Bigfoot and Cryptozoology

BIGFOOT AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Cryptozoology is the “science” of mythical or undiscovered animals such as dragons, the Loch Ness monster, Yeti (the abominable snowman), and Bigfoot. But cryptozoology is better thought of as pseudoscience rather than science because it operates in reverse of the scientific process. Its fans seem to start with a firm conclusion (these animals definitely do exist) and then go about trying to come up with evidence and arguments to back it up. Science doesn’t work that way. It requires the proof to come before the conclusion. Scientists may have wild hunches or flimsy leads that direct them to search for strange, undiscovered animals somewhere—there’s nothing wrong with that—but they don’t declare to know that an unknown animal exists before they can prove that it does.

Despite the failure of Bigfoot enthusiasts to prove their claim after all these years, 16 percent of American adults say that the creature is “absolutely” or “probably” real.22 Before we analyze Bigfoot belief, however, I want to point out that this is yet another extraordinary belief that is very, very unlikely to be true—but I wish it were. It would make my day to hear news of one captured alive or a recovered body. It may not win me over, but it does bring a smile to my face when I watch “real footage” of Bigfoot or see the plaster cast of a giant footprint. I love apes and I love the idea of an unknown ape species living right under our noses all this time. You have to understand, I’m a guy who obsessed over the original Planet of the Ape s films in childhood. When I conducted long interviews with Donald Johansen, discoverer of the famous “Lucy” fossils, and Jane Goodall, the great primatologist, for feature stories, it took a Herculean effort on my part to be professional and stop asking them questions after an hour or so. I even managed to talk my wife into letting me display my museum-quality replica Australopithecus afarensis and Homo erectus skulls in our living room. I feel closer to a couple of the bonobos at the San Diego Zoo than I do to half the humans I know. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that I would be happier and more excited than most cryptozoologists if Bigfoot were found. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to good evidence, attempt to suppress or deny it, or feel awkward about it, anyway. Remember, good skeptics don’t declare absolute knowledge about the nonexistence of flying saucers, ghosts, and so on. We simply point out problems with the claims and ask for good evidence. When it doesn’t come, we do the sensible thing and conclude that these things are unlikely to be true so they aren’t worth believing in. But we stop short of claiming to know what the world and the universe do not contain, because it’s a big world and a big universe, so we can’t be sure. Finding Bigfoot would be great for science because it would require an update to our current knowledge of primate evolution. We would have a new species to welcome into the family. Believers in these kinds of things often think that skeptics are against them and their claims. But this is not true. We simply know better than to pretend to know things we don’t know—even when we might love for them to be true.

So what are some of the problems with the claim that there is a giant primate running around in the Pacific Northwest and/or southern swamps of America? The biggest challenge for Bigfoot believers is simple: no body. Skeptics say “show me the body,” just one. But it hasn’t happened yet, and that’s a significant reason for doubt because it is extremely unlikely that after all this time not one camper, forest ranger, hiker, runner, logger, mountain biker, fisherman, or hunter would have stumbled upon a Bigfoot body that had died of old age or injury. All it would take is one body. Just one ten-foot tall bipedal ape in North America and Bigfoot is confirmed. Actually, it wouldn’t even take that much. Biological anthropologists are so good that they could prove it with only a few key bones. After all, they were able to figure out that Gigantopithecus, a 1,200-pound and nine-foot-tall ape, roamed the forests of Asia hundreds of thousands of years ago. And they didn’t even need a complete body to do it. Fossilized teeth and jawbones were enough. So all we likely would need to confirm Bigfoot would be part of a specimen. But we have nothing. All these years, and not even one jawbone turns up? No teeth? Not one unusually long primate femur bone? What are we supposed to believe, that the Bigfoot clans bury their dead in secret, unmarked graves out of sight of outdoor enthusiasts and forever beyond the reach of expanding suburbs?

Another critical problem for the Bigfoot claim is that there can’t just be one out there. Very few people think about this, but for Bigfoot creatures to endure all these years, there would have to be many of them out in the woods eluding people year after year. I raised this point with an anthropologist friend of mine who lives in Oregon (Bigfoot country). He guesses there would have to be at least five hundred Bigfoot individuals in a given area to maintain a genetically viable population capable of surviving long term. Of course, hundreds of creatures would make it even more likely that remains would be found. But they haven’t been. Disappointing, yes, but reality does not always cater to our desires. It just is what it is.

