- 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
programme.
-
- "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.
-
- 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," said Craig
Woolheater, director of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center.
-
- "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
-
- Mr Woolheater's organisation investigates 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 acarpi - 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."
-
- © BBC MMIII
-
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3152468.stm
|