Physiology

Survival of a species is dependent on many factors, two important ones to consider when thinking about humans, apes and bigfoot would be culture and physiology. As humans evolved, if we assume that we have evolved, we have developed a cultural base that has allowed us to evolve away from the sort of physiology that could easily survive the various environments which we live in. Becoming hunter/gatherers, building shelters, adorning ourselves with protective clothing, banding together in groups in order to accomplish all of these things, has allowed humans to become more gracile, less robust, and less capable of survival in the wilds alone.

Apes also live in groups, demonstrate a primitive degree of culture, but not the sort that would allow them to evolve away from a more robust, hardy, physiology. And so, in the absence of cultural development, apes need to be hardy creatures, and certain traits and characteristics are required for their survival in the wilds.

Bigfoot, again if they exist, appear to not have the sort of cultural development that would allow them to evolve away from a wild physiology. They appear to have no clothes, no tools, no weapons. No apparent culture which would assist them in hunting, or in shelter construction, or in finding ways to gather in groups. They appear to live as wild creatures in the forests, surviving harsh climates being naked except for the coats they grow out of their own skin. Much like an ape in that sense, or like a primitive type of human prior to evolving culture.

What sort of physiology would a bigfoot require for survival? Good question. First of all, food. What do they eat? It is highly unlikely that a bigfoot would have the ability to run down a deer. Being built much like a human, being bipedal (upright, walking on two feet) is not a particularly fast architecture. Humans, equipped with guns, crossbows or long bows have a hard enough time finding, much less shooting, deer in the forests. And that's with a fair amount of technology at their fingertips. Prior to guns and bows and arrows, humans had spears, traps, snares and so on with which to catch game. But that was after culture and tools. Prior to tools, hunting would have been very difficult, and limited to smaller, slower game. Bigfoot appears to have no tools, and so whatever it eats it would have to grab by hand, smack with a stick perhaps, or maybe ambush.

Let's consider ambushing. Most witnesses claim that bigfoot stinks to high heaven. Most hunters would agree that stinking to high heaven is a dead giveaway to deer or other potential prey animals that have a sense of smell. Stinking, providing such an obvious warning sign to prey animals that something is amiss, is not good for ambushing prey. Ever lie in wait for a deer in the woods, along an established game trail, and have one come close enough to grab hold of with your bare hands? And yet, there are those that believe that bigfoot catch and eat deer.

I suspect that if bigfoot eat deer, they come upon them as scavengers. Ambushing or running them down in the woods (ever try to run in the woods?) just doesn't make good survival sense considering the many thousands of years that they would have been living here.

The forests have ample resources for animals suited to eating them, but to survive year round there needs to be adequate sources of protein, fats and carbohydrates for such large creatures to subsist on. Funguses, roots, tubers, nuts, berries, insects, plants, and the occasional small animals would have to be enough. Is it?

The ability to withstand the cold without freezing to death. The ability to avoid predation from bear, cougar, coyotes and wolves. Bear can get to be pretty big, and wolves hunt in packs large enough to bring down bison. Are we to believe that bigfoot are more formidable than bison, who normally live in herds themselves?

What about reproduction? How do they find one another to make babies, and how do the mothers raise their babies and still eke out a living? Both human and ape babies are very dependent on their mothers for survival. Culture allows both a fair degree of safety, and food. Are the solitary bigfoot not quite so solitary after all? Do they form family units in order to provide for the babies? If not, how would a mother bear and raise an infant in the woods, from newborn through toddler stage, through adolescence, to the point where it could go off on its own? Where would this all take place, and how would they be able to do all of this without detection by humans, or even predators?

These questions would have to have answers in order for something such as bigfoot to exist in reality, beyond simple theorizing. Asking questions does not indicate disbelief, but rather is required in order to establish the probability of them even existing. If they exist, they have t exist in the real world, and the real world is a hard place for things to survive in if they are not adequately fit to the task.