Greetings everyone, it's map pro It here.

Obviously, we're all reeling and very heartbroken at the news of the loss of doctor Jeff Meldrim, who was a huge influence on all of us but a dear friend to both Cliff and Bobo.

Usually on Fridays we re release old episodes that we call classics, but this morning I decided that I think it would be better to release this bonus episode that we recorded with Jeff Meldrim back in March of twenty twenty three.

So this was originally recorded then after we recorded what was our two hundredth episode.

This was originally just for members of the podcast, but we wanted to put it out here on the main feed.

I know that Cliff and Bobo will have a lot to say about doctor Meldrim and his tremendous contributions to the field at some point in the very near future, but in the meantime, here's an interview that the main listenership hasn't heard, and we hope that everyone enjoys This discussion remembers Jeff and celebrates the many, many contributions that he made to this field.

Enjoy the episode.

Okay, everybody, welcome to Beyond Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo, and we really appreciate your membership.

Today we're a continue our conversation with doctor Jeff Meldrim for our two hundredth episode.

Jeff, thank you so much for sticking around for a membership section.

We really appreciate it.

Glad too, Yes, thank you.

Thanks.

In the main episode, we're having great.

I was enjoying the conversation, so I'll call it and call it great, A great conversation about various bits of anatomy and details like that.

There's a couple other bits I wanted to ask you about, and then we want to talk a little bit about research, modern and all that sort of stuff and potential.

But as far as anatomy goes, one of the things I didn't get a chance to ask you is about their eyes, because much has been made about their eyes with eyeshine or eye reflectivity and all sorts of stuff, and their night vision.

But some people Daryl Collier, for example, was on our show and he mentions that from his observations, maybe not visual, but he's had several his observations of sasquatches an area X, he's starting to think that perhaps they don't see as well at night as people give them credit for.

Do you have any thoughts on that or i reflectivity to pede and lucidum or anything like that.

Well, sure, if we just first establish an anatomical baseline.

So the rule sort of is that higher primates, monkeys and apes do not have a reflecting membrane that to pay them lucidum, and that was seen that the loss of that seems to correspond to to the evolution of the fhovia Centraali's the focal point where there's an area of the retina that is relatively well much more sparsely vascularized, so you don't have the interference of the basku that you realize that our photoreceptive cells are at the back of the retina.

We have kind of a back ass word design where the light has to come through several layers of cells being diffracted by the nuclei and other cell structures and as well as the vasculature.

So we've evolved this phobious centrallis an area and you may have heard the macula macula that surrounds it.

Macular degeneration is a condition that plagues some people, but that area is much more sparsely vascularized, and the overlying layers of cells is thinned out, and the depression has therefore more surface area and a greater concentration of cones, which are much more sensitive to visual acuity.

There's a much higher ratio of innervation.

Each nerve has fewer receptors, and so it's much more specific in its response to discrete information, you know, discrete photons and so forth.

Anyway, so there's that, So there's that distinction.

The lower primates, the lemurs and lorises and so forth, they have the reflecting membrane, and many of them are dedicated nocturnal species.

Now there's a couple of interesting exceptions.

There are a couple of monkey.

There's a monkey, a South American monkey, the darakuli, the owl monkey, which has secondarily re evolved nocturnal behaviors.

But in the with the lack of a tapatom, what they have done the strategy is to just greatly increase the absolute size of the eye, so it's light gathering capacity relative to the organism itself is greatly enhanced.

I mean, I mean, it's it's really an app salute quality.

It's not dependent on the size of the organism.

The other example is the tarsire, which is kind of this in between.

It's a very primitive, you could say, a very primitive monkey.

It kind of straddles the division between the lemurs and lorises on the one hand and the monkeys on the other hand.

But in any case, it's similar to monkeys in that it has lost it's to pay them as well and has a phobia.

But it is also nocturnal and as a result, its eyes, because it's a small little critter, you know, hamster size, its eyes have gotten enormous, so big that one eye is bigger than its brain.

