Monsters and Myths

Prior to the famous if controversial film of an alleged bigfoot striding into a forest at Bluff Creek, California, which was taken on 20 October 1967 by rancher Roger Patterson, few people outside America had ever heard of this mystifying cryptozoological entity. In reality, however, stories supporting its existence date back centuries, as revealed by the following selection of bigfoot-related tales from the traditional folklore of the early European settlers and native American Indians.

THE WOOD DEVILS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

According to the settlers inhabiting Coos County in New Hampshire, the deep woodlands of this New England state harboured elusive, fleet-footed beings known as wood devils. Although superficially humanoid in appearance, they were very tall, hairy, and thin, with grey skin. They were able to emit piercing screams, and their faces were not those of humans at all. Occasionally, a human would unexpectedly encounter one of these mysterious man-beasts, but if a wood devil became aware of a human’s approach, it would conceal itself by standing upright and perfectly still against a tree, moving slightly to one side if necessary in order to keep the tree’s trunk between itself and the oncoming person. All of these details are consistent with modern-day reports of the bigfoot.

ARULATAQ - AN ESKIMO BIGFOOT

Even as far north as Alaska, traditional belief in bigfoot-like entities is strong. The Yupik Eskimos, for instance, still speak of the arulataq - whose name translates as a creature that makes a bellowing cry. The Yupik affirm that the arulataq is an exceedingly tall, hairy, man-like being, loftier than a 9-ft or even 10-ft-tall spruce tree, but with such lengthy arms that even when standing upright it could touch the ground next to its large feet with its hands. Similarly, current reports of the bigfoot often state that it has unusually long arms. Although the arulataq is not predatory and actually seems quite curious about humans (again like the bigfoot), people seeing one would run away in fear, because of its formidable appearance.

HAIRY MAN-EATING GIANTS

A more common image in traditional American folklore, however, is that of the shaggy-furred, man-eating giant. According to an early Pueblo tale from Taos County, New Mexico, an old man once encountered one of these terrifying creatures, which killed him and took his body away to its cave. When he did not return home that evening, his family and friends set out in a party to search for him. After spying the hairy giant’s huge footprints, they trailed them back to a huge cave, where they discovered the old man’s bones and skull - all that remained after the giant had eaten him. They also found the skeletons of some of its earlier human victims. So, vowing to avenge their dead Pueblo kinfolk, they decided to smoke the monster out of its cave and kill it. When the enraged giant finally emerged, coughing loudly, they shot many arrows at it, but their weapons did not seem to harm it, and it ran away.

According to their description, the giant had big hands, feet, head, and mouth, very muscular arms, and a burly body covered in long hair. Eventually, after being chased by the Pueblos across the Lucero River, the giant was struck by lightning, and after retreating, fatally wounded, inside another cave, it died.

It is interesting to note not only that the giant’s description compares closely with that of today’s bigfoot but also that many present-day eyewitness reports of bigfoot encounters claim that the creature does not seem to be harmed by weapons, not even by bullets.

Intriguingly, according to an early Taos legend, as long ago as the 12th Century a tribe of Pueblos travelled southwards to the Rio Colorado’s canyon, about 10 miles from Taos itself. Here they built a stone village, but were attacked by giants, forcing them to flee south.

The Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, Canada, also speak of forest-inhabiting giants with a taste for human flesh. In one such tale, a group of small children met a huge hairy man-beast, far taller than any human, and also readily distinguished from humans by its face, whose skin was rough and whose eyes were sunk deep in its face. This is a common, recurrent trait in Amerindian stories of hairy giants - and is one that just so happens to be a characteristic consistently occurring in modern-day descriptions of the bigfoot too.

This frightening being soon caught the helpless youngsters and carried them away in a large basket on its back, but one boy managed to escape from the basket without being seen by the giant and ran back to his village to alert the adults. Swiftly forming a hunting party, the village’s men followed the trail left behind by the giant, as pointed out to them by the boy, and eventually they found themselves outside a large cave. Peering inside, they could see the giant and his wife, tying up the children in front of a large fire.

In this particular folktale, the men and the giants spoke the same language, conveniently enabling them to ask the giant what he intended to do with their children. Not surprisingly, they were horrified when he confirmed that he and his wife planned to smoke them over the fire, then eat them for dinner. Happily, however, fate lent a helping hand, when the giant unexpectedly confessed to the men that he was curious as to why their faces were smoother and their eyes more attractive than his. Thinking quickly, the men promised him that if he released the children, they would make his skin and eyes like theirs. The vain giant agreed, so once the children were safely out of harm’s way, the men told him to fetch a large flat rock and a sharp pointed rock, and they would begin his beautifying treatment immediately.

