Fish tales

Undoubtedly you are aware of the outrage from people on the anti-woke end of the spectrum about Disney's choice of Black actress Halle Bailey to play Ariel in their upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.

This is just the latest in a very long line of people getting their panties in a twist over what fictional characters "really" are, all of which conveniently ignores the meaning of the words "fictional" and "really."  Authors, screenwriters, and casters are free to reimagine a fictional character any way they want to -- take, for example, the revision of The Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West into the tortured heroine in Gregory Maguire's novel (and later Broadway hit) Wicked.  This one didn't cause much of a stir amongst the I Hate Diversity crowd, though, undoubtedly because the character of the Witch stayed green the whole time.

But that's the exception.  In the past, we've had:

• A French professor claiming the Smurfs are communists
• An Islamic cleric issuing a fatwa against Mickey Mouse
• Right-wing media calling Dora the Explorer an illegal immigrant
• The Vatican declaring that the Simpsons are Roman Catholic

The current uproar, of course, is worse; not only is it blatantly racist, it's aimed at a real person, the actress who will play Ariel.  But these lunatics show every day that they care more about fictional characters than they do about actual people; note that the same folks screeching about Black mermaids seem to have zero problem with using public funds to transport actual living, breathing human beings to another state, where they were dropped on a street corner like so much refuse, in order to own the libs.

Oh, but you can't mess about with the skin color of mermaids.  In fact, the outrage over this was so intense that it has triggered some of them to invoke something they never otherwise give a second thought to:

Science.

Yes, if you thought this story couldn't get any more idiotic, think again.  Now we have members of the Mermaid Racial Purity Squad claiming that mermaids can't be Black, because they live underwater, and if you're underwater you can't produce melanin.

I wish I was making this up.  Here's a direct quote:

Mermaids live in ocean.  Underwater = limited sunlight.  Limited sunlight = less melanin.  Less melanin = lighter skin color.  Because they live underwater, which has no access to light beyond a certain depth, Ariel and every other mermaid in existence would be albino.

And another:

Correct me if I'm wrong.  But isn't it physically impossible for Ariel to be black?  She lives underwater, how would the sun get to her for her to produce melanin?!  Nobody thought this through..?

Okay, well, correct me if I'm wrong, but applying science to a movie in which there's a singing, dancing crab, a sea witch with octopus legs, and a character named Flounder who clearly isn't a flounder is kind of a losing proposition from the get-go.

Fig. 1.  Flounder from The Little Mermaid.

Fig. 2.  An actual flounder.

Plus, there are plenty of underwater animals that aren't white, which you'd think would occur to these people when they recall the last science book they read, which was One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.

Oh, and another thing.  It's an ironic fact that the squawking knuckle-draggers who complain about "wokeness" every time some fictional character they like isn't played by a White American and are the same ones who pitch a fit at any kind of representation of diversity, be it in books, movies, music, or whatever, conveniently overlook the fact that (1) Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote The Little Mermaid, was bisexual, and (2) there's a credible argument that the original story itself was inspired by his grief at having his romantic advances rejected by his friend Edvard Collin.  (In fact, in the original story, the mermaid doesn't marry the prince -- he goes off and marries a human girl, just as Collin himself did, and the mermaid weeps herself to death.  Not a fan of happy endings, Andersen.)

Anyhow, anti-woke people, do go on and tell me more about "reality" and "what science says."  Hell, have at it, apply science anywhere you want.  Start with climate change and environmental policy if you like.  Or... does it only matter to you when the subject is people who aren't the right color, gender, ethnic origin, nationality, or sexual orientation?

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Long live the king

Those of you who are interested in the affairs of the royal family of Great Britain will no doubt want to know that the psychics have weighed in on the future of newly-crowned King Charles III.

According to an article Thursday in the Hull Daily Mail, the loyal subjects of His Majesty are in for a bit of a rollercoaster.  One Mario Reading, author and expert in interpreting the writings of Nostradamus, predicts that Charles III isn't going to be king for long.  He's going to abdicate, Reading says.  "Prince Charles will be 74 years old in 2022, when he takes over the throne.  But the resentments held against him by a certain proportion of the British population, following his divorce from Diana, Princess of Wales, still persist."

