Bigfoot (cryptozoology)

The iconic ape-like creature known as Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, depicted for generations in anecdotes and media stories and which supposedly inhabits forests in the US Pacific Northwest, has fostered debate among folklorists and scientists striving to determine whether it exists or is merely the product of misidentification or hoaxes. Working-class men in the early twentieth-century perpetuated the story of Bigfoot, causing many to embark on extended searches for the hominid. Yet scientists of the twenty-first century have found insufficient evidence to support the existence of Bigfoot; most photographs and other evidence obtained by hobbyists or self-styled cryptozoologists have been debunked. Scholars accept Bigfoot as a folkloric character or the mythological archetype of “the wildman,” a figure that exists on the outskirts of civilization and that is present in many cultural traditions.

Brief History

“Wildmen” stories date back to the book of Genesis and the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Modern depictions of Bigfoot in North America were first gathered by Protestant missionary Reverend Elkanah Walker (1805–1877), who recorded the tales of giant “men stealers” from the Tshimakain people who lived in the region of what is now Spokane, Washington. John W. Burns, an American teaching on the Chehalis Indian Reserve in British Columbia, also gathered stories of a local “wildman” who abducted women. He translated and consolidated these First Nation legends into the archetypal stories of Sasquatch for newspapers during the 1920s. A First Nation family, George and Jeannie Chapman of Ruby Creek, British Columbia, reported a Sasquatch sighting near their family home in 1941.

Another notable case involved the discovery of a set of large footprints around a bulldozer in Bluff Creek, California in 1958. Jerry Crew, who discovered the footprint, had a friend make a plaster cast of the “big foot,” which was then photographed for the Humboldt Times. Thus, the creature became known as “Bigfoot,” and a legend was reborn and spread via mass media into popular culture. This event was later revealed as the first Bigfoot hoax, but it spawned a phenomenon in popular culture that has extended internationally to the study of Yeti, or the abominable snowman, a Sasquatch-like figure who is said to inhabit the Himalayan Mountains near Tibet and Nepal.

Cryptozoologists, those who search for legendary animals and evaluate the possibility of their existence, historically asserted that Bigfoot was an unknown and unclassified species of ape. Bigfoot is characterized as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid. Several reports of Bigfoot sightings have been discovered to be misidentified as bears or other known animals with mange. Bigfoot has also been the culprit in a number of abduction narratives.

Belief in Bigfoot has fostered continuing hoaxes, launched television series, and prompted vibrant debates between anthropologists, folklorists, journalists, showmen, First Nation cultural experts, and big game hunters.

Impact

The description of Bigfoot is quite similar to that of Gigantopithecus, a genus of large ape that originated in China millions of years ago and most likely became extinct about one hundred thousand years ago. Bigfoot believers say that Gigantopithecus could have crossed the Bering land bridge into North America and continued to survive, although most scientists say this is highly unlikely. Scientists and many Bigfoot enthusiasts agree that recent sightings are misidentifications or publicity stunts. Rick Dyer and Mathew Whitton claimed to have found the body of a deceased Bigfoot in the woods of northern Georgia in 2008. After posting a video of the creature on YouTube, the men received a $50,000 check from SearchingforBigfoot.com and enjoyed major coverage in the news media. However, the frozen corpse was examined and found to be a fake; the head was hollow and the feet were made of rubber.

Grassroots efforts to capitalize on the Bigfoot legend were thwarted when videocameras became common in the 1980s. The grainy amateur footage of 1970s 16mm films, some of which created media frenzies (such as Roger Patterson’s 1967 film, which was shot north of Orleans, California), became a thing of the past as well-equipped skeptics could investigate and disprove false evidence. Recent hoaxes have proved more brazen and even deadly: a Texas veterinarian created her own blog to publish DNA evidence of Bigfoot in 2013, and a Montana man was killed in a car accident while staging a Bigfoot hoax in 2012.

In 2014, a team of researchers under Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford University, used DNA testing to determine whether a collection of hair samples belonged to Bigfoot, as claimed. The results proved that the samples actually came from bears and similar animals. That same year, Spike TV premiered a new reality program on which several teams trekked into the Pacific Northwest on a hunt for evidence of Bigfoot's existence. As a reward for such scientific proof—which would need to be confirmed by a biological anthropologist in an on-site lab—the network promised to pay $10 million, the largest cash prize ever offered in TV history. Yet another video supposedly capturing images of the creature walking around in Yellowstone National Park surfaced in early 2015.

Several organizations exist to study and investigate Bigfoot sightings, such as the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. Beginning in the mid-1990s, information literacy related metadata (data regarding web page titles tags, folksonomies, and bookmarks) has increased among high school and college students. This type of information literacy and critical thinking about sources of information has made people more skeptical about Bigfoot information that turns up on the Internet.

Bibliography

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