6/30/09 thermal video of bigfoot?, page 1

Here is a thermal video taking in Wisconsin. It appears to show a small biped for a few seconds then the creature appears to jump, and camera is unable to find the animal again.

Here are the comments from the blog that I found it on.

The videographer had this to say:

A baby bigfoot is seen here on the ground looking up to a branch in a tree just before it leaps up and swings through the tree's.
A photo later of a person 5 foot 6 inches, has shown this baby bigfoot is about 4 foot tall.

I don't know how the videographer knows it's a bigfoot. Maybe he'll answer some polite questions. I can see what looks like legs as it runs away, but it's so briefly on screen, I really am not sure what I see.

UPDATE: The videographer, who goes by the screen name replures, replied to my questions this way:

I was standing on the ground, and fell to my knee to start recording.
The reason I say bigfoot, is because it has the profile of a humanoid just before it leaps for the trees, and the reason I know its not a human is because of its speed and stealth through the branches.
I did go back to the spot with a person, and had the person stand where this thing was, the person stands 5 foot 6 inches tall, from this estimate the critter is 4 foot tall.

I would have to argue that I'm not so sure it has a profile of a humanoid in that brief moment before it leaps out of frame (which I cannot, unfortunately, get the YouTube file to freeze on..). I see something that looks a bit like a tail shooting off to the left. I also see what looks like ears up on the top. If I were going to guess, I'd say it was a fox or some other canid. It doesn't look like it's going up into a tree to me, either. It looks like the shot is at an angle down toward the ground, and the animal simply trots away.

blog

The jump in the video appears monkey like, but I am wondering if this could be a large cat?

reply to post by hisshadow

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Yes, that is why I think it looks like a cat. Usually they look before they leap.

Some birds show up fairly warm, some do not. I spend hundreds of hours each year observing and recording wildlife with thermal imagers, night vision and other tech. Here are some examples from my YouTube channel that you can use for comparison.

The great thing about a thermal imager is that it is very good at locating otherwise camouflaged animals. The bad thing about it is that it can be very difficult to tell what the animal is, especially if it is slightly obscured by foliage etc. This is why thermal imaging technology has been largely responsible for the many military friendly fire incidents of recent years. In conditions like in this video I often identify an animal by the way it moves instead of its shape.

The size of an animal can be very difficult to determine when observed through a thermal imager. This is because you can only see the animal and its surroundings through the imager's monitor and not with your own eyes like you can with a normal camera. Fortunately they were apparently able to recreate the scene at the location to determine the size of the animal.
We cannot tell how much warmer than the surrounding objects the animal/person is in this video because we have no information about how the thermal imager was set at the time. If the operator had been using a larger temperature span we could have seen more detail in the animal/person. It doesn't look as though the operator would have had much time to fiddle with settings to show more detail once the animal had been spotted.

There are some things in this video that are quite typical of a sighting. First the imager is set with a small temperature span. Although this reduces detail it increases sensitivity which is ideal for locating animals in the bush. Secondly the footage starts after the animal/person is spotted. This happens to me all the time because I'm trying to save batteries or recording space on the camcorder. Next, when the operator looses sight of the animal/person they start to pan the area where the animal is expected to be spotted next. The approach into that area is slow and unsteady because the operator is concentrating on requiring the animal through the imager rather than paying attention to objects which have to be navigated around/over safely while basically walking blind. Lastly the animal is not reacquired resulting in a rather poor video sequence. That is pretty typical. Most of the footage that I acquire that could have been pretty exciting usually ends up being a momentary blob not worth keeping.

Another thing I notice is that when the operator tries to reacquire the animal/person they seem to misjudge where they are aiming and are searching to low. This is easy to do when you cant see your surroundings. When the image is bouncing it looks like there are glimpses of the very obscured "thing" a couple of times in the top of the image suggesting that it made a bit of progress further to the right.

Another note, there was a comment I read somewhere that the imager was held at an angle making the "thing" appear to jump vertically when it had actually moved horizontally. This is definitely not the case. I am very experienced at observing trees through the thermal imager and it is very obvious to me that they are all pointed strait up and down in the scene. I'm not sure how clear that is to the casual observer so I apologize if I am pointing out something that is obvious.

Lastly, I've seen what is probably hundreds of cats through the thermal imager and I just can't see anything that suggests that this might be what it is.

reply to post by testrat

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Cats aren't the only ones who look before they leap.

(So do conservatives.)

I've heard a lot of characteristics of the bigfoot, but never, ever did I hear of them doing the Tarzan thing.

Black bears can climb trees, but Brown bears, Kodiaks, and Grizzly, like the bigfoot, are too large to do any climbing.

That's why I'd discount this as being a bigfoot.

Now if he picked up and threw a Volkswagen . . .

A stabilized version of the video can be seen here.

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