Formal studies of Bigfoot

There have been a limited number of formal scientific studies of Bigfoot or Sasquatch, the supposed ape-like creature said to live in North America. While a few scientists have examined the evidence, the subject is not considered an area of credible science, and supposed evidence like the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film have "no supportive data of any scientific value."

Details

The first scientific study of available evidence was conducted by primatologist John Napier's and published in his book, Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality, in 1973. It offers a sympathetic examination of the subject. While giving high marks to some earlier researchers ("Ivan T. Sanderson and John Green and René Dahinden... have made a far better job of recording the major events of the sasquatch saga than I could ever hope to do"), Napier writes that if a conclusion is to be reached based on scant extant "'hard' evidence," science must declare "Bigfoot does not exist." This conclusion is qualified, however, as Napier seems willing to leave the question unresolved. He finds it difficult to entirely reject thousands of alleged tracks, "scattered over 125,000 square miles” or to dismiss all "the many hundreds" of eyewitness accounts. He adds that "if one track is genuine and one report is true-bill, "then myth must be chucked out the window and reality admitted through the front door." Napier concludes, "I am convinced that Sasquatch exists, but whether it is all it is cracked up to be is another matter altogether. There must be something in north-west America that needs explaining, and that something leaves man-like footprints."

Brian Regal has written that very few scientists have been prepared to take the possibility of an anomalous primate seriously. The small number of scientists that did included the naturalist Ivan Sanderson and the zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans. Later scientists who were prepared to research the topic included Carleton S. Coon, George Allen Agogino and William Charles Osman Hill although they came to no definite conclusion and later drifted from researching the topic.

In 1974, the National Wildlife Federation funded a field study seeking Bigfoot evidence. No formal federation members were involved and the study made no notable discoveries.

In 1975, The Gentle Giants: The Gorilla Story was co-authored by Geoffrey Bourne, another primatologist. Its final chapter is a brief summary of various mysterious primate reports worldwide. Like Napier, he laments the dearth of physical evidence, but does not dismiss Sasquatch or Yeti as impossible.

From May 10 to 13, 1978, the University of British Columbia hosted a symposium: Anthropology of the Unknown: Sasquatch and Similar Phenomena, a Conference on Humanoid Monsters. Presented were 35 papers (abstracts collected in Wasson, 141-154). Most attendees came from anthropology backgrounds. Robert Pyle writes that the conference "brought together twenty professors in various fields, along with several serious laymen, to consider the mythology, ethnology, ecology, biogeography, physiology, psychology, history and sociology of the subject. All took it seriously, and while few, if any, accepted the existence of Sasquatch outright, they jointly concluded 'that there are not reasonable grounds to dismiss all the evidence as misinterpretation or hoax.'" Some papers presented at the symposium were collected in 1980 as Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence, edited by Marjorie Halpin and Michael Ames.

Beginning in the late 1970s, physical anthropologist Grover Krantz published several articles and four book-length treatments of Sasquatch, though his work has contained multiple scientific failings and falling for hoaxes.

Robert Michael Pyle, ecologist and nature writer, wrote a book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide, that explores Pyle's attempts to "get a feel for both the legend and the beast itself by experiencing whatever the idea of Bigfoot had to offer." The book was researched and written with a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation.

See also

• Bigfoot in popular culture