When they had been given the two rocks, the men instructed the giant to lie on the ground, use the flat rock as a pillow to support his head, then close his eyes tightly, and keep them closed for the next four days, after which the treatment would be complete. This he did, but once his eyes were closed, the men hit him between his eyes with the sharp rock, slaying him instantly. When his giantess wife came to see what was happening, the men coolly informed her that he needed to lie there for four days, undisturbed, in order for the treatment to work. Little suspecting the truth, she allowed the men to leave the cave, which they did with all speed, until it was soon lost to sight in the far distance.

CRYPTO-CONCLUSIONS

Needless to say, such tales as these could easily be dismissed as entirely mythical, with no basis whatsoever in reality. After all, stories of man-eating giants are commonplace in mythology worldwide. So too, however, are modern-day reports of hairy man-beasts. Is it possible that these creatures do indeed exist - relics of more primitive, larger primate species, such as Gigantopithecus, known from fossils but not thought to have survived to the present day - and have been transformed by vivid human imagination from shy, inoffensive beings into bloodthirsty cannibals? There is a notable precedent for this hypothesis.

For centuries, travellers returning home to Europe from Africa recalled lurid native legends of huge, hairy, man-eating giants. Scientists, however, refused to believe such stories, until the existence of a certain species of extremely large, hairy, African primate was confirmed in 1847 - since when science has shown that it is really a placid vegetarian.

Today, we call this once-discounted giant the gorilla - and tomorrow, we may finally become acquainted with another officially-discounted giant, the bigfoot.

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2009/01/bigfoot-beginnings.html

LOCH NESS MONSTER “INVENTED”

An Italian journalist claims in the Milan illustrated weekly that he invented the Loch Ness monster in 1933. Signor Francesco Gasparini said that he was the London correspondent of a Milan newspaper at the time and amassed hundreds of British newspaper clippings.

They included two lines published in a Scottish newspaper about some Inverness fishermen who had seen a strange fish. “At the beginning of August 1933 my supply of news was even slower than usual,” he wrote. “I had the inspiration to get hold of the item about the strange fish. The idea of the monster had never dawned on me, but then I noted that the strange fish would not yield a long article, and I decided to promote the imaginary being to the rank of monster without further ado.” But the monster grew out of hand.

The next day, Signor Gasparini said, he was forced to invent eye-witness accounts, backed up by local colour gleaned from a geography book. By the time he began plotting the monster’s death or escape, long reports were appearing in other papers. “It had to live on. The British press grabbed my little monster and made a giant out of it.”

The legend grew. “Photographs” of the monster and magnificent drawings, based on eye-witness accounts were published widely. Affectionately called “Nessie”, it became a national institution. Signor Gasparini declared: “The monster of Loch Ness has never existed. I invented it. I admit it – but I am not sorry.”

irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0126/1232474680305.html

It’s big. It’s hairy. It stinks. It lurks in the woods — and it’s been spotted near Tate’s Hell.

It’s Florida’s own monster: the Skunk Ape, known in other parts of the world as Bigfoot, Yeti, the Abominable Snowman and Sasquatch.

True believers say the Skunk Ape is real (stop rolling your eyes!). Files at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission confirm that many people say they’ve seen one.

A few freethinkers hope to spot the legendary creature themselves this fall. That’s when Scott Marlowe — a manly man, unafraid to hike into the swamps during the wee hours, when alligators bellow and owls cry — leads an expedition in search of the Skunk Ape, somewhere in the wilds of Florida.

“We will definitely be roughing it,” the 51-year-old from Winter Haven said. “We will be in the wild, and we will be camping…, but we’ll also have an RV headquarters to work out of.”

Marlowe says he has had two close encounters with Skunk Apes, said to be 7 feet tall and outrageously stinky.

“I was actually beaned by one,” he said of his latest encounter, in June.

It happened while he and two Discovery Channel filmmakers were tracking a family of Skunk Apes. (A film about the Skunk Ape later aired as “Animal X” on Discovery.) Marlowe says one of the creatures threw a stick and whopped him on the head, drawing blood.

Such are the perils of monster hunting — or, to use a gentler term, cryptozoology: the study of, and search for, creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Marlowe — who has held various jobs, including schoolteacher and computer technician, and is working on a bachelor’s degree in computer science — teaches a cryptozoology class at the Florida Keys Community College. Anyone with an Internet connection can take the class, which includes a deep-woods expedition.

