Just ignorant of the evidence, that’s all. Just going off half-cocked in an area she knows nothing about. Which are not the same things.

It just strikes me as odd that someone in her position would say what she does. Again, I think that anyone who dismisses the sas like that shows in his or her reasoning a lack of acquaintance with the evidence. At least I’ve never read any such opinion that failed to so show.

If your reason for accepting an animal as real is, simply, that you have seen it, it seems at the very least presumptuous to form an opinion on an animal of similar status without considering the possibility that witnesses as reliable as you have done the same.

You may find the sas “difficult to accept” given what you know. Heck, so do I. But the evidence forces me to keep as open a mind on Bigfoot as I do on orang pendek.

It’s just that if you aren’t as well acquainted with the evidence as I, you wouldn’t feel that way. That’s all.

Indeed, Debbie’s whole point with the “camera freeze” moment was to document how unfamiliar you can be with what might be a rare form of wildlife in an area until you know what you are seeing. She certainly has noted she knows what they look like now, and she’s ready for any Orang Pendek that comes in camera range again.

With regard to her skepticism of Sasquatch, I find that no reason to harshly view her sense of the Orang Pendek or her personality. It merely demonstrates the human phenomenon that one tends to respect and accept those things one happens to know the best.

Debbie Martyr’s current work in preserving the habitat of Orang Pendek and tiger is outstanding. The world is a little better off with a Debbie Martyr out there in the jungle!

I don’t understand the attacks on Martyr as unscientific or closed-minded because she rejects sasquatch. Everyone who is, in some way, in our business has an opinion (whether published or tightly guarded) on most of the major cryptid categories.

I don’t presume to speak for Martyr, but I assume that, like myself, she has great difficulty accepting that giant apes have inhabited North America throughout the period of human habitation without leaving a single bone or other substantive relic in human possession. (The tracks, reports, and casts, while intriguing, fall far short of what we SHOULD have by now. Would you call Alan Rabinowitz, discoverer of several new mammals, closed-minded because he holds that opinion?)

It’s not closed-minded: it’s an opinion, subject to change if new facts come in. One reader’s comment that orang-pendek can be explained without a new species is likewise just that: an opinion.

I think we should salute Martyr for the conservation and cryptozoological research she’s doing and agree that there are different opinions regarding the orang-pendek, Nessie, sasquatch, or what have you.

Smug says: ““I had a camera in my hand but I froze, because I didn’t know what I was seeing.” This statement kills me, it also makes my highly skeptical.”

It shouldn’t. Not that alone, it shouldn’t. I had an encounter with a grizzly in Alaska once during which the fact that a camera was dangling around my neck never once occurred to me. I’ve seen many other animals that I knew I would lose in the time it took me to get a camera up. I wanted to SEE it, not lose it in the act of getting what would likely be a crappy pic or none at all. People who think that a statement like that disqualifies a sighting, well, they have never had a sighting like that.

Smug also says “I’ve looked into the sightings and am convinced they are a mix of people seeing gibbons and young orangutans throughout the years. And the footprints could be explained by sun bears.”

From what I have seen of the information available – particularly the WWF “identikit” sessions that yielded the above pictures of the orang pendek – I think that any known animal can be pretty effectively ruled out. This is just like sas and yeti with me: a pretty intensive look at the data will tell you that either these animals exist, or everyone’s deliberately lying (or deliberately perpetuating a legend, which I guess isn’t quite the same as lying). There are no other reasonable alternatives. The animals being described are, quite clearly, not organgutans, not gibbons, not sun bears. The descriptions are way too consistent with one another, and way too inconsistent with anything known to exist. Sound familiar, sasquatch fans?

Several other folks talk about Martyr’s skepticism about yeti and sas. Couldn’t agree more. This falls into the same category as mainstream scientists’ skepticism: Martyr hasn’t examined the data on the yeti and the sasquatch anywhere near enough to have an informed opinion, and her statements pretty clearly indicate that. Stick to what you know about, Debbie. People who follow glass cryptids shouldn’t throw stones.

Another disappointing factor, is that Martyr, who is supposedly on the cutting edge of undiscovered primate research, goes right ahead and states that she doesn’t believe Bigfoot exists! Yes Debbie, you’re probably right, only cute little hobbits are around, everyone else who studies or has had a sighting of a similar creature that’s taller, well, that’s just not gonna fit the bill. Tall isn’t cute or “Lord of the Rings” like is it?

What Martyr forgets, is that in a media exposure position, it would benefit cryptid research worldwide by making the call for worldwide investigations. Instead of saying “I don’t believe in things like Bigfoot” (actually you do Debbie) it would have been more professional to state, “there seems to be enough trace evidence to warrant further investigation on these types of creatures all around the world.”

That, IMHO, is lack of vision. To me, Martyr has a ways to go before anyone should be calling her an angel of the great Leaky, and Bigfoot, may have a ways to go, if convincing researchers that study similar creatures that he may actually be a player in this exciting cryptological game.

I also find it interesting that she doesn’t think Sasquatch exist, even though there’s more hard evidence for Sasquatch (in terms of quantities of good prints, eyewitnesses, the P-G film, Snookum cast, etc.) than for Orang Pendek. I think there’s some researcher bias at work there. She thinks the Orang Pendek exists because she’s seen it. Well, lots of credible folks have seen a sasquatch as well – what makes their observations less qualified than hers?