After that, things get even weirder.  Citing Nostradamus's line "A man will replace him who never expected to be king," Reading says that after Charles's abdication, the next king will not be his elder son William.  It could be that his younger son, Prince Harry, will reign as King Henry IX... or possibly someone even wilder.  An Australian guy named Simon Dorante-Day, who claims he is the secret son of King Charles and the Queen Consort Camilla, might be ready to take the crown once Charles steps aside.

"It’s certainly food for thought, because the prediction makes it clear that someone out of left field would replace Charles as king," Dorante-Day said.  "I can see why some people would think I fit the bill.  I believe I am the son of Charles and Camilla and I’m looking forward to my day in court to prove this.  Maybe Nostradamus has the same understanding that I do, that all this will come out one day."

King Charles III and the Queen Consort Camilla [Image is in the Public Domain]

On the other hand, an article Thursday in the Hull Daily Mail says that the new king has nothing to worry about.  Psychic and Tarot card reader Inbaal Honigman says she did a card layout for King Charles, and found that he will have a long and fruitful reign.

"Starting off, he has the Three of Swords card which is for sorrow," Honigman said.  "This means he is entering a period of mourning and adjustments that will be quite hard for him...  He’s not a young person taking on this role so he will have added worries and concerns about himself and his entire family so I predict this will be a time of introspection for him while he adapts to the transition.  The next card is a Ten of Cups which is a water Tarot and as King Charles is a water sign, he is very aligned to this card.  This card shows that he is possibly preparing or will make preparations early on for the next transition that will occur after him."

Honigman said overall, the predictions were encouraging.  "The third card is the Chariot card, which is a card of moving on.  I predict that around his eightieth birthday, King Charles is going to start sharing duties with his son, Prince William, to ensure there is a smooth transition of power when the time eventually comes for Charles.  The Chariot card is not negative, it means the moving on will be from a safe and secure place and that King Charles and Prince William will work well together.  I think the public will get behind Charles as the King.  I think his words and actions in the next days and weeks will demonstrate his message is one of love, unity and public service and that he intends to do all of it from the heart."

So yeah.  If you were reading carefully and noted the sources of these two predictions, you noticed something interesting.  Two psychics made completely opposite predictions about the same person, and the stories appeared in the same newspaper on the same day.

Believers in psychic phenomena often get snippy with us skeptics about our tendency to dismiss divination and future-reading out of hand, and yet don't have any inclination to call out such obvious impossibilities as this one.  Instead, they pick out the one or two times someone gets something right -- for instance, the aforementioned Mario Reading correctly predicted Queen Elizabeth II would die this year -- and claim this is vindication for the whole shebang, rather than (1) listing all the times the psychics got things wrong, (2) pointing out when psychics say mutually contradictory things about the same person or event, and (3) acknowledging the fact that predicting the death of a frail 96-year-old lady really isn't much of a reach even if you're not psychic.

So come on, psychics.  Get your act together.  If there really is something to what you're claiming, there ought to be at least some consistency between your predictions.  Okay, I can let it slide if you get the occasional details askew.  But "Charles will abdicate soon and be replaced either by Prince Harry or by some random dude from Australia" and "Charles will have a long reign and there will be a smooth transition of power to his elder son, Prince William" can't both be true.

It puts me in mind of the famous quote from the Roman author Cicero: "I wonder how two soothsayers can look one another in the face without laughing."

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The will to fight

If you're fortunate enough not to suffer from crippling depression and anxiety, let me give you a picture of what it's like.

Last week I started an online class focused on how to use TikTok as a way for authors to promote their books.  So I got the app and created an account -- it's not a social media platform I'd used before -- and made my first short intro video.  I was actually kind of excited, because it seemed like it could be fun, and heaven knows I need some help in the self-promotion department.  (As an aside, if you're on TikTok and would like to follow me, here's the link to my page.)

Unfortunately, it seemed like as soon as I signed up, I started having technical problems.  I couldn't do the very first assignment because my account was apparently disabled, and that (very simple) function was unavailable.  Day two, I couldn't do the assignment because I lacked a piece of equipment I needed.  (That one was my fault; I thought it was on the "optional accessories" list, but I was remembering wrong.)  Day three's assignment -- same as day one; another function was blocked for my account.  By now, I was getting ridiculously frustrated, watching all my classmates post their successful assignments while I was completely stalled, and told my wife I was ready to give up.  I was getting ugly flashbacks of being in college physics and math classes, where everyone else seemed to be getting it with ease, and I was totally at sea.  When the same damn thing happened on day four, my wife (who is very much a "we can fix this" type and also a techno-whiz), said, "Let me take a look."  After a couple of hours of jiggering around with the settings, she seemed to have fixed the problem, and all the functions I'd been lacking were restored.

