The Alleged Sasquatch

Frame 352, and All That -Tetrapod Zoology

Zoologist Darren Naish tackles the P-G Bigfoot film, particularly one frame of it, in his normal, very meticulous manner. A good analysis. (via: The Anomalist)

Frame 352, and all that

For some time now I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a blog post about sasquatch, North America’s legendary cryptic ape. And, generally, I’ve decided that doing so would be a really bad idea: I am chicken, and as someone trying to gain a reputation within the academic world, I think that even expressing an interest in issues like this is a bad idea. That’s ridiculously unfair of course, stemming only from ill-informed knee-jerk negativity to this subject, and given that scientific inquiry of any phenomenon is a worthwhile pursuit, I like to think that more zoologists should actually get informed about mystery animals (for a previous post making the same argument go here). I note that hardly any hard-line sceptics of things such as sasquatch display familiarity with the literature on the subject [adjacent image shows frame 310 of the Patterson film: see below].

In the interests of hypothesis testing, I finally decided: what the hell. My hypothesis is: will writing about sasquatch negatively affect my career prospects? Well, let’s test the hypothesis. Let me state from the start that I do not “believe” in sasquatch, nor am I planning to promote either an anti-sasquatch, or a pro-sasquatch, point of view. What I have learnt from research on this area is that – contrary to the assertions of some – the evidence for sasquatch is, at the very least, scientifically interesting and worthy of investigation.

While purported evidence for the supposed reality of sasquatch continues to attract strong criticism, more interesting in my view is that a number of academically qualified primatologists have recently gone on record in stating that the evidence for sasquatch is scientifically compelling. These people do not only include well-known sasquatch proponents, such as the late Grover Krantz (1931-2002) of Washington State University, or Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University. Daris Swindler (professor emeritus of physical anthropology at the University of Washington, author of Atlas of Primate Anatomy) stated, after examining the Skookum body cast (a large impression, made in mud, from Washington state, apparently created by a reclining man-like primate), that the heel impression visible on the cast is definitely that of a giant unknown primate. J. H. Chilcutt, an expert on human and non-human primate fingerprints (who initially examined casts of sasquatch tracks because he felt confident that he could debunk them), has expressed his absolute confidence in the validity of dermal ridges on footprints as demonstrative of the reality of sasquatch. On the Whitewolf Entertainment TV documentary ‘Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science’ (2003) he stated “I stake my career on it”.

-cont.