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Close but no see-gar.

They make no mention of the Soviet researchers input.
 
Had a quick search but I can't find any mention of this.

There is a lot about Patti's gait compared to a man in a suit but given that male and female gait are different has anyone tried asking a woman to don a suit and try to replicate the gait in the film?

I'm sure the perceived differences in the bigfoot/human gait are not the same as in the differences in the male/female gait but I asume that if it was a man in the suit he would be trying to alter his gait. Therefore could a woman alter her gait to replicate Patti's better than a man could? Probably a daft question but I know nothing about the mechanics of this, so I thought I'd see if anyone on here knows.

Given the size etc. if it were a woman she'd be large but not outside "normal" human range.

Sorry but I now have an image of Patti looking over her shoulder and saying "Does my arse look big in this?"
 
Had a quick search but I can't find any mention of this.
There is a lot about Patti's gait compared to a man in a suit but given that male and female gait are different has anyone tried asking a woman to don a suit and try to replicate the gait in the film? ...
Interesting question ... Off hand, I don't recall seeing / reading where anyone attempted to test the gait with a female in a similar suit.
 
Had a quick search but I can't find any mention of this.

There is a lot about Patti's gait compared to a man in a suit but given that male and female gait are different has anyone tried asking a woman to don a suit and try to replicate the gait in the film?

I'm sure the perceived differences in the bigfoot/human gait are not the same as in the differences in the male/female gait but I asume that if it was a man in the suit he would be trying to alter his gait. Therefore could a woman alter her gait to replicate Patti's better than a man could? Probably a daft question but I know nothing about the mechanics of this, so I thought I'd see if anyone on here knows.

Given the size etc. if it were a woman she'd be large but not outside "normal" human range.

Sorry but I now have an image of Patti looking over her shoulder and saying "Does my arse look big in this?"
I think this is a brilliant question, and one that needs to be answered by the serious researchers.
 
There is a lot about Patti's gait compared to a man in a suit but given that male and female gait are different has anyone tried asking a woman to don a suit and try to replicate the gait in the film?
Having seen all of the re-enactments - well, all those to which I could ever find reference - no, they're all men. They've concentrated primarily on size.
 
Had a quick search but I can't find any mention of this.

There is a lot about Patti's gait compared to a man in a suit but given that male and female gait are different has anyone tried asking a woman to don a suit and try to replicate the gait in the film?

I'm sure the perceived differences in the bigfoot/human gait are not the same as in the differences in the male/female gait but I asume that if it was a man in the suit he would be trying to alter his gait. Therefore could a woman alter her gait to replicate Patti's better than a man could? Probably a daft question but I know nothing about the mechanics of this, so I thought I'd see if anyone on here knows.

Given the size etc. if it were a woman she'd be large but not outside "normal" human range.

Sorry but I now have an image of Patti looking over her shoulder and saying "Does my arse look big in this?"
Tun11: "Given the size etc. if it were a woman she'd be large but not outside "normal" human range."

Regarding the normal range of height in adult women: Could you please share with us a source of information of Patty’s height?

My understanding is that all estimates of her height come from a set of assumptions about distance from the camera, camera altitude compared to Patti, lens type, extrapolations from human foot size:height ratios, etc. I vaguely remember that her height was estimated at 6 feet to 6 feet 6 inches.

The height difference between men and women is relatively stable, and men are usually 8% taller than women. The tallest population is currently the Netherlands, where men are an average of 182 cm (as of 1996, the most recent year I could find good info on). I have used a tall country, rather than the medium height US, in order to show how even in a best case scenario, it is possible but very unlikely it was a woman wearing the Patty outfit.

182 men/1.08 men-women difference = 168 cm average women height in the Netherlands, land of tall women.

So, if Patti was a tall (Dutch?) woman wearing a suit, and was at the upper right end of 3 standard deviations from the mean, then Patti was 177 cm (69.69 inches, or 5 ft 10 inches) tall. The upper end of 3 std. dev. means that Patti was taller than 99.9% of all women worldwide. (Note that the bell shaped curve for height is slightly different than the more familiar IQ curve.)

Back in the (100% Dutch) US in 1967: total population 198,700,000. Women: 99,350,000. Women 5’10” or taller: 1 out of a thousand. Women 6’ tall: even rarer. And remember, this is in the fantasy world of Dutch America.

