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Bigfoot - Down's Syndrome Bear?

GSX1400

Gone But Not Forgotten
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When bears stand on their hind legs they are pretty 'man-shaped' apart from the muzzle. Maybe there is some kind of chromosomal disorder amongst bears that occurs every now and again, which affects the look of the face and maybe some other characteristics in much the same way as Down's syndrome has wide ranginng but characteristic effects on humans.

That would explain why attempts to find a breeding population have proved fruitless even though sightings are made on a fairly regular basis down through the decades. There would be no breeding population and there is no need to look for an explanation of why such a gene would remain in the population and not be removed by natural selection. This is because the syndrome would be a result of a breakdown of the normal genetic mechanisms rather than the effects of a particular gene.
 
Is there any evidence for this?

There have been captive bears for a long time and we'd have probably heard about them - especially as survivability would be greater than in the wild.

It would also not explain the long legs which are more along primate proportions.
 
I don't think I subscribe to this theory, but the thought of a bear with Down's syndrome makes me feel ever so sad.
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
Is there any evidence for this?
My first thoughts, precisely. However, you never know, there may be something in this...
Mighty_Emperor said:
It would also not explain the long legs which are more along primate proportions.
Ah, but a bear with Downs Syndrome might have longer legs.
Kondoru said:
Bears as a rule do not walk upright.
Ah, but a bear with Downs Syndrome might.

You know, they could be onto to something here.





(thinks about promises he made re sarcasm on thread)

No, I don't think so. I am willing to be proved wrong, though.
 
When I refer to 'Down's syndrome' I mean to generalise about any infrequent but fairly simple chromosomal type mutation, i.e., one that has wider ranging effects than a simple genetic mutation. I think that in Down's a simple mistake leads to the creation of two copies of a particular chromosome.

On another note, I seem to remember some fairy tale about a bear shedding its skin and revealing itself to be some sort of a prince. Maybe this is a distant folk memory of these infrequent but simple chromosomal type anomalies that produced bears looking more like bi-pedal apes.
 
GSX1400 said:
On another note, I seem to remember some fairy tale about a bear shedding its skin and revealing itself to be some sort of a prince. Maybe this is a distant folk memory of these infrequent but simple chromosomal type anomalies that produced bears looking more like bi-pedal apes.

The Singing Ringing Tree?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052199/
 
Do bears suffer from giagantism?It could explain the long legs/arms..just look at the pictures of the world's tallest man!
 
Well, there's a thread on very large bears here, including stuff about the "God Bear" of Siberia. Thing is, they look like normal bears, but very very big indeed.

Do bears suffer from acromegaly? The only reference I can find is on this page, with the following abstract from a broader discussion about the bear photos that are the primary subject of the previously linked thread (all emphases mine):
According to an article in the Irish Examiner, representatives from the Smithsonian and the Guiness Book of Records will visit Alaska next week to confirm the shooting of what may be the world's largest bear. US airman Ted Heuvelmans* said he shot the 1,800-lb, 14-foot-tall Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) [more] in self-defense when the animal reared to charge him. The bear was twice as large as normal Brown bears, which are the world's largest bear species.

William Golding, Professor of National History at Toronto University, told the Yukon Courier that the bear's size suggests that it suffered from a growth disorder, such as acromegaly.

BUT...
If this is not a hoax, it will be interesting to see where the body ends up. I'm frankly suspicious, given that the only report of this event seems to be in an Irish paper. Furthermore, I can find no evidence that either "Toronto University" (as opposed to the University of Toronto, which does not seem to have a "William Golding" on the staff) or the "Yukon Courier" exist. I assume "National History" is a typo for "Natural History", a mistake frequently made by tourists on the Mall.

So do bears suffer from acromegaly? Who knows.





*Fortean name check - in the circumstances, not a little suspicious.
 
and I suppose none of you have ever been dancing bears? They stand upright all right when trained.

Though walking like a humanoid is anothe thing
 
ouijaouija555 said:
and I suppose none of you have ever been dancing bears? They stand upright all right when trained.

Your right ive never been a dancing bear.... :lol:
 
pintquaff said:
ouijaouija555 said:
and I suppose none of you have ever been dancing bears? They stand upright all right when trained.

Your right ive never been a dancing bear.... :lol:

dancing bare maybe ... or barely dancing after a few pints ... ;)
 
But would a bear with some bruin form of Down's Syndrome survive long enough to reach maturity?

True, human birth defects of this type are surviveable today and Down's Syndrome sufferers gloriously more educable than ever before, but they would not survive without strong adult support throughout childhood and even after.
 
I find it very hard to believe that "Bigfoot" is any kind of deformed or mutant bear.

Regardless of the question of any such mutation affecting survival chances (and i've never heard of any such things happening in wild, as opposed to domestic, animals), Bigfoot has, to my knowledge, never been seen in the company of bears, and other large animals in general are supposed to avoid them IIRC. Its behaviour also seems much more like primate than bear behaviour (ok, this proposed syndrome could affect behaviour patterns, but given that in humans Down's and pretty much all other chromosome disorders impair rather than enhance mental functioning, i think a similar disorder making a bear develop more primate-like behaviours is pretty unlikely).

Bigfoot type creatures have also been seen in social groups including adults with young, which wouldn't happen if a mutation randomly happened among populations of bears - if anything, you'd expect to see one "Bigfoot" among, or perhaps lagging behind, a family unit of bears if that was the case...