But before you join a crew of Skunk Ape hunters, know that you risk encountering ticks, snakes and worse — the antics of snorting friends (”You’re doing what?”) who hoist imaginary glasses to their lips, implying that your judgment is sadly clouded.

If you’re like Marlowe, you shrug, smile and forge onward. If you’re more of a ham, you could borrow a line from the Bard: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Or you could wisely choose to tell no one of your plans.

The ape files

Before “The X-Files,” there were the Skunk Ape files: two fat folders at the state’s Wildlife Commission offices in Tallahassee. Not surprisingly, the files (which go back to the 1960s) are full of strange accounts and requests.

One man wrote to say he’d lived with a family of Skunk Apes for six months. Others asked whether they needed special permits to bag one. (The official answer: No, because they don’t EXIST! And surely if they did, some wildlife officer would’ve slapped a radio collar around one’s neck by now.)

Perhaps the saddest story in the file, though, is the saga of the Green Swamp creature. A wild man was spotted in the swamps of Sumter County in 1990 and 1991. He was finally tracked down and caught by Sheriff Don Page. The swamp man’s name was Hu Tu Mei. He was a 39-year-old Taiwanese mariner.

He had wandered off unnoticed from Tampa General Hospital’s psychiatric ward eight months before his capture in the swamps. According to news reports, he’d apparently survived by eating small wild animals raw and occasionally stealing food and other items from barns and mobile homes.

After they treated him to plates of food at the jail, the deputies told the man he’d soon be able to go home to Taiwan. Later that evening, he killed himself by wrapping a belt around his neck.

Such a sad ending to the tale of the Green Swamp creature. But it’s the only tale in the files that has an ending. The story of the Skunk Ape goes on and on.

Why?

“That’s one of those things that’s always going to be around. I think people need those myths and legends,” said Robert Daniels, a recently retired Florida wildlife officer of 27 years.

He’s seen some strange things in the Panhandle woods, the 52-year-old said, but never a Skunk Ape (also called a Swamp Ape).

So, what is the strangest thing he’s seen in the woods?

That would be a ghost. Daniels said he saw it many years ago, at the Lake Jackson Indian Mounds.

But that’s another story.

What the … ?

Bill Arnold, on the other hand, has never seen a ghost. But he says he has gotten a good, unexpected look at a Skunk Ape.

The longtime owner of Arnold Bicycle Sales & Service Shop in Columbus, Ga., has property in Wakulla County and plans to retire here. So he’s often in the area and enjoys going to the beach on St. George Island.

He saw the Skunk Ape, he said, on his way to St. George. (And no, he said, he had not been drinking or doing anything else to impair his faculties.)

He was on County Road 67, a long, lonely stretch of road that winds near Tate’s Hell and cuts through acres of undeveloped land. It was one day about this time last summer, he said, around 6:30 p.m., when he spotted something large and dark crossing the road on two legs.

“When I first saw it, I thought it must be a bear,” the 52-year-old said. “As I got closer and closer, … I thought it might be a hunter. A big, hairy hunter.”

But then he realized it couldn’t be a human, either. It was too big *#8212; “probably 8 feet tall” — and it had furry hair “pretty much from top to bottom.” He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It had no neck. When it turned to look at his approaching truck, its upper torso turned rather than just its head.

It was a big, hairy ape, he said. And then it was gone, disappearing into the woods on the other side.

And although he’s willing to have his name in the newspaper, he said, “I don’t tell a lot of people.”

He learned quickly it was best not to.

“I got a kind of guarded reaction. ‘Oh yeah, sure, uh-huh.’”

He’d heard the story of the Florida Skunk Ape before his sighting, he said, but never thought much of it. But now, “I believe it more because I feel like I really did see it.”

Whenever he takes that same road, he’s always on the lookout. He keeps a camera ready, just in case.

(Which may not help, even if he snaps one. Photos of Skunk Apes abound, from blurry snapshots in grocery tabloids to clear photos of what looks suspiciously like Chewbacca, the Wookiee in the “Star Wars” movies. Wait — maybe what Arnold saw was a Wookiee!)

Making a monkey

If you stop in at J.R.’s Aucilla River Store on U.S. Highway 98, across from the Aucilla River Wildlife Management Area, you’ll see something that owner Lester Walker Jr. — known to all in this remote area as J.R. — calls a swamp monkey.

You’ll find the mysterious stuffed creature along with other stuffed wild animals, such as wild boar, bobcats, turkeys and quail.

