Sasquatch (Species)

Sasquatches are an elusive species of bipedal arboreal great ape native to much of Asia and North America in Hazel Baumgartner's written universe. They are now only found in heavily wooded areas primarily in the Pacific Northwest and throughout Canada and the Great Lakes Region, but may also be found along the Gulf Coast where they are locally known as "skunk apes". In Asia, remaining sasquatch populations are largely relegated to the dense jungles of southeast Asia where they are sometimes mistaken for orangutans, and the Himalayas where they are called "yeti". Sasquatches are a species unknown by science, so they have no official latin name, and their existence is controversial. Sasquatches feature heavily in Hazel Baumgartner's "The Woods".

## Biology

If I had to classify sasquatches biologically, I would give them the scientific name of *Saesqec sylvestris*, the "woods sasquatch". Sasquatches make up the genus *Saesqec*, which is divided into three extant species, one probably extinct species, and one extinct common-ancestor chronospecies. These are:

* *Saesqec sylvestris*, the Wood Ape, Common Sasquatch, or North American Sasquatch
* *Saesqec almas*, the Himalayan Sasquatch or yeti
* *Saesqec jurrawurra*, the Australian Sasquatch, Indochinese Sasquatch, or Yowie
* The extinct *Saesqec wodwosi*, the Wodwos or Wild Man, formerly found in Europe until around 1200 AD

Additionally, one distinct chronospecies exists which is a common ancestor of the other three, known as *Saesqec trogdolytes*, but it is believed to be extinct. *S. trogdolytes* likely lived in modern day Siberia from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, and may have been a direct descendant of *Gigantopithecus*.

The American Sasquatch, *Saesqec sylvestris*, also has several distinct subspecies. The most notable of these are *S. sylvestris carolina*, the Skunk Ape, *S. sylvestris yereni*, the Yeren found in China, and *S. sylvestris cucurbita*, or the Missouri Monster.

Sasquatches descended either from orangutans or from a common ancestor with orangutans (such as *Gigantopithecus*). They would have crossed the Bering Land Strait during the last Glacial Maximum, and largely be biological newcomers in North America.

Sasquatches stand on average between four and eight feet tall, weighing between two hundred and eight hundred pounds. Sasquatches display significant sexual dimorphism. The males are typically over six feet tall, weighing from five to eight hundred pounds, while the females may be as short as five feet tall and weighing as little as three hundred pounds. Unlike any other great ape, sasquatches continue growing their entire lives, and older individuals will be taller and larger than younger ones. Males may also display long canines, a sagittal crest, cheek pouches, and even throat pouches that may be inflated in a threatening display. Females have visible and sometimes hairless breasts, especially when pregnant or nursing. The genitalia of neither sex is readily present due to a thick layer of pubic hair, though males will display their testes when seeking a mate.

Compared to humans, sasquatches have proportionately long arms, but their legs are also much longer than Orangutan's in comparison to their body, a trait adapted to a lifestyle of upright locomotion. They have four fingers and an opposable thumb well-developed for both climbing and tool use, and five toes on their feet. When a sasquatch is young, its foot features an opposable toe, but this toe usually locks into place to assist in locomotion once the sasquatch reaches maturity. Additionally, sasquatches lack the flexible hip joints their orangutan cousins are known for.

Sasquatches have coarse hair covering most of their bodies, ranging in color from blacks and dark browns to bright reds and oranges, into blondes, golds, and yellows, and even greys and whites. The hair does not cover the palms of their hands, soles of their feet, or their cheeks and eyes, and during the summer the hair retreats off their faces, chests, hands, and feet entirely to help keep the creature cool.

One notable thing about sasquatches is their remarkably long lifespan, even when compared to other great apes. Sasquatches grow slowly, reaching sexual maturity at around thirty years of age, and can easily live for a hundred and fifty years or more. One sasquatch which lives near Mount Saint Helens in Washington was photographed as early as 1875, already a full-grown adult, and has been photographed again as recently as 2019. Assuming he is still alive and was a sexually mature adult in the first photograph, this makes the beast one hundred and seventy-six years old, at least.

