The team returned to the cabin and set up camp for the week only to be let down. The float plane operator gave the crew news about a nearby Bigfoot sighting. A couple of Canadians saw a Bigfoot when they were out picking blueberries. They noted the bipedal upright walking which is key because bears are often mistaken for a Bigfoot and bears cannot walk on two feet for very long.

This is as close as you’ll ever come to seeing a Bigfoot on MonsterQuest

The researchers packed up their gear and left the cabin for the location where the Bigfoot had been spotted, just over 100 miles southwest of the cabin. Although their relocation didn’t net them any new results, they did learn something important: animals need food.

Haha, yeah. I hate to sound like Captain Obvious here, but I would prefer to eat blueberries and raspberries than lichen any day of the week. So it doesn’t surprise me that these Bigfoot sightings were further to the south. Spring came late to Canada this year apparently and the blueberries weren’t ripe yet near the cabin and therefore the Bigfoot stayed away.

One of the key discoveries from the previous investigation came from the blood work. The other episode ended with the revelation that the scientist found primate DNA in the blood which was found on the board of screws. However, the same blood was tested again with a different technique by a different scientist and he only came up with bacteria.

I was incredibly disappointed with this episode. I had very high hopes of something impressive, but nothing was learned as far as I’m concerned. I would hope that the team returns to the cabin again next year, but pays attention to the blueberry ripening. There’s no point in making this mistake again. As for the blood work, well, it’s hard to say what went wrong. Either the previous tests were contaminated or the blood no longer contains DNA.

Rating: 6.4

There was a very brief moment where the narrator correctly pointed out possible causes of why people claim to see dragons. It’s often humans tapping into memories/stories about bizarre animals from generations ago and then the strange bones found during the Dark Ages.

It’s the size of a bus!

History showed a documentary a few years ago which talked about this and I really enjoyed it. They talked about how the legendary Cyclops was likely born from the finding of an elephant/mammoth skeleton. Early humans would see these skeletons and note the large hole in the middle. Instead of identifying that as the animal’s trunk, they would assume it was a single eye socket, giving birth to a legendary creature.

It’s hard to say whether or not there was a similar situation with dragons because we do know that very large monitor lizards did exist, ones far larger than the big Komodos of today. We do know that a creature at least three times the size of the Komodo did exist. The Megalania is said to have died out some 40,000 years ago, but some feel the creature still exists.

I’m usually doubtful about these possibilities and I still am, but I’m a little bit open to the possibility of this creature living in Australia today. I think it’s very unlikely it still remains due to the lack of remains, but Australia is a vast land which has never been thoroughly explored and documented. This leaves endless possibilities to unknown creatures living there.

Rating: 5.7

I did like that the Bull Shark was properly blamed for most shark attacks and especially the famous New Jersey attacks in 1916. Anyone who knows anything about sharks knows that Great Whites wouldn’t be found in the little river that those poor people were killed in. Only a Bull Shark could be responsible for them.

A Bull Shark From Louisiana

While there was a search for the Bull Sharks in Louisiana (why not Illinois, given the title?), there was also one in Canada as they were looking for Greenland Sharks in the St. Lawrence River. Until this year’s Shark Week on Discovery, I don’t believe I had ever heard of this species of shark. I am certainly not a shark expert in general, but I’d like to think that I would be able to identify most of the common ones.

The Greenland Shark is a relatively unknown entity due to its habitat. This particular shark prefers the very cold, deep, dark water near the Arctic. A question was posed regarding why the creatures weren’t solely found under the ice like they used to be. This seemed like a silly question to me given the warming climate. There’s very little ice left compared to what it was several generations ago.

Again, there wasn’t much in the way of surprising information in this episode. I thought they could have given more information on the Greenland Shark, but they didn’t tell us much of anything. Scientists don’t know a whole lot, but I can’t say that I learned anything by watching this episode.

Rating: 5.6

That one photo from Iraq made me interested in camel spiders, but that interest was quickly dashed once the experts pointed out the fact that there were two spiders hooked to one another, making it look like one monster spider.

A large 10-inch Tarantula from South America

The various treks through South America and Texas netted about what one would expect from MonsterQuest… not a damn thing. All they got was more folk tales about enormous spiders, capable of killing and dragging dogs into the forest.

A few years ago, there was a scientist on television who shot down any idea of spiders being able to grow to the monster sizes purported by the so-called eye witnesses. His claim was more to do with the legs of a spider wouldn’t be able to support the large abdomen of a giant spider. There’s apparently some sort of limit.

