Trust, Evolution, and Survival

I'm originally from New York, and like most New Yorkers, I trust no one. It takes me about 4 years of knowing someone before I will, say, lend them a utensil or believe them when they tell me the 5-day weather forecast. So it is with some shaking of my head from side to side that I react to stories like "Scams originating from Nigeria and other West African countries have been deceiving Queenslanders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars per month for many years." as reported by the Queensland (Australia) police department.

Like they say on the excellent, stylish, and fun British show Hustle, it's easy to scam people. All you do is "...offer them something for nothing, then give them nothing for something." (As an aside, Hustle ran for 4 glorious seasons before being discontinued; you can read my Hustle reviews here).

Which brings me to the real point of this post: Bigfoot. The ultimate urban legend has been back in the news recently, with 2 self-proclaimed Georgia (USA) Bigfoot trackers claiming to have found a Bigfoot corpse. (full story here). It turns out that the corpse was a Bigfoot suit stuffed with road kill and discards from an abbatoir. The two men, one of whom was a cop on leave (he has since been fired) claim that the story was blown out of proportion by a promoter (Tom Biscardi) who paid them $50,000 for the story and told them to make the fake. Before the story was fully revealed to be a scam, the guys had leaked the corpse photos to the internet, claimed to be having a press conference, and shown another fake video of a supposed primate researcher who had examined and authenticated the corpse (the primate researcher turned out to be the cop's brother - the resemblance was easy to spot).



What amazed me about this story was how many commenters to it were willing to believe in it, despite many red flags pointing to a scam. Perhaps with Bigfoot, 'scammability' is magnified. Bigfoot is an enduring urban legend, and our natural fear of forests and other unvisited places means that we often populate these places with imaginary beasts like unicorns, Loch Ness Monsters, dragons, extinct Tasmanian Tigers, mountain lions well out of range, and dinosaurs well past their extinct-by date.

I scoured the internet to find more proof that this scam was indeed a scam, but instead I found myself deeply buried in polished pro-Bigfoot websites (like The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy). Here's a tip - don't stay at the site for too long, or you will soon find yourself beginning to believe, too - or at least you will slide a little bit towards the 'undecided' category - especially when you read this transcript of noted primate expert Jane Goodall from a radio show in 2002. Yes, Jane Goodall said that she thinks that Bigfoot exists. Of course, a little later on, she does say she wishes they exist. So even Jane may be capable of getting gathered up in the hype.