The YouTube Bigfoot... What's It All Really About?

[Ninurta]

Not a Bigfoot, but an Appalachian cryptid nonetheless. These are trail cam photos taken in the Appalachian mountains. The first is a cat, a really big one. The second is a fella named Bill, who stands about 5' 10" tall for size comparison. The last, if it works, is an animated GIF I made to cycle between the two photos so you can get an immediate idea of the cat's size.

It had really big teeth, too.

The photos were taken by a trail cam strapped to a tree within minutes of one another. Bill was on the trail of the cat, ready to shoot it if he needed to, but it moved faster, and he never caught up with it.

They were taken closer to Mystic Wanderer's neck of the woods than mine.



















There's THINGS out in them big dark woods...





       



.

Why don't you guys think that's a bear?

I can't speak for the rest, but for my part, it's because we are eat up with bears around here, everyone has seen them, and whatever that is is not built like one. It's too long, too narrow, legs are too long and thin, and not shaped correctly - bears are plantigrade animals (walk with the whole foot), and that is not. Canines and felines are digigrade - walk on their toes. It's a "toe walker", rather than a "foot walker". That can be clearly seen on the rear legs - it's walking on the toes, and the heel is about half way up it's leg like on a dog or a cat - both toe walkers. The shank of the leg between the toes and the heel is far too thin - that would not even contain the bones of a bear's leg, much less the muscles and tendons, too.

The shoulders are too high and too powerfully built compared to the hindquarters. bears are more evenly distributed, front to rear. In other words, bears have bigger butts, relative to their shoulders, that that critter. their spine is more level to the ground when they are down on a fours.

The hair is too long and shaggy, and it's the wrong shade, although that could be a function of the infrared illumination. The head is shaped wrong to be a bear... and it has a tail. We can't see how long the tail is, but there is one there, clearly. Bears do not have tails.

And the size. It's too big. Most bears around here are around 200 pounds. A big one is around 400, and the biggest one I ever heard of was killed a few years ago by an 8 year old boy, and weighed in at 800 pounds. But the vast majority are around 200 lbs, and about the size of a big dog. "Poppa Bear", the biggest one of the 3 living around the house I moved out of a couple of months ago, might run around 600 pounds, so he was a comparative monster, and still not as big as this thing - but he was a lot chubbier.

The only things I know of that have ever lived around here of that size, shape, and build would be Smilodon, Panthera Atrox, or possibly Homotherium, all of which are now extinct.

.