Aug. 15, 2008 -- Bigfoot's body has been found, according to two Georgia men who, with much media fanfare, showed reporters three blurry photos said to depict the creature at a press conference held today at a hotel a few miles from Stanford University.
The promised evidence for Bigfoot DNA turned out to be an e-mail from Curt Nelson, a University of Minnesota scientist who analyzed DNA samples provided by the two men. Nelson said one of the samples came from a human, the other from an opossum. The presenters sidestepped the issue by saying that is what their Bigfoot must have recently consumed.
The hotel's proximity to the California university is about as close to academia as the supposed findings will get, according to experts contacted by Discovery News. They say photographs of the body, supposedly stored in a freezer, resemble a widely available Halloween costume.
"What they are claiming to be Bigfoot in a photograph doesn't look natural," Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy in the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University, told Discovery News.
"When the photo is juxtaposed next to an off-the-shelf costume, the resemblance is remarkable," added Meldrum, who is the author of the book, "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science."
Suspicious from the Beginning
Meldrum, who does not discount the Bigfoot legend, was at first "hopeful" that the discovery was legitimate. Matthew Whitton, identified as a Georgia police officer in a Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., press release, and former correctional officer Rick Dyer, say that they found "the creature" in the woods of northern Georgia.
"The exact location," the press release continues, "is being kept secret to protect the creatures."
"So here these men are in Georgia, which is home to the world-renowned Yerkes Primate Center, and what do they do? They turn to a charlatan instead," Meldrum said.
He identified the "charlatan" as Tom Biscardi, founder of the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization and one of the presenters at today's press conference. In 2005, Biscardi claimed his group captured an 8-foot-tall Bigfoot. That claim was quickly disputed.
More recently, Meldrum says Whitton and Dyer released a YouTube video said to show a scientist traveling to Georgia to examine the "body." Both Meldrum and The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization say that numerous viewers quickly figured out that the "scientist" was, in reality, Martin Whitton, the deputy's brother.
Georgia Fakelore
Long-time north Georgia resident Charles Doyle, who is a noted folklorist and an associate professor of English at the University of Georgia, told Discovery News he wasn't surprised that Bigfoot is an attention-getter in his region.
The claims come down to media and money, he said.
"Much of the lore of Bigfoot, I suspect, is what one eminent folklorist a generation ago called 'fakelore' -- invented figures with little or no basis in actual oral tradition that are passed off as local folklore, figures like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill -- for purposes of PR, attracting tourists, selling tabloid newspapers and magazines, creating children's literature, etc.," Doyle explained.
As to the forests of north Georgia, Doyle pointed out that James Dickie's thriller "Deliverance," and the movie based on the novel, give considerable national currency to a stereotype of the remote "monstrousness" of the area. Concession sales alone in the area provide a local income boost, and future money generated from the Bigfoot hype is expected to do the same.
"Crackpots Versus Eggheads"
Brian Regal, assistant professor for the History of Science at Kean University, foreshadowed this week's news last month. He gave a lecture at London's Grant Museum of Zoology entitled "Crackpots and Eggheads: Pseudoscience and the Search for the Yeti."
During the lecture he mentioned that there is a "battle" between amateur naturalists and professional scientists that helps to drive the hunt for "anomalous primate monsters like Bigfoot."
Regal told Discovery News that there is a "long history of secretively held Bigfoot bodies that goes back to the 1960s."
"The story grabs people's imagination," he said "and until a reputable museum, laboratory or university finds incontrovertible, documented physical evidence for Bigfoot, then we should assume these other finds are fakes and in the category of the 'alien autopsy' of the 90s."
Ray Santilli, a London-based video entrepreneur, promoted the alien video, which featured B-movie type beings undergoing an autopsy. He admitted in 2006 that the video was not entirely genuine.
Bigfoot Believers Unfazed
Loren Coleman, who runs the Cryptomundo blog, which covers strange and unknown animals, warned that the public should take care to separate this latest hoax with legitimate research on the subject.
Meldrum, who claims to have over 200 "Bigfoot footprint casts" in his lab, agrees.
"My assessment of the evidence suggests that Bigfoot is a great ape, like a gorilla or chimp, which is not a hominid and does not possess material culture or the ability to control fire," Meldrum said.
He described the unknown ape as standing 6.5 to 8 feet in height, weighing 450 to 500 pounds, muscular, small brained and flatfooted. Analysis of the footprints suggests it walks "like a human carrying a backpack," with flexed joints to carry the body's weight. He based some of his determinations on the famous 1967 "Bigfoot" video footage shot by Roger Patterson and Robert Grimlin.
"I've concluded, based on repeated examination of the film, that it shows a real animal and not a man in a fur suit," Meldrum said.
Regal, on the other hand, said that "the video looks fake to me," although he expressed respect for Meldrum, whom he described as being "one of the few primatologists to seriously study the phenomenon."
Legends Will Continue
In an odd coincidence, the deputy-found "Bigfoot" falls on the heels this week of the Texas "chupacabra," also allegedly found by a deputy. Chupacabra is another legendary animal whose name literally means "goat-sucker." Sheriff's Deputy Brandon Reidel of Cuero, Texas, shot footage of the running animal, which other experts have identified as a sick coyote.
Aside from the media "ca-ching" factor, Doyle believes "legends about 'monsters,' in general, probably address people's abiding fear of, and therefore fascination with, the unknown."
He suspects the Bigfoot legend will live on well into the future.
"Interest in such semi-human monsters, such as ape-men and werewolves, relate to our perpetual struggle to define what is essentially human in ourselves and in others," concluded Doyle.
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Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal
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