Bigfoot is a fascinating subject and I find myself writing about it from time to time. I don't give it as much attention as ufos, but every once in awhile it creeps into my writing. This usually happens because I have either seen something or read something that makes me want to talk about it. This time it was a program on tv that spurred my interest. The entire program wasn't about bigfoot, but it did have a 10 minute segment that was interesting.

The second question that concerns bigfoot, that has to be asked, is are all the sightings of large ape like creatures all the same animal? The first question just can't be answered yet, that question is whether bigfoot actually exists. What I am asking here is if the Yeti, Yeren, Sasquatch and bigfoot are the same animal? Isn't it strange that many different areas developed legends of a giant ape creature on their own? Would it be possible for a large ape like creature to exist without anyone having found it, in the discovery sense, yet? I think it would, after all look where it has been sighted, it always seems to be in remote areas. It has been sighted in the woods of the northwest U.S., the mountains in Tibet and remote areas of China, just to mention a few places. The show featured a couple of people that said that they were either attacked or chased by a giant ape. One was a woman from Tibet who was a shepherd. She said that she was tending some cows and a Yeti came running at her, tossing her into the stream and killing three cows before leaving. The other person was a man with an even more incredible story. He claims that he was hunting in the woods and was at the bottom of a hill. He states that he heard a loud sound that startled him. It was a large animal falling through a tree and breaking branches as it fell to the bottom. He further states that the animal then rolled down the hill near him. He watch as the animal rose on two legs and straightened out it's back. He says that he fired a shot over it's head but it didn't run but turned and walked away. He decided he had better return to his camp and as he walked in that direction, he says that the animal was waiting for him. It was a giant ape like creature. He ran in terror as the creature chased him. He got to the point where he was so out of breath, he couldn't run anymore and thought for sure that he was going to die, but a strange thing happened. When he stopped running so did the ape. He got his breath and ran again and the ape chased him. By now he was all cut up from the branches he ran through. After awhile he began to realize that the ape was playing with him. Every time he would run the ape would chase him and when he would stop, so would the giant ape. He finally got near the road and the ape left. He says that he was never so scared in his life.

A lot of people would say that we have no way of knowing if any of these stories are true, but this is always the case when there is only one person that sees something. I think that the biggest problem is hoaxers that do things like plant false foot prints. They destroy the credibility of anyone that says that they have seen one of these creatures. There are actually databases on the internet that are full of bigfoot sightings. Unfortunately as with anything connected with the internet there is nothing set up to protect us from false reports and I am sure that children love to post there. Still, some of these sightings may be true. It is hard to believe that every bigfoot sighting is false.

Yeti

CNN wrote an article about a missionary who said he saw a very mysterious ape in the Congo that was walking upright in 2003. A short video was taken of the ape and it was examined by the lab at a famous zoo. A primatologist stated that it didn't look like either a gorilla or chimpanzee after viewing the video. A description of the animal was that it was about a couple of inches bigger than a Gorilla and more flat faced than any ape species. The zoo is said to be in possession of fecal matter of the mystery ape and the DNA lab stated that their preliminary test had show that the DNA was chimp like. The scientists at the zoo's lab stated that the large ape could also be a hybrid and if the mother was a chimp and the father a gorilla then the test would only identify the mother's DNA, so only chimpanzee genes would show up. If the mystery animal turns out to be a hybrid, boy are there going to be a lot of disappointed bigfoot watchers. Now I am no scientist but this thought brings up other possibilities in my mind. Could an ape have fathered a baby with a human thousands of years ago, creating a strange race of creatures? Wouldn't that be a terrible thought. I have always heard that this type of thing was impossible but I am not entirely convinced. What if it only worked even, with an ape, once in a million times but it did happen at least once? Could we have a race of apes that carry human genes walking around?

Let's take this a step further. Assuming that the creatures do have some human genes and maybe a few human traits, they may be smart enough to mostly stay out of our way, that would make them much harder to find. Could this be the reason that it is so hard to see a bigfoot?

Some of the sightings of bigfoot have been ridiculous. An example of one of these was a sighting in Texas where the observer truly thought that he was looking at a bigfoot. The animal was shot and it turned out to be a Coyote with the mange. Now some may well ask, how do you mistake a Coyote for a bigfoot? That is a legitimate question and I can see no answer to it, it certainly seems absurd. Many people are obsessed with being the first to bag a bigfoot. It has gotten so bad that China had to close a nature reserve to keep bigfoot hunters and their safaris out. Big foot has been spotted in almost ever state of the U.S. There is only one state that has never had a bigfoot sighting. You guessed it, it is Hawaii.

There are many bigfoot sightings in Texas. Not being a Texan myself, I was surprised to learn that Texas has 12 million acres of forests. I always thought that it was mostly desert and tumble weeds. The forests are a great place for a bigfoot type creature to hide out. Indians in Canada have an ancient legend of a Sasquatch which means hairy giant in english. This animal wasn't seen by a white man until about 1811 when David Thomson found huge footprints in the snow that were over fourteen inches long and eight inches wide. Were there some indians hiding behind a tree and laughing as the astounded Thomson look at the prints? An animal was even caught in Canada that was thought to be a baby bigfoot. It was four feet seven inches tall and 127 pounds Many people discount this because the description resembled a chimp. Today it is thought that someone had brought a chimp back on a ship and it got loose and was captured. If we don't count indian sightings over the centuries, the bigfoot sightings really began in the U.S. in the 1920s. They took place in the Pacific Northwest.

Evidence that is comprised of just footprints does not impress the scientific community. Who can blame them, anyone can go out and create a giant footprint. Some may have been created to increase the tourist trade and others just as a prank. Any real bigfoot footprints will never be credited to the animal due to all these frauds, it is such a shame.