It's huge.

They're huge to for that light gathering capacity.

So having said that, with that in mind, what do we have.

Oh one other anecdote, a behavioral anecdote, and that is there was an effort to habituate chimpanzees in Uganda to human interaction in order to try to exploit some eco tourism industry and a researcher that you may know, I don't know if you ever met Owen Caddy.

I did meet him very briefly.

I can't say I have a relationship with him, but I met him well.

Owen was over in Africa with the Peace Corps, and then when his stint was done, he stayed on and got a job as a park ranger in a Uganda excuse me park and they were tasked with this job of trying to habituate the chimps.

The problem was the chimps had been so traumatized by all the warfare that was going on in the country that they had become behaviorally nocturnal.

That is, they would come out in the twilight hours of the evening to forage and then you know, they would then bed down in the middle of the night and get up before dawn and forage.

And but during the daytime they stayed out of side.

They stayed in thickets or hidden way up in the canopy, and so they had real trouble finding them.

They were so elusive, but they eventually did were able to interact with them.

And you know, my question was, well, were they stumbling around in the dark, like did they have white canes?

And he said no, it was really quite amazing.

They were actually quite adept at getting around by starlight or by moonlight.

And you know, you think about it, we get so used to all this light pollution.

If you've ever had the chance to be out in the outer doors for a long period of time, your eyes and your ability to see, do you know you accommodate.

I guess nothing is really enhanced.

It's just you're powers of navigation and interpretation of what you're experiencing.

And you learn how to see too.

Because because of our focal point, because of that phobia and the concentration of cones, that means that that area is less sensitive to dim light, to gray scale light.

And so you'll notice this if you go out in the dusk, say you're going out in the parking lot to your car, and you drop your keys.

If you look straight for them, straight at them, or where you think they are, you see this kind of a wispy, kind of ghostly mist that sort of obscures your vision at that point.

If you look just to the side of your keys, so that the image of the keys falls more on your peripheral vision, where there's a much higher proportion of rods, you can see it.

You can't see it quite as clearly as you would in daytime, you know, on your focal point, but you can see it.

Try that experiment home and you'll be really quite amazed.

One of the things we used to teach newcomers on finding Bigfoot, and we had the trump around on logging roads all nights is a it's a technique called averted vision, which is something I picked up from my amateur astronomy pursuits.

When you're looking at faint and nebu lee or galaxies or anything like that, they don't contrast against the dark background very well.

So it sounds like a very zen thing to say, is that if you want to if you want to see it, don't look at.

It right exactly.

And it's a technique that you have to a skilled you kind of have to develop a little bit.

It's because it's counterintuitive.

It's not a natural thing to do.

But once you discover it, you you can pick up on it anyway.

So with all that in mind, the plasticity of behavior in the chimp, which is otherwise a diurnal you know, lacking the to pay them, and the strategy exhibited by those very few species who have secondarily gone back to knock internality by simply increasing the absolute size of the eye.

Now think about sasquatch, So what what might be Maybe the capacity is much greater and as far as sensitivity and into the infrared.

You know, I don't know of any studies that have really engaged that.

The questions have really never been asked where that that kind of data has been collected for great apes or monkeys, to be quite honest, to see what kind of variation.

We have a limited number of species to draw from anyway, and you can't You've got to avoid falling into the trap that chimps and gorillas and rings represent all of apeedum.

They don't, you know, They're a narrow, narrow sample, you know, could be a very skewed representation of the different strategies that other apes have evolved.

Anyway, But take size.

If if that cranium scales up to the size of a sasquatch, and the eyes have scaled isometrically, in other words, they've kept the same proportions, they've gotten really big.

The eye of a sasquatch would be like the size of a tennis ball, and much like the increased size of the owl, monkey or the tars here, it would have greater light gathering capacity than would a human under the same circumstances.

Well, you know what I think of a tars here as well, they're cute little guys.

