This photograph, obtained from searchingforbigfoot.com, purports to be a closeup of the teeth from the body of a Bigfoot, the legendary apelike creature that has been the subject of decades of hoaxes and dubious sightings. (www.searchingforbigfoot.com via AFP/NEWSCOM)
What does Bigfoot mean to us?
By Eoin O'Carroll | 08.19.08
Back in 1997, when I was on something of a hiatus from college, I found myself in a remote Nepalese village staring at what I was pretty sure was the scalp of a yeti.
Maybe it was just cognitive dissonance: getting there required a grueling, nine-day trek through the Himalayas, followed by a three-hour search through the village to find the old Sherpa woman with the key to the Buddhist monastery where the scalp was kept. Or maybe it was the reverence with which she opened the pistachio-green filing cabinet in the prayer room and solemnly held up the glass case containing the “scalp” for me to examine. Maybe it was something about the scalp itself – a rotted, shabby thing that resembled a large, misshapen coconut half – that exuded a kind of venerability. Or maybe it was just because the air is really thin up there. Whatever it was, for a brief moment, I believed that I was looking at the real thing.
So you can imagine my disappointment later that day when I learned that in 1960 the scalp had been analyzed by American scientists, who concluded that it had been molded from the hide of a goat.
Bigfoot enthusiasts endured a similar letdown last week, when a trio of outdoorsmen claimed to have found a sasquatch carcass in the state of Georgia’s wilderness, only to have DNA tests reveal that the samples they’d provided came from an oppossum. To all those who found this news to be a huge bummer, believe me, I can relate.
After all, how cool would it be if Bigfoot were real? It would mean that, despite all the abuse that mankind has unleashed on the planet, there still remain some places that are truly wild.
And in a sense, there are. Earlier this month, scientists came across what they called a “mother lode” of 125,000 previously uncounted western lowland gorillas in the Republic of the Congo. And in recent years, scientists have discovered at least three new species of deer in Vietnam, and what may be a new carnivore species in the dense forests of Borneo. And our ocean voyages continually turn up ever-larger species of huge deep-sea dwellers, such as the colossal squid, one of the world’s largest animals.
But in another sense, it’s doubtful that there exists any place on Earth that has not been in some way touched by human activity. The effluent of industrial civilization travels far and wide. The pesticide DDT, banned decades ago in most countries, is showing up in Antarctic penguins. Millions of tons of discarded plastic wind up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And the burning of fossil fuels is changing the climate – and countless ecosystems – in ways that we are only beginning to understand.
Humans’ impact has become so extensive that, in February, the Geological Society of London, the world’s oldest association of earth scientists, agreed that we are now living in a new geological epoch. In the Anthropocene Epoch, which dawned with the Industrial Revolution, humans are seen as the driving force shaping the planet’s environment.
So maybe the yeti and Bigfoot represent for us a connection to the previous epoch. Americans and Himalayan people are not the only ones to have imagined an elusive, reddish-brown man-ape that lives in the wild. In China they call it the yeren; in Australia, it’s the yowie; in Malaysia, it’s the sejarang gigi; and in Brazil, they call it the mapinguari.
The prevalence of these legends suggests something primitive. Perhaps they reflect an ancient memory of a time when our ancestors coexisted with their hairy hominid relatives.
A similar figure even appears in the Bible. In Genesis, Esau is described as coming out of the womb covered in red hair, with his brother, Jacob, grasping at his heel. Unlike his gentle, studious brother, Esau is a hunter who prefers the outdoors. One day, Esau, returning from a hunt faint with hunger, agrees to exchange his birthright with his twin for some food. At that point Esau, and all his descendants, became forever separate from the chosen people.
Perhaps our desire to find the Bigfoots of the world represents an ancient longing for the wild twin who helped bring us into the world, whom we then abandoned along the way to creating a civilization.
As for me, I’m now firmly in the skeptics’ camp. But I hope that others will keep up the hunt. After all, there aren’t too many wild places left, and it would be a shame if the poor beast – on the off chance that he exists – were to become extinct before we could thank him.
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2. David Iverson | 08.19.08
As a general reader of science news in the mainstream media, it is fascinating to me that it is perfectly acceptable to spend millions of dollars looking for some species (such as the Ivory Billed Woodpecker) that may or may not exist. Yet at the same time there are species (such as some sort of large hominid, or some sort of large fish/reptile) that are “out of bounds” for search/study by “legitimate” scientists.
Scientific American unintentionally juxtaposed a short (mildly disparaging) article on Bigfoot with a lengthy feature article on the search for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
The news media just recently published aerial photos of an “uncontacted” group of **** Sapiens (our very own species) living in the Amazon basin, while blithely assuring us that there are several others. That is to say, we are 100% sure that there are still stone-age people living on this planet that we have no direct experience with.
This blog entry mentions its skepticism for the existence of a large hominid while at the same time providing its own list of recent discoveries.