The next morning, when I got up and got my cup of coffee and thought, "Okay, let me see if I can get started catching up," I opened the app and it immediately crashed.

Tried it again.  Crash.  Uninstalled and reinstalled the app.  Crash.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons LaurMG., Frustrated man at a desk (cropped), CC BY-SA 3.0]

I think anyone would be frustrated at this point, but my internal voices were screaming, "GIVE UP.  YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE SIGNED UP FOR THIS.  YOU CAN'T DO IT.  IT FIGURES.  LOSER."  And over and over, like a litany, "Why bother.  Why bother with anything."  Instead of the frustration spurring me to look for a solution, it triggered my brain to go into overdrive demanding that I give up and never try again.

When I heard my wife's alarm go off an hour later, I went and told her what had happened, trying not to frame it the way I wanted to, which was "... so fuck everything."  She sleepily said, "Have you tried turning your phone completely off, then turning it back on?"  Ah, yes, the classic go-to for computer problems, and it hadn't occurred to me.  So I did...

... and the app sprang back to life.

But now I was on day five of a ten-day course, and already four assignments behind.  That's when the paralyzing anxiety kicked in.  I had told the instructors of the course a little about my tech woes, and I already felt like I had been an unmitigated pest, so the natural course of action -- thinking, "you paid for this course, tell the instructors and see if they can help you catch up" -- filled me with dread.  I hate being The Guy Who Needs Special Help.  I just want to do my assignments, keep my head down, fly under the radar, be the reliable work-horse who gets stuff done.  And here I was -- seemingly the only one in the class who was being thwarted by mysterious forces at every turn.

So I never asked.  The more help I needed, the more invisible I became.  It's now day seven, and I'm maybe halfway caught up, and I still can't bring myself to tell them the full story of what was going on.

Adversity > freak out and give up.  Then blame yourself and decide you should never try anything new ever again.  That's depression and anxiety.

I've had this reaction pretty much all my life, and it's absolutely miserable.  It most definitely isn't what I was accused of over and over as a child -- that I was choosing to be this way to "get attention" or to "make people feel sorry for me."  Why the fuck would anyone choose to live like this?  All I wanted as a kid -- all I still want, honestly -- is to be normal, not to have my damn brain sabotage me any time the slightest thing goes wrong.  As I told my wife -- who, as you might imagine, has the patience of a saint -- "some days I would give every cent I have to get a brain transplant."

So re: TikTok, if Carol hadn't been there, I'd have deleted my account and forfeited the tuition for the class.  But I'm happy to report that I haven't given up, and I've posted a few hopefully mildly entertaining videos, which I encourage you to peruse.

The reason all this comes up, though, isn't just because of my social media woes.  I decided to write about this because of some research published this week in the journal Translational Psychiatry which found that a single gene -- called Tob -- seems to mediate resilience to emotional stress in mice, and without it, produces exactly the "freak out and give up" response people have when they suffer from depression and anxiety.

Tob was already the subject of intense research because it apparently plays a role in the regulation of the cell cycle, cancer suppression, and the immune system.  It's known that in high-stress situations, Tob rapidly switches on, so it is involved somehow in the flight-fight-freeze response.  And a team led by Tadashi Yamamoto of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology found that "Tob-knockout mice" -- mice that have been genetically engineered to lack the Tob gene -- simply gave up when they were in stressful situations requiring resilience and sustained effort.  Put another way, without Tob, they completely lost the will to fight. 

When I read this article -- which I came across while I was in the midst of my struggle with technology -- I immediately thought, "Good heavens, that's me."  Could my tendency to become frustrated and overwhelmed easily, and then give up in despair, be due to the underactivity of a gene?  I know that depression and anxiety run in my family; my mother and maternal grandmother definitely struggled with them, as does my elder son.  Of course, it's hard to tease apart the nature/nurture effects in this kind of situation.  It's a reasonable surmise that being raised around anxious, stressed people would make a kid anxious and stressed.