Walker, 54, will spin a yarn to inquiring newcomers that the swamp monkey is a creature he shot after it fell from tall trees into his boat. (”I always keep a 9millimeter with me,” he said matter-of-factly, “’cause down here 911 is a long distance.”)

But before his patrons leave, he tells them the truth: It’s just something he rigged up using “a deer tail turned upside down.”

Still, his pseudo swamp monkey has sparked plenty of tales about the legendary Skunk Ape. Walker’s not a believer: “I’ve never seen anything like that. Just bears. There’s a lot of bears around here.” But he just smiles and nods. If he’s in the mood, he might share his tale of the strangest creature (other than the humans) he’s ever encountered in the Aucilla River woods.

It happened, he said, back in about 1970.

“I thought I saw two hogs, and I got out of my truck. I had a 45 with me, and I thought I was (”Gunsmoke” TV Marshal) Matt Dillon with it. I snuck out there to the edge of the bushes.”

But what he found wasn’t a wild boar.

“It was a big black cat. This thing was about 60, 70 pounds. I knew not to be messing with something like that.”

So, quietly, he climbed back in his truck and left.

Today, he’s still not sure what he saw. And though it may not be a yowzer of a tale, as many Skunk Ape stories are, it’s his. And he has a simple but wise philosophy when it comes to swapping tales of Things I Saw in the Swamps: “I don’t mess with your stories, and you don’t mess with mine.”

That’s sage advice to all who seek the Florida Skunk Ape.

rfthomas.clara.net/news/florida.html

Investigator Stan Gordon has filed an overview of the strange things that happened last year in his corner of the world.
Two short sections are about the reports of Thunderbirds and Bigfoot encounters in Pennsylvania.

Giant Bird Sightings

Rick Fisher of the Paranormal Society of Pennsylvania received a report which occurred in February [2008] at a rural location outside of Harrisburg. The driver of a vehicle, who was also an active hunter, saw a huge bird-like creature drop from the trees and approach his vehicle. The man stopped and got out to take a better look at the creature, which seemed to soar or glide without flapping its wings. He hesitantly told Rick that what he saw looked, “prehistoric almost.”

Researcher Jim Brown investigated an incident which occurred on the afternoon of May 20, [2008] on a major roadway in Washington County. Motorists reportedly pulled off the road to watch as a huge dark colored flying creature that looked more like a giant bat than a bird, circled low, and passed over some cars. One witness noticed that the wingspan extended beyond the edges of the two lane highway. One man was seen taking pictures of the giant flying creature. That person has never come forward.

Bigfoot Sightings

The Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society (PBS) received a report from Warren County in May [2008] that a woman had seen such a creature climb up her lattice and onto her back deck. She watched it from her patio door as it climbed over the railing and departed. In August, [2008] from rural Warren County, I received a report that a man and his son observed a 7 foot tall, hair covered creature with very long swinging arms cross a roadway with very long steps and enter a wooded area.

I also received reports of strange screaming sounds coming from along the Chestnut Ridge near Latrobe. An experienced woodsman came across 18 inch long, five toed footprints, unlike anything he had ever seen before, while hiking in the Forbes State Forest above.

stangordonufo.com/news/2009/january/2008%20update.htm

The variety of living things on Earth is truly staggering. Scientists currently estimate that there are somewhere between 10 million and 100 million species on the planet. However, only about 5 million of those species have actually been described and named.

Among mammals like weasels, deer, wolves, monkeys and apes (including us humans), the picture is a little clearer; almost all of the approximately 5,400 living species have probably already been described. Yet nature continues to surprise us with new species. For example, less than 15 years ago scientists in Vietnam described the sao la (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), a rainforest-dwelling relative of cattle previously unknown to science, and several new species of monkey have been discovered in the forests of Africa and Asia since then.

Is Bigfoot among the undiscovered mammals? Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is described as a medium-sized bipedal (upright-walking) hairy animal with big human-like feet thought to inhabit the forests of the Pacific Northwest of North America. From this description, it seems safe to assume that Bigfoot is a human-like ape, or hominid. It is certainly conceivable that a creature like Bigfoot could exist. After all, we know of many living species of great ape (gorillas, chimps, bonobos, humans, etc.), and scientists have documented many other species of hominids.

However, all non-human hominids are known only from Africa, where they appear to have originally evolved. And except for our own ancestors, all known hominids went extinct without leaving the continent. So the discovery of a living hominid in North America would be very big news indeed!

