For many year I have been hearing about mysterious ape like animals living in the woods, usually the northern woods, but sometimes even in the jungles of South America. Up north some people call the animal Bigfoot or Sasquatch, its indian name. It doesn't really matter what the name of the animal is, everyone is talking about the same thing. As we know, there are similar beasts being reported all over the world. This brings me to an interesting question. Is it possible that some mentally ill people have migrated, from time to time, into the woods and jungles of this world? Could some of these people have been particularly violent and maybe very large? Could it be that what we accept as an animal is really a human with a severe mental illness? Some would say impossible because of the extremely large foot prints that have been found. There are so many "forged" Bigfoot prints around that it is hard to prove that there ever were huge foot prints found that were genuine in the first place. I am not saying that everyone involved with finding these prints were committing a fraud, what I am saying is that it would be easy to come across one of these print and think that it was the real thing when it was only planted by someone else as a hoax or joke or even to promote their souvenir business.

Another thing that I wonder about is if there are any criminals that are hiding in the woods and jungles? If someone was being chased by the police for a major crime, what better place to hide in, than the wilderness? Picture this scenario, some poor hiker is making his way across the woods and stops to build a camp. A murderer is hiding from the police in the woods and decides either that he can use the supplies that the camper has or that the camper is a threat to him being discovered, so he kills the camper and makes him disappear. The people in the nearest town find out that the camper disappeared and attribute it to Big Foot. Is this impossible? I don't think so. I bet things like this have been happening since the beginning of time. Cavemen probably went out to hunt and were killed by their enemies and the word got back that evil spirits got them or the gods were displeased and killed them. There always seems to be some ridiculous story like this floating around.

Lets look at some of what passes as evidence for the existence of Bigfoot. It is thought that a trapper first sighted a Bigfoot in 1811 and described him as seven or eight feet tall and hairy. Could this man have seen a large man who was unshaven and was covered by animal skins to guard against the severe cold of the northern United States? Maybe the trapper had a few drinks before the sighting. If he couldn't tell the difference between 7 and 8 feet tall, maybe he couldn't tell the difference between 6 and 7 feet tall. Maybe the large man was very tall, say 6.5 feet and with animal skins piled on him, looked much taller. As they say, one of the worst types of evidence is what people see, because they can never agree on what it was. Throw in a few people and ask them to describe the same thing and you are likely to get all different answers as not.

There is one video that I know of that is supposed to be of a Bigfoot. Many of us have seen it on tv or the internet. As usual it is too far away to allow us to be sure of anything. All kinds of witnesses have been produced to state that it is an ape in the video, if that is what it is, it is an unknown species of very tall ape. They say things like its gate is that of an ape or it turns its whole body when turning around just like an ape and so on. Hey, why couldn't a person in an ape suit who knows about apes do the same thing? This doesn't mean that the person who took the video knew it wasn't a bigfoot. What if a group of people went out to try and find a Bigfoot and some of their friends thought it would be great fun to play a trick on them? I bet this has happened more than once. I remember when I went down to get my Volkswagen beetle when I was a kid and in the parking spot was a toy Volkswagen. My friends had carried mine into the woods and thought it was great fun to put the toy in its place. Hey you never know.

Looking at some of the other evidence, I have to say there doesn't seem to be anything conclusive. When crop circles first appeared everyone thought they were miraculous and made by aliens, then two guys were caught creating them. The famous photograph of Nessie, the Scottish monster, was believed to be genuine for many years until it was admitted a few years ago that it too was a fraud. This kind of thing really lets the wind out of your sails, when it comes to believing in these things. As I said before, I don't think that Bigfoot foot prints can be taken as evidence of anything. As a matter of fact, I bet if we tried hard enough, we might even be able to catch someone making them. Several people have admitted to this already.

Other so called evidence has been found and that is hair, dung and hand prints. As for the hand prints, the same problem exists for accepting them as evidence as the foot prints. The hair and dung are different. Here is the problem. There can be other species of animals out there, animals that are undiscovered today. We are still discovering new animals every year. Just because we find unknown fur or dung certainly doesn't mean that it comes from a bigfoot. I remember the case where everyone thought that a new type of dinosaur was pulled from the ocean by Japanese fishermen. It turned out that it was a whale, I believe, but it had rotted and lost some of its body parts and admittedly it did look like a dinosaur.

Until we find a dead Bigfoot, we will never be able to prove that it exists. The proof has evaded us in North America for almost 200 years and even longer in some other parts of the world. Let me finish this article by saying I hope that someday it will be proven. I am always interested in new animal species.