Patty Head Turn

Here are two frames from the PGF with added enhancements to the shadow and highlight areas which indicate where the eyes, nose and mouth are, as well as indicating a hair ruff as the head turns.

Suit: Human Head vs. Patty Head

It has been said that a human head cannot fit within the profile of Patty's head. Here is a simple animation which contradicts that assertion. This is a rough animation, using an enhanced frame form the PGF combined with two stock human head images. The intent is not to suggest that Patty was in fact a human in a suit, but to challenge the claim that Patty was so significantly different in form, based on the film images, that it could not be a human or a human-like creature.

Bigfoot does not have to be so radically different from humans to exist, in other words. It can exist and still fit within human standards. It does not have to be a flat headed, long armed, ape-like alien in order to be real.

Vocalizations

Do bigfoot have language? There are many reports of bigfoot vocalizations, from hooting, to howling, to grunting, growling and snorting. More recently there have been a host of recordings which suggest a rapid form of gibberish which when slowed down seems to sound like a form of language.

Here's an excerpt about an ancient ancestor, believed to be a common ancestor to modern man, neanderthals, and even possibly chimps:

"Homo heidelbergensiscould pronounce some basic vowel sounds - "aa", "ee" and "oo" - but not well enough to hold any kind of conversation.The sounds would have been slow and slurred due to the dimensions of the mouth and pharynx, the Spanish researchers say."

Modern apes cannot vocalize language the way humans can. This is mostly due to their anatomy. Primitive ancestors who were developing the anatomy appropriate for language are assumed to have been slow, slurred and simplistic in their ability to vocalize.

How then is bigfoot supposed to have a language that is twice as fast, and much more complex in terms of enunciating? having heard a very good presentation on these sounds, I have to say that I am quite unconvinced about the authenticity of those sounds. They sound as if the speaker is running through as many different sounds as possible, in every possible manner. There seem to be forward snorts (exhaling), reverse snorts (inhaling), throat clicks, tongue clicks, and vocal chord tones from very high to very low. Picture someone rapidly running through an imitation of the cartoon character Taz (the Tasmanian devil).

While I don't have a problem with bigfoot making sounds, even having some form of primitive language, I am extremely skeptical ( I said it) about these sounds that have to be slowed down by half in order to make them sound legible. What human, or other known primate can vocalize and verbalize so incredibly fast, especially when attributed to a creature that is assumed to be reasonably slow in behavior, with a lifestyle that would easily be characterized as slow paced. If people, with all their culture and advancement, with such widely ranging languages, with such fast paced lives, have languages that are as fast as they are by necessity, how could a bigfoot manage to have a language that is so significantly faster? When by all accounts they seem to be solitary in nature?

Are they primitive such as apes or human ancestors, or are they advanced and social such that they can develop a language faster than any known auctioneer? I have a lot less of a problem with the hoots, howls and grunts than I do with the double speed Tasmanian chatter.

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.

Arguments against a "suit"; Breasts

There have been numerous arguments against Patty being a man in a suit. Some of them are quite good, some are quite convincing, and some are clearly wishful thinking. Let's take a look at some of the arguments.

First, let's look at the idea that Patty has breasts. I

t has been argued that no off the shelf costume of an ape, or alien, or monster has had breasts, at least back in the mid 60's when Patty was filmed. Costumes typically were genderless, not male or female, at least in terms of primary or secondary sex organs being displayed. Ape costumes were generally male in form, but lacking in any sex organs.

Along with this generally accepted idea of off the shelf costumes lacking gender, it has also been claimed that there were no female apes or ap

e-like creatures featured in films during that mid-60's period of time, and that for a hoaxed costume to feature breasts would have been too improbable, too creative, or too much of a jump from existing costume technology for a layman to come up with.

Now, it may be true that there were no off the s

helf ape costumes with breasts in the 60's, and let's assume that is the case because I really have no way to verify that as fact, but assuming that it is true is not a big problem for me. However, the claim that there were no ape-like costumes in the 60's that featured breasts is patently untrue. Ape-like costumes featuring breasts were featured in "One Million Years BC" which was released in late 1966 in Europe, and early 1967 in the US.

FACT: Ape-like costumes featuring breasts had been seen in big screen movies prior to the filming of Patty.

Additionally, in 1970 a movie called "Skullduggery"

was released which dealt with the discovery of a tribe of ape-like people called Tropis, and whether they were human or animal. That film clearly displayed gender attributes, as this still from the movie shows.

In conclusion, if one is to have an honest debate based on facts and reasonable thoughts, then one has to avoid using arguments which are false or misleading. The fact that Patty had breasts is not proof that she was a real bigfoot, and it is very true that decent examples of breasts had been featured on Hollywood costumes back in the day.

Does she or doesn't she...

That's the big question. Does Patty really exist? Actually, that leads to two different questions; does bigfoot exist and was Patty a real bigfoot. Patty, of course, is the subject seen in the famous 1967 film shot by Roger Patterson, assisted by Bob Gimlin, at Bluff Creek, California.

You can't answer the first question (was Patty a real bigfoot) without first answering the second question (does bigfoot really exist). Often enough, the question of whether Patty was real precedes the question of whether bigfoot is real. It's a difficult situation to sort out.

Traditionally, researchers who believe, as well as skeptics who don't believe, and even those who do believe in bigfoot yet don't believe in Patty, analyze the Patterson/Gimlin film as if it were the Holy Grail of the bigfoot mystery, as if solving that mystery of Patty would solve the question of bigfoot. It's been over 40 years since that filming, and the debate rages on. Even conspiracy theories have sprouted up, taking any number of feasible to outlandish directions.

Reportedly, the Patterson/Gimlin film is second only to the Zapruder film as far as depth of analyses. Very interesting to say the least. And so far, also without a firm conclusion. The question of whether Patty truly existed is clearly YES. But was she a bigfoot or a person in a suit is still unresolved, as is the question of whether bigfoot truly exists.