I know what you are thinking. What about that famous Bigfoot film? And what about all those plaster casts of giant footprints? Isn’t that stuff proof? No, it’s not because we have very good explanations for those things that don’t require a population of gigantic apes. First, let’s take care of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. Shot by Robert Patterson and Bob Gimlin in Northern California in 1967, this brief bit of footage has impressed millions of people around the world, undoubtedly converting many into believers. I have no idea why, because it’s terrible. (If you are not familiar with it or haven’t seen it recently, search for “Patterson Bigfoot film” online and judge for yourself). I’m no primatologist, but the “creature” seems all wrong to me. It does not look and move like a wild animal. But it does look and move like a human in an ape suit. Furthermore, the way in which it parades by Patterson and Gimlin and then gives the men a dramatic money shot by glancing back at the camera before vanishing back into the woods seems too convenient. Even more difficult to believe is this little detail: Patterson told people in advance that he was going out that day to find and film Bigfoot. Ask yourself, what are the odds that he would have been that lucky? Maybe a pudgy, flat-footed, pear-shaped Bigfoot really did accommodate the two men that day, but I doubt it. It has all the look and feel of a staged hoax, and that ought to be everyone’s first guess because we know hoaxes happen. But let’s not rely on my opinion here. The man who seems to have worn the suit, Bob Heironimos, came forward and confessed23 — Figure unavailable in the source files. Greg Long’s book, The Making of Bigfoot, includes that and more. It lays out the whole story in detail and includes information about Patterson buying a gorilla suit from Morris Costumes in 1967. The owner of that business, former magician Phillip Morris, said Patterson told him he planned to “have some fun with the suit.”24 Seems he did, indeed.

Evidence in the form of plaster casts of Bigfoot prints is even less impressive than the film. Faking giant footprints was something of a cottage industry in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. For a while, it seemed like everyone was doing it. But the first print-maker may have been Ray L. Wallace, a road-construction worker. When he died in 2002, his son, Michael Wallace, told the New York Times that his father was an enthusiastic prankster who made giant wooden feet and began stomping around in the forest, making prints, from as early as 1958. He said his father never intended it to be a complex plot, nor did he imagine that it would grow into the widespread phenomenon that it did. He only meant to play a trick on a few local people for a laugh.25

Science finds the real monsters. The good news for veteran or aspiring cryptozoologists is that they can do what they love—think about, research, and search for exotic new life-forms—within science instead of outside of it. If the chance to find new creatures sounds exciting to you, then science is the ticket. Take your pick: biology, zoology, microbiology, entomology, astrobiology, and more. These scientific disciplines are not only open to new discoveries, they, unlike cryptozoology, actually make them on a regular basis!

Many people are not aware of it, but science has a long, long way to go when it comes to finding and cataloging the life-forms we share this planet with. There is no doubt that the Amazon rainforest, the hills and mountains of Asia, the African bush, and other more-remote locations are still hiding many surprises from us. Even more promising is the ocean. Scientists can hardly pull up a water sample without finding something new in it. Maverick scientist and visionary Craig Venter of San Diego has had teams trolling the ocean for nine years in search of new life. So far, he and his team have discovered hundreds of thousands of new species and sixty million previously unknown genes.26

Forget life on the planet for the moment, we haven’t even identified the life on us! There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done to discover and understand the microbes that share our bodies with us. Never make the mistake of thinking that the only interesting, important, or scary creatures are big. Sure, a ten-foot ape would be impressive, but have you ever seen images of the little beasts crawling around on your skin and inside your home right now? They look like monsters to me. Have you learned about some of the amazing and bizarre things that microbes can do and the surprising places they can live? No doubt, there are many millions of real monsters awaiting discovery right now, and science is the route to finding them. Popular Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson is in awe of the still-mysterious microbial frontier:

Bacteria, protistans, nematodes, mites and other minute creatures swarm around us, an animate matrix that binds Earth’s surface. They are objects of endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm’s length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.27

One does not even have to limit the search for new life to this planet. Astrobiology is a respectable and growing branch of science that treats the entire universe as a target of opportunity. Astrobiologists do not claim to know that extraterrestrial life exists, of course, only that it’s certainly possible and well worth thinking about and looking for. Much of their work involves the search for and study of weird creatures here on Earth that live in extremely hot, extremely cold, or extremely acidic environments, the kinds of places once thought to be impossibly hostile to life. That line of work has to be more exciting and rewarding than looking for the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, or other mythical monsters that are very, very unlikely ever to be found.