I actually don’t care much whether there is a large hominid living in Nepal or other places. But it is fascinating to see how clearly human prejudice functions and survives within the context of scientific inquiry.
But, my personal opinion? If a small herbivore in Vietnam can avoid being cataloged into the annals of science this long, doesn’t it seem reasonable that a potentially intelligent and self-aware hominid could make a deliberate attempt to do better?
5. movie buff | 08.20.08
i’m still trying to figure out if “Sasquatch” is Bigfoot’s name, or if that’s the name of his species
6. Squankum | 08.20.08
I have reason to believe that the saaquatch/bigfoot is a subject worthy of further research. Lots of reasons, actually.
Sasquatch is name given to this creature by a west coast Native American tribe. These are real creatures to them, and always have been. Artwork from long before 1958 by Native Americans has featured gorilla-like animals.
Bigfoot was a moniker that popped up in a media firestorm in the late 1950’s, IIRC, when footprints were being found on the west coast and the subject hit the national media. (Not the first time newspapers around the country carried stories about this subject, but in the past, they were treated as “wildman” and “monster” stories.)
A few quibbles:
* Ivory billed woodecker? I’m a sasquatch researcher, but I will admit, hey, at least they’ve got bodies of those already. The sad thing is that people were laughed at and one expert’s academic career was affected, for having said he saw one back in the 1960’s.
* Wilderness? Wilderness, schmilderness. This species of ape is doing better than you might suspect in the lower ‘48. “uuuge tracts of land are not required for it to go “undetected” by us. This mental concept assumes a smart, determined us, and a passive or predictable prey.
It has enough intelligence to hide, evade, or flee when it doesn’t want us to see it, which is, of course, almost always. Please take a gander at Stan Courtney’s blog, and his entry, “The Wilderness Paradox.”
7. I-believe-in-bigfoot-2008 | 08.26.08
Is this really a hoax?
I’ve been at the site http://www.searchingforbigfoot.com several times and some things just don’t seem to fit. Why does the picture of the gorilla in the Fox News video look so different from the still picture of the creature in the freezer?
For example, the gorilla has a head shaped like the top half of an egg, and the top of the head of the creature in the freezer (still picture)appears to be flat? The eyes of the gorilla are wide open, the eyes of the creature in the freezer are “peacefully” closed in death. Why does the narrator of the hoax exposed video make statements that contradict what the reseacher who “discovered” the hoax said? The researcher said the body was all rubbery. The narrator says the mouth, the teeth, infact everything on the body is real except the creature isn’t real? In fact, when I listened on the 24th of August, it seems that I thought that I heard him say that everything was real except for the genitals. That section no longer seems to be there. The gorilla in the video on Fox News has its mouth closed and tounge sticking out like a child would stick out his/her tounge to another child he/she doesn’t like. On the video on the hoax exposed, at 24 to 25 seconds into the frame, the mouth of the creature being examined is rigidly open(or hanging open from gravity)-not closed, and the tounge seems to be hanging as if gravity we pulling it-not sticking out to make fun of someone.
There are two other things that I find extremely intriguing. One, on the hoax exposed video, again 24 to 25 seconds into the video. That mouth looks very much like the mouth of a chimpanzee. Or, should I suggest, a Bondo Ape.
Again, at 24 to 25 seconds, I find that body shape very intriguing. I’ve seen the picture of a dead Bondo Ape before, and that body sure does look very much like the body of a Bondo Ape.
You know what, I’m willing to bet you 90% that the frame at 24 to 25 seconds of the hoax exposed video is the picture of a dead creature closely related to the Bondo Ape. And if that video is a video of the same creature pictured in the still that was displayed to the world on a press conference, then it means that Rick and Matthew actually did find a creature. And if they did find the creature, it appears that you’re pretending that it’s a hoax to repay in full every person who critisized them-make them eat their words.
Looks like the joke may be on the press this time.
PS: From the little that is known of Bondo Apes, first ‘discovered’ in 2003 in the Congo(did you note the apostrophes), they do not get as tall as the creature found (assuming that this is not a hoax and that my argument is correct.) Most will reach a height of 5 feet, though one that was shot by a Congolese hunter at the request of a western researcher before mainstream science was willing to admit their existence measured almost 6 feet. However, Congolese folklore does have it that Bondo Apes exceeding 6 feet have been seen on several occassions. Considering that the Bondo Ape was unknown to mainstream Science until 2003, and only existed in Congolese folklore, these statements cannot be easily dismissed. Bondo Apes are not true bipedals. They can walk, indeed they do run, bipedally. But close observation has shown that they would move about as most other chimpanzees would for the most part of any given day.
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1. Robert Murdock | 08.19.08
Great article.
One point. Just because there is a hoax, does not mean that there is not an animal roaming out there. I, by no means, am trying to convince anyone. I can tell you that I have seen many many good pieces of evidence over the years. I, for one, will keep up the search.
Robert Murdock
Sasquatch Information Society
http://www.bigfootinfo.org