They are hanging in the trees and stuff.

But one of the things that stands out is sure they have big eyes, but the almost the entirety of their eye is taking up by the iris, which which is just a muscle for opening up the lens anyway, or focusing the lens and opening up the aperture of the eye, rather.

Open up the aperture of the pupil.

And that was the next point I was going to make, is that is that with that eyeball the size of a tennis ball and then an iris or a pupil that can open up remarkably largely.

And many people you know, have talked about sasquatch eyes being these dark, deep dark, you know, almost alien eyes.

And if you've looked at the tars here, that isn't that isn't blinded by the photographer's flash at night.

Its eye, its pupil is enormous, like you said, it nearly fills the whole visible portion of the of the eye.

And so so yeah, I think those combinations would allow a sasquatch to and and clearly they're not strictly and absolutely only nocturnal.

I mean, when was Patty encountered, you know, in the afternoon.

So I think that there again there's some behavioral plasticity as well, and it may be that the nocturnality is as well.

It could be one of two things, at least avoiding interaction with humans, but also partitioning the large omnivore niche with bears which have rather maybe just to offset your activity profile.

That is a well documented strategy that other sympatric species species that occupy the same region utilized in order to differentiate similar niches.

Is dividing up the activity profile, the daily activity profile when you're out, so that you're not out at times that you're going to be in direct competition with or interaction with a competing species.

Hey, Jeff, have you heard about people talking about there being the secondary eyelid that comes out from the side like a reptile.

And then also the person I heard talking about said like astrolopithesene or some early hominid hominids had that same feature.

Is that true?

Well, I haven't.

I haven't heard that, and there'd be no way to infer that from the skeleton.

We don't even have a good There isn't a good correlation between the bony orbit and the size of the eyeball across species comparisons.

You know, So some people have looked at you look at a Neanderthal skull, and their orbits are noticeably larger in proportion to their skull than are human orbits.

And some have said, well, that's because they must have had bigger eyes and they were nocturnal predators, see they evolve nocturnality.

Well that's possible, but when you go and look at a whole array of other species of primate, great apes and monkeys, there isn't a real tight correlation between those those two measures.

So you're you know, you're going out a limb.

But as far as the third eyelid, that nictitating membrane, you know, like your dog has, you you know there, it's not present in primates.

It's it's very rudimentary in humans and great apes, it's just not it doesn't slide across.

We had a dog who was just hated to have its fingers toenails clipped and so.

And he was big enough and strong enough.

It was hard to handle and you'd get scratch.

He wouldn't bite or any but he'd scratch and claw and and so my my wife would slip him a happy pill sedatium a little bit, and for like the next eight hours, his his third eyelid would come over about half It's like he lost control of it and it would come over about halfway across his eye.

It was the funniest looking thing.

The poor guy was so spaced out.

But as far as I know, primates don't have that quality, that feature.

Have you heard anyone any witnesses describers.

I've heard some good witness descriptions up close studying as they said, they definitely saw that.

And did it?

Did it go across like a windshield wiper?

I mean, is that did they notice it like that or was it just.

I guess when they blinked that that the what do you call it, the nictitating nictitating membrane?

Yeah, slid across, Yeah, that would go That would be like almost all it would be like halfway across whatever.

Then the top one would come down.

Well, I could I could go back to literature and look in my my familiarity with anatomy doesn't include any description of that feature being present in I we'd have no way to assess it from the fossil record obviously, and it's certainly not present in humans, but it could look.

If the nocturnal tendencies, because they're certainly not strictly nocturnal, the tendencies of sasquash be nocturnal, have developed some sort of a greater nocturnal vision in low light vision, and it's it's based almost solely on just a different design of the eye, like a larger eye, a larger perhaps pupill area opening that sort of thing.

Let alone, it could change the shape I mean, I guess owls have a different shape of their eye that like almost like a cylinder, which somehow amplifies the light for them.

