|
A forensic
expert in the US believes he has some of the strongest evidence yet that
the Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, creature exists.
The creatures are
real enough to those who say they have spotted them - but most scientists
remain sceptical about their existence.Investigator Jimmy
Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specialises in
finger and footprints, has said he believes he is certain around six footprints
found - claimed to have been made by Bigfoot - are genuine.
He added that one
42 cm (18-inch) print found in Washington in 1987 has convinced him.
"The unique thing
about this cast is that it has dermal ridges - and the flow and texture
matches the ridge flow texture of one from California,"
Mr Chilcutt
told BBC World Service's Discovery program."The ridges
are about twice as thick as in a human being."'Physical evidence' Before becoming involved
in bigfoot studies, Mr Chilcutt had amassed a huge collection of ape and
monkey prints as part of a police research project.
"I know
there's an animal out there, because I've seen the physical evidence."
...Jimmy Chilcutt
He added that the
ridge flow pattern was crucial in proving the prints had not been made
by a very large-footed human or other primate.
"The ridges run down the side of the foot - in humans, the ridges
run across the width of the foot," he said."That's what
makes it unique. The only other animal I've seen this in is a howler monkey
in Costa Rica."
As a crime scene
investigator, I don't deal in what I believe or what I think."I examine physical
evidence and make a determination... I know there's an animal out there,
because I've seen the physical evidence."
The Bigfoot is considered
to be a North American version of the yeti of the Himalayas. The name
bigfoot comes from several huge, mysterious foot impressions found in
1959 in a Californian forest.
Hundreds of other
prints have been found since, although many have turned out to be hoaxes."
There have been
reported sightings in every state of the United States, other than Hawaii
and Rhode Island. "It's not the
missing link, it's not an extra-terrestrial, it's just an animal - a flesh-and-blood
primate that has learned to be elusive around man and avoids man where possible."
Sightings
Organizations investigate about 100 Bigfoot sightings in the state each year - as well
as the surrounding states of Arkansas and Louisiana. Members use a wide
range of technology - remote-controlled cameras, video surveillance systems,
night-vision, and thermal imaging - in an effort to get video and photographic
evidence of these creatures. So far it has proved
unsuccessful.
However, other evidence
gathered through time includes footprints, audio recordings and "limb
twists" - where branches of trees have seemingly been twisted by
a type of primate with massive strength.
These twists are a
common aspect of primate behaviour and Bigfoot hunters say they occur
in areas where there have been a number of sightings.But most of the evidence
- such as photographs, hair samples, and even blood - has turned out to
be fake."
There is a significant
amount of evidence for Bigfoot - there are tracks, there are fuzzy photographs,
there are hair samples, there are sighting reports - the problem is that
it's not good evidence," said Benjamin Radford, managing editor of
Sceptical Inquirer magazine."
I liken it to
a cup of coffee - if you have many cups of weak coffee, they can't be
combined into strong coffee."
It's the same
with scientific evidence. If you have lots of weak evidence, the cumulative
effect of the evidence doesn't make it strong evidence - and what science
needs to validate a Bigfoot is strong evidence."
Cryptozoology
Bigfoot is probably
the best-known of the subjects of "cryptozoology" - the study
of hidden creatures.
Some scientists are
highly sceptical, believing these creatures to be nothing more than tricks
of the mind."
One of the problems
- and I know this from my background in psychology - is that it's actually
fairly easy to fool ourselves," said Mr Radford."
What often happens
is that people will be out in the wilderness and they'll see something
out of the corner of their eye - something dark or hairy or fast - that
will surprise or shock them."
If they're already
thinking that there's a Bigfoot in the area, it's easy to make the leap
between saying: 'I saw something, I don't know what it is,' to: 'I saw
something and it's Bigfoot.'"
But others say it
is best to keep an open mind."Every now and
again big things turn up," Colin Tudge, zoologist and author of the
book The Variety Of Life, told Discovery."The okapi -
a horse-sized relative of the giraffe - turned up only in the early 20th
Century."
A few years
ago somebody discovered an absolutely enormous shark in the ocean."
The most recent
- and I think the most spectacular - is an animal that people think is
a goat-antelope, some kind of relative of the shamuar, which has turned
up in the forests of Vietnam.
"This is an animal
about the size of a Shetland pony with long horns, that nobody even suspected
was there until just a few years ago - it was finally identified in about
1994."
Story from BBC NEWS © BBC
Article courtesy Laura
Hammett, edited to fit the perimeters of this website.
Back
to What's New?
Back
to Newspaper & Magazine Articles
Main
Portions of
this website are reprinted and sometimes edited to fit the standards
of
this website under the Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright Law
as educational material without benefit of financial gain.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
This proviso is applicable throughout the entire website.
|