Are bigfoot real

Answer 1

There is not enough evidence to conclusively say Bigfoot exists. No one has every captured a living specimen or even stumbled upon a carcass. The body of evidence comprises "eyewitness" accounts, grainy video, and questionable footprints. Many people claim to have seen Bigfoot, but this does not mean they actually saw it. As someone who comes from a police family, I can tell you there is a reason why courts don't always consider eyewitness accounts reliable. Twenty people watching one event can see twenty different versions of it. The mind can play tricks on people, even those who are awake. For instance, a bear standing on hind legs would look a lot like a Bigfoot. Not to mention the fact that the power of suggestion is very, very powerful. A person is going to see the creature (whether if it is there or not) if they really want to. And one also has to contend with people who are just plain lying--something that is common to Bigfoot claims.

The amount of recent blurry or grainy videos of supposed Bigfoot creatures is appalling considering we live in the age of HD camera phones. The Patterson-Gimlin film is often held up as being the best video evidence. Some people claim it is a real because they believe it would have been impossible for someone to create such a suit during the 60s, or that it is physically impossible for humans to walk in the same manner portrayed. I watched a documentary where they overlaid simulated human skeletons over the individual from the film to show that the proportions don't match up. However, the problem with doing this is that the original film is extremely shaky. They had to stabilize the scene by manipulating the original frames. On top of that, who's to say they are overlaying it at the correct angle? Most importantly, overlaying doesn't take into account the possibility of a padded suit. This would naturally throw off the proportions. For instance, padded shoulders would make the arms and torso look much longer than normal human proportions. It should be noted that many people, including the SFX specialist Stan Winston, believe it is just a man in a suit.

Most of the footprint casts I've seen look like undefined foot-shaped lumps of plaster. Sometimes you can see every single toe, like it was just a stamp attached to the bottom of someone's boot. There have been some casts that appear to be very realistic. I once read that one of the very few professional anthropologists doing Bigfoot research claimed a cast had evidence of a healed wound. I don't consider casts to be evidence, though. This is because all a person has to do to make a believable footprint is to have access to modern materials like silicone and have a basic knowledge of anatomy.

Despite what was written in the first answer, there is zero tangible scientific evidence to support the existence of Bigfoot. Dr. Melba Ketchum, a Texas veterinarian-turned-geneticist, has claimed to have written a research paper showing that the creature is the result of humans and some unknown primate species mating 15,000 years ago. However, none of the material has ever appeared in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal. Most importantly, her camp keeps on moving the hypothetical publishing date back further and further each week. This is like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey. The beast keeps on following as long as the carrot is held just out of their reach. Dr. Ketchum has claimed in radio interviews that the DNA evidence of hair and skin samples were sent in by independent Bigfoot field researchers. Relying on such evidence casts doubt on the reliability of the research. How do we know the DNA is from a Bigfoot if no baseline has been set for the creature? Were the people who obtained the samples properly trained in evidence collection techniques? It's very well possible the reason that her testing found primate DNA is because the samples were contaminated by the people who sent them in.

Being a student of Primatology, I would be thrilled to learn about an as yet undiscovered primate species living in North American. But I can't ignore the fact that Bigfoot research has a very, very long history of hoaxes. I'm the sort of person that will only believe it when a live specimen is captured and documented by science.

Answer 2

Its very possible it is and very possible it isn't no one really knows.