## Behavior

Sasquatches primarily move around by walking erect on two feet. Though they are excellent climbers, the thin lumberwoods that they tend to call home are a poor environment for an arboreal lifestyle. Still, the young will readily climb trees and hurdle down broken branches if they feel threatened. This behavior probably inspired the legend of the acropelter, small monkey-like creatures that threw logs and rocks at woodsmen in rural America. Sasquatches maintain this throwing behavior into adulthood, throwing sticks and rocks at anything that they find threatening or even unpleasant. They are capable of running short distances at speeds up to twelve miles an hour, but if they want to move faster or further they will drop down to a knuckle-walking gait similar to gorillas or chimpanzees. While running on all fours, a sasquatch may reach speeds of up to thirty miles an hour in a straight line.

Sasquatches are social creatures, living in family groups of up to a dozen individuals. Sasquatch clans are matriarchal in nature, where an elder female leads and protects the clan who devote themselves to her. When another female reaches sexual maturity, she is cast out of the clan where she will migrate to a new area in hopes of starting a new clan. Males are often ejected from clans for violent behavior. In this case, they will either become "hermits" or wander until they find a new clan, whereupon they will use feats of strength such as throwing rocks, tearing down trees, or swimming great distances to demonstrate their usefulness in hopes that the new clan will allow them entry. Thus, clan makeup is constantly evolving and shifting, helping sasquatches maintain genetic diversity despite the fact that there are only around 10,000-50,000 individuals remaining in the wild.

Overall, Sasquatches are extremely reclusive creatures which makes them hard to study. In the United States, sasquatches encounter humans around 3,500 times per year, though most reported encounters are just sightings and as many as 2/3 of these are likely hoaxes. They also practice ritualistic cannibalism of their dead, resulting in a lack of cadavers to study.

Being the only nonhuman great ape to live outside of tropical environments, the sasquatch has developed a sort of pseudo-hibernation. While they do not truly hibernate like bears and small mammals, a sasquatch will spend its summer and fall fattening up for the winter. The same sasquatch weighed twice may exhibit significant change in mass - an 800 pound male weighed in November may lose all that weight over the winter and emerge a mere 400 pounds in April (a trait shared with many bears). Additionally, their fur grows in thick during the winter and is then shed in the spring, resulting in many individuals having different summer and winter coats. Sasquatches are crepuscular, being most active around dawn and dusk.

Like many mammals, sasquatches use hormones and scent to communicate. Male sasquatches are reported to smell terrible, akin to rotting food or a dead skunk, leading to the nickname "skunk ape".

## Diet

Like most great apes, sasquatches are opportunistic omnivores and will eat whatever they can get their hands on. They are fond of shellfish, but are also capable of fishing, hunting, and trapping, similar to chimpanzees. Overall, a sasquatch's diet is said to be similar to that of a bear, feasting on nuts, berries, bark, fish, hunted meat, shellfish, honey, and even occasionally taking livestock. Sasquatches also eat a good amount of greenery, similar to their orangutan cousins, and reports exist of sasquatches breaking into barns to steal hay during the winter. Their primary source of protein is believed to be deer, which they are capable of running down and subduing with their bare hands. Sasquatches have also been known to steal food from humans, including deer stolen from hunters before they could be retrieved, fish snatched from drying racks, and even at least one cartoonish account of a sasquatch stealing a fruit pie left to cool on a windowsill.

## Tool use

Sasquatches excel at tool use at a level rivaled only by humans. Sasquatches are known to use stone tools such as choppers, grinders, and hammers. They may also use sharpened sticks for hunting and fishing. Sasquatches are known to construct shelters for themselves similar to a gorilla's nest, often in the mouths of caves or other natural coverings. Unlike gorillas, a sasquatch clan will remain in the same locality and use the same nest for generations. Sasquatches are remarkably intelligent, and may learn to use tools invented by humans. Reports exist of sasquatches opening doors and windows, A sasquatch's behavior of throwing rocks and branches at perceived threats or annoyances may also be considered tool use.