But it also makes a great deal of sense that these familial patterns of mental illness could be because there's a faulty gene involved.

Research like Yamamoto et al. is actually encouraging; identifying a genetic underpinning to mental illnesses like the one I have suffered from my entire life opens up a possible target for treatment.  Because believe me, I wouldn't wish this on anyone.  While fighting with a silly social media platform might seem to someone who isn't mentally ill like a shrug-inducing, "it's no big deal, why are you getting so upset?" situation, for people like me, everything is a big deal.  I've always envied people who seem to be able to let things roll off them; whatever the reason, if it came from the environment I grew up in or because I have a defective Tob gene, I've never been able to do that.  Fortunately, my family and friends are loving and supportive and understand what I go through sometimes, and are there to help.

But wouldn't it be wonderful if this kind of thing could be fixed permanently?

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Rebuilding the web

One of the (many) ways people can be shortsighted is in their seeming determination to view non-human species as inconsequential except insofar as they have a direct benefit to humans.

The truth, of course, is a great deal more nuanced than that.  One well-studied example is the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park, something that was opposed by ranchers who owned land adjacent to the park, hunters who were concerned that wolves would reduce numbers of deer, elk, and moose for hunting, and people worried that wolves might attack humans visiting the park or the area surrounding it.  The latter, especially, is ridiculous; between 2002 and 2020 there were 489 verified wolf/human attacks worldwide, of which a little over three-quarters occurred because the animal was rabid.  Only eight were fatal.  The study, carried out by scientists at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, stated outright that the risks associated with a wolf attacking a human were "non-zero, but far too low to calculate."

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and the wolf reintroduction went forward as scheduled, starting in 1996.  The results were nothing short of spectacular.  Elk populations had skyrocketed following the destruction of the pre-existing wolf population in the early twentieth century, resulting in such high overgrazing that willows and aspens were virtually eradicated from the park.  This caused the beaver population to plummet, as well as several species of songbirds that depend on the insects hosted by those trees.  The drop in the number of beaver colonies meant less damming of streams, resulting in small creeks drying up completely in summer and a resultant crash of fish populations.

In the years since wolves were reintroduced, all of that has reversed.  Elk populations have returned to stable numbers (and far fewer die of starvation in the winter).  Aspen and willow groves have come back, along with the beavers and songbirds that depend on them.  The ponds and wetlands are rebuilding, and the fish that declined so precipitously have begun to rebound.

All of which illustrates the truth of the famous quote by naturalist John Muir: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

The reason this all comes up is a recent story in Science News about a project that should give you hope; the restoration of mangrove forests in Kenya.  You probably know that mangroves are a group of trees that form impenetrable thickets along coastlines.  They've been eradicated in a lot of places -- particularly stretches of coast with sandy shores potentially attractive to tourists -- resulting in increased erosion and drastically increased damage potential from hurricanes.  A 2020 study found that having an intact mangrove buffer zone along a coast decreased the damage to human settlements and agricultural land from a direct hurricane strike by an average of 24%.

[Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NOAA]

The Kenyan project, however, was driven by two other benefits of mangrove preservation and reintroduction -- carbon sequestration and increased fish yields.  Mangrove swamps have been shown to be four times better at carbon capture and storage as inland forests, and their tangled submerged root systems are havens for hatchling fish and the plankton they eat.  The restoration has been successful enough that similar projects have been launched in Mozambique and Madagascar.  A UN-funded project called Mikoko Pamoja allows communities that are involved in mangrove restoration to receive money for "carbon credits" that then can be reinvested into the community infrastructure -- with the result that the towns of Gazi and Makongeni, nearest to the mangrove swamps and responsible for their protection, have become economically self-sufficient.

I have the feeling that small, locally-run projects like Mikoko Pamoja will be how we'll save our global ecosystem -- and, most importantly, realizing that species having no immediately obvious direct benefit to humans (like wolves and mangroves) are nevertheless critical for maintaining the health of the complex, interlocked web of life we all depend on.  It means taking our blinders off, and understanding that our everyday actions do have an impact.  I'll end with a quote from one of my heroes, the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai: "In order to accomplish anything," she said, "we must keep our feelings of empowerment ahead of our feelings of despair.  We cannot do everything, but still there are many things we can do."

