Editor's Note: According to the excellent kids book Looking for Bigfoot, "Dian Fossey, world-famous expert on gorillas, says on TV that she believes the Patterson [Bigfoot] film, along with other evidence, calls for a major study of the giant ape-man."
Before You Reject Another Bigfoot “Evidence” Photo, Know This
Objectivity and Faces In The Brush?
Bigfoot investigators have the monumental task of sifting through piles of potential evidence submitted to them by people from all walks of life. Breaking down blurry videos and “blobsquatch” photos are a big part of their everyday life. And they do all this very diligently, all while tolerating a certain amount of ridicule from skeptics and non-believers at the same time. It’s not an easy job. And then, there are differences of opinion on the same bits of evidence. Is it real? Is it a reasonable case of mistaken identity. Is it a hoax?
And every once in a while, I throw something into the mix to try and make us think a little bit harder about everything we’re thinking. And I was doing a random internet search on related topics just to see what I could find. And I came across the photo below.
And what do you think this is? Another bad supposed Bigfoot photo that needs red circles on it to tell us where we need to be looking?
No, this photo came from the blog of Gorilla Doctors. They are a veterinary group that has been working on helping and ultimately saving the lives of mountain gorillas since the project was first envisioned by gorilla researcher, Dian Fossey in 1984 in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dian Fossey, a real life researcher, was featured in the renowned movie about the poaching of mountain gorillas called Gorillas In The Mist. She was murdered trying to protect them.
But her legacy lives on with Gorilla Doctors along with a group of very reliable researchers. And they claim there are at least seven or eight mountain gorillas in this photo. And if Dian Fossey were alive today and told us the same thing, would we believe her?
In the Bigfoot community, we speculate and debate about how a creature can hide so well, and there are hundreds of these types of photos submitted as photographic evidence. And I’ll be the first to admit I’ve groaned and rolled my eyes more than a few times when I see these. And Bigfoot skeptics like to try and rip the submitters of these types of photos to shreds.
Is it fair? Sometimes and sometimes not.
As I’ve said many times about Bigfoot, just because you can’t see something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not there. But to many people, seeing is believing. And that’s the only way they’ll believe. But what if reliable researchers or even scientists tell you something’s there, but you just can’t see it. Is it any less “there?”
This photo could have easily been submitted to National Geographic magazine and casually described as illustrating how well mountain gorillas hide in the brush. But if someone submits the same types of photos and claims they are Sasquatches hiding, then there’s a problem. And the angry debate begins.
So what’s the difference?
The difference is gorillas are not cryptids. They are known to exist by science. Sasquatches are not…yet.
Now, I’m not saying that we should buy into every photo like this that we see. The Crypto Crew rejects 99.9 percent of photos and videos as fake or mistaken identity. Because it’s our responsibility to scrutinize every piece of potential evidence and go over everything with a fine- tooth comb. But what I am saying, and what I’m always saying is that we always need to be objective and sharp and open-minded in what we do. And sometimes that means taking something we don’t necessarily like at first and giving it a second look. And check the story behind it. And someday, after we’ve proved Bigfoot exists, we’ll look back at some of these old Bigfoot photos and laugh about how we didn’t believe them because we couldn’t see what someone else swore was there. ********DF