## Distribution

Sasquatches are found throughout much of eastern Asia and North America, though they also exist in limited numbers in South America and Australia, where they are called yowies. Sasquatches primarily live anywhere where dense forests may be found. In the United States, they are primarily found in the Pacific Northwest and throughout western and central Canada, down into the Great Lakes region, in Missouri and the Appalachian Mountains, in the Rocky Mountains, and in the Gulf Coast area. Lone sasquatches are occasionally seen migrating through other areas, such as the elder male individual that was photographed in Fort Worth, Texas in 1999.

## Etymology

The term "sasquatch" is the most regularly used term for the creatures. It derives from the indigenous Halkomelem language of what is now known as Puget Sound, Washington. The Halkomelem word for the creatures was "sæsq'ec" (says-q'eck), which was anglicized into "sasquatch" during the 20th century. Other universal names for the creature include "bigfoot" (owing to the size of the footprints that are the most common evidence of its existence), "grassman", "wood ape", and the more generic "monster".

## Interaction with humans

Sasquatches are reclusive nocturnal creatures which exist in small numbers, so interactions with humans are rare. Of the roughly 3,000 annual reported sasquatch encounters, 2/3 are mere sightings where a sasquatch and a human spot each other and walk away. Of the remaining 1,000 encounters per year, around 10% result in any violence, which is 90% of the time initiated by the human observer. However, sasquatches are large, potentially predatory creatures, and should be feared. Incidentally, one in three sightings occurs in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada.

Many indigenous groups throughout Asia, Australia, and North America report interactions with these creatures going back thousands of years. A thousand year old cave painting in Arizona depicts a family of sasquatches traveling through the woods. Some northwestern tribes would tell stories of cannibalistic *skookum* (a generic term for "monster") that lived on Mount Olympus and would travel into villages at night to devour naughty children.

In 1901, a party of self-proclaimed monster hunters seeking lost treasure encountered a sasquatch near the Missouri-Oklahoma-Arkansas state line. They subdued the creature and planned to bring it to Kansas City and make a sideshow out of it, but one member of the group released the sasquatch, murdered another member, and disappeared.

In 1924, a miner in what is now known as Ape Canyon, Mount Saint Helens, Washington reportedly sighted a sasquatch and shot it with his rifle, killing it. He was unable to retrieve the corpse due to the rough terrain. That night, his mining crew was savagely attacked in retaliation, with a group of sasquatches throwing rocks at their shack and slamming their bodies into it, causing structural damage. One miner was struck by a rock causing a traumatic brain injury.

Also in 1924, a Canadian prospector by the name of Albert Ostman in British Columbia was captured by a clan of four sasquatches and held for six days. The adult male in the clan picked him up off the ground in his sleeping bag and carried him off, and kept him captive in the clan's nest for six days. The sasquatches did not harm Ostman but treated him as more of a pet, feeding and grooming him and allowing the children to play with him. On the sixth day, the male sasquatch discovered a can of chewing tobacco on Ostman's person, which he fed to it. The sasquatch became ill, allowing Ostman a chance to escape.

In 1964, The Sasquatch was nearly struck by a truck driven by Jimbo Jonas in Shasta Trinity National Forest, near McCloud, California. In retaliation to the perceived threat, the creature attacked Jonas, dragging him from his vehicle and mauling him. Jonas died of his injuries.

In 1971, a family was attacked by a sasquatch in Fouke, Arkansas, who reached through a window in an effort to open a door. One of the house's occupants fired a rifle at the arm, injuring the creature. The creature stalked and harassed the family for weeks, throwing rocks and injuring the man who shot him, until the townsfolk got together a posse and ran the sasquatch out of the swamp. These events were later memorialized in the film, "The Legend of Boggy Creek".