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Viral reality

If you are of the opinion that more evidence is necessary for demonstrating the correctness of the evolutionary model, I give you: a paper by biologist Justin R. Meyer of the University of California-San Diego et al. that has conclusively demonstrated speciation occurring in the laboratory.

The gist of what the team did is to grow populations of bacteriophage Lambda (a virus that attacks and kills bacteria) in the presence of populations of two different potential food sources, more specifically E. coli that had one of two different receptors where the virus could attach.  What happened was that the original bacteriophages were non-specialists -- they could attach to either receptor, but not very efficiently -- but over time, more of them accrued mutations that allowed them to specialize in attacking one receptor over the other.  Ultimately, the non-specialists became extinct, leaving a split population where each new species could not survive on the other's food source.

Diagram of a bacteriophage [Image is in the Public Domain]

Pretty amazing stuff.  My response was, "If that isn't evolution, what the hell is it?"  Of course, I'm expecting the litany of goofy rejoinders to start any time now.  "It's only microevolution."  "There was no novel gene produced."  "But both of them are still viruses.  If you showed me a virus evolving into a wombat, then I'd believe you."

Nevertheless, this sticks another nail in the coffin of the anti-evolutionists -- both Intelligent Design proponents and the young-Earth creationists, the latter of whom believe that all of the Earth's species were created as-is six thousand or so years ago along with the Earth itself, and that the two hundred million year old trilobite fossils one sometimes finds simply dropped out of God's pocket while he was walking through the Garden of Eden or something.

So as usual, you can't logic your way out of a stance you didn't logic your way into.  Still, I have hope that the tide is gradually turning.  Certainly one cheering incident comes our way from Richard Lenski, who is justly famous for his groundbreaking study of evolution in bacteria and who co-authored the Meyer paper I began with.  But Lenski will forever be one of my heroes for the way he handled Andrew Schlafly, who runs Conservapedia, a Wikipedia knockoff that attempts to remodel the world so that all of the ultra-conservative talking points are true.  Schlafly had written a dismissive piece about Lenski's work on Conservapedia, to which Lenski responded.  The ensuing exchange resulted in one of the most epic smackdowns by a scientist I've ever seen.  Lenski takes apart Schlafly's objections piece by piece, citing data, kicking ass, and taking names.  I excerpt the end of it below, but you can (and should) read the whole thing at the article on the "Lenski Affair" over at RationalWiki:

I know that I’ve been a bit less polite in this response than in my previous one, but I’m still behaving far more politely than you deserve given your rude, willfully ignorant, and slanderous behavior.  And I’ve spent far more time responding than you deserve.  However, as I said at the outset, I take education seriously, and I know some of your acolytes still have the ability and desire to think, as do many others who will read this exchange.

Sincerely, Richard Lenski

And if that's not spectacular enough, check out one of the four P.S.s:

I noticed that you say that one of your favorite articles on your website is the one on “Deceit.”  That article begins as follows: “Deceit is the deliberate distortion or denial of the truth with an intent to trick or fool another.  Christianity and Judaism teach that deceit is wrong.  For example, the Old Testament says, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’”  You really should think more carefully about what that commandment means before you go around bearing false witness against others.

I can only hope that there was a mic around after that so that Lenski could drop it.

So there you have it.  Science finding out cool stuff once again, because after all, that's what science does.  The creationists, it is to be hoped, retreating further and further into the corner into which they've painted themselves.  It's probably a forlorn wish that this'll make Ken Ham et al. shut up, but maybe they'll eventually have to adapt their strategy to address reality instead of avoiding it.

You might even say... they'll need to evolve.

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Big bird

If last week's post about the Demon Ducks of Australia wasn't sufficient to scare you into stopping your project to build a working time machine so you can study prehistoric life first-hand, take a look at a different recent fossil discovery -- this one of a bird with a six-meter wingspan...

... and teeth.

Well, pseudoteeth, says the Wikipedia article on pelagornithids, because they don't have the same structure as true teeth and are actually outgrowths of the premaxillary and mandibular bones.  But that would have been little consolation to their prey:

This rather horrifying discovery, which I found out about thanks to a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, lived in Antarctica on the order of fifty million years ago.  The entire order was around for a very long time -- they first evolved shortly after the Cretaceous Extinction 66 million years ago, and only went extinct at the end of the Pliocene Epoch, three million years ago.  So these enormous toothed birds (pardon me, pseudotoothed birds) were swooping around scaring the absolute shit out of everyone for about sixty times longer than humans have even existed.