That theory was never mentioned here, but a more interesting one was. One of the experts stated that a spider’s simple lungs make it difficult for them to grow to large sizes. The amount of oxygen in the air today is much lower (65% lower) than back “in the day” when spiders were said to grow to enormous proportions. This simple fact was much more intriguing to me. It’s not necessarily the diet or predators, but their rudimentary lung structure which is limiting their size. It’s somewhat of a relief, though I’m more scared of small spiders, as they’re said to be the most poisonous. But, I’m no spider expert.

Rating: 5.5

The controversy comes from the video footage they caught of a squid. In the distance, one could see a very large squid approach the camera. A video analyst said it could be as large as 60′ long, a truly giant squid, but it’s hard to know if his estimates are in any way accurate.

In this revisit, the MonsterQuest crew return to the Sea of Cortez to see if they can find any other large squids. I knew it would be possible to find one, but the team wasted their time by equipping the camera system with lasers. What is this, Star Wars?

The lasers were a good idea, in a lab, but not in the field. In practice, the lasers scared off virtually every piece of sealife which came near it. I was surprised they didn’t notice this during their trial run with the fish.

Not surprisingly, they didn’t manage to find any significant squid, just the typical Humbolts. Their divers got to wrestle with a few angry Humbolts which was entertaining for a second or two, but largely, this episode was a colossal waste of time. The use of the lasers along with the choosing of high-traffic areas led to an expedition which was almost a waste entirely. They will hopefully learn more about their mistakes. This episode is like every other episode of MonsterQuest, there just isn’t enough time taken during the expedition. I would like to see an actual expedition, which in my eyes, takes at least a week of in-the-field work.

Rating: 4.5

My initial thought was no, they’re not getting larger, but I admit to forgetting about the fact that some species of bears are thought to be mating with one another, something not believed to be very common. A photo of a bear taken by a fella who shot a bear shows that bears can be quite large, but that doesn’t mean that the various species’ as a whole are getting larger. It was excellently pointed out by someone on the program that bears within a species vary greatly in size, just as some adult men can be over seven feet tall. We don’t call them monsters, but rather, we send them to the NBA.

I found the first half of the episode or so to be very informative. I don’t watch any documentaries about bears, so I admit that my knowledge about the eight known bear species is rather limited. This proved to be a very valuable episode, informing me of the size and ranges of some of the bear species. It would have been nice if they talked more about the bears found in Asia, but they focused the air time for North American bears for the most part.

I was very disappointed by two portions of the show. One was the skull belonging to a bear that is currently in the Smithsonian. In the dramatizations, the skull was made to appear enormous, but when a scientist was able to see the actual skull at the museum, he was disappointed by the size, suggesting it was actually a young, female brown bear, and not something new.

The second portion of the show which disappointed me was the trip to New Jersey. Some of the residents tried to make it sound like they were living in downtown Manhattan and they were being invaded by large bears when they were clearly in a heavily-wooded area. I can’t for the life of me understand why they are surprised that bears are commonly seen in their neighborhoods.

The U.S. is greatly overpopulated by humans and instead of rebuilding dilapidated parts of towns, we seem to just ignore them, expand the towns further into areas which are more heavily-wooded and inhabited by animals. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that these idiots are seeing bears walking through their backyards. Animals such as bears need lots of room to find food. Bears are getting more aggressive, but it’s only because of us. We’re not only encroaching on their land (temporarily through hunting, fishing, hiking, etc and permanently by building homes), but our reckless use of natural resources is destroying their habitat.

Rating: 8.3

China has a long history of being inhabited by people. We know that the Gigantopithecus, an extinct genus of apes, used to live in China and was the focus of a History Channel documentary called “Giganto: The Real King Kong.” But does a newer, smaller genus resembling Bigfoot exist now?

It’s a great question and one of the problems with identifying the creature is that is can easily be misidentified. This is especially true with footprints. Bears are often the source of a lot of prints, but there are still a lot of footprints which seem to fit what we would identify as Bigfoot prints. This is true with some of the prints in this China episode.

Although it was a little disappointing to see that the Chinese government put a limit to the amount of time the investigative team had in the park, I don’t think the team would have spent much time there anyway. I’ve never gotten the impression that the team in any episode of MonsterQuest, is ever investigating a location or animal for more than a day or two. They always seem to be in and out, lickety-split.

Despite some intriguing prints, the fake hair was a little disappointing. It’s sad to think that people would take evidence like that, but we all know it’s done. There are a lot of people who purposely plant fake Bigfoot prints in the U.S. So it’s not surprising some would take hair like that.

