's one Bigfoot that has been alive since like the forties. And like somehow ends up all over, like, the Western seaboard and like into like, the Midwest. Like if you're thinking about Bigfoot as like something that really could exist, you sort of have to like accept that there's multiple, like this is a species that does have that longer extent they can be around for generations and generations. It's sort of like if you are envisioning it more as like a tangible creature, rather than like a fantastical creature, it kind of needs to be a whole species, rather than just one immortal Bigfoot.

Ellen: Unless, Parthenogenesis is involved.

Elliot: It's true. There could always be one at a time.

Ellen: It's just the one Bigfoot that is self-replicating, and then it'll be a clone and Bigfoot would be a female of their species that would be capable of reproducing via parthenogenesis.

Elliot: That's possible! I haven't really thought about the parthenogenesis aspect, but then you would still have to believe that Bigfoot can like really get around, like really be moving. Like people are citing him in California. They're citing him in like Southern California. Like, how'd you get from Washington to California so quickly with just one guy? But I don't know. [00:07:30] He's got big feet, long legs.

Ellen: There you go. His stride is so long he can cover distance. It's true.

Elliot: And there are like physical anthropology papers about like Bigfoot stride. And like what based on like Bigfoot footprints, what was his, what would his stride be like? What is his gait like? So there's research out there.

Ellen: He's really getting around. Okay. So with that being said, when we say that he is a cryptid, like how do you define what a cryptid is?

Elliot: So the technical definition of cryptid is an animal whose existence is disputed, or it can also include animals that exist in places they shouldn't be, there are like stories about like big cats, like Panthers and stuff on like the moors in England. Like, and those are considered cryptids, it's because the existence of that animal in that place is disputed. And like, we don't really know for sure if that animal is real. Cryptozoology then is the study of cryptids it's the study of these, maybe or maybe not real creatures, which sort of distinguishes like Bigfoot and like cryptids from things like leprechauns, which is like not an animal so much, or like it distinguishes it from like aliens. They're sort of in the same --people lump them together. But technically aliens wouldn't be cryptids because it's not, they're not like animals whose existence is disputed, they're like a whole extra terrestrial. But what's interesting about cryptids is that there are a lot of cryptids that are no longer cryptids because their existence has been confirmed. So I know you've talked about the okapi on the show before, and it [00:09:00] used to be that the okapi was a cryptid and that's really like, that's the cryptozoologist like favorite thing to talk about is like, well, did you know that the okapi was a cryptid? And then they discovered it was real. So it's possible for all cryptids.

Ellen: It does lend that element of plausibility to it. That's like, well, you know, this has happened where we thought something was fake and it wasn't.

Elliot: Exactly. And one of those things is that, for a lot of the cryptids that have had their existence confirmed, when you're saying its existence is "disputed" really you can sort of think of that as its existence is disputed by like, white people and Western science, because like the okapi, the people that live in that area and knew the okapi existed, they told people the okapi existed. And that happens a lot. Is that like native people will say, yeah, there's this animal that has zebra legs, but like a deer head. And it's like, "oh that's not real", but just because you haven't seen it, like the native people are telling you, like, yeah, I know that that's there. Why don't you believe me.

Elliot: There's this great paper about Bigfoot that I'll probably discuss later by this anthropologist named Wayne Suttles who worked in like the Puget Sound and Southern British Columbia area. And he talks about how, like, if you listen to somebody describe what a beaver is like, "oh, it's this giant rodent that can cut down trees and build dams and communicate with other beavers through like sound" like that doesn't sound real, a rodent that can cut down trees and build dams, but beavers are real.

Elliot: And he like described that as like you can't just, based on their description of it outright, [00:10:30] say that something isn't real. Like I think the way that he phrases it is like you can't use ethnography, which is basically the study of contemporary people, like a detailed study of contemporary people. Ethnography can't disprove beavers anymore than it can disprove Bigfoot.

Ellen: Reminds me a lot of the Platypus, how early Western scientists saw Platypus and were like, surely not, this can't be right.

Elliot: I mean, there's a lot of, like, one of my favorite things is looking at like old medieval illustrations of like animals that like, lived in like Africa and stuff. Like the first time that they heard of a hippopotamus. And they're like, I guess, I don't know how to draw this. And then you see these absolutely ridiculous drawings of what they think that it might be basically the world used to have many more cryptids before white people got out and identified everything. They used to think like, people in Europe are hearing about people discovering giraffes and they're like, no. That can't, that can't possibly be the case.

Ellen: You've made this up. This is a farce.

Elliot: Yeah. And so now the thing with cryptids is that, you know, we've discovered the whole known world. We know we've mapped the entire globe. And so the question then being like, what's left to discover, but we know that like we're constantly making new discoveries in, especially like the deep sea, they're finding new species of like snakes and bugs and stuff like that. So, you know, there's always the possibility for discovery, even though we think we've discovered everything in the world, things are much more diverse than we expect or give credit to.

Ellen: Yeah. Another famous example, since you mentioned the deep sea, you know, coelacanth, that was just [00:12:00] chilling the whole time.

Elliot: It's crazy. Like there's stuff out there you, you would never, never think to describe. And like, you know, there are parts of the world outside of like the United States where everything is very developed, right. Where there is a lot of forest that hasn't been explored or, and it's one of those things where it's like, well, maybe the native people are telling you that something is there, and all this time, we haven't been believing them. So anyway, I think that there, something about cryptids that's wonderful is just the idea of like there being things left to explore and there being mystery, it almost sort of like goes with that idea of scientific discovery where like people love science because they love the idea of discovery and learning something new. And I think that cryptids is really lend themselves to that. Just like to the extreme.

Ellen: Are Bigfoot and Sasquatch, the same thing?

Elliot: Sort of, so Sasquatch specifically is a word that comes from a Coast Salish language specifically, it comes from Halkomelem, and Sasquatch comes from the Halkomelem word saesq'ec, which the direct translation isn't really clear, but saesq'ec refers to a giant, hairy man that lives out in the mountains, basically, which was a figure in like Coast Salish like zoology. Like when you're asking, when, again, Wayne Suttles, this anthropologist that worked with the Coast Salish, he would give them books of like, here's a list of all the species in Washington, all the mammals in Washington, give me the translation for all of these species and they would go through and say, "Oh you're missing a couple of species." and they would say like, well, you're missing, you [00:13:30] don't have Sasquatch on here. You don't have these other, like these, this two headed snake you don't have on here. And so Sasquatch comes specifically from the Coast Salish language and from like Coast Salish worldviews, but the Bigfoot is often used much more generally to refer to like how Bigfoot manifests in lots of cultures. Like obviously people in like California, aren't speaking this British Columbia language, but they still have like a giant hairy man that lives in the woods. They just call him something different. So Bigfoot and Sasquatch are pretty much the same thing. It's just a difference in etymology. But then there are also large humanoid primates like that, that live literally all over the world.