So although a creature like Bigfoot could exist, the real question is whether Bigfoot does exist — in the present day. When scientists formally declare that a previously unknown species exists, they do so based on compelling scientific evidence. For example, in the case of the sao la, the animal was first known from three sets of horns found in the possession of Vietnamese hunters. But it was only after the examination of more than 20 different specimens and careful analysis of the animal’s DNA that scientists could conclude that the sao la was present in the forests of South East Asia and distinct from all other known species.

So what about Sasquatch? We know about this creature from stories, some grainy photographs and films, and, of course, footprints, lots of footprints. Most of this evidence has been clearly demonstrated to be fakes generated by hoaxers.

For example, “Sasquatch hair” collected by nine people who reported the creature in Alaska in 2005 turned out, upon DNA analysis, to be bison hair. Most importantly, no one has yet found an actual specimen of Bigfoot, not a body, not any hair, not a bone, not a tooth.

But while we have no material evidence that Bigfoot does exist, some of the documentation cannot be conclusively dismissed. That creature on the film could just be some guy in an ape costume, but it could be … something else, right?

And here, Sasquatch is not the only creature whose very existence seems to be more a matter of opinion than science. In 2005, scientists claimed that they had discovered, or re-discovered, the ivory-billed woodpecker, a species thought to be extinct in the United States since around 1944. As evidence, they presented a grainy video clip of a large woodpecker. Unfortunately, the bird stays in the video frame for only four seconds!

However, after carefully analyzing the color pattern on the wings in the video and seeing the bird in the wild multiple times and hearing it doing its “display drumming” on tree trunks in the area, the ornithologists (scientists who study birds) were confident that the ivory-billed woodpecker was not extinct. However, after their discovery was published, other scientists re-analyzed their video and concluded that bird was more likely the ivory-billed woodpecker’s close cousin, the pileated woodpecker.

This debate goes on, and it is in the great tradition of science that the researchers are skeptical of one another’s arguments. In the end, all agree that the debate can only be settled by collecting more evidence.

Now while a 200-pound “rainforest cow” or a woodpecker might not sound as exciting as Bigfoot, the discovery (or rediscovery) of a species is always a big deal among biologists. It demonstrates that even though we have done an awful lot of exploring and exploiting, the natural world still holds mysteries and secrets for us to unravel.

At this point there is no scientifically credible evidence that Bigfoot exists, and until someone shows up with at least one specimen of this wily and shy creature, there are many reasons to believe that it probably doesn’t exist. Still, the myth of Bigfoot, the mysterious creature in the woods, always just beyond our reach, might provide valuable lessons about how we relate to nature. Rustling in the brush, glimpsed out of the corner of our eye, Bigfoot whispers that we still have a lot to learn. Grab your binoculars, camera and butterfly net, but I wouldn’t waste your money on Bigfoot bait.

Drew Kerkhoff has been assistant professor of biology and mathematics at Kenyon College since 2005. He teaches courses in ecology, statistics, and mathematical biology and studies forest ecology, trees, caterpillars and evolution. He lives in Mount Vernon with his wife and two daughters and enjoys cycling and music.

mountvernonnews.com/local/ask-a-scientist/

Is-there-any-scientific-evidence-that-Bigfoot-exists

RAF pilots have tried to BLAST UFOs out of the sky under a top secret Government directive, it was claimed last night.

Nick Pope — who worked on the Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk for three years — revealed the rules of engagement for the first time.

He claimed RAF pilots had fired at UFOs on several occasions — but failed to bring them down.

He added: “We know of cases where the order has been given to shoot down — with little effect to the UFO.”

Mr Pope said the rules of engagement were drawn up after dozens of close encounters with suspect craft in British airspace.

RAF attacks on UFOs were “not automatic but happen when something in our airspace is deemed to be a threat”.

He explained: “In the case of UFOs, whether the object is causing a threat is very much a (pilot’s) judgment call.”

Mr Pope, 43, from London, said the “shoot down” orders had been issued under the highly-classified directive since the beginning of the 1980s.

He believes a pattern has emerged in incidents already publicised in this country and abroad.

When a UFO is thought to be threatening a country’s airspace, the drastic action has been taken.

He said: “There was a faction in the MoD who said ‘We want to shoot down a UFO and that will resolve the issue one way or another’.’’

He claimed credible UFO witness statements had come from dozens of near-misses with planes, police helicopters and RAF jets in recent years.

Earlier this month The Sun told how a UFO was believed to have torn off a 65ft blade as it hit a wind turbine in Conisholme, Lincs.

Locals saw “strange lights” streaking towards the 290ft-tall power generator.

But any alien battles with the RAF will be kept secret, according to Mr Pope, who worked as a civil servant at the MoD for 21 years.