"In a lifestyle likely similar to living albatrosses, the giant extinct pelagornithids, with their very long-pointed wings, would have flown widely over the ancient open seas, which had yet to be dominated by whales and seals, in search of squid, fish and other seafood to catch with their beaks lined with sharp pseudoteeth," said Thomas Stidham of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who co-authored the study.  "The big ones are nearly twice the size of albatrosses, and these bony-toothed birds would have been formidable predators that evolved to be at the top of their ecosystem."

It's easy to look around at today's chickadees and warblers and think of birds as being small, feathery, fluttering creatures who are more often prey than predator.  But even today we have, as a reminder that birds are dinosaurs, species like cassowaries:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Nevit Dilmen, Darica Cassowary 00974, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Which are as foul-tempered as their expression suggests, and have been known to attack people by kicking them with their heavy, razor-taloned feet.  So it's not just the prehistoric birds that have as their motto, "Do not fuck with me."

Anyhow, that's today's installment from the "Be Glad You Live When And Where You Do" department.  As fascinating as I find prehistoric life and birds in particular, I'd prefer not to meet in person a bird that could carry me away and eat me for breakfast.  

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Swamp people

I've written here at Skeptophilia for twelve years, and I've been interested in weird claims since I was a teenager, so it's not often that I run into a cryptid I'd never heard of.

Much less one from my home state of Louisiana.

So I was pretty shocked when a loyal reader sent me an article on the "Honey Island Swamp Monster," a southern relative of Sasquatch (and thus a cousin of Arkansas's Fouke Monster and southern Florida's Skunk Ape), who allegedly haunts the swamps along the Pearl River in Saint Tammany Parish.

Unlike a lot of cryptids, though, the Honey Island Swamp Monster doesn't have a long history.  The first reported sighting was by a retired air traffic controller named Harlan Ford in 1963.  Since then, the crypto-crowd has seized upon the story as they always tend to do, and the Monster has made appearances on shows like Mysteries and Monsters in America wherein they search every week for some strange beast, and every week find exactly zero beasts, then high-five each other for being such amazing beast hunters and do the same thing next week.

Oh, and if you're ever in Saint Tammany Parish, apparently there are Honey Island Swamp Monster Tours wherein a guide will take you out into the swamp, and you'll come back having had the thrilling experience of seeing no monsters while getting approximately 8,382,017 mosquito bites.  (I will say, however, that the Louisiana swamps are beautiful even without monsters.  I have great memories of growing up fishing, boating, birdwatching, and swimming -- yes, with the alligators and cottonmouths and all -- in the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp of south central Louisiana.)

But as far as the Honey Island Swamp Monster goes, the sad truth is that when you start doing a little digging, the whole story starts to fall apart pretty quickly.  On cryptid sites there's a lot of buzz about some camera film found amongst Harlan Ford's belongings after his death in 1980, claiming that it had photographs of the Monster.  But I found actual images of the developed film, and... here they are:

To say this is underwhelming falls considerably short.  It further supports my contention that there's something about aiming a camera at a cryptid that causes the AutoBlur function to turn on.

More damning still, though, is something rationalist skeptic and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell uncovered back in 2011.  He was looking into the stories of the Honey Island Swamp Monster, and specifically Harlan Ford's role in perpetuating them, and he found, buried near Ford's former hunting camp on the Pearl River, one of a pair of shoes with an altered sole for making Swamp Monster tracks.

Oops.

Nickell calls this "prima facie evidence of hoaxing."  And I have to admit that if he were alive, Ford would have a lot of 'splainin' to do.  As do his apologists, such as his granddaughter Dana Holyfield-Evans, who still support his claims, especially when it involves television appearances on shows like Not Finding Bigfoot on the Folks, This Seriously Isn't About History Anymore channel.

So sad to say -- because, as I've pointed out before, as a biologist, no one would be happier than me if it turned out there really was a Bigfoot lurching around in the wilderness somewhere -- this one is kind of a non-starter.  Anyhow, you cryptid hunters, do keep looking.  Just because one story turned out to be false, doesn't mean they're all false, right?  Even if the last 562 stories were false, same thing, right?

Of course, right.

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