Elliot: These are stories that come up literally everywhere. And so Bigfoot and Sasquatch usually just ends up referring to the ones that are in North America. Whereas, like you mentioned, like Florida has skunk ape, Australia has the Yowie. Indonesia has the Orang Pendek, which translates to like short person, which is basically like, like a smaller version of Bigfoot. And then obviously there's the Yeti in the Himalayas. Right? And so these are all functionally the same as a giant hairy man that lives out in the mountains of the woods. But nobody would refer to those as Bigfoot, Bigfoot's really like a North American phenomenon. And I get very heated with people that are trying to say "well, I heard that I saw big foot in like Ohio!" And I'm like "no, Bigfoot lives on the west coast. Bigfoot is, it is a species with an actual range that lives in the west coast. I don't know what you saw out in [00:15:00] Ohio, but it wasn't Bigfoot. But no, that's our cryptid that was here. You can't just totally destroys the credibility of Bigfoot to just say you saw it wherever you want.

Ellen: We are cryptid gatekeeping.

Elliot: Exactly. Like people are like, "oh, I saw Mothman" and Mothman is a different cryptid, but Mothman was like cited in like Cincinnati or like Chicago or something a couple of years ago and I'm like, "No. Mothman is West Virginia's.

Ellen: Right, like specifically Appalachia.

Elliot: You can't take that kid, you can't just say that you saw Mothman in Chicago, you have your own stuff going on in Chicago. Don't be taking other people's cryptids. So it's actually like a whole other cryptid in like that area, like in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, which has Dogman, which is its own whole thing. So why don't you just stick with your cryptids?

Ellen: Okay. You got your own interesting stuff going on. You don't need to branch out, let us have this!

Elliot: Which I also think sort of goes to that idea of like, if we're talking about Bigfoot as an actual tangible animal, it has to have like a range. You can't just live everywhere. Like if you are talking about it as a thing that could exist it needs to have a specific range. And I think that range would be west of the Rockies.

Ellen: When you were describing the variations of what we consider to be a Bigfoot-like creature that occur all over the world, you know, when you're talking about like Yeti or the smaller one--

Elliot: Orang Pendek!

Ellen: Orang Pendek reminds me of orangutan.

Elliot: It's the same etymology. So orang means [00:16:30] person.

Ellen: And you're describing like them having very noticeable, physical differences between them. Like one of them being much smaller. It reminds me of like the variation you see in species, maybe like a genus of species that occur over a wide range where some of them might be much taller than the other. Some of them might have more hair or less hair or be skinnier. It'd be bulkier. You see that in, you know, genuses of animals that live over wide ranges. So like you said, if we're applying Bigfoot lore to tangible real-world species, it makes sense that they'd have a wide range with physical variation to adapt to different environments.

Elliot: And something that's really interesting about the Orang Pendek. It's the same sort of thing. It's a hairy humanoid, lives in the mountains. What's really interesting about that is that there is a species of hominid, homofloresiensis, which is a human, not a human ancestor, but a human relative from the past that is from like the Indonesia Sumatra area that was a very, very tiny human, basically. Like when they were discovered, like those fossils were discovered around the same time that the Lord of the Rings movies were popular. So they're often referred to as the Hobbit, like they're the Hobbit species. So I think that there's probably this like connection between this idea of these very small people, the homofloresiensis that sort of carries through this Orang Pendek thing, which speaks to the fact that before like 40,000 years ago, there were multiple species of human that existed on the planet at the same time. [00:18:00] And so it's interesting to think that maybe that like manifestation of Bigfoot could be this, like, hold over like cultural memory of those smaller people, because we don't know exactly when homofloresiensis went extinct. We don't know how much of an overlap there is with modern humans. So these sorts of things can be like carried over, like through generations and generations, these stories, which I think is really interesting. It's really impressive what we, as a human species are capable of maintaining just through like oral histories and learned like cultural beliefs that just persists for like thousands and thousands of years.

Ellen: Right. Cause that's like an element of our natural history that just gets passed down, even though that's so far removed from what anybody on our living on our planet would remember.

Elliot: Yeah. The tribe that I work with in Oregon has stories of like rhinoceroses that like lived like an Oregon. And then there has been like evidence of potential, like Pleistocene, like ice age megafauna, like these giant species that like existed way, way back when, and there's like a thought that the stories of the rhinoceros could just be this hold over cultural memory from way back when. And so I think that there's something to be said about like this widespread belief in Bigfoot or other large non-humans and the idea of this cultural memory that we have of there being other species of humans. Like it's very unnatural in terms of like the grand scheme of human evolution, for us to be the only species of our genus all alone in the world. [00:19:30] Whereas up until 40,000 years ago, which is when the neanderthals went extinct, there were multiple species of human. And I think that part of why Bigfoot is so widespread is that we're kind of lonely, you know, as a species, like it's very rare for species to be just the one species in their genus. It definitely happens. You talked about different species like that on the show. But I think that like part of it is that, you know, we're kind of lonely. So we want to invent our relatives or people that are just, that are like us, but not like us. Um, because it's not natural for us to not have millions and millions of years there were multiple species of human. So it's not our natural state.

Ellen: Yeah. And believing in there being still existent members of the human genome would I think, feel like a connection to nature as a human, like humans so often see themselves as being separate from nature. But if you are still thinking about, oh, we have relatives that descend from the same line of early, early humans that are still here, it just makes you feel more like understanding your place in the animal kingdom a little bit more than just if you're thinking of like our human relatives as being like Bonobos or chimpanzees or something that seems more farther removed, but then that might feel a little bit more distancing between you and the rest of the animal tree. But if there's a little bit more of a bridge there, you can know that feels a little bit more like a connection.