He said: “The public won’t know unless it comes down in a heavily-populated area.”

thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ufos/article2171863.ece

Kathmandu: Many have tracked it on the slopes of Everest, but few have seen it. Nonetheless, the mystery of the Yeti has outlived the conquest of the world’s highest summit 50 years ago and perhaps represents the last true Himalayan quest.

Tracks in the snow, rare photos — often fuzzy — excretions, hairs and disputed testimonies are some of the elements that continue to fuel debate on the “abominable snowman“.

Half man, half monkey, it is said to live high up in the thick forests of Nepal and Tibet, where it is known locally by the name “migou.”

Legends abound among the Sherpas, the ethnic group in the Himalayan valleys, of a mysterious creature, venerated and feared, which moves upright like a man, but bent, endowed with sufficient strength to “kill a yak with its fist,” with a pointed head and a body covered in black or reddish-brown hair.

And since the last century, curious westerners have put themselves on the track of the Yeti. Among the most famous are Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner and, especially, Edmund Hillary, who first conquered Everest on May 29, 1953.

Some years after, in 1960, the New Zealander took part in a ten-month expedition to attempt to prove the existence of the Yeti in the Khumbu Valley, to the south of Everest.

But it was in vain. The most convincing evidence was a scalp brought back from a monastery in Khumjung.

“My father travelled with Hillary all over the world with the yeti scalp,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

But scientific analysis proved it was a forgery, made with a piece of a Serow Himalayan goat. But like other Sherpas of his age, Ang Tshering, 49, still has his suspicions.

“There are some mysterious animals left up in the mountain. Nobody knows exactly what these animals are,” he says, pointing out stories of killed yaks.

Scientists say that in theory, a wild creature could escape the clutches of men in the immense, uninhabited and largely unexplored Himalayan heights.

A relatively recent account comes from American mountaineer, Craig Calonica, who said he saw the yeti in 1998 on the Chinese side of Everest.

“It walked like a human, except that it had thick black fur, was about six feet tall and had hunched over shoulders with very long arms and extremely large hands,” he said.

Various theories have sprung up from accounts like these: a large langur or gibbon type of monkey, a wild man or a rare species of bear.

Specialists lean towards the last hypothesis. “It is not an anthropoid, not a strange creature. This is a high-altitude bear, the blue bear,” whose fur looks blue in the sunlight, said Harka Gurung, a former Nepalese minister of education and later tourism and an Himalayan geographical specialist.

The author of many studies and a former advisor of international organisations, Gurung thinks the Yeti exists only in popular belief.

On the other hand, the blue bear is rare, lives in the wild forests and can climb to an altitude of 6,500 metres in search of food.

An omnivore, it can kill yaks if it is hungry, he explained. “The Yeti is a myth. It’s like the Loch Ness monster in Scotland,” he said.

Even the younger generation of Sherpas are sceptical, adds Commander Bed Upreti, pilot and author of a book on Everest, who himself went in search of the Yeti in 1997 and 2001.

“The Sherpas said: dont waste your time. They say it is easier to climb Everest than to go on a Yeti expedition.”

He, however, likes to believe in the Yeti, as does Ang Tshering, the president of Nepal Mountaineering Association. “If I took a photo of the Yeti, I would be a very rich man,” he said, adding there were always people in search of the mysterious creature.

By day she’s the Stanislaus National Forest’s archaeologist. With a master’s degree in anthropology, she makes sure prehistoric Native American sites in the woods are protected. She’s also the forest’s liaison with the Me-Wuk tribe.

But it’s what Kathy Strain does in her spare time that separates her from Forest Service colleagues.

She’s a Bigfooter. A student of Sasquatch. A yearner for Yeti. A true believer.

“A strong case can be made that Bigfoot exists,” said Strain, whose Jamestown-area home includes a room full of books, videos, cast footprints, notes and reports on the creature. “I’ve seen things I have no other explanation for.”

Not only that, but she says Tuolumne County and the forest she works on are among the huge creature’s favorite haunts. She has catalogued scores of eyewitness accounts, has discovered a Sasquatch “nest” near Twain Harte and swears she was once close enough to the creature that dirt was still falling from the sides of deep, 14-inch footprints it left behind.

And get this: Strain is not crazy.

In fact, her scientific credentials and employment by a huge, dead-serious and not terribly imaginative federal agency boost her stock as a guest speaker at Bigfoot conferences.

But when she walks into the forest’s Greenley Road headquarters, Strain leaves Sasquatch at the door.

She doesn’t demand that wide swaths of timberland be set aside as Bigfoot habitat. Nor does she hector forest wildlife biologists with evidence or accounts she has collected.

