What do the believers actually think bigfoot is?

[wasteofo2]

Do the people who believe in bigfoot/yeti/sasquatch etc. have any idea what you think the creature might be? Obviously it's some sort of ape, but do you all have any idea exactly what? I could see possibly pinning sightings in asia on a small group of gigantopithicus (or something simmilar) which survived, despite being thought to be extinct. However, I have no idea what "bigfoot" sigtings in the America's could be, since (as far as I'm aware), Neither North or South america has anything which remotely resembles Bigfoot in the fossil records.

I've found it's easy to say "Yep, that's definitely an animal in the Patterson film and not a guy in a suit, look at the proportions of the appendages, the way it walks and how the muscles flex/breasts swing", but it's a lot harder to come to a rational explanation of what that animal might be...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I will look around some more when I can. Maybe Zoobyshoe can help here? So far I don't see any specific suggestions or theories.

This appears to be a serious attempt to quantify the data:

http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/WHF/FahrenbachArticle.htm

You may be able to find something here:
http://www.bfro.net/

There is also a brief interview with Jane Goodall.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Off the top of my head, I would characterize the common assumption to be that it is a completely unknown, undocumented, species of ape, one which differs radically from all others, not so much for its size but because it has the ability to walk completely upright with no discomfort, and does that as a matter of course, never resorting to quadrupedal locomotion, as all other apes do.

All Native Americans I have read about who believe in Bigfoot do not consider it an animal at all, but a kind of human being. They find the expression on the face as well as it's actions and activities to be too human/intelligent for it to be an animal. One Native American woman I saw interviewed did not characterize it as a "primitive" kind of human, but as one that is so "different" from either Native American or white man, that we could never form any kind of meaningful interaction with it.

In Bhutan, I think, near Tibet, the locals believe it is more related to the bear than to Humans or apes. I thought this was a fascinating notion that could explain why it seems to be so hard to find any physical evidence of the creature. If it were some upright-walking, short-faced evolutionary side track of the bear line, all the fur and any bones found would read, genetically, as bear and be disqualified: bear, not yeti.

So the three non-hoax theories seem to be Ape, Human, Bear.