Elliot: And like historically there was a bridge, like, I mean, we co-existed with Neanderthals [00:21:00] for thousands of years in Europe. And we know for a fact that we were breeding with Neanderthals because almost all humans have some small percentage of Neanderthal DNA. Like, these other species of humans were something that we interacted with and had relationships with. So yeah, like the idea that Bonobos being our closest, like relative, but still feels very distant because it's not the same kind of relationship that we were able to have with the other members of our genus. I've even heard, like people call like Bigfoot or Sasquatch, homo-sasquatch-ensis, to try to like give it that sort of like species place. But I think what you said about the idea that we're very, I think humans are very concerned about like where we fit into the world, where we fit into the animal kingdom. And there's like a long history of like Western civilizations and like Europeans thinking like, well, we fit into the animal kingdom by being on top of it. We're going to dominate nature. We're like different from nature and we're in charge of. Whereas most cultures outside of like Europe didn't see it that way they saw maybe they were apart from nature, but at the same level as other species or that there was no difference between us and nature at all.

Elliot: And so I think that the other thing about Bigfoot being so widespread is that we're very obsessed with like fitting ourselves into nature and deciding like where do humans fit in the grand scheme of thing? What makes us different from all the other species? Because obviously we are different. But how and why? And I think that having that sort of foil in having these sort of Bigfoot like stories all [00:22:30] across the world is sort of our own way of dealing with where do we fit in? What makes us different from nature? And what would it look like if maybe we weren't as different from nature? You know, getting philosophical about Bigfoot?

Ellen: Well, I think that's what Bigfoot brings out in people. You know, I think that makes people feel very introspective and feel very, like, philosophical about like, what does Bigfoot mean to me?

Elliot: It's a big question, he's deep in my heart and my soul.

Ellen: Yeah. I think he brings that out.

Elliot: Yeah. And like I said, humans are obsessed with this. There's hundreds of papers in anthropology and archeology justify, like about like when did we become human? Like when can we trace humanity back to. We're obsessed with ourselves in that way. And so Bigfoot sort of fits into that larger scholarly tradition. Like, as I would say.

Ellen: You know, since Bigfoot is such a special case and he's very different from the animals. We typically review on this show. If you're, if this is your first time ever listening-- this is a very strange episode to get in on if this is your first one. But we like to rate animals out of 10 in different categories. But since Bigfoot is very different from the animals, we usually talk about, we wanted to do something a little bit different because we didn't feel like the categories that we typically apply to our animals were going to work for Bigfoot and what we know about him. So instead we're branching out a little bit and we've got some custom categories that we're going to [00:24:00] rate Bigfoot on. Um, the first of which is plausibility. So for plausibility, we're using this rating to express how much you believe in your heart, that Bigfoot is physically present out there, kicking it in the woods in the sense that like you could go there and see and touch a Bigfoot. Um, what would you give Bigfoot for plausibility?

Elliot: In my heart and my soul I want Bigfoot to be real so badly, but I think that I'm going to give Bigfoot a four for plausibility.

Ellen: That's something.

Elliot: There's, you know, some convincing evidence. But I think that, like give some real justification for why I think that, I'm going to give like a little bit of like ecological background on what, what a real Bigfoot would be like in the world. And why I don't necessarily think that you can really give him more than a generous four in terms of tangibility. I briefly mentioned this idea that Bigfoot, hairy bipedal non-human primate, lived sort of in the mountains of like the Western United States. This is like a huge animal. So this isn't like, you know, we discover new species of like insects all the time. This is a giant species that we have somehow not seen.

Ellen: It's hard to miss.

Elliot: Or at least, you know, people have seen him, but we don't have, like the tangible proof, the average size-- and I'm going to give you some stats that I got from the Bigfoot field researchers organization. [00:25:30]

Ellen: Excellent.

Elliot: And so they've compiled a lot of information about Bigfoot sightings. So, I mean, this is a on average, six to seven foot tall animal. It's well, within the range of human existence, although there are cases where people said that it's up to 10 feet and I actually had a really interesting conversation with the man that runs the Bigfoot discovery center in Felton, California.

Elliot: He thinks that most of the Bigfoot sightings are underestimating how tall Bigfoot is, because he thinks that the Bigfoot that we see are probably young, stupid Bigfoot that are like wandering out into like the roads and like getting close to people because they're like curious and young. And so he thinks that like six to seven is like a juvenile Bigfoot.

Ellen: The reckless teenager.

Elliot: Yes, exactly. These are like reckless teenagers that don't know any better than to hide from humans.

Ellen: Implying that like the hiding is a behavioral thing that they have to learn.

Elliot: Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean smart on them because humans have caused a lot of ecological destruction. And if you're trying to survive as a species, if you have the brains to it's best to avoid.

Ellen: Hiding from humans is a excellent strategy. I must say.

Elliot: You know, at the same time, like how well can something that is like seven to 10 feet tall, really hide? And it's not like these are terribly unpopulated areas. The west coast of the United States is not unpopulated by any stretch of the imagination. So again, thinking about whether or not we can say that it's [00:27:00] plausible, that this kind of thing is wandering around the woods. Not super likely. The other thing about Bigfoot is that if we're assuming that Bigfoot is related to humans and primates, generally. By and large, great apes, which are part of the primate phylogenetic tree. The family tree of primates, great apes are the largest ones they don't have tails is one of the really big differentiators between great apes and the other like monkeys. Great apes includes gorillas, chimpanzees and Bonobos, and technically humans. Although obviously we're sort of our own thing. So Bigfoot taxonomically would make sense within the great apes. So what we know about great apes is that we're very social creatures. Obviously humans are very social creatures. We live in large groups, chimpanzees, Bonobos, gorillas, they all live in these huge groups.

Elliot: So if Bigfoot is a great ape, you would expect it to be in these huge groups. The exception to that is the last great ape is the orangutan, which is pretty different from the other great apes, because while the other great apes are very social and they live in these huge groups, orangutans are much more solitary, but usually live with like a mom and some kids in these like huge home ranges that like overlap a little bit with other orangutans, but not, they try not to, uh, come together very often. So. Maybe we're talking about a species that does have something a little bit more orangutan- like, we have these smaller groups, which would make it a little bit more plausible that they could be, you know, if we have one Bigfoot and their babies [00:28:30] and they have like a 50 mile home range, because this is like a huge, bigger than an orangutan so we would give it a bigger home range. Maybe there's just such a low population density that we haven't seen them. So that's where, you know, I'm pushing the plausibility up a little bit because you would think if it is going to be a solitary great ape, the only like reference we have for that is the orangutan. And they do have very, very large home ranges that barely overlap. So, maybe the population density is just very, very low.

