No idea what the mystery creature is, but it looks only about four feet tall. I’m always suspicious when the photographer isn’t ‘available’ for comment!

And obviously KNOW IT EXISTS doesn’t work by itself. You need the day job that lets you look for it, too. I was careful to add: AND has the time and the money. Which many are more than ready and willing to donate to a dedicated biologist, using proven techniques and working in a hotbed of known species such as frogs, birds, insects, bats, reptiles, leumrs, etc.

Many of those “unknown” species — most if not all of them in fact — are “known unknowns,” in biologically superrich places like tropical forests or coral reefs where it is considered certain by almost all authorities that there is lots of stuff waiting to be discovered. Do what you do in general to find frogs birds and fish, and in one of these areas you’ll get good evidence of a new one (or more) to science. Or you’ll find a “new” place — like that two-million-hectare primary forest in New Guinea that’s just been penetrated, apparently for the first time, by humans (locals included). Or the Vu Quang in Vietnam — an “unknown place” in a very combed-over (heck, bombed-over) country! Then, yep, you’re gonna get shots of things people haven’t seen. It’s almost certain, which is why the money flows to efforts like that.

The coelacanth? Remnant thylacines? A ten-foot-high ape in Tibet, CA, GA or TX? Not so much. People just consider it a very long shot, simply because the scientific evidence is, as far as science itself is concerned, nonexistent.

That was my point.

He/she is able to justify the time and expense spent sifting through the bush, or setting up and checking a camera trap over the course of months, by the virtual assurance of a decent photo, sooner or later. And the money to live on ’til the photo is taken.

Nothing like this is ever done in the search for cryptids. Virtually every cryptid photo op is a totally unplanned experience, in front of a barely-prepared — if at all — photographer. The sole historical exception is, still, the Patterson film. And even that was a fleeting glimpse, only possible because the cameraman stayed prepared, the entire trip, for that opportunity, with camera at hand, ready to roll.

The Patterson trip remains the only significant Bigfoot expedition conducted in history. Ever. What you hear about these days are the briefest of excursions, conducted by people who have day jobs and can’t devote the time that Patterson and Gimlin just happened to have to devote at the time they went to Bluff Creek. (How many of today’s “Bigfoot expeditions” even see so much as a coyote or bobcat? And we know they exist.)

Until one devotes the time and energy to Bigfoot that is routinely devoted — by full-time biologists — to documenting known species, forget about “decent” evidence. Unless you count all those tracks and voice recordings.

All wildlife encounters are luck. You just have to have the time and patience — and money — to get lucky.

And I agree with the comment that in just a fleeting glimpse, I find it hard to imagine someone having the camera in hand, ready to snap a pic at any given moment in time.

Maybe we’ll get to see a good pic at full res, but I’m not holding my breath.

Thanks

Obviously I am talking about decent secondary evidence that would be accepted by the general scientific community!

Not “unidentified hair/scat/footprint/dna” claims.

With references coming from “unknown tv shows”.

(Incidentally, if anyone cares, I’ve found Fuji digital cameras have the fastest focus and shutter response times. With some of the Kodaks and Nikons I’ve had in the past I’d be a mile down the road before the camera ever clicked the picture. Get one that has at least ISO 800 though or you just end up with blur.)