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Singing Sasquatches

Posted by: Craig Woolheater on January 2nd, 2007

The following AP article is very interesting in relation to Sasquatch behavior.

The Texas Bigfoot Research Center has used gibbon whoops in our research. We have gotten return vocalizations when broadcasting these calls in Southeast Texas. See the after-action reports for Operation Primate Lure and Operation Thicket Probe.

Thailand tree apes use song as warning

By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer

Wed Dec 27, 6:21 PM ET

Wah, wow, hoo! Turns out humans aren’t the only primates using songs to warn of life’s dangers and travails. White-handed gibbons in Thailand’s forests have been found to communicate threats from predators by singing — the first time the behavior has been discovered among non-human primates, researchers said Wednesday.

While other animals have been shown to use song to attract mates or signal danger, researchers writing in this month’s science journal PLoS One said their study was the first to show gibbons — a slender, tree-dwelling ape — issuing song-like warnings to each other.

"This work is a really good indicator that non-human primates are able to use combinations of calls … to relay new and, in this case, potentially lifesaving information to one another," said Esther Clarke, a University of St. Andrews graduate student and co-author of the study.

"This type of referential communication’s commonplace in human language, but has yet to be widely demonstrated in some of our closest living relatives — the apes," she said.

Along with Klaus Zuberbuhler from St. Andrews in Scotland and Ulrich Reichard of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, Clarke spent 2004 and 2005 at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand observing groups of gibbons.

Mostly black with a white face, gibbons live in the treetops and are known for issuing elaborate hooting sounds that echo across the forest for up to a half mile to advertise pair bonds or attract mates.

To test the primates response to danger, the team conducted a series of experiments in which they put models of predators — snow leopards, pythons and crested serpent eagles — near a group of gibbons and then made audio recordings of their response.

What they found, Clarke said, is that the gibbons approached the potential predator and began warbling a series of sounds — "wahs, wows and hoos" — that were picked up by other gibbons, who then repeated the calls to others.

The sounds made when encountering a predator were more chaotic and louder than those used to win over a mate, Clarke said. "Gibbons can rearrange their songs to denote different circumstances, much like we do with words," she said.

Thad Q. Bartlett, a gibbon expert at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the findings were interesting and significant.

"From a cognitive standpoint, the claim that gibbon calls are digital is interesting because this is one of the hallmarks of human language, that is, the ability to rearrange discrete elements to create new meanings," he said in an e-mail.

Bartlett also said the findings provide further insight into the behavior of gibbons, contradicting earlier suggestions that their small social network — a male, female and their offspring — was largely a result of the apes facing few threats.

"Because large group size is often seen as a response to predator pressure, researchers have long assumed that gibbons are largely immune from predators," he said. "To my mind, this research further demonstrates the importance of predator pressure to the evolution of gibbon social systems."

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 9:13 am and is filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Expedition Reports, Sasquatch. You can follow responses via our RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.

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4 Responses to “Singing Sasquatches”

heinselman responds: January 2nd, 2007 at 12:43 pm
The open access journal entry is located here.

Craig Heinselman
Peterborough, NH
bill green responds: January 2nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
hey craig great new article about sasquatch. thanks bill
Buzzardeater responds: January 3rd, 2007 at 5:37 am
The dimensions of a Sasquatch suggest to me the possibility of subaural (too low for humans to hear) communication. Couple this with night-capable vision and superhuman speed and strength and you get a better idea of why no one has ever chased down one of these creatures. That said, communication is said to be possible. The giants allegedly can speak a simple form of ’skookum’, an old trading pidgin that combined local languages and English. Usage has died out, but more recent reports have the creatures uttering old words or phrases when startled. Fun to speculate about a conversation.
Jeremy_Wells responds: January 3rd, 2007 at 10:44 pm
OK…

But if Bigfoot is a real flesh and blood creature, it would seem beneficial for the species to be able to communicate across long distances. And if primates are a good model for other primates, and observation tells us that at these very basic levels we are talking about, they are, it wouldn’t be out of the question that they might use something akin to the gibbon songs described in the article.

Considering all of the above, and the reports of vocalizations (grunts, howls, etc.) heard in conjunction with some sightings, I have to say that, in my opinion, any available recordings of supposed Bigfoot vocalizations are evidence that deserve close scrutiny.

As for the use of various primate calls to elicit a response from Bigfoot in the field, even if the return call might be something more akin to the “shock gobble” one can elicit from a turkey with various exotic bird calls, the evidence collected could still prove very useful so long as it the exact nature of the blast call and response are documented.

It would be interesting to listen to and compare reported Bigfoot vocalizations, from various places across the country, that were collected in response to gibbon hoots, gorilla calls, predator calls, human vocalizations, blast of other reported Bigfoot vocalizations, etc.

By then comparing these various pieces of evidence — taking particular note of what source they were responding to — and looking for both overarching patterns AND patterns in responses to various call stimuli, we could begin to try and legitimate various recordings as well as weed out probable hoaxes.

Is anyone on Cryptomundo aware of any researchers out there concentrating their studies in this direction?

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