Customer Reviews

Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe have in the course of 207 pages laid a basis for a reclassification system to the myriad of mystery primates from around the worldwide. Borrowing from the works of Mark Hall and Ivan Sanderson (to name a few) the proposed classification system encompasses nine (9) varieties of these cryptic creatures.

Coupled with the classifications, are 50 case studies each accompanied by an line illustration by Harry Trumbore. These case studies are short recounting of famous and not so famous, incidents and anecdotal information about each of these cases. The cases themselves are subgroup in a worldwide geographical breakdown, thus allowing a reader to view only the particular world area if they choose. Although some may question the inclusion of chupacabras or Steller's sea monkey (or ape) in the classification system, they do add some spice to the reading and perhaps offer a few un-thought of ideas.

The heart of the book though is not the case studies, rather the rationale for a reclassification to avoid the common term of "Bigfoot" around the world, as these mystery primates have been being reported long before the usage of the word "Bigfoot" in the mid-part of this century. The first portion of the book breaks down the various groups that make up the classification, these being: Neo-Giant, True Giant, Marked Hominid, Neandertaloid, Erectus Hominid, Proto-Pygmy, Unknown Pongid, Giant Monkey, and Merbeings. By far the last class, Merbeings, is the most controversial.

Additionally the latter part of the book deals with best bets as to which of these mystery creatures may be discovered first. It must also be said that some of the inclusions are historical and that the creatures described may no longer exist. The extensive bibliography, source pages and other resource and additional follows-up sections at the rear of the book, make it easier for a researcher to dig further for themselves.

The book does not answer everything, and there are some gray areas. But, as a medium to create debate and rethinking of ideas the book succeeds. As a book in a series of other Field Guides this one had to follow a certain pattern. More emphasis is needed on breaking down the exact anatomical variations between the classes and a more thorough emphasis on cases that make up those classes. But for limited space and a stricter pattern, the book does offer a reader the basics to start their own research and evaluation. Perhaps even offer the authors themselves a reclassification of their classifications.

Please don't listen to people who think this book is a "must-have" or an "instant-classic", or another "(the author) has done it again!" book. This book is really rather weak book that should be considered more as entertainment than as a serious work.

1. "Mermen?" "Neo Giants"? Does anyone really think these things exist? And if they do, does anyone really think these things really exist based on a handful of weak reports?

2. The taxonomic classification system, while based in real science, is really a shot in the dark. While one might argue that Grover Krantz's beloved Gigantopithecus Blacki has been classified by science based on a few tooth fragments, well, that's actual physical evidence, and despite the fact that I do believe in a physical aspect to the Bigfoot phenomenon, there is no hard physical evidence. I know it's an attempt, Loren, but still, it's grasping at straws to even suggest these are different species. We could be dealing with a single species and the reported difference in physical appearance could be akin to so-called "racial" differences in humans.

3. The sightings in the reports are really kind of bland and uninteresting. No photographs, no eyewitness drawings, no photographs of locations, nothing. Just one pencil drawing per page. It would have been more interesting to make it look like a field investigator's scrapbook.

4. The sighting reports are too short. In many Bigfoot books, the author/researcher may spend many pages on a single sighting, interviewing eyewitnesses, documenting evidence, revisiting the scene, etc. There's none of this here. Every entry looks the same and is pretty much the same length.

5. I'm really baffled to find myself listed in the Acknowledgements section. I really don't know what I did to assist in the production of this book. I didn't even know the authors were writing it.

It's a fair read, don't get me wrong, though I think that anyone who reads it ought to read it with an iceberg-sized grain of salt. Those well versed in Bigfoot should give it a pass, or take it on as a curio, a maker in the careers of Loren Coleman and Patrick Hughye. Coleman in particular has been getting away from theorizing and sticking to dishing reports, so it's all the more frustrating to see him go back to theorizing and producing such, well, quality rubbish. I think it would be a good starter book for children in the way Marian Place's books were, a category that currently remains unfilled. It's contraversial, but then again, most Bigfooters think that professional wrestling is contraversial.