Elliot: So, you know, I'm going to give them like one or two points, in plausibility there. Taking down a whole notch for the fact that this is a seven foot tall primate wandering through the woods, giving them a little bit back and then also giving them back because like you said, that idea that like the hiding is like behavioral because I live on the west coast and Bigfoot merch is everywhere. And you see a lot of stickers that like roadside stands that say Bigfoot hide and seek champion. It's sort of implying that like Bigfoot are avoiding people on purpose. And really there's no way to believe in like an actual, tangible Bigfoot and think that they're not actively avoiding humans because if they were not actively avoiding humans, we would have found them already.

Ellen: This has gotta be intentional.

Elliot: So it's sort of built into, like, if you read that website that I mentioned the, uh, the Bigfoot Field Research Organization, like in their like behavior section, they talk about avoidance of humans and they also talk about things like Bigfoot will like, throw rocks at people to like, get them to run away. Like that's something you see in a lot of big foot stories is like rock throwing, log throwing, [00:30:00] smashing people over the head with rocks, which certainly rocks sort of sometimes if you're in a mountainous area, do roll loose and roll down the mountain. Um, but if we're talking about a big primate, that's trying to get people to stay away.

Ellen: Some hostility.

Elliot: Yeah. You know, especially if we're talking about like, like with orangutans, we're talking about a solitary mother and like maybe one or two babies. We know how like bears act when you get near their baby. So maybe these are mother Bigfoots trying to keep humans away from their babies. Maybe that's why they're being so aggressive with the throwing of rocks. Which again, you hear that a lot, is this idea that Bigfoot is like throwing rocks at people, smashing them over the head with rocks. I don't know that I've ever heard of a specific account of somebody being smashed over the head by a rock by Bigfoot. But it is something that comes up in like Bigfoot lore a lot.

Ellen: I'm also imagining like a territorial male, right? Like if it's like a male that is feeling territorial and sees a human in its range, a human might be something that it would maybe recognize as like a potential competitor and then act hostily towards that.

Elliot: Yeah, that's true because I mean, if we're looking at Bigfoot and recognizing sort of ourselves and our species in Bigfoot, presumably Bigfoot has enough intelligence to recognize us as something similar to that and therefore, please stay out of my territory.

Ellen: Right. I wonder if humans would activate that uncanny valley, like uneasiness in Bigfoot to be like "uhhhh something's off here".

Elliot: Bigfoot sort of brings that out and us is this like," whoa, it's like us, but it's not like us. And I don't know how to feel about it."

Ellen: Just off enough. The vibes are just like [00:31:30] slightly...

Elliot: Bigfoot apparently has this absolutely terrible odor, that you're supposed to be able to smell a mile away. It's like the Bigfoot field researchers Organization has a stat of 10 to 15% of closing counters include this intense disagreeable stench, to which they would say that's proof, to which I would say there's a lot of things that smell very bad in the woods. Decomposing animals for one, not a great smell, skunks, not a great smell animals poop in the woods, not a great smell. So, you know, I'm not going to give Bigfoot a lot of plausibility points back for that. Another thing is like one of the classic Bigfoot things, and this is something that you see in those Coast Salish stories, like the native people have these stories of like big whistling, this idea of whistling and other noises that are associated with Bigfoot like howls, roars, knocking sounds like a repetitive knocking on trees, which other than the whistling, you can pretty much describe away the howling and the roaring with other animals in the woods that and roar like mountain lions, like scream. They make like a, like, I think that they're called mountain screamers in like some parts of the country. These are animals that scream, um, and they also live all across North America. You know, you can sort of explain a lot of the howling and the roaring and like the repetitive knocking sounds easily explained away by wind knocking, like a loose branch over and over and over again.

Elliot: Whistling, I don't really know how you would explain away. I personally can't think of any species that I know of in like the Western United States that whistle, [00:33:00] although birds can make sounds that are like, sort of whistle-y. So maybe that's, but you know, we will get to a point a plausibility point back for, I don't know, what's whistling out there? Could be a, could be a Squatch, could be. I don't have a great explanation for whistling. I'm sure that somebody that is much more familiar with the ecology of birds in the Western United States would be like, oh, I know exactly a bird call that sounds like a whistle.

Elliot: I'm also

Ellen: thinking, because you mentioned that they would have a very low population density and a very wide home range yet they still do have to meet somehow. Like they got to find each other somehow. So they would need some way to communicate over a large distance and whistling could get the job done.

Elliot: It's true. Yeah, it is. It's a sound that carries for. So maybe this is a really great adaptation that they have this whistling communication.

Ellen: Yeah. And something that like wouldn't necessarily give away exactly what they are, either. Like a whistle could be something that would carry and also not particularly scream "hey, there's Bigfoot over here."

Elliot: Yeah. They're not like shouting out into the woods. "Hello! I'm a Squatch!" And letting everybody know. So that's sort of, I guess my plausibility, to just summarize, is taking a bunch of points away for this is a very large animal that we have somehow not seen. You get a little bit more points back for, it's possible that they are one behaviorly actively avoiding detection. And two, if we're using orangutans as like a proxy, they could have these very massive home ranges, very, very low population densities, which could lend credence to the idea that there is something out there. So giving them some [00:34:30] four out of 10, giving them a couple of points back, giving them the benefit of the doubt, because again, I want so badly for Bigfoot to be real. I want it so bad.

Ellen: Absolutely. The other category we wanted to rate Bigfoot on, instead of our usual ingenuity is mystery. How big is the gap in our knowledge? What questions are there that are like, well, we don't particularly know, like this could be a Bigfoot thing. Like what would you rate Bigfoot for mystery?