A slightly similar suggestion from a few years ago was that "Bigfoot" might be a relict species of "short-faced" bear, which IIRC was a larger cousin of the South American spectacled bear and had longer hind legs than present day NA species of bears - the idea being that if a hunter saw one alive and it got away, the difference in locomotion and facial appearance from a normal bear might make it get reported as "Bigfoot", whereas if one was shot the carcass would be seen to be "just a bear" and not merit further analysis (by the average person who might not necessarily think "ooh, this might be a different/unknown species of bear", but "oh, it was just an odd-looking bear" and leave it at that).

IMO that's still pretty unlikely tho... Bigfoot, from all the reports i've read, just doesn't seem that bear-like to me...
 
Ursa Sapiens?

Is it possible that Bigfeet represent, not a cronosomal disorder, in the usual sense, but rather a sudden evolutionary leap in bear intelligence?

It's been suggested (even if tongue-in-cheek) that there may be a race of highly intelligent dogs (approaching nearly to human intelligence) which "hide out" in the regular doggish population.

Mightn't the same thing happen amongst bears?

Tongue again somewhat in cheek, of course, for my own protection.
 
Re: Ursa Sapiens?

OldTimeRadio said:
Is it possible that Bigfeet represent, not a cronosomal disorder, in the usual sense, but rather a sudden evolutionary leap in bear intelligence?
An interesting theory, but I think it works the other way. There have been two recent stories of non-human primates walking upright: one a baboon with brain damage (from blunt trauma?), the other a monkey (I think) who had a stroke. In each of them, the damage caused to the brain left them walking upright, rather than on all fours.

So walking upright is the result of brain damaged monkeys. Where does that leave us?

More to the point, where does it leave our theoretical ursine sasquatch?
 
I'm gonna have to go with the gixser on this. Why you may ask how about this tiger.

tiger.jpg
 
its a white tiger and so very inbred hence odd look.

either that or its just smelled something really bad...
 
I dunno. To me that looks like it could be one of those liger/tigron thingies.

Poor thing.
 
This link seems to indicate that some chromosomal disorders can be survived in the wild:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... o_fox.html

There are a couple of interesting things about this case, which I think might reasonably inform the bigfoot debate:

1. If something as simple as loss of hair can cause such perplexity about the identification of a well known animal, then it demonstrates at least in principle that it wouldn't take much of a change to a bear's external appearance to result in misidentification.

2. The fox (if that is indeed what it is) has adapated its behaviour to compensate for the disability or infliction. Bigfoots don't act much like bears, but then, why should they? If they are bears with a chromosomal disorder then it could be that they have to make changes to their behaviour just to survive.

3. The fox or thin thingy has been photographed nice and clearly. No, grainy footage; no badly executed sketches; no wild reports from half mad hillbillies. And it's little. I think that we might reasonably expect to have a half decent photograph of a bigfoot by now given its size and the long history of reports. These days there are millions of cameras in circulation. So where are the pictures?
 
White tigers are highly inbred which can lead to problems. From MessyBeast:


Sara Iverson has produced a genealogy showing the two white tiger bloodlines converging in America, with Mohan and Begum on one side and Como Zoo's brother-sister pair of wild caught Amur tigers on the other. Iverson's chart illustrates the critical junctures where the bloodlines intersect, first with Kesari and Tony at Cincinnati Zoo and later Ranjit and Obie in Omaha, like marriages between royal houses. According to "Tigers Of The World", the Indian subspecies was, at one time, represented in North America by five individuals, all siblings highly inbred for white coloration with co-efficients of 0.406. All of this means white tigers have been greatly inbred.

White tigers show a problem called inbreeding depression - continued inbreeding to fix a particular trait (the white colour) shows up other deleterious genes in the population. As a result, white tigers are prone to being cross-eyed and have other problems as noted later. Inbreeding depression can be overcome by crossing white tigers to unrelated orange tigers; although the offspring will all be orange, they can be bred back to the white parent to produce white cubs. White tigers are now found in numerous zoos, not so much for conservation purposes (since they are essentially "man-made" and most are mongrels of Bengal and Amur tigers), but because they are a hit with the public. Contrary to the claims of zoos, white tigers are not a separate "endangered species"; they are colour morphs of orange tiger which have been bred in the same way domestic cat varieties have been perpetuated. White tigers are often larger than normal Bengal tigers.

The rising number of unusual tigers reported in Similipal suggests that inbreeding is causing recessive genes to surface. Inbreeding in zoos is causing other recessive genes to show up; not just colour variations, but also physical deformities.

<snip>

Some zoos have had leg problems and juvenile lameness due to over feeding. Overfed fed cubs take on the appearance of an English bull dog, though this is reversible if caught early. Some snub nosed white tigers might fall into this category as opposed to having a brachycephaly mutation though tigers the size and shape of bull dogs have been reported in the wild.

http://www.messybeast.com/genetics/mutant-bigcats1.html
 
ouijaouija555 said:
and I suppose none of you have ever been dancing bears? They stand upright all right when trained.

Though walking like a humanoid is anothe thing

They stand upright to avoid the pain from the ring punched through their nose that is being yanked upon by their "trainer". They don't do it through comfortable choice.
 
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