It's an odd book, a field guide for a nonexistent field.

"The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide" by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe stands alone as a work that attempts to briefly describe each of a variety of distinct animals sighted worldwide.

The authors have presented the cases, not as the "be all and end all" of mystery primate reference, but rather, as the title denotes, as a "field guide". The historical accounts are informative, nicely condensed, and feature excellent drawings by Harry Trumbore.

It can be argued that the differences in individual sightings leading to the creation of so many distinct "classifications" has the effect of lessening credibility, but the reader is free to make their own judgements. Although some would relegate it to the realm of "mythology", the majority of the sightings are based on solid historical evidence. To include more than one or two specific sightings per entry would have burdened the book with unnecessary bulk and turned it from a "field-guide" into an "encyclopedia".

Overall it is another excellent book from a cryptozoologist with nearly 40 years of experience.

The authors of this odd book collect accounts of large bipeds from around the world and come up with a classification system for them. But the problem is that the "eyewitnesses" (many from children and people long-dead, but with a few "scholars") are frequently unreliable. Part of the problem is that the entries are all just one page long, and leave out a lot of information that would be helpful to determine how believeable the stories are. This is a well-intentioned book, but you get the feeling that the authors will believe just about any stories that come their way. Also, there is some obvious sloppiness (ie, the country "Ecuador" is misspelled; some maps are geographically inaccurate). Bigfoot, if he's out there, deserves better.

This book looks like any other field guide you might pick up. It has drawings, maps, tracks, descriptions of the organisms, and the details of the most prominent sightings or evidence. Coleman and Huyghe spend a considerable amount of time explaining the evolutionary pathways that could have led to the radiation of these "mystery primates". They even construct a sort of taxonomy that revises the Hominidae into 9 tribes that each contain several genera - with the "mystery primates" among them and linked to specific ancestral lineages in the fossil record.

This is not an anti-evolutionary book, but the use of evolutionary theory and evolutionary ecology to support the book's thesis is decidedly non-mainstream. The most significant error is the authors' confusion of the "single species hypothesis" - the model that proposes that modern humans emerged from a single, geographically-localized pre-sapiens population - with the competitive exclusion principle - the concept that competition between species using the same resources in the same way in the same environment will result in either extinction or new adaptation among the competitors. Furthermore, modern paleoanthropologists generally do not regard any particular fossil specimen as the ancestor of any other particular specimen. However, Coleman and Huyghe seem quite comfortable making direct links between, for example, Paranthropus and "Neo-Giants", such as Sasquatch, or between Gigantopithecus and "True Giants", such as gilyuk, orang dalam, misabe, or chenoo.

On the other hand, this is not a scientific book. True to the long tradition of pseudoscientific "research", the authors seem to accept almost any claim as "evidence". They provide detailed descriptions and drawings of organisms whose characteristics are constructed from traces presumed to be tracks or footprints. Often the descriptions and classifications are based on "eyewitness" accounts. The authors' chief rationale for accepting this "evidence" at face value is summarized near the end of the book.

"Could there be other primates as yet undiscovered by science roaming the world's wilderness areas? Absolutely. Throughout the twentieth century new primates continues to turn up at an astounding pace. Everything from large monkeys to small prosimians are being discovered." (p 172)

Indeed. There is one important difference, however. These newly-discovered primate species were found only recently because scientists began looking for them only recently - in systematic and intense surveys meant to characterize the entire ecological community in which they lived. With the possible exception of the mountain gorilla, their discovery is not the vindication of indigenous accounts of strange, mysterious creatures roaming the wilderness. In contrast, systematic scientific surveys have failed to confirm the existence of any of these other "mystery primates."

Coleman and Huyghe do admit that the lack of concrete evidence is a serious problem for their conclusions, and they lament the fact that to "prove" that they are correct about these creatures, someone will undoubtedly have to produce a carcass - or at least, they say, quoting Anthropologist Grover Krantz, you will have to "cut off the biggest piece you can carry and then go for help to retrieve the remainder" (p 178). Of course, that would help to identify the taxonomic status of the organism. But if the experience of the infamous Japanese "plesiosaur" is any indication, any scientific study that refutes the claim of a "mystery primate" would be vigorously and persistently discounted.