But if that those are the things going on, then this red eyeshine that is often reported, could that be a different a different expression of the same sort of thing where you take a picture with the flash and you know Grandma has red eyes at Christmas.

Right exactly so, so a very large pupil opened up would and and if if there is you know, the right perspective by the viewer, they might see that highly vascularized retina, which in the absence of it to pay them where there are you know, molecules that help to reflect and depending on which what the molecular profile is, there's a yellow eye shine or a blue eye shine or a green eye shine.

It just has to do with whatever crystals, whatever molecules are in the tapayed them.

But in the absence of that, the pinki the phenomenon you described that, you know, the photographer's bane of pink eye that seems to particularly afflict those with lighter colored, less pigmented irises.

But also when the pupil is dilated, there's more tendency for a pink eie effect.

You know, it doesn't really if the flash is fast enough and short aperture time, exposure time, then sometimes the constriction of the pupil doesn't eliminate it.

Yeah, that would now people who argue that they are self illuminating, that their eyes glow in like in the daylight.

I mean, first of all, stop and think about it.

It h if such a phenomenon did occur, it would make no sense for it to occur within the eyeball.

If you if there was tissue within the eyeball that could self illuminate, it would just scramble any incoming visual signal.

I mean, it'd be like someone shine in a flashlight in your eye.

Now, So the only thing that would make sense is if there was something in the say the iris, that was illuminating in response to the light or something or I can't imagine any mechanism or any selection pressure for uh for for self illuminating irises.

But then again, if if our earlier discussion about extreme enlargement of the pupil is true to the point that it feels the visible you know, covers the visible the iris is pulled back completely, then that does that explanation doesn't work very well because you wouldn't you know, there wouldn't be much iris left there to illuminate to give off light.

So I'm my experience has been and I hate to make generalizations, but drawing upon my direct experience when people have shown me eyeshine, I mean, we had one experience where the witness you know, immediately pointed out eye shine, Oh there, look there it is, that was it, and he claimed, you know, these eyes were eight feet up in the air.

Well, we went and investigated, and there was a recent duff of snow quarter inch of wet snow on the ground, and we found that they weren't eight feet up in the air because it was a slope that you couldn't see from our vantage point that once you got there, the eyes were, if anything, were on the lower branches of this tree.

And guess what was right underneath the tree?

A set of raccoon tracks, as clear as could be.

And I go, okay, well, let's just you know, evaluate this.

We we've saw glowing eyes that were very characteristic of a reflection from a night vision to pay them, lucid them and it was close to the ground, and there are raccoon tracks, but no sasquad tracks.

What do you think you saw?

And man, it was tough to get him to admit, oh, it was probably just a raccoon.

But that's been my experience is that people overinterpret their what they see.

And belief is a real strong drug.

Oh yeah, it really is.

Well, Belief confriended with evidence is a is a paradigm shaking moment.

A lot of people aren't very uncomfortable with that, I think.

Especially when you have a dose of ego mixed in for levining.

Now, Bob, but you want to ask about some research and whatnot, do you anything right off the cover.

I can take the lead on this one because I've got a couple of things I'd like to ask.

Yeah, go go ahead, Well.

Okay, so Jeff, as far as current or future research or even past research, what do you think is valuable?

And my own my own, my own position, of course is people should enjoy the subjects in whatever way they are most interested, if they want to take stories from people, and and that's that's great, do that sort of stuff.

But but what do you think is going to push the ball a little further down the field in the absence of a type specimen?

Yeah, that's and that that ultimate question, that's really the you know, the brass ring.

That's the take home message.

And I think that the best well I've I've often advocated that I think there's there's two lines of two directions of research that will possibly push it forward, push the question for and that is short of a type specimen, a DNA voucher, there already is a DNA specimen, a voucher specimen of DNA that can be replicated and sequenced and identified as an unknown And see, that's that's part of the problem, right.

There is that in gen Bank.

Well, that's just it.