Tun11, I was just having some fun with this, after only one cup of coffee. My point is that, even if something is possible, it does not make it likely. I am persuaded on the preponderance of evidence that Patty was not a human in a monkey suit, but I am not sure. I can't be sure, based on the current evidence.

The bell curve is an approximate representation of data. Why do people treat it as an absolute rule? - Quora
Human Height - Our World in Data
Height Percentile Calculator, by Age or Country - Tall.Life (scroll down for distribution curve)
 
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My understanding is that all estimates of her height come from a set of assumptions about distance from the camera, camera altitude compared to Patti, lens type, extrapolations from human foot size:height ratios, etc. I vaguely remember that her height was estimated at 6 feet to 6 feet 6 inches.
There's an issue with some of that. Patterson said the creature was around 7 feet. Dr Don Grieve, Reader in Biomechanics at London Royal Free Hospital who analysed the film in 1971 confirmed the creature’s height to be around 196 cm (6’5”), estimated weight of 127 kg (280 lb) which would render at most a 30 cm (12 inch) footprint, which is well within normal human range, and at variance with Patterson’s estimate of a 7 foot (215 cm), “very heavy” creature.

Further, to quote myself from FT 360:
John Napier states that the footprints that Patterson cast after the sighting, which Patterson claimed were those of the filmed figure were closer to 15 inches (37 cm) long, which would indicate a much taller creature, at least 7’8” (234 cm) in height with an indicative 53 inch stride: however, the distance between the footprints is only 41 inches (104 cm), whereas a 6’5” humanoid would have at least a 45 inch (114 cm) gap, and given the exaggerated stride of the creature in the film it would be closer to 48-50 (c.125 cm) inches, which largely tallies with Grieve’s estimates. So, the footprints that Patterson presented belong to a supposedly much taller being, but with a markedly shorter step than the one in the film. Whatever their provenance, Napier concludes that the two items - film and prints -do not belong together.
 
Nope, but the discrepancies between print-size, stride and the figure are a problem only so much as the figure in the film didn't make the tracks.
 
Endlessly Amazed, I think I was making a lot of assmptions :). I had read somewhere that an estimate of around 6 ft 6 inches had been propsed (shorter than Patterson's estimate) and had been used as a basis for whoever got shoved in suit to try and replicate the gait etc. As Stu Neville says they concentrated on size rather than the gender. From that I thought that that height wasn't impossible for a woman as as Patti is female had anyone thought of asking a tall woman to try and replicate the gait?

Normal range was a poor choice of words, perhaps possible range would have been better! However from what you say a woman that size would be noticable and so likely to have been noticed if she was in the area at the time of filming and may have been commented on by residents of the area. I worked with a man who was 6 ft 7 inches and he was noticable.

I can't make up my mind about Patti. Most of the other films I've seen look like someone in suit or someone in a suit trying to copy Patt's gait and not very well. I'd like the film to be real, but I'd really like to know for sure if it wasn't.

I posted originally thinking this may be a daft question, it still may be, so if anyone thinks it actually worth playing round with, dismissing or explaining why it's daft, that's great.
 
Assumptions :) Don’t you love them?!? They are the first cousins of cherry picking. They are the cousins nobody wants to talk about or acknowledge in the arguments put forth on Fortean topics. They replicate like rabbits in the backs of all our minds.

This has probably been posted previously somewhere in the 1000 posts; but here are my thoughts on Patty evidence, possibilities, and proof:

Evidence: Everyone has a different set of what evidence he or she finds acceptable. Most people probably have different sets of evidence because of different data sources.

Possibilities: I have read that it is possible for Patty to be a human in a monkey suit, and so therefore we must reject the hypothesis that it was a nonhuman because of the (mis)application of Occam’s law. I strongly disagree with this interpretation of poor Occam.

Proof: Everyone has a different idea of what proof he or she finds acceptable.

Evidence, possibilities, and proof are strongly linked; unfortunately, almost everyone puts them together differently for Patty.

Even if a very tall woman was put into a Patty suit and filmed in the same location, this would provide evidence of nothing because we don’t have a solid understanding of how similar the gait of a large unknown nonhuman would be. We do not have a single incontrovertible film (type specimen) of a large unknown nonhuman walking with which to compare Patty. Even if the gait of a tall woman was identical to Patty, this would prove nothing. For me, it would not even increase the pool of possibilities, because I already think it is possible that Patty was faked - but I don't think it was likely and I have reached the conclusion that Patty was real: unfaked, unknown nonhuman caught on film by chance by two amateurs unlikely enough looking for Patty.
 