I like that the series is going to foreign countries, but I’d like to see Bigfoot searches in other countries. Surely there must be sightings in somewhere more remote, less commonly thought of as being the home of Bigfoot (or other creatures).

Rating: 5.5

If you’re a regular viewer of MonsterQuest, you are very familiar with lake monsters by now. There was a slight twist to this one. Instead of looking for a Canadian version of Nessie, we went in search for a monster-sized eel. It was a new monster, but the research approach was the same as previous investigations.

Bring in the divers, sonar scanners, sketch artists, and supposed eye witnesses. I can’t say that any of the eye witnesses had anything particularly unusual, although I kind of laughed at the story about the man wrestling with an eel in the water.

It didn’t seem likely to me that an eel would reach that size. And after watching the show, it’s still hard for me to accept the idea of an eel inhabiting those waters. We’re not talking about a 10′ eel, but something much, much larger. Images of eels have always made me uncomfortable. There’s just something unnerving about them, lurking in the shadows, beneath the rocks, waiting for something small to swim by.

The issue I have with the sketch artist is the same I have with the lie detectors occasionally brought in. If someone believes they saw a monster, then there’s no lie to detect. What these people are seeing isn’t a monster. I’m certain it’s a case of mistaken identity. Floating logs, beavers, and otters are three very good and common things to mistake them for. I can’t help but point out the fact that they didn’t bring out a single live eel from the lake. They showed a guy electro-fishing for eels, but they only showed one eel and it was instantly put into a net and we never really saw it for more than that split second. I don’t discount the possibility of large eels existing there, but I don’t believe they’re as large as these people are suggesting. It’s merely mistaken identity.

Rating: 5

Anyway, the episode put a focus on the town of Whitehall in the state of New York which has a long history of Bigfoot sightings. Although I am not a Bigfoot researcher, I don’t recall hearing about Whitehall, NY before. When you think of Bigfoot, you tend to think of the Pacific Northwest.

There was a fair amount of opinion thrown into this episode — scientists debating whether or not a creature like Bigfoot could really exist (today or ever). I liked seeing some footprints, though I don’t consider prints to be that reliable now that some people have the ability and sadly the desire to create false prints.

The biggest problem I had with this episode of MonsterQuest was the polygraph test. We’ve seen them performed in the past and as far as I’m concerned, it’s pointless. People who saw something twenty years ago are pretty sure that they weren’t hallucinating or what have you, so when you question them, I’m doubtful they would have difficulty passing a polygraph test. Save the polygraph for criminal investigations and keep it out of this field of research, please.

The Bigfoot hunt featured in this episode was exciting and funny. Exciting because there were moments when it appeared as though there may have been something in the woods with them that night, but it’s hard to say for sure. I say it was funny because the people doing the searching looked like they were ready to do some sort of special forces operation with all of their camo, pockets, etc. It just looked silly to me.

One thing I didn’t see them try to do is knocking wood. Hitting one piece of wood with another is something only primates tend to do and is something many Bigfoot eyewitnesses claim to hear.

I’m still waiting for a Bigfoot episode as good as the one in the last season… the one from Canada which showed rocks being thrown and wood knocking by something in the woods. But I thought this was a pretty good installment nevertheless.

Rating: 7.7

As it turns out, yes, but it depends on how you define the word giant. There’s already a species called the North Pacific Giant Octopus, which is a large cephalopod located in the Pacific Northwest, near Oregon and Washington. They’re the largest known species of octopus, but I wouldn’t exactly call them giant.

I suppose when I think of a giant octopus, my mind tends to conjure up images of entire ocean-going vessels being attacked by a giant octopus. I don’t think of the 20-50 pound octopuses one might find while diving off the coast.

There was an interesting story about a blob washing ashore quite a few years ago and some scientists seem torn as to what the creature might have been. I tend to side with the scientist who said it was a piece of a whale. The blob didn’t look even remotely octopus like when it was shown from one or two of the side views.

Though the ocean is a vastly unexplored place, I have serious doubts as to the existence of such a creature today. Like many fish, I think the really large octopuses that may have been around a long time ago have probably died out due to overfishing (of prey), so they may not grow to that truly giant size anymore. Being a fisherman, I’ve seen a lot of old photos of very, very large fish which don’t grow to that size nowadays. Still, I think most of the old stories about ships being attacked are exaggerated… or at least the size of the creatures was exaggerated. I don’t doubt an octopus would attack a vessel.

Rating: 6.6