We don't have any known specimen of sasquatch DNA in a gen bank, and so most identifications occur by taking the the sample in question and comparing the sequence to those that have been cataloged in the gen bank.

So it's kind of like with identifying hair.

You know, hair is typically identified by comparing an unknown to a known specimen, a catalog specimen.

And without a known sasquatch hair, all we can conclude is that that this hair has primate like characteristics.

There's a fully sequence genail that's on.

No, I say, if there was, if there so, so yeah, well I'm saying, I'm saying the best you could hope for is if you had a sample that indeed was with sasquatch.

Is that your investigator, your analyst would say, well, this is unknown.

It matches nothing in gene bank, gen bank or gen bank, and so and just like with hair, we can say, well, this hair doesn't match any known wildlife.

It's an unknown.

So but but these all these unknowns are remarkably consistent and uh and you know, attest to originating from some some consistent species, you know.

And so same with the DNA.

If if we got multiple samples that were identical to one another, and could not be matched to any known sample, then that would potentially represent an unknown species.

And then what you do is you go in and compare it to the gnomes and you and there are techniques that allow you to determine what its nearest neighbors are, which group does it cluster with, based on derived traits derived sequences, and then you know, you could say, well this this most closely matches or clusters with a clade of great apes, or it is most similar to human to the exclusion of all other apes.

So therefore it's related to humans somehow, like a hominid like paranthropists.

If it was that the paranthrapist model were to hold up, we would assume that there are some derived traits that would separate it from all other apes.

So that's that's the But see, that's going to require if we're talking about a creature that is potentially identical to humans down to a difference of a half of one percent, then you've got to do a pretty complete sequence in order to find those scattered markers that only account for you know, zero point five percent of the gene sequence.

Most studies that are tests rather not studies, but most tests that are conducted on an unknown sample, or you know, a real pretty quick and dirty look at one or maybe two spots in the mitochondrial gene genome rather collection of genes.

And if that, if they're even doing complete plow sie, you know, if they do more than a say, a thousand base pairs, you're you're probably paying lots and lots of money to have that done.

Do you have a do you have a in your back pocket or hidden away?

Do you have a sample that you're holding onto that you think is most like you're really confident would be you know, it could show a sasquatch genome.

No, I don't.

I don't honestly.

I mean, because we what what things we have had in the past.

You know, we've we've submitted for testing, and and that kind of testing usually consumes the sample.

So no, I don't, uh, I mean there are and and the problem with you know, the most common samples are hair, and hair is notoriously challenging to get DNA from because of this distinctive characteristic of a cellular medula, you know.

And I used to say this is interesting because I used to say, well, that's not you know, some mysterious feature that's not uh that that that's that's a known characteristic of some types of hair.

But as I as I started digging a little more and looking through the catalogs, one, there are really aren't any species out there in polar bear supposedly has hollow hair with an a cellular medulla, you know, for insulated qualities.

But there aren't really many, if any other species.

So it is a very distinctive characteristic.

There aren't many other species that have that characteristic.

It is a very distinct characteristic of sasquatch.

That is remarkably consistent.

Now, isn't it true that red headed humans have a similar structure.

Yes, yes, red red or very blonde, very light, lightly pigmented individuals often have a cellular or or at least in what they call discontinuous medulla.

Now would there be a connection there since one of the other possible traits of sasquatch hair is it shines red when backlit.

Is there?

Do you think there's a connection there any in any way?

Well, not necessarily, because I from my experience and reading, it hasn't been particularly redheads so much as it is very pale blonde toe heads where there's a lack of pigment in the hair.

With red heads there is the presence of the fail milan and the reddish pigment which is present in the sasquatch hair as well.

They have eumulanin and fail milanin.

The yumilanin is the dark pigment, fail milan is the reddish.

And so you get as you it's kind of like you've got these two rheostats, you know you can alter, so you get an individual that has very little of either.

