Comments on: Big Birds Or Not?

By: springheeledjack

springheeledjack — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 04:36:08 +0000

My thoughts are thus: I have been skeptical about the idea of pterosaurs flying the skies and even thunderbirds…it seems pretty out there that such big flying critters could go unnoticed if they are out there.

Then while driving to and from work one day I began looking at the sky (while driving…okay not real smart, but hey I survived) and I got to thinking about how little time the average person probably really does spend looking at the sky. I would like to think some big flying critter would catch my eye, and others, but realistically, might I be able to see something (and if it was really high up) might I not just assume it was a plane and not waste any attention on it?

Think about how much time you actually pay attention to what is above us?

I guess my mind is open on the subject, though I haven’t seen any pterodactyls flying about (well except on re-runs of Johnny Quest).

Last, I would appreciate a link or info on where to go for the book–if nothing else, it will be valuable for the cataloguing of sightings.

Thanks

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:15:27 +0000

Right…our vision is OK for what it was adapted to do…so for the distance to a sheltering tree, hanging fruit or the distance and size of a likely bit of prey, it’s great..but cryptids under the influences of natural selection are able to disrupt our abilities and in the results oriented world of nature’s diversity there are several options which could work and we see examples of those (pattern disruption, coloration, paralysis…). Big birds and flying devils…I can believe we have an instinctual response to the dark shape of predatory birds wings hardwired, just like our nearly universal startle-response to snakelike shapes at our feet…even if they’re garden hoses. Since we can’t bend down at our feet to see if killer birds are actually big enough to be a danger, we flinch a bit and when it passes away we see it getting smaller and that it was just another one of the regular big birds, vultures, herons, owls…condors. We’re not good at much more than that for bird ID, even though soaring birds are great at focusing on, magnifiying and ID’ing us on the ground at great distances.

Anyhow, since we can never really be sure of what we’re seeing (specifically referring to cryptids) it makes all the more sense to record all the sightings until the unmistakable imprint of reality becomes evident, which would help us to understand what it is we’re dealing with and how to further verify scientifically their existence….separating the signal from the noise, so to speak. Turkey vultures from teratorns. Creating an environment where people will come forward with their info and having it discussed intelligently is a good step and places like this are a fine example.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:39:32 +0000

Well, Dogu4, I can’t really add much to your well put post. Humans tend to have pretty decent ability to judge size and distance, as do all predators with stereoscopic vision. It’s the recollection of events sifted through our concious mind where I think the problems occur. The tendency for the human mind to inaccurately recall events is one reason why in most saces, a criminal cannot be locked up from witness testimony in and of itself. There has to be some sort of hard data to back it up. This is one of the sticking points in cryptozoology, I feel. Lots of compelling sightings, too little to substantiate it. I beleive there is something going on and that accurate sightings are made, but the simple fact of the matter is there has to be something more because, especially in stressful situations, the mind can twist things around. This will make it hard for anyone to accept or base too much on sightings alone.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:27:23 +0000

Unknown flying fauna of almost any description seems hard to believe, let alone the kind that would be as charismatic as a gigantic bird or a flying dinosaur. I’ve been very interested in the scientific understanding of human perception for a while, and have come to accept that our perception, especially peerceptions from our vision which we hold in such high regard, is tightly impinged on a structure of how we think objective reality works both instictively(intuitively) and empirically. Most anyone will believe that theirown vision is very accurate and dependably captures reality. It turns out when we record what happens for the instant replay we see we’re actually pretty poor at taking it all in and recalling it accurately. We by and large think that we have superb color memory and we think we’re great at judging distance and size…all excellent reasons why a healthy dose of skepticism is not something you want to leave home without. Some of the recent examples (the gorilla and the basketball players) that I’ve seen on tv programming which explored the human mind show how in-accurate and undependable our sense of vision and recollection can be, especially in settings where other interesting things are happening. The examples are eye opening and the implications regarding the validity of eye-witness reports, whether at a traffic accident or a sea serpent, I think are interesting as far as cryptozoology in general and BF in particular. So much so that in my mind I’ve reconsidered the idea of large birds, despite their not being whence we think they ought to be. The sightings of a very large broadwinged bird by some very experienced bush fliers a couple of years ago from Southwest Alaska stick in my mind.
So on one hand I think that human perceptions are not as dependable as we think they are so we shouldnt take outlandish sightings for their face value, but on the other it means that creatures which at a distance fit our general idea of what’s out there lead us to see turkey vultures instead of teratorns, bats instead of pteradactyls. Our ancestral hunting instincts, one would think might very well come into play in unexpected ways as we interpret the environment, and it’s a sure thing that what we see as objective reality has more to do with what we want to see than we might have thought prior to “this fascinating modern age we live in”.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:12:59 +0000

sschaper, there’s a really good argument for doing away with class Reptilia altogether. It’s more of a hodgepodge grouping of more or less similar animals than anything else. I also believe that pterosaurs should not be classified as reptiles. I believe they should be placed in a separate class of their own. I’m not at all sure that the monotremes should be classed as mammals for that matter. Turtles are dissimilar enough from snakes and lizards to warrant separation at the class level too. I would class birds, dinosaurs, and crocodilians together in the same class, snakes and lizards in another class, turtles in another, and tuataras by themselves. Furthermore I would separate monotremes from mammals at the class level or at least put them in a subclass (as many taxonomists already do).

The more we learn about reptiles, the more differences turn up. About the only things that the various groups called “reptiles” have in common are ectothermia and scaly skin.

By: The_Carrot

The_Carrot — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:59:33 +0000

The eyewitness reports of Big Bird are interesting, but I have a hard time believing that there are large flying animals in the continental US that haven’t been discovered by now.

Kongamato and ropen? I’m open to those possibilities. Sanderson’s giant bat? Sure, I’ll buy into that as well. Pterosaurs over Texas? I’m not buying into that.

Although I suppose it’s possible that certain specimens of certain species might occasionally grow much larger than expected; Marlon Lowe (sp?) is proof of that.

By: greatanarch

greatanarch — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:04:31 +0000

I think zooforms are becoming an endangered species at the CFZ as well. Good riddance in my view; but I suppose we all enter cryptozoology from different directions.

By: proriter

proriter — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:04:24 +0000

Haven’t read the book yet, but I do think that regional crypto studies should be encouraged. If there is even one fact, perspective or observation in the book that has so far escaped general notice, then it is a worthwhile book. Not every work has to be a masterpiece to earn a place on the shelf. Perhaps it’s not a great book — I may well pay $13 online to find out — but perhaps Mr. Gerhard can give us a better one next time.

By: calash

calash — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:53:20 +0000

Giant birds are a concept that is just too hard to accept. With the exception of modern day birds dinosaurs are gone and they aren’t coming back. For any species to survive you need a suitable environment. Flying creatures with a twenty foot wingspan would need to spend most of their time in the air above the trees. As soon as you get to this elevation the likelihood of being sighted increases enormously. If you were to factor in the need for a breeding population of suitable size it would make the existence of creatures like this impossible not to detect.
These reports have to be misidentifications of known animals that were much closer then was believed by the observers.
Regards

By: DWA

DWA — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:29:22 +0000

Not to sound like Gerhard’s editor (harrumph!) or anything. But here:

“But, as the product of convergent evolution, they may have BORE a striking resemblance to their modern day counterparts….” [caps mine]

That should be BORNE, Ken.