We have LOTS of examples of BF tracks...both individual feet and tracks of them.

Some of them aren't even from the North American continent.

There's an absolute embarrassment of them.

Surely a specialist can identify traits of a BF not found in a large human???
 
We have LOTS of examples of BF tracks...both individual feet and tracks of them.

Some of them aren't even from the North American continent.

There's an absolute embarrassment of them.

Surely a specialist can identify traits of a BF not found in a large human???
“Surely a specialist can identify traits of a BF not found in a large human???

Well, different Ph.D. specialists in hominid biomechanics have weighed in over the decades. No uniformity of opinion. So, the answer to your question is no, a specialist cannot identify traits to a degree which most or some or a few other specialists can agree with. Also, nobody is in charge of defining what skills such a specialist would need in order to be accepted by peers. The Wild West of Academe.

If those traits were identified, then the argument would shift to the evidence (foot casts, film, etc.) being faked. If the evidence was shown to be not faked, then the argument would shift to the traits not really being different than a large human. Etc.

For a few years in my career, I directed large scale parametric studies (for 100% of populations and not statistical). I had vapors because nobody could argue about applicability. Vapors!
 
Meldrum's Exhibit A is the mid-tarsal break, ie the foot can flex halfway along. Almost impossible to fake convincingly and certainly not consistently.

Yes, to the limits of my non-specialist understanding, I found this persuasive. However, other specialists did not, at least publicly.
 
A little off topic but one factor of the Patterson film for me was how I first saw it. On a mainstream news programme and treated IIRC a little more seriously than most "filler" items. It was a time when America was leading up to the moon landings and anything seemed possible. Also no internet and no facility (at least for most ordinry mortals) to record it. There was no mainstream follow up that I remember, so we were left with one view of the film and that was that. It was quite a few years before I saw the film again. The main thing that stuck in my memory was the iconic look over the shoulder.
The reaction of family members who were also watching, although not interested in the topic, was interesting. General consensus, once it was established that it wasn't 1st April was that it actually didn't walk like a man in a suit and was "weird." When I saw the film again I expected to be disappointed, but I wasn't and as stated above I still can't make my mind up.
 
A little off topic but one factor of the Patterson film for me was how I first saw it. On a mainstream news programme and treated IIRC a little more seriously than most "filler" items. It was a time when America was leading up to the moon landings and anything seemed possible. Also no internet and no facility (at least for most ordinry mortals) to record it. There was no mainstream follow up that I remember, so we were left with one view of the film and that was that. It was quite a few years before I saw the film again. The main thing that stuck in my memory was the iconic look over the shoulder.
The reaction of family members who were also watching, although not interested in the topic, was interesting. General consensus, once it was established that it wasn't 1st April was that it actually didn't walk like a man in a suit and was "weird." When I saw the film again I expected to be disappointed, but I wasn't and as stated above I still can't make my mind up.
I have seen that look over the shoulder from different animals as they assess whether or not you are going to chase them or threaten them as they move away from you: coyotes, bears, rabbits, elk, deer, javalina, etc. So, for me, it seemed realistic from an animal.
 
I also wondered, pure speculation nothing more, whether Patti was leading Patterson and Gimlin away from something, perhaps a youngster and was checking that they were following. I know that some animals do this; but more likely, as you say that she was checking out the threat.
Always assuming that it wasn't an actor checking that Patterson's camera was working.
I also wonder about potential differences in behaviour depending on whether Patti is an ape or a hominid.
 
54 years and counting...I bought the Bill Munns book on it a while back but haven't had the inclination to read it yet. I assume others have read it, any thoughts?
 
Frankly I cannot believe all the questioning of the Patterson Gimlin film. The height of the creature, the general build, the walk showing muscles rippling beneath the fur, the long arms (that alone told me this was no human), that lack of a neck, the position of the hands while walking, just the whole film was so obviously of a real animal. The horses themselves panicked at the sight of Bigfoot, it's there in the film, you cannot avoid that fact, the horses knew this was something strange. And that book from 1956 "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz includes a chapter on finding some Yeti / Bigfoot in the Himalayan mountains, haven't any of you read it? So many sightings and footprints found over the years tells me that Bigfoot is real. Questioning it endlessly is pointless, it is what it is.
 