Elliot: I think that I would rank Bigfoot, maybe like a seven or an eight in terms of mystery, because there are a lot of things that I think about Bigfoot that for one, like I said, in possibility, like there is the potential for there to be something that we haven't seen. But I also think that if we go back to thinking about the okapi, right? It's this idea that the indigenous people of that area knew what was going on and, you know, white people just didn't want to believe it. And I think that if we're talking about Sasquatch, specifically thinking about like the origins of Sasquatch and in the sort of Pacific Northwest area, the Western like mountain ranges of the United States and Canada, we see that like our definitions of what species exist, isn't really compatible at all with the way that indigenous people think about like these species. Uh, Wayne Suttles again, when he was like doing this research about like, well, what do the Salish people say about Bigfoot? [00:36:00] He, he really finds that like, there is no distinction in like bare, like thought of the real and the mythical, like that aligned, that doesn't exist. And they would tell you very frankly, his informants are like, "yeah, big food is a real animal, just like a whale or like a bear. This is a species that exists." Like they would give it in their list of their, listing all the species that live in their area. That's something that would come up. And I think that part of that, and part of the way that like Wayne Suttles talks about it is that Western science doesn't really have the capability to cope with that. We don't know how to deal with that. And he talks about like some anthropologists. He knows for a fact that those cultures have like Bigfoot stories or Sasquatch stories, but then you read the anthropologist account and it's just totally left out. And he was like, I don't think that this is like intentionally trying to like hide that information. I think it's just that an informant told them that and they went, I don't know what to do with that information. I'm just not, I don't know what to do with that. There is a lot to be said about our capability within like Western thought in Western science to not be able to deal with the existence of something like Bigfoot.

Elliot: And I think that that inability of us to wrap our head around the fact that like real and mythical and supernatural and natural are categories that might not exist, it's just totally outside of our worldview. So I think that that inability of our own Western thought lends a lot to that mystery. So maybe there is no tangible physical Bigfoot, but [00:37:30] you see in these societies where Bigfoot exists, like the Coast Salish, that they are doing things in reaction to Bigfoot, they, they know that Bigfoot exists and they were avoiding certain areas because of Bigfoot and they have stories about Bigfoot and they live in a world where Bigfoot is real, just like all the other like creatures that we might call mythical. They live in a world where Bigfoot is real. And in that sense, Bigfoot is real, because they're reacting to it. And this is the case in pretty much everywhere, where there is some sort of story of Bigfoot or some other kind of species that we would call mythical. Like the people are reacting to it and know that it is real.

Ellen: He's practically real.

Elliot: Yeah. It's functionally real. And that society, whether or not I can go touch a Bigfoot, the, the potential that like, we just, as like people from our social position, can't really grasp the idea that these things can all like coexist, I think that that lends more to the mystery of it. You know, maybe it's just sort of outside of our own framework.

Ellen: His impact is real.

Elliot: His impact is real. And I mean, like outside of like the whole philosophical thing that I just went off on with like indigenous cultures, which is really like what my like, research is in is thinking about like taking indigenous cultures and their oral histories at face value is really important to the research that I do. But like moving away from that, if we're talking about like Bigfoot's impact to us, Bigfoot holds up economies in some places. That is, you know, like there are towns that's entire tourists ecosystem is built around Bigfoot. Bigfoot is real to those towns because their entire economy is based on Bigfoot. I [00:39:00] have this like dream of, if you drive up highway 101, which is sort of goes along the west coast, if you drive 101 up from like Marin county. You pass so many Bigfoot like tourist traps. And I have a dream of one day stopping at every single one. Normally I'm going somewhere on purpose and I don't have time to do that, but like Bigfoot has a function in that, like those places, you know.

Ellen: It's a big foot pub crawl.

Elliot: Exactly! Ah, the dream, a Bigfoot pub crawl. Really what I want to do is I have this like life goal to do a cryptid road trip across the United States. Um, you know, go see like all the best, Bigfoot museums, go see Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where Mothman was cited, go to like there's places that have like jackalope museums. And end it at there's like a cryptozoology museum in Maine. And I like, you know, I want to do this whole big road trip. But that's like examples of these things, like all across the United States where like, there were like whole towns that it's like, we need to believe that this exists so that we can build our entire town around it. We need other people to believe this exists so that we can build our town, our whole entire town's economy around it, you know? And again, so like in that sense, Bigfoot is like real he's like he has an impact in the world.

Ellen: Yeah. Very, very tangible footprints as it were.

Elliot: Exactly. Yes. The tracks of Bigfoot are just littered across the United States.

Ellen: Massive, massive Bigfoot prints.

Elliot: So again, not to get too philosophical or metaphysical on this podcast that is about animals and nature. But I do [00:40:30] think that something that like anthropologists study and something that I studied specifically in archeology is the idea of like the relationship between people in the environment and the way that people conceive of the environment and how that impacts how you like live within the environment. And I think that again, Bigfoot maybe ties into my research more than I realized, because what Bigfoot is, is like a manifestation of the relationship between people in the environment. And also, and this is probably way too, like out of left field for this podcast. But if you think about it, the way that like people relate to the environment is really reflected in Bigfoot because in like Coast Salish society, Bigfoot is like an animal that is similar to humans, but not like humans that you have to interact with.

Elliot: And there's much more of like a symbiotic, like leveled out relationship, whereas in Western society, which is capitalist and like we're all built around market economies and like commercial value. Bigfoot is being used as a commercial, like tool. Like Bigfoot's part of the economy is functions in the economy as something that you can make money from.

Ellen: Like a gimmick.

Elliot: Yeah. Like I think that speaks something to the way that like we function with the environment and the relationship we have with our environment. So really in that sense, Bigfoot encapsulates our relationship with the environment.

Ellen: It's an interesting indicator of your sort of cultural values.

Elliot: Yeah. I love Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a great tool for like thinking through things, I think, you know? It tells you a lot about society and yourself. I mean, that's what we've been talking about this whole time. It tells people about, where do we fit in society? What [00:42:00] is it like to be the only member of our genus that's still alive?

Elliot: Bigfoot really, he's what we make of him, you know? And I think that that's really important for telling ourselves stories about us, which is, again, humans are obsessed with.

Ellen: He's a great prompt.

Elliot: He is, he's a think piece.

Ellen: He is, he's a jumping board.

Elliot: Okay. Yeah. And we live in a think piece economy right now.

Elliot: You know, people want to write like a good good think piece. So I think, you know, Bigfoot really slotting right in there. Yeah. Like a jumping board, really. And again, talking about this idea of like taking indigenous oral history at face value, first of all, calling it oral history. Like these are histories.

