Not once did John Kirk say Ogopogo was a manatee.

What Kirk does say, as an aside, is that there are older native legends of “little people” that appear to be descriptions of some dugong-ish type animal. Others have wondered about the possibility, he notes, of a smaller bodied version of the Steller’s sea cow being responsible for these stories. That is all.

On the Seraphim Long/Suswap story, they are so old they can never be verified but they are important in that they say a great deal about how a society perceives these beings. Are they more human? More animal? I’d say individual reaction to these stories is very telling in regards to an individual’s (or society’s) perception of BF.

Without knowing exactly where Sasquatch fits on the evolutionary tree, it’s hard to say exactly how likely hybridization would be. As for the stories, they do sound like they fulfill a useful social role in native culture, providing a socially-acceptable excuse for runaway girls, allowing them to return to the fold. That shouldn’t necessarily rule them out, but it should make us more suspicious of them. I’d be interested to see what a folklorist would make of them.

a) the woman and bigfoot were not genetically compatible and

b) that maybe the bigfoot returns the woman due to her inability to give him kids.

There are several case studies among chimps, apes and even birds that the fertile spouse will go outside of their relationship to get a child. So, if the theory is that bigfoot is more like humans than we think, then maybe he is doing the same thing.

In addition, female Ligers, which are the result of a cross between a male lion and a female tiger, are also fertile and can be bred to tigers or lions. Male ligers are sterile, though.

“…I always had a theory that sasquatch was a product of this and one day I hope I will have enough time to study in detail and attempt to triangulate back on the evolutionary tree to verify this, scientifically.”

HOW?

Ogopogo seems a bit off-topic but as it was mentioned, there is no chance the sightings in Lake Okanagan are manatees. Florida manatees are named so for a reason – they are relegated primarily to Florida’s warmer fresh water springs, rivers and lakes since they have no tolerance for cold temperatures and are specialized feeders. Okanagan is too cold and lacks any suitable food source for manatees or dugongs. In fact during the colder winter months (“colder” being a relative term) in December and January, manatees have been found dead in north Florida when caught by unusually cold weather fronts. Manatees are known to congregate near the plant outflow systems that dump warm water into the rivers. Manatees occasionally get accidentally pulled into the water intake in their attempts to warm up. The only sirenian species known to live in non-tropical waters was Stellar’s sea cow. This animal may be a candidate for Ogopogo but since Florida can scarcely keep the manatee population going, a manatee is right out of the line-up.

As to the assertion that the Germans attempted to cross-breed gorillas and humans, right out once again. This has never been achieved in the record of any national or private scientific organization to date. There was an attempt made in Soviet Russian in the 20’s which was stopped by the government and the scientist spent the remainder of his life in a gulag. Besides, in that case the attempt was with chimpanzee sperm, not gorilla. No educated scientist (I suppose there are uneducated scientists) would waste time pondering a gorilla-human hybrid due to the vast genetic differences. Theoretically a human could crossbreed with a bonobo or chimpanzee and have a reasonable expectation that fertile offspring would survive but I’ve never read of a Bigfoot eye-witness claiming that what they saw looked like a bonobo or chimpanzee. The closest known animal living or dead to fit the Bigfoot mold would be Gigantopithecus blacki and although nothing remains of G.B. except teeth, it’s fair to reason that even if we had genetic material to test it wouldn’t be compatible to human DNA.

Sure, everyone likes to kick the nazis but their record is plenty bad without pinning bad pulp novel and 50’s comic book plots on them. Regarding the proclivity of Bigfoot to kidnap and rape, I’ll head back to the dark corners and read the opinions of the experts.

So yes, interbreeding is possible, whether the offspring would survive would depend on how close the genetics of the two species were. Too much interbreeding can produce gentic abnormalities and diseases so that could also account for lack of live offspring.

One Eyed Cat (12): “It causes a lot of doubt when the hybrid offspring always die- and die first before woman’s return”.

That would actually make some sense. The logic of Suswap’s victim’s story is that women who can’t produce children are returned to the tribe, but “successful” women are kept and aren’t heard from again.