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 Many skeptics and uninformed laymen often assume that there is no evidence to suggest that sasquatches are real animals. Contrary to popular opinion, there is quite a bit, but it has largely been ignored by those qualified to comment on it with authority.
The most commonly asked question is, “Where is the body?” While no bigfoot has been killed and brought in for scientific scrutiny, there have been numerous reported bigfoot kills over the years. In fact, there has been a reported kill at least once every four years for more than a century. Why a piece of the body hasn't been brought in varies from case to case, but unfortunately no one has yet to bring a piece to the right people. That may change soon, though.
Intelligent folks would then wonder about naturally dead bigfoots. When people ask me, “If bigfoots are real, why don't we find their bones?” I always reply with, “If bears are real, why don't we find their bones?” That's right, we don't find bear bones in the woods unless the bear was killed under unnatural circumstances, like hunting, poaching, or in a road kill situation. In fact, remains of naturally dead apex predators of any sort are almost never found in the woods. North American forests are just too good at recycling the corpses, whether it's coyotes or other scavengers disposing of the meat, or deer mice and other rodents eating away at the bones for their calcium content. Besides, if you found a three-foot long femur in the woods while on a hike, would you pick it up, bring it to a university, and then pay a couple thousand dollars for a DNA test to see if it was a sasquatch bone? Even I wouldn't do that, and I'm about the biggest bigfoot nerd you're going to run across.
If no modern bigfoot body parts are likely to be found, then what about the fossil record? Perhaps it can be used to ascertain the possibility of bigfoots being real. As it turns out, there is a possible candidate for the sasquatch in the fossil record, and it was alive and well as recently as 100,000 years ago (a blink of an eye in geologic terms). While little is known about this creature, Gigantopithecus Blacki, it did exist at the same time and in the same place as a direct ancestor of human beings, Homo Erectus. Could sasquatches be relic Gigantos? Maybe, but so little is known about Giganto that this is speculative at best. The existence of Gigantopithecus does show that apes can get very large. They also existed at a time when there were many more ape species than are around today. Who knows what other giant wood apes might have been roaming around Asia at this time?
What about other parts of the body? There is actually a decent amount of hair that might be from bigfoots. The leading investigator of bigfoot hair samples is Dr. Henner Fahrenbach, former head of the Laboratory of Electron Microscopy at the Oregon Regional Primate Center in Beaverton, OR. He has a couple dozen samples of hair that was collected from various parts of North America that have eluded identification. The problem is that there is no known sample of bigfoot hair to compare it to. What Dr. Fahrenbach can say about the hair is that they all share the same morphology and coloration. The hairs have never been cut, and in some cases have been collected at locations where sasquatches were seen. So far, there has been no published account of extracting DNA from these hairs, but this might soon change as technology and new methods become available. There is at least one study looking at such possibilities, but as of yet the results lay in the realm of rumor.
Since sasquatches have been around for a while, we might look to the other bipedal inhabitants of North America for some information in our query. Do Native Americans have sasquatches in their cultural history? Absolutely. There are hundreds of stories about sasquatches in Native American folklore. In fact, some tribal clans were even named for sasquatches. Kathy Strain, a US Forest Service archeologist has published a very interesting anthology of traditional Native bigfoot stories, and she has only scratched the surface. Bigfoots apparently have been here as long as Native Americans have.
Another commonly asked question is “Where are the photographs and films of bigfoots?” Every year, there are perhaps a dozen or two pictures and videos that pop up that might show a bigfoot. Most of these are too blurry or obscured to be of much use, and the ones that are fairly clear are often hoaxes. There are some, however, that seem to actually show a sasquatch. The most famous of these is the Patterson/Gimlin Film, taken in 1967. It has been repeatedly scrutinized, and every time this happens the conclusions point to its authenticity. There are other photographs, such as the Silver Star Mountain Photos by Randee Chase that are also very likely sasquatches. The problem with photographing a bigfoot is that they seem to be largely nocturnal, and even more frustrating, they hide. I would expect real photographs to be of poor quality. Just because a picture isn't very good doesn't mean it isn't authentic.
Adding to the body of video evidence is now thermal footage. Thermal imaging technology is the best hope at capturing sasquatches on film because thermal imagers can see through darkness and see the heat mammals radiate into the night. Any mammal stands out like a beacon when standing in the forest against the forest background heat, and sasquatches are no exception. Thermal imagers are still very expensive, but as this technology finds its way into more and more hands, we should expect to see a proportionately large body of footage emerging. This type of footage won't satisfy the public's desire to see a sasquatch, but it will show some interesting features and behaviors never before seen.
I am sometimes asked why people don't see bigfoots more often. I laugh when I hear this because even though I'm just one guy, I hear about a few bigfoot sightings every month. As of this writing, I have heard about at least six local bigfoot encounters that have happened in the last five months. That's not to even mention the stories of older encounters that have found my ears, nor is it taking into account the eyewitness reports I get from other parts of the country. And, I'll repeat... I'm just one guy. I would be very surprised if I hear even one percent of the bigfoot activity in my local area. People see bigfoots kind of a lot, which is exactly what would be expected if they are real.
An interesting point about eyewitness reports is that they are not a recent phenomena. Not only have Native Americans always known bigfoots were here, but for nearly 200 years, articles have been published in newspapers detailing eyewitness encounters by the dominant culture. Many of these encounters happened while the population was pushing westward into unexplored lands around small towns that popped up throughout the nineteenth century. Interestingly, they report the same type of creature that is commonly reported today. Even more interesting is that these historical accounts talk of behaviors that were discovered in the other extant apes in the 1960's by primatology pioneer Dr. Jane Goodall (another admitted bigfoot believer).
To me, footprint casts offer some of the best evidence because it can be shared in peer review. These casts conform to the same proportions independent of the year or location of their discovery. Such details as dermatoglyphics, sweat pores, flexion creases, and even nails can be seen in them. In some cases, individuals can be tracked over time and space as one particular creature left footprints over the years. The underlying bone structure has been theorized, and it turns out that the restructuring of the bone positions that is observed is a necessary biomechanical alteration needed to propel a bipedal creature of huge mass. Dr. Jeff Medrum discovered in 1996 a feature in the sasquatch footprints that had been recorded decades earlier in sasquatch called the midtarsal ridge. This ridge is observed in all of the other ape species' footprints, and even in the prints of other species of man such as Neanderthals and Australopithecus. The ridge is made by the retained flexibility of the mid part of the foot, a little-known aspect of ape anatomy.
The above are some of the more commonly thought of types of evidence associated with sasquatches. There are others as well. Tree breaks, vocalization recordings (some of which hint at language use), and body impressions are also in the data set. If more people knew about these data, then perhaps they'd be willing to be more open to the possibility that they share the planet with another bipedal species.
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