Elliot: And also like, like my research, I like study how the Coquille tribe in Oregon manages their like, um, environment and specifically like how they maintain sustainable, like shellfish harvesting practices. And it's like, based in like their worldview wherein shellfish are people. And if there are people and they're relatives, you have to maintain a reciprocal kin relationship with them. So you can't like take advantage of your relatives and like totally destroyed an ecosystem. Totally disrespectful. Totally not how you handle relatives. And you see that they are maintaining a very like symbiotic relationship with them, which is like, based in this idea that these are relatives. You know, if we're trying to tie this into, like, this is an animal podcast, we're talking about animals, the idea that like humans are something totally different from nature is sort of something that we made up.

Elliot: And a lot of indigenous cultures are like, it's not even that like, oh, we are animals. [00:43:30] It's like the opposite, animals are people. And we're seeing in terms of conservation worldwide, like, so much knowledge from indigenous peoples turns out was like the thing that was keeping those ecosystems of float, where like, when you try to like take people out of those ecosystems, everything falls apart. Like I, again, I live in California, so our wildfires are like hugely created by the fact that we don't do indigenous cultural burning anymore. We had this idea, "fire is bad". We don't want any fire. Like we're going to suppress all the fire in all the like national and state parks. And then it turns out that no, actually you do need to like have controlled burns constantly because it prevents the buildup of like underbrush and like fuel. But indigenous people knew that. They'd been doing that for like 10,000 years. So in terms of trying to like fight things like climate change and like natural disasters, listening to what they have to say. And a lot of that information is drawn from their oral histories. Indigenous oral history comes into those sorts of things and like a really, really real powerful way.

Elliot: I mean, you look like 20 years ago and like what we thought we knew about like science and nature is like totally changed, you know? If you will like come to anything, like if you come to Bigfoot totally, like, "I will never believe in it", it's almost naive if you think about it, because if you look at the course of human knowledge, we're constantly learning new things. And I think that assuming outright that we know everything right now, like we know everything that can be known is it's like a logical fallacy. Evidence says, if we can know anything, it's that we don't know everything yet. You know, like that's like the one thing we can know for sure is that we don't know [00:45:00] everything yet. We're constantly learning, constantly refining our knowledge in basically every single realm of science, but there's constantly new things to be learned.

Elliot: And so looking at something like Bigfoot and just assuming outright that can't possibly exist, we're never going to know it, you know, like sure. Maybe there isn't a tangible Bigfoot. But assuming that there can't possibly be is sort of, I think anti-, like, discovery, you know, it's like leave yourself open for like the possibility of more out there, you know, it's even if you don't ever actually expect to find a tangible Bigfoot, having that like curiosity and that like feeling of curiosity, and also people would go out into the woods and like go like hiking because they're like interested in that kind of stuff, you know? And that there are definitely like the tinfoil hat people that like, are like trespassing through areas that are not supposed to be, and like doing all sorts of stuff. But then, like, for example, there's a county in Washington that like listed Bigfoot as a protected species that can be, if you harm a Sasquatch, there's like a thousand dollar fine. Part of the reason they did that is because of, they are in an area where there's a lot of park land and people are like coming to visit to like be in nature. And so they sort of, they use Bigfoot as this way of promoting, going out into nature and like being a part of the ecosystem and being respectful of it. So they use Bigfoot as an opportunity to do that stuff. And I think that, like we sort of said Bigfoot, like a springboard for other [00:46:30] things, Bigfoot like pushes you towards like curiosity and interest in nature and gives you that wonder, you know, even if you don't ever expect to find Bigfoot in real life, it's so fun to think about it. And I think that that like joy and like playfulness of Bigfoot can really lend itself to keeping people interested in things like science and nature and what it means to be human and what it means to be human in relation to the environment, because life would be really, really boring if we knew everything already, you know, and life would be really boring if we just thought, well, there's nothing more to learn. Yeah, let yourself have fun. Believe in Bigfoot, believe in aliens. Believe in ghosts. You know, there's nothing wrong with wanting there to be something out there. That's more than we know right now.

Ellen: Oh, hot take for this podcast I know, but I a hundred percent with all of my heart, not even the faintest, hint of irony, believe that there are aliens out there somewhere.

Elliot: Well, there are 100% aliens out there because the universe is infinite. And to think that humans are that this is the only time that life has ever happened ever, any kind of life is totally self obsessed of us like--

Ellen: Ludicrously, narcissistic.

Elliot: So narcissistic and humans love to be narcissistic, but it's like the idea that there's like literally no other kind of life out there is just ridiculous. It's an infinite universe.

Ellen: It's a numbers game at this point.

Elliot: The likelihood of them and us running into each other is heartbreakingly low, very, very low. But the same thing could be said for aliens is that it encourages people to be interested in space and interested in space [00:48:00] exploration and like. Sure. Maybe you don't ever think that aliens are, they're going to find an alien, but it encourages that like fascination in space. So I think that Bigfoot can be very inspiring in that way. You usually wrap up your episodes talking about the conservation status of these species. So I already mentioned that there's the, Skamania County, Washington protected species officially on the county law.

Ellen: I love that. I love Bigfoot having legal protections.

Elliot: Oh, yeah. And I don't know that they've ever had to give a thousand dollar fine or a year in jail for harming a Bigfoot, but you know, it's on the books.

Ellen: That would be a big story.

Elliot: In 2018, so tragically, there were two bills that didn't make it through the Washington state legislature, but there were two bills on the floor. One of which was going to make Bigfoot Washington's official state cryptid like, you know how you have an official flower or an official bird. They really wanted to like to make Bigfoot the official state cryptid, which would obviously sort of go along with like certain protective status for it. But then also there was another bill to create specialty license plates that would have Bigfoot on it.

Ellen: That'd be so cool!

Elliot: The idea being that if you bought that specialty license plate, the money would go to the Washington state parks, which tragically didn't happen. I was living in Washington at the time and I was like, yes, yes, yes. And then it didn't didn't pass the legislature.

Ellen: Did it not pass in the sense that they don't have a state cryptid or--

Elliot: Yeah we don't have a state-- nothing is the state cryptid.

Ellen: I was gonna say like what could possibly beat Bigfoot?!

Elliot: What could possibly beat Bigfoot in Washington? That's [00:49:30] basically what they have. So, no, it didn't. Nothing passed. Um, and they do have like a specialty license plate program where there are like animals and you can buy like a Orca, you know, license plate and it, the money goes to the state parks.