And these are the quote white Sasquatch, you know, the rare white Sasquatch.

And then you go on up and you get the beige or buckskin and the reddish reddish brown, dark brown black, almost mahogany where there still is a little bit of red highlight in there.

Interesting is across that entire color spectrum, chromatic spectrum, they all have an a cellular medulla, and so that's what's different than human, whereas it's usually just the very light pale hairs that occasionally have an a cellular medulla.

Even there it's not consistent oner sent but across Sasquatch and I hope we're not cherry picking imposing.

I don't think we are because in other words, only attributing those with an a cellular medulla to be a sasquatch, you know, we subliminally or unconsciously accept that as a distinguishing characteristic, and so anything that does have a medulla couldn't be a sasquatch because there are other features.

I mean, the hair are approximately sixty five microns across, they have parallel sides, they have a blunt tip where there's no taper.

I mean, the the only other species that has those characteristics is human.

So that's why we end up with this notion that there and this is why I think Henna Fahrenbach was a little reluctant to make a more take a more conclusive position, was that there's always that chance that you have something that is just a misidentified human.

And he was hoping that the DNA would would you know, be the final arbiter for that.

What's happened with DNA costs since it's been on last It's been about a couple of years since we had you on what how much does it come down to?

Know?

It's always dropping in price?

Well, I I don't have a real good sense of that.

I mean, my, my, you know, discussions recently with the idea of maybe undertaking an environmental DNA study, it was to do it thoroughly and extensively was extremely expensive.

I mean we're talking about a project, a multi year project that would be several many hundreds of thousands of dollars to undertake, and I mean I'm sure that we could trim that budget somewhat.

Some of that was the ambition to include postdocs and graduate students in order to do the legwork.

Wouldn't if they if they found something real promising, like well, this is this is a unique strand here, would they would they just want to do it for free at that point, just for the scientific glory.

Well, if you if you had something that was compelling enough.

But even getting that first initial undertaking, I mean I was shot in the well.

I surveyed.

I contacted rather a number of labs, you know, by calling through the literature and finding laboratories at at universities where they were doing molecular studies on grade apes and publishing regularly.

And you know, I figured they would have the expertise, they would probably have the manpower, the post docs and so forth, because they're an active molecular lab.

And unfortunately, because of that, they were adamant that they couldn't do even if they were interested, and they you know, I didn't get a uniform formally positive reception, but even the ones that were interested.

It's such a dog eat dog funding environment out there.

You know.

The latest figures I've heard for National Science Foundation were ten percent or less of the submitted proposals were funded and so, and that's sometimes that's on the first round, you know, blah blah blah, but people argue, but still it doesn't go out very high, very very much further than that.

And so with that level of competition, the labs are under extreme pressure to produce and and not do anything that would jeopardize you know, that some reviewer could could hoist as a red flag for a grant renewal or a proposal.

So that was the reception I got.

So that's that's the problem.

You know, it's the funding, and it's also the willingness of the unless you just go to a commercial lab and you contract it, but then the costs are inordinately higher than if you went through an academic institution with.

That hit like a million dollars, you think.

Oh, I don't know if we'd go if it got that high for for you know, straightforward test.

It's just I really think that we're going to have to do an extensive nuclear genome in order to find those few markers that distinguish and convincingly.

I'm you know, I mean, I'm fairly active in the field and whatnot.

I know that I have my own biases that tend me towards finding footprints and trying to predicts where these things are going and what they're doing and whatnot.

But you know, the vast major ninety nine percent of our audience probably are just amateurs who are interested.

Where do you think those research efforts should go?

Because even after the academic exception, acceptance of the sasquatch is a real deal.

You know, everybody knows they're real animals, there's still going to be a role for amateurs at some point because you know, academics are teaching, they're doing their own research things.

But so the chance encounters, which is what tends to happen with sasquatches, are still going to be happening.