Frankly I cannot believe all the questioning of the Patterson Gimlin film. The height of the creature, the general build, the walk showing muscles rippling beneath the fur, the long arms (that alone told me this was no human), that lack of a neck, the position of the hands while walking, just the whole film was so obviously of a real animal. The horses themselves panicked at the sight of Bigfoot, it's there in the film, you cannot avoid that fact, the horses knew this was something strange. And that book from 1956 "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz includes a chapter on finding some Yeti / Bigfoot in the Himalayan mountains, haven't any of you read it? So many sightings and footprints found over the years tells me that Bigfoot is real. Questioning it endlessly is pointless, it is what it is.
Do you mean you’ve read the previous 35 pages of discussion here and still can’t believe why some are reluctant to say this is a real creature?
 
Do you mean you’ve read the previous 35 pages of discussion here and still can’t believe why some are reluctant to say this is a real creature?

Well quite.
Of all the cryptids discussed here over the decades, I find Bigfoot one of the least plausible (and consequently the least interesting).
 
Well, to be fair ... This thread is focused on Patterson's film, not the broader issue of whether Bigfoot exists. Our criticisms regarding the film and its filming don't necessarily represent dismissal of the cryptid the film purports to illustrate.
 
How would a bigfoot use its hands?

They aren't habitual tool users so it would be very different to us.
 
Anyone seen this interesting evaluation of the Patterson Gimlin video?


And how to explain the panicking of their horses upon seeing this strange creature?
Animals have more acute senses than humans.
Another interesting analysis. If I were forced at gunpoint to declare Patty real or fake I'd go for real but I still have doubts. Has the issue of the film speed been settled definitively? IIRC it had significant impact on the gait analysis.

Bob Gimlin had a rifle so anyone in a costume was taking a risk if Gimlin wasn't in on the hoax.

Did either Patterson or Gimmlin mention the smell, bigfoot are meant to stink - or is that only males or only sometimes?
Related to the issue of smell is the reaction of the horses. If Patty stank shouldn't the horses have picked up on it before she was sighted?
Otherwise I'm not sure I'd put too much significnce on the horses' reaction, they always seem pretty panicky critters as the best of times, and I think that a man in a suit suddenly appearing in front of them may have elicited a panic reaction however well trained they were. Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of horses will have a view. My knowledge is limited to staying out of their way :)
 
Horses may react badly to anything unexpected or unfamiliar. I am a road unicyclist, often riding 20 to 30 mile circuits around the lanes and villages near my home. Although I am very definitely human, and horses have generally seen bicycles before, they can shy unpredictably at the sight of a unicyclist. Back when I used to deal with insurance claims, I handled a few where riding school horses had thrown students after being spooked by a bag flapping in the hedgerow.

I am sceptical of "gait analysis" mainly because someone who is trying to appear other than human can fake a walk.

My three thoughts about the PGF remain:

1) It looks to me like a big bloke in a suit, adopting a loping walk.

2) However, I suspect that almost anyone faking being a Bigfoot would be more likely to overdo the "monkey walk" than to underdo it. It would take a subtle hoaxer to do the double bluff of not looking outré enough — particularly in view of the attitudes of the time.

3) Also, a hoaxer giving that much uninterrupted view of the "monster" is giving analysts a lot to work on. If I were doing the hoax myself, there would be tantalising glimpses of the creature moving between and behind things, followed perhaps by a brief full view, just enough to convince, but not enough to invite analysis.
 
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Horse may react badly to anything unexpected or unfamiliar. I am a road unicyclist, often riding 20 to 30 mile circuits around the lanes and villages near my home. Although I am very definitely human, and horses have generally seen bicycles before, they can shy unpredictably at the sight of a unicyclist. Back when I used to deal with insurance claims, I handled a few where riding school horses had thrown students after being spooked by a bag flapping in the hedgerow.

I am sceptical of "gait analysis" mainly because someone who is trying to appear other than human can fake a walk.

My three thoughts about the PGF remain:

1) It looks to me like a big bloke in a suit, adopting a loping walk.

2) However, I suspect that almost anyone faking being a Bigfoot would be more likely to overdo the "monkey walk" than to underdo it. It would take a subtle hoaxer to do the double bluff of not looking outré enough — particularly in view of the attitudes of the time.

3) Also, a hoaxer giving that much uninterrupted view of the "monster" is giving analysts a lot to work on. If I were doing the hoax myself, there would be tantalising glimpses of the creature moving between and behind things, followed perhaps by a brief full view, just enough to convince, but not enough to invite analysis.
Off topic but 20 or 30 miles on a unicycle… blimey. How long does it take you to do these distances?
 
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