Ellen: We've got that on our car. We've got the bear one.

Elliot: Yeah. But of course the state legislature decided to have absolutely no fun with it. And didn't pass the Bigfoot one, which would have benefited state parks, which is another thing that I think, you talk a lot about on the show of the idea of these charismatic big, like animals, like the Panda bear or like, you know, the gorilla, like these really big charismatic species that sort of end up being like ambassadors and like spokespeople for their entire like ecosystem.

Elliot: And like ultimately it benefits the entire ecosystem to try to be conserving that one species, and Bigfoot certainly can like serve that sort of function in terms of like conservation, like in 2017, the us forestry service for their April fool's joke did like a huge thing about the loss of Bigfoot habitat and "the habitat of one of America's greatest legends may be at risk" and they have these like posters and stuff made for April fools.

Elliot: And then at the end of this long thing that they had about Bigfoots, like habitat being like endangered and stuff, they ended it with real stats on like forest loss in the United States. Bigfoot can be that, that charismatic, like large species.

Ellen: That's your flagship right there.

Elliot: Exactly. You know, like Bigfoot has a lot to give in terms of [00:51:00] conservation and learning to like care about these spaces. And I think he's more than happy to be the face of that. Uh, those kinds of movements.

Ellen: What is your, what are your thoughts and feelings towards fake Bigfoot videos and photos and stuff? Like we've all probably got an image in our mind. Okay. The film it's the Patterson Gimlet Bigfoot film. That's the thing that everybody's like familiar.

Elliot: You're like close your eyes, picture it. You can see Bigfoot walking. His arms are swaying and he likes sort of looks to the camera. That's the Patterson Gimlin film that is fake. And I think what I would say to them, no flair, no fun. You know, it's one thing for somebody to like, say that they saw Bigfoot. It's another thing to like trick people into saying you saw Bigfoot or like, you know, it's one thing to like, have your entire towns, like tourist economy based around like being Bigfoot country. And another thing to just lie to people, to get them to come like, hey, Bigfoot is out there and he's special and you're taking away from that.

Ellen: And now he's being misrepresented basically. And it's also a sense of like, well, how do you know that? That's what Bigfoot would even look like? Cause then they're placing themselves in a position of authority being like, this is how we're going to say Bigfoot canonically looks like what gives you the right to say what Bigfoot looks like.

Elliot: It's tragic. There's this really interesting study that somebody did, where they, they modeled the, what the range of Bigfoot habitat would look like based on Bigfoot sightings. Like they took Bigfoot sightings [00:52:30] and overlayed them over environmental data, and then like extracted what categories lend themselves most to Bigfoot sightings. And basically moral of the story is they found that, um, the Bigfoot habitat range and black bear is exactly the same. Interesting, interesting, interesting thing about Bigfoot ranges is it is statistically exactly the same as the American black bears range do with that information what you will, saving Bigfoot habitat, saves black bear habitat. That's just a fact, they are exactly the same whether or not you're saying that those Bigfoot sightings were black bears. I don't know, but I can't say that they are exactly the same range. So if you protect Bigfoot the habitat, you are protecting black bear habitat.

Ellen: I will say an element of that that could be in favor of the tangible existence of said Bigfoot, is that that range clearly is going to be an environment that can already support a very large omnivore. That's an ecosystem that lends itself to the trophic level that we need to --

Elliot: Then we have another issue with plausibility. Is that like, can it support two different species that fill the exact same ecological niche?

Ellen: Yeah, I guess they would, wouldn't they.

Elliot: I don't know. They're in direct competition. Maybe the black bear have made Bigfoot go extinct. Maybe they out competed them in their natural range.

Ellen: That would be in direct opposition to the [00:54:00] arguments of pretty much every dude who has said they could beat up a bear.

Elliot: Yeah, no, they outcompeted Bigfoot. So what are you going to do about it? Who was saying they can beat up a bear?!

Ellen: I've seen dudes say they could beat up a bear. I know.

Elliot: Talk about human narcissism. Thinking that you can beat up a black bear. You're not going to win.

Ellen: They're not even the biggest bear.

Elliot: No, they're not even the biggest bear and you're still not gonna win. And also they don't want to fight you. Bears are not aggressive.

Ellen: I've never experienced an aggressive bear.

Elliot: I've been within like 50 feet of a black bear before they, and they just, it just sat there and stared at me and at the like huge group of people that gathered around to stare at it, which was very stupid of them.

Ellen: I mean, that's the thing, like maybe the bears and Bigfoot have sort of an understanding not to bother each other. Like, you know, maybe they're scared of each other.

Elliot: Maybe they recognize like, "hey. We're in this together, trying to avoid humans getting in our stuff."

Ellen: Game recognizes game.

Elliot: "Like I don't have opposable thumbs, so maybe if you could throw a rock at the human, that'd be great because I can't pick up a rock."

Ellen: They're teaming up.

Elliot: Yeah. This is an alliance. Definitely. Somebody needs to write a, like paper about like the species interaction going on there. It's a couple with the species modeling paper that demonstrated that their habitats are identical.

Elliot: See this is what

Ellen: I like about Bigfoot is that it gives you an opportunity to think about things like, well, how would, you know, an interaction play out between a great ape and a black bear living in the same place? Like you could probably look at like the interactions between bears and apes that live [00:55:30] in Asia, like in places where--

Elliot: Yeah, I guess that is, that's probably the only place that they really overlap, huh?

Ellen: Like there being like forests where you'll find probably like--

Elliot: Like a sun bear and an orangutan or something.

Ellen: Right bears and great apes live together in places like that.

Elliot: I mean, we share a range with lots of bears.

Ellen: So it's not unprecedented.

Elliot: It's not a great species interaction. Maybe we should learn from Bigfoot and their coexistence with the bears. We could all be a little bit more like Bigfoot, I think.

Ellen: And that's the tagline right there. That's the TLDR; we could all afford to be a little bit more Bigfoot like, and open your mind and your heart to Bigfoot. And it'll just unlock the entire world of childlike wonder.

Elliot: Yeah. And that's the thing is like, when people ask me, like, okay, but do you believe in Bigfoot? Like I said, I gave it a four out of 10 plausibility, but here's the thing: it's so much more fun to believe in Bigfoot. It's just so much more fun to believe in Bigfoot.

Ellen: Choose joy!