“Kathy has been an excellent archaeologist and employee,” confirmed her boss, Forest Supervisor Tom Quinn. “And, at least in my four and a half years here, I have had no reports of Yeti conversations in the workplace.”

For the record, Quinn added, the forest has “no position” on Bigfoot.

Which, less restrained Bigfooters might say, is like Australia having no position on kangaroos.

Next to the deep woods near the Oregon border, Strain says, the Stanislaus Forest area is the nation’s hottest Bigfoot spot. In the past six years she has documented more than 200 sightings and witness accounts.

A few have come from co-workers looking to unburden themselves — after quitting time, of course — of long-held Bigfoot tales. Take the wildlife biologist who never forgot his 1993 trip to Bloomer Lake, above Pinecrest.

“An animal-creature mythological being,” is how this field worker described the gaping, hairy 6-foot creature he glimpsed. Even after it had disappeared, leaving a dismembered deer behind, he felt “that sixth sense of a presence” nearby.

“Pretty cool and funky,” was his distinctly unscientific summation.

But this is only a cube in a Bigfoot iceberg, Strain said.

Local sightings range from below Knights Ferry (a “hairy giant” seen by horsemen in the late 1890s) to the Emigrant Wilderness, apparently popular summer range for Sasquatch. And, according to Me-Wuk lore collected by Strain, a hulking creature called “Yayali” has roamed these mountains for hundreds of years.

Want to see one?

“I’d try the Pinecrest-Strawberry area,” Strain suggested, adding that it has been an epicenter for sightings over the years.

But it’s not like she’s seen any there.

In more than 20 years of looking, in fact, Strain hasn’t seen Bigfoot anywhere. She’s like an ornithologist who has never seen a bird or an entomologist still looking for her first bug.

“Anyone who sees one is incredibly lucky,” she admitted, describing an elusive animal with a remarkable ability to blend in with its surroundings.

That said, the Pinecrest area — at least in contrast with other places — fairly teems with Sasquatch. At least it did in January of 1963, when The Union Democrat carried this headline:

“Report: 10 Ft. Shrieking Monster.”

“There was definitely some creature in the woods,” said Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Huntley, who had responded with partner Elbert Miller to reports of “a 10-foot tall man — the most awful thing I have ever seen” at a gravel pit near the high-country subdivision of Peter Pam.

The two officers went to the pit, heard eerie shrieking, saw trees shaking violently, and at one point radioed that “It’s heading right toward the car. Here it comes.”

Alas, it never came. A few days later, it was dismissed as a bear.

And the guy who reported the monster? “You’ll think I’m crazy,” he told deputies, refusing to identify himself. “You’ll put me in a straitjacket.”

Which begs a question: Why is Strain, a 38-year-old establishment scientist whose life is otherwise devoid of fringe trappings, willing to take a chance on that Bigfoot straitjacket?

Blame “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” a low-budget 1973 documentary on a hairy creature roaming the Arkansas backwoods.

“I was about 7 years old,” said Strain, who grew up in the Porterville area. “I was fascinated.”

By high school, completely hooked, she asked a stunned guidance counselor what college major might qualify her for a career in Bigfoot research. “Anthropology” was the answer.

Two Cal State Bakersfield degrees later, Strain found that paying jobs in Sasquatch science were as scarce as the creature itself and went to work for the Forest Service.

In the 16 years since, she’s invested thousands of off-work hours in Bigfoot. She has collected hundreds of stories from tribal elders and has researched 1,000-year-old pictographs of what the Yokuts Indians called “Hairy Man.”

Strain is now in demand as a guest speaker, is writing a Bigfoot book, chairs the Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers and in March will appear on a TV show called “Science Meets Legend.” Her license plate reads GOTYETI, a sculpted Bigfoot stands at her front door and a good number of her weekends are spent in the woods, waiting with her husband and teenage sons for the elusive Sasquatch.

“I’d say my chances are good,” she said. “After all, Bob saw one.”

Sure enough, retired Folsom firefighter Bob Strain says he saw a 10-foot, 800-pound upright creature while hunting in Idaho’s Salmon Wilderness in 1975. “I was watching him through my rifle scope from 400 yards,” said Strain, who met Kathy at a 2003 Bigfoot conference. “But, no, I didn’t pull the trigger.”

Had he done so, Bob might have changed history: A continuing mystery is why, if Bigfoot really does exist, a carcass has never been found.

“That will happen,” assured Kathy. “Sooner or later one will be hit by a car or truck, or someone will discover a body.”