What can amateurs do to not only move the ball down the field, but also to not bruise ourselves because you know, and Darren Darren Nache visited my home and I shared a bunch of footprint casts with them, and he told me that there's a lot of academics out there who are closely watching what happens.

And that just made me shuddered thinking about these ten Yeah, that's like the representatives who get the media attention.

It just that just scared me in a way.

And so what could we be doing as amateurs to help.

Right, Well, one is continually to educate yourself, you know that this was one of the goals of the Field Guide was to kind of provide a little leg up in that direction, but to uh cultivate and practice you know, the most objective and systematic forms of data collection and documentation and reporting, and not to just advocate.

I mean, I think we collect actively shoot ourselves in the foot when over eager individuals, you know, for want of another click post and repost things that are obviously or have been repeatedly debunked, and that that just creates so much distraction and interference that it's it makes it that I'm sure a lot of things slip between the cracks because you know, they're just they're tainted by association kind of or lost in the in the fog.

So when it comes to footprints, you know, just basic things like scale, like cultivating good habits of the techniques of photography UH and documentation it and and doing the the contextual leg work establishing the scene.

I mean, if you're if you if there's six inches of snow on the ground, wet snow, and you find absolutely what appear to be Chris Christine footprints, you should be able to track that creature for considerable distance.

And if all you present is an abbreviated YouTube video that shows one or two or three footprints with yours trumped all over the place to make the scene almost unintelligible, you've done really a disservice, or you've I should say you've you've you've not risen to the to the mark and uh and you've you've missed the opportunity to perhaps document a very compelling case with a large data set from which things like gate parameters and associated behavior food scat.

You know, you find a place where they've urinated, you know, and scoop it up in a pint jar or something things like that.

But so that's that's one thing.

And then also, obviously one of the other big areas are all these quote blob squatches instead of just throwing out every shadow, every this or that.

If you think, and especially if they are items that a photograph that you've taken associated with a first hand experience of your own, you know, reinforced by that experience.

You look at that image and it reinforces or you can be confident in what it portrays.

But someone who doesn't have the benefit of that firsthand experience, it must rely on your ability to make a compelling case for this questionable image.

So you're saying, but you just said, Dirk, like soil that or a sasquatch, you're in it.

That's useful these days?

It could be yeah, if you if you respond quickly enough, if we got that sample into ethanol or some other way to stabilize the proteins and possible DNA you know that could be extracted from that from from slough cells or whatnot.

I mean, it's a biological fluid, so there there are things that could be done with it, presumably, but it's it's a narrow window.

But a lot of it is just to up the ante up the game so that the evidence is more compelling, that it has much greater contextual establishment.

You know, the comparison shots with you know, someone standing in the same spot, the picture taken from the same place, I mean goes that speaks volumes.

Not all sasquatch are going to be extra humanly large.

But if if what your portray train is that narrows down the or strengthens the likelihood of it being something rather than just a you know, a figure in the distance or a fisherman or this that or the other.

So I guess that I don't know.

That's not a real satisfy.

It's kind of a clumsy answer, But in short, it's just up the game and be much more methodical in your in your data collection instead of instead of peeking through the not hole, you know, offering the notthle to art to your viewer to watch the game, knock down the whole section of the fans so we can really see what's going.

On, and then of course behave in an appropriate and sober manner as far as presentation goes.

Well, sure, I know it's hard to take a YouTube video seriously when it's been then set to some weird music.

You know, or we Spooky Spook Galley, you know theme song.

It's I mean, why would you do that if you're serious and this is a legitimate I mean I've I've conditioned myself my thinking to where I realized that in this day and age.

I mean at one time I would say, well, if someone was serious, they would never post it on YouTube, they would look up an expert, they would take it to a university here.

And now I realize, no, that people wouldn't do that, right, that's the way people think today.

But it doesn't surprise me that people do that.

So I've got to I ward off the tendency to just dismiss something that's been posted on YouTube, because that's the way people communicate today.

That's the public bulletin board, you know, the town hall bulletin board, so town square bulletin board.