On July 11, 1972, three children in Louisiana, Missouri witnessed a seven foot tall black sasquatch "with a pumpkin shaped head" entering their yard carrying a dead dog. The children reported the creature had "large glowing eyes". This prompted a rash of sightings, including one where the town's fire chief who also served on city council encountered the creature while crossing a creek outside of town. The man formed a posse to hunt the creature, which the press nicknamed "Momo" (for Missouri Monster), but it was never caught.

In the early 1990s, a man in Kitsap County, Washington called 911 at least twice to report an intruder in her yard. He described the intruder as a massive human like creature, all black in color. In the first call, he reported that the creature attacked and killed his dog and then threw its mangled body over his fence. In the second call, he reported that the creature was now after him and was trying to gain entry into his home. Both times, law enforcement responded, but they never found the creature.

In 1991, a young girl named Harmony Carlini disappeared from her family's driveway near McCloud, California. Members of the family attributed her disappearance to a sasquatch which they said stalked and harassed them for years. A year prior in 1990, a neighboring family of the Carlinis, the Molinas, had rocks hurdled at their house and car in what they described as a hate crime, now believed to have been the same sasquatch.

In 1993, three migrant workers from Mexico working on an illegal marijuana farm outside of Redding, California were hunted and killed by a sasquatch, possibly the same one that attacked the Carlinis.

In 1999, an elderly woman in Florida photographed a sasquatch just off her back porch. Her daughter-in-law had brought her fresh apples from up north which she had left on her back porch and they had started to go missing. Believing the culprit to be neighborhood children, she waited on her back porch with a camera. When she heard rustling in the bushes, she took a picture and caught a large sasquatch venturing up to her porch, which she believed to be an escaped orangutan. She later said that had she known it was such a large creature, she would not have gotten within ten feet of it.

During the winter of 2002, a remote fishing cabin in Snelgrove Lake, Ontario, was broken into and ransacked. The cabin was only accessible by seaplane, yet something had broken open the door and ransacked the cabin. Officials said it was unlikely to have been a bear, as there were no claw marks on the door and the refrigerator coolant, which would smell like formic acid and therefore prompt a bear to search for ants, had remained untouched. This led many to blame a sasquatch for the intrusion.

In 2002, the Carlini family was again harassed by the same sasquatch, which threw rocks and branches at the cabin they were staying in and later tried to break in.

In 2020, the Carlini family was once again attacked by the sasquatch, which abducted Jason Carlini. The Carlini family, with the help of Andrew Callahan, hunted down and killed the beast.

## Controversy

It is much debated whether sasquatches actually exist. Owing to a lack of physical evidence beyond footprints, the scientific community at large tends to laugh at the idea of a bipedal great ape in North America. However, critics claim that there is some level of hypocrisy here, as scientists tend to reject potential bigfoot evidence before actually analyzing it. Multiple hair and stool samples exist which have never been tested for DNA. Most of the scientific community considers sasquatch to be a cryptid, akin to the Loch Ness Monster and the Black Dog.

Many hoaxers have taken advantage of the controversial status of sasquatch, for fame, money, or shits and giggles. A well known example is the Patterson-Gimlin film, which purported to show a female sasquatch crossing and drinking from a river but was eventually demonstrated to show an overweight human male in a Planet of the Apes costume posing for the camera. It is believed that at least one in three sasquatch sightings is a demonstrable hoax, and that number is likely higher.

In November of 2012, a veterinarian and animal rights activist named Melba Ketchum proclaimed that if Sasquatch exists, they likely posses human-like intelligence and therefore deserve human rights. She has argued for the banning of hunting or shooting sasquatches, and for attacks on the creatures to be treated as assaults legally. Furthermore, she argues that sasquatches represent a reclusive indigenous population, akin to many of the uncontacted tribes of South America, and should maintain legal protections accordingly. Similarly, other human rights activists have argued for personhood and citizenship for chimpanzees, gorillas, octopuses, and elephants based on their human-like intelligence.