Now, however, she wants to see a live Sasquatch. And if one comes her way, she’ll be ready: Camping with the Strains includes not only tents, barbecue grills and s’mores, but thousands of dollars’ worth of night-vision, audio, video and photographic equipment.

So don’t look for any repeat of those hazy, grainy 1960s creature-feature shots from Bob and Kathy. If they film Bigfoot, you’ll see traces of breakfast in his teeth.

Their odds? An anthropologist and Sasquatch researcher once estimated that about 2,000 live in the Washington, Oregon and California woods. Prorate that and it’s, what, a dozen, maybe 20 on the Stanislaus Forest?

“I’m not going there,” said Strain. “Populations change too much to be tied to a number.”

But in May of 2001, at least one Bigfoot was in the Twain Harte area: Strain and another researcher were driving on a road in the area when they noticed a just-snapped, still-moving 3-inch-thick tree.

She and her friend followed fresh, crumbling 14-inch prints to a “nest” of bent trees and snapped limbs. Inside, she said, was a 7-foot “body imprint” in the leaves and moss.

“It appears a lone Sasquatch was occupying the area,” concluded Strain’s four-page, all-business report on the nest, apparently abandoned after the May foray.

Then there was her August 2004 expedition on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. “We were walking along a road with night-vision goggles,” she remembers. “We heard noises from both sides and, as we got closer, an 8-foot-tall, upright creature came from behind a tree to look at us. We just froze.”

A Bigfoot sighting? Not for this scientist.

“By the time we moved closer, it was gone,” Strain said. “Unless I see the whites of its eyes, I’m not going to count it.”

And if she ever does look into the whites of those mysterious eyes — and gets it all in high-def?

Well, then maybe we can talk about setting aside some habitat.

They used 3-D shape analysis to study the LB1 skull of the hobbit and found the shape of the skull to be consistent with a scaled down human ancestor but not modern humans. Their findings, reported in the current online edition of the Journal of Human Evolution, add to the evidence that the hobbit is a new species.

The question as to whether the hobbit was human or another species remains controversial. Some scientists claim the hobbit was a diminutive human that suffered from some type of disease that causes microcephaly, which results in abnormal growth of the brain and causes the cranium to be much smaller than the normal human cranium. But Dr. Baab and co-author Kieran McNulty, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, believe their findings counter the microcephaly theory.

“A skull can provide researchers with a lot of important information about a fossil species, particularly regarding their evolutionary relationships to other fossil species,” explains Dr. Baab. “The overall shape of the LB1 skull, particularly the part that surrounds the brain (neurocranium) looks similar to fossils more than 1.5 million years older from Africa and Eurasia, rather than modern humans, even though Homo floresiensis is documented from 17,000 to 95,000 years ago.”

To carry out the study, Dr. Baab and colleagues collected 3D landmark data on the LB1 skull and a large sample of fossils representing other extinct hominin species, as well as a comparative sample of modern humans and apes. They performed several analyses of different regions of the skulls. Taken together, these analyses indicated that the LB1 skull shape is that of a scaled down Homo fossil not a scaled down modern human.

The results of the analysis of the asymmetry of the skulls, which refers to differences between the right and left sides of the skull, refutes the suggestion that the LB1 skull was that of a modern human with a diagnosis of microcephaly. In modern humans, a high degree of asymmetry may indicate that the individual was diseased. At least one scientific study on the asymmetry of LB1 supported the argument that this individual had microcephaly. Conversely, Dr. Baab and colleagues found the degree of asymmetry of the LB1 skull was not unexpectedly high and therefore not supportive of the diagnosis of microcephaly.

“The degree of asymmetry in LB1 was within the range of apes and was very similar to that seen in other fossil skulls,” says Dr. Baab. “We suggest that the degree of asymmetry is within expectations for this population of hominins, particular given that the conditions of the cave in Indonesia in which the skull was preserved may have contributed to asymmetry.”

Dr. Baab recognizes that the controversy as to the evolutionary origins of Homo floresiensis will continue, perhaps without an answer. However, all the evidence that she and colleagues illustrate in their article “Size, shape, and asymmetry in fossil hominins: The status of the LB1cranium based on 3D morphometric analyses,” suggest that Homo floresiensis was most likely the diminutive descendant of a species of archaic Homo.

The results of this study are also in line with what other researchers in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University have found regarding the rest of the hobbit skeleton. Drs. William Jungers and Susan Larson have documented a range of primitive features in both the upper and lower limbs of Homo floresiensis, highlighting the many ways that these hominins were unlike modern humans.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090120144508.htm