Bigfoot

The Bigfoot is reputed to be a large primate which inhabits the wilderness of the US Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada. Also called Sasquatch by Native Americans who have stories of such a creature; the word is derived from Northwest Coast[?] Native American names for it.

Despite the lack of rigorous scientific evidence, there are volumes of eyewitness sightings, as well as poor-quality home movies and photographs. Bigfoot has been a staple of those television shows and tabloid newspapers which cover topics like UFOs, conspiracy theories and dead celebrity sightings. However, a great bulk of the best-known of this evidence was produced by Ray Wallace[?] from 1958 onward; he eventually admitted it had been a continuous prank that had gone wildly beyond his control; his family publicized many of the details following his death in 2002. In any case, he had fabricated all of his own "proof" and much of that produced by others.

It should be noted, in any case, that most of the areas where the Bigfoot has been seen are close to known habitats of bears, notably including the Grizzly bear. Grizzly bears are large and furry, and occasionally stand up on their hind legs, prompting speculation that at least some of the sightings are really bears. Some of the sightings however are by people familiar with bears, who claim that what they saw was not a bear. At least one film (the Patterson-Gimlin film) shows something that is definitely not a bear, and this film was for a long time taken to be the strongest evidence for Bigfoot. However, it was filmed under the advice of Ray Wallace (see above), who claimed that this, too was a fake--that the filmmakers believed it to be real, but that the creature seen is a friend of Wallace's in costume.

There are reports of unknown large primates in wilderness regions on every continent except Europe and Antarctica. One of the more famous examples is the Yeti or Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. Enthusiasts theorize that at least some of these reports could be of present-day specimens of the giant ape Gigantopithecus. Without additional evidence, this suggestion must be regarded as highly speculative.

See also Alma, Orang Pendak, Yowie, Mythical beast, cryptozoology.