I mean, well, then that brings up and probably maybe the final point before we let you go.

I think if someone does get good compelling footage, or even mediocre pretty compelling footage, what should one do with it as far as the release goes?

Yeah, Well, that's you know, and I can understand when people are concerned about you know, some proprietary claim to it and I and there are ways, I mean, I'm personally not familiar with them, but with all the copyright laws that exist, you.

Don't need to.

No, No, you don't need to because I know a little bit about that from being a musician.

If you hold, if you hold the camera, it is yours.

You don't need to file papers.

You don't need to do anything.

And did you catch that news item where there was a sort of baboon or monkey that accidentally took a selfie and and that went to court because the person who owns the person who took the picture owns it.

And there can a monkey own a picture?

How funny?

Yeah, So if you if you photograph, if you if you film a sasquatch, it is yours.

You don't actually have to file papers.

You can, but you don't have to.

Well with that reassurance, then I think that if a person is serious, there are individuals like the three of us, or there are others out there are who have established a reputation of serious investigation and who are very experienced and have dealt with a lot of different forms of evidence and examples of photographic evidence that you would want to seek out their advice and their reaction.

I mean, it's just like with the footprints, you know, I have a constant stream.

I mean, every day at least there's an example of a footprint that comes across my computer screen.

And you know, the vast majority of them are readily attributable to other interpretations or other identifications.

But there are every once in a while ones that I mean, there are those that are so ambiguous you just can't say one way or the other.

I mean that people are hopeful, but every once in a while those there are some that are really quite intriguing, and and then hopefully the investigator has had the where with, you know, the presence of mind to do their own little investigation, shoot as many pictures as they can.

You know, in this digital age, what's what's stopping you from taking dozens and dozens of pictures and and walking a little further for and aft of the find to see if there's any other sign, you know, further along that would would further substantiate.

Well, there you go, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us again for beyond Well, actually there's the first thing you've been on.

Beyond big thing and beyond our membership thing.

We really appreciate your extra time and and just the wealth of knowledge that you bring to the subject.

And I would really really appreciate that.

Yeah, thank you, Jeff.

It's always a learning experience for me too to think through some of these things and hear your your questions and comments and insights.

I appreciate it as well.

It's got up to doing for me.

Well, I thought it'd be fun to angle this one really heavily towards anatomy, since that is your specialty, and it's such an interesting aspect.

And if it's so everything is so congruent.

I guess I keep using the word congruent because that's just the way I see it.

You know that these things, yeah, that they share some anatomy and characteristics with chimpanzees and humans and gorillas and and whatever's going on here.

Like I say it often on stage where people can crucify me.

Yeah, whatever these things are, they evolved here.

They have so much in common with everything else that we're looking at.

Why would we go.

Outside the box in that sort of way, And it's it's.

Really neat to do that.

Yeah, it's always interesting to kind of rain the audience back in Have you been present when I've shown the various slides that have Like there's one where there's a very comely female in a bikini walking and I've got walking away from the camera, and I've got the partying kind of the shot of angled shot of Patty, and one on a vanbam.

I mean, you know, you do something like that and people chuckle.

But if they'll stop and think, I mean, it's so obvious, they become fixated on something like, well, the big toe isn't divergent, so it's not an ape, and they know to ignore everything else about it.

It looks like an eight one thing tips the scale, you know, So a picture like that, while it's a little tongue in cheek, it's really meant to give you pause and consider what is it that you're focused on?

Right, Yeah, whatever this thing is, it makes sense in context and that that's really striking to me at least.

So yeah, all right, Bobs, you want to get us out of here?

All right, folks, thank you.

The Jeff Belgium, the doctor Jeff Belgium from Idaho State University, and he's got a cool website you got to check out at the relicommoned inquiry at RhI At, Well, it's RhI at is U dot E d U, the State University.

That's awesome.

So until next time, folks, keep it beyond squatchy