Elliot: Choose joy. Choose Bigfoot. Don't give up on your childlike wonder.

Ellen: It's believing with your heart and not your mind.

Elliot: Exactly. Well, like I said, I did give it a four out of 10. There's the sliver of hope because I can't give up on the fact that Bigfoot's out there waiting for me to hang out with them.

Ellen: It's what he represents, what he stands for.

Elliot: It's what he represents to us in our hearts, and our souls.

Ellen: He's an icon.

Elliot: He's an icon. He's our dear relative. He's the only other extant species of our genus. I'm going to say it now.[00:57:00]

Ellen: He would never give up on us. So believe in Bigfoot, because he believes in you.

Elliot: Exactly. Exactly. I do think that I've seen like that like on a t shirt.

Ellen: That's probably on there. That's probably where I got it from.

Elliot: Yeah. Just, I believe in you Bigfoot and you believe in me.

Ellen: Bigfoot. If you're listening...

Elliot: Listening, somebody leave a like iPod out in the woods, for Bigfoot, blast it on some speakers out in the forest, let Bigfoot know that we're here and that we love him.

Ellen: I have to tell you, there is somebody out there who plays this podcast on speakers to keep cougars away. This podcast has been used as cougar deterrent, which I was overjoyed to hear about.

Elliot: Yeah, that's great. Normally like when I've had to do survey in areas where there are bears and cougars, I just occasionally like shout, just walk around you, just absentmindedly shout every once in awhile, just to let them know. I think it would probably be much more pleasant to the other people I'm surveying with to be blasting a podcast.

Ellen: As long as it's a podcast everybody can agree on.

Elliot: Who can disagree with listening to people talk about animals. If you're, if you're surveying in the woods and you have a job that involves you needing to survey in the woods. I think that you're the kind of person that wants to listen to a podcast about animals.

Ellen: We clearly all have common ground here. Yeah. All right. Elliot, before we wrap up for today, I would love it. If you could let our listeners know, like what kind of projects do you have ongoing right [00:58:30] now? What are you involved with that you want people to know about? Like, what do you want to leave our listeners with today?

Elliot: So I have two things that I want to shout out. One is a really big thing that I'm involved in is this anarchic archeology collective called the Black Trowel Collective. And we do a lot of things, but one of the big things that we do is we have a micro grants committee where archeology students that are in need of a little bit of financial help can apply to get like no strings attached money. Um, which is really great. So if you just Google Black Trowel Collective.

Ellen: How do you spell that?

Elliot: The trowel part T R O W E L. It's like a garden trowel.

Ellen: Got it.

Elliot: Yes. And then the other thing that I want to shout out is, so, you know, Sasquatch is inspired by Coast Salish, oral histories. So I want to encourage your listeners to support a land focused organization that is based in Coast Salish territory. There are a couple, but I'm going to shout out the Na'ah Illahee Fund specifically. They're based in Seattle and they have grants and a lot of community programs that support indigenous ecology, food sovereignty, and wise action, and they work to advance climate and gender justice. So I think that that's something that animal lovers and lovers of the environment can get behind is, you know, supporting indigenous ecology and food sovereignty in the Coast Salish homelands where Bigfoot lives and where the Sasquatch like stories come from. So I just wanted to shout out the, uh, Na'ah Illahee Fund and I can give you the link for that also.

Ellen: Awesome. Those links will all be in the episode description. [01:00:00] Yeah. So just scroll down on your app and you can click through this.

Elliot: Um, and you can find me on Twitter at archhelmer, A R C H H E L M E R on Twitter. I don't normally tweet about Bigfoot. I mostly tweet about some of the other stuff we talked about. The like indigenous oral history stuff, and broadly about the environment and other anthropology topics and shellfish. A lot of shellfish I talk about. So if you're into Marine ecosystems, I definitely tweet a lot about that.

Ellen: Which if you're here listening, you probably are.

Elliot: Yes. Yeah. I was so disappointed when, when I first started listening to this podcast, I was like, maybe I should email and I can do like a barnacle episode. And then there was a barnacle episode already, and I was like dang it!

Ellen: Sorry!

Elliot: That was like, well, what do I know as much about, as I know about barnacles? Bigfoot.

Ellen: And we had not had a Bigfoot episode. So now you are the, uh, the intro to cryptids on Just the Zoo of Us. Now, the precedent has been set. There is now an expectation.

Elliot: Oh boy, whoever has to talk about cryptids next, please. You do not feel like you have to talk about philosophy and anthropology as much as I did.

Ellen: That's the fun part of cryptids! It gets the wheels turning.

Elliot: It really does. And you know, Bigfoot is an anthropological topic.

Ellen: Yeah, absolutely. He fits right in with primatology. Yeah. We've had primatologists come on to talk about other primates.

Elliot: We have primatologists in my department, so, you know, it's, it's part of anthropology. It's very real.

Ellen: [01:01:30] Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Elliot for spreading appreciation for Bigfoot, sharing your knowledge, and this has been delightful. Everybody go follow Elliot, scroll down, check out some of the links that they dropped. And thank you so much. We'll talk to you later.

Elliot: All right. I had a great time.

Ellen: Thanks, me too. Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening friends. I hope that you have learned something new, whether it's about Bigfoot or about yourself and your place in our big, beautiful world. Remember it is Bigfoot's world. We're just living in it. It has been refreshing to explore mysteries like cryptids and the unknowns of nature. With each episode of this podcast, I learned something new and come away with some new perspective. And I hope that you do too. It's really a theme that is central to this podcast and being able to explore those themes has been so meaningful, not just to me personally, but I just think it's an important thing to be doing always, but especially now when it's so needed. So if you too find exploring the mysteries of nature to be of value in the world today, and you are in such a position that allows it, please do sign up for a membership to support this podcast so that we can keep putting unabashedly joyful content out for all you nature nerds out there. One more time, that is maximumfun.org/join. [01:03:00] Next week, you, the audience, are the star of the show. Christian and I will be answering your questions. If you haven't sent them in yet, there is still a little bit of time. Send them to me via email at ellen@justthezooofus.com by Friday, April 29th.

Ellen: We are also going to be opening up those experiences that you beautiful folks have shared with us. So stay tuned for those. I really can't wait. I love y'all. Finally, thank you to Louie Zong for our beautiful theme music, and we'll see y'all next week for our Q&A episode Byeeeee.