The authors provide 8 pages of "case sources" - reports of "mystery primates" - and 8 pages of resources organized by region. There are also 8 pages of bibliographic references, many devoted to the discovery of "new" primate species. However, the only reports in peer-reviewed scientific literature on the so-called "mystery primates" in this field guide are those that find that there is no conclusive evidence for the existence of such organisms. The same is true for this book - it has no scientific value as a field guide.

On the other hand, anyone interested in folk zoology - especially anyone interested in how legends and animal lore intersect with modern scientific research - would find this to be an intriguing volume. At the very least, it is an extensive, if uncritical, catalog of all the variations on the "mystery primate" theme organized geographically and annotated extensively. My copy is on the shelf next to White's (1984) Book of Beasts, and Merian's (1998) 1300 Real and Fanciful Animals....

Adapted from a review in _Reports of the National Center for Science Education_ 2000 May/Jun; 20(3).

Overall I enjoyed this book. The material was presented seriously but with small touches of humor that lightened what could have been an otherwise dry read. After a lifelong interest, I have begun to research the subject seriously to prepare for my first "hunt". This is the first of several books I have ordered to add to my library, and I would recommend it to anyone who is as interested in the subject as I am.
That being said I did have a few problems......
First is the books length. I read it cover to cover in one evening, and I was hoping for something a little more in depth. The illustrations were nice but I don't think that they really added that much, and I would have liked a little more actual information.
Second is the aquatic or "merbeing" treatment in the book. I understand that the authors included these reports in an attempt to cover the subject a thoroughly as possible, but mermaids....I thought that was a bit silly. I realize that most people would consider the subject of Bigfoot itself to be pushing the limits of believability and that some suspension of disbelief is necessary to even consider the possibility seriously. I just felt that by including aquatic primates in the subject matter only damaged the credibility of an already incredible topic.
All that aside I enjoyed the book, and I feel that it would make a fine addition to any collection of the strange and unusual.

Coleman's theories are interesting, but the host of creatures he presents are given with little substantiation for their existence. Each creature has one sighting related to it (some date back thousands of years), and vague references to other research/evidence. This hardly fortifies his theories that if you are willing to accept Bigfoot/Sasquatch then you should also accept his other Hominids as factual. Personally I felt that his descriptions and the drawings of 80% of the animals he claims seem to point to the Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti variety of Biped, not the host of other classes he postulates

Coleman's attempt to taxonomize mystery primates does not stand up to comparison against Heuvelman's earlier, mighty attempt with sea serpent reports. The book reads like an uneasy mix of science and folklore: while there is indeed an estimable corpus of evidence to support sasquatch, I must draw the line at third-hand reports of 20-foot Scottish ogres or of club-wielding abos attacking prospectors at Australian creek beds. Neither does the level of scholarship in Coleman's book compare to that found in the works of, say, Krantz or Shackley. I was really looking forward to adding this work to my extensive cryptozoological library, but, after reading it, I relegated it to an auxiliary bookcase in the unused third bedroom.

Although attempting to be a pack-along "Field Guide" for any encounter with an unknown creature, you suddenly realize that most of the contents of this "Field Guide" is reaching for information that just is not available. If though, you are on a camping trip and wish to wow your younger audience, this could be your guide. It is even illustrated with black and white line drawings with what is described in the descriptions. To be blunt, more a field guide for someone in the past few centuries than any actual case evidence. I had been looking for more theory and evidence than just meer far reaching speculations. I hope to find another book on this subject that will deal with hard factual evidence to scrutinize, rather than just more old conjecture.

Treatment of the bigfoot and other hairy bipeds took several steps back thanks to this collection of fairy tale creatures and other nonsense. Hobbits and merfolk belong in Tolkien's fantasy world, not in the scientific rhelm of relic hominids. Very disappointing.