THE 10 STRANGEST,MOST TERRIFYING CREATURES EVER FOUND

                      THE 10 STRANGEST,TERRIFYING CREATURES EVER FOUND

1

Montauk Monster Washes Up On A New York Beach

Hype:
The story goes that local youths just found it and then photographed it, then sold it to papers (yay humanity!) Now, this happened near Plum Island Animal Disease Center which brought up theories about the government doing weird experiments. Its dinosaur beak was pointed out along with the speculation that it could be a previously undiscovered prehistoric mammal.

Other possible identifications of the creature included a dog and a turtle without its shell (but turtles don't have teeth).


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It's also apparently not a demon dog who only serves the great and powerful Zuul...



Reality:
Larry Penny, the East Hampton Natural Resources Director, along with other experts, confirmed it was nothing more than a decomposing raccoon carcass, which matched dental and skeletal points but was missing its upper jaw.

Since the case of the Montauk Monster was solved, other carcasses have been found in the same area. A website called montauk-monster.com is dedicated to following up on these cases with photographs and insists that the similarities between all of the beasts means they are coming from Plum Island. This means that if you ever go to Plum Island, if this is what the raccoons look like, you better watch your motherf*cking back when you run into their sharks because in the rest of the world, raccoons look like this:



UPDATE:



It seems like another one has washed ashore, this time on the other side of the country. In the early morning hours of April 27th, a deformed creature was found on the shore of Seal Beach California. It has been noted to look a lot like the original Montauk Monster. Could it be another raccoon? Or something different?

See the video report here.

2

Eerie Monster on Deer Cam in Berwick, Louisiana

The Hype:
On December 10, 2010 NBC 33 reported a picture that an anonymous hunter had found on his deer cam after coming back to his destroyed camp in Berwick, Louisiana. It was reported in news outlets around the world, illustrating the fact that if it's printed somewhere in "letters", local TV news will pick up news of the biblical apocalypse being here. The hunting picture shows a thin, gangly, fast-moving, seemingly nocturnal creature that can most likely swallow your soul with one backwards-sounding howl.

What's really the creepiest part of this whole thing is how powerful and mobile the creature looks.





Reality:
The mystery hasn't completely been solved although many believe it is a photoshopped hoax.

Two different companies tried to exploit this by saying the creature is part of their viral marketing campaign. The first was a report for J.J. Abram's Super 8, which is due out in June of this year. Movieweb.com linked the creature to the film because in a video, Cameron Marie Saunders, who worked on Super 8, she talks about running into a "zombie" and having to cry in the scene. There was no further evidence that the creature was part of Super 8's viral marketing campaign.

Then Playstation claimed that the creature was a Grim from their Resistance 3 game and part of the marketing campaign. Insomniac Games posted an update to their Twitter that read "Whoops...looks like one got out. If you see a Grim on the loose...please return to Insomniac Games," which further convinced people that the truth had finally been revealed. This, of course, also isn't true because if Playstation/Insomniac Games had actually been behind this, they wouldn't have made the image so sad. I mean, the poor guy's missing a few eyes.

This is what a "grim" looks like:



Some say that it's the same creature from a popular night vision video that is to this day unexplained. It's supposedly a "fallen angel" captured in the woods. Wait until 45 seconds for the creepy part. It would make sense that this is the same creature:



After that, two people on the popular website Reddit debated the very pixels in the picture, reaching no conclusion (by the way, these guys did more research than any of the "news" stations that reported the picture put together.)

Captainpremise basically disproved the picture using one side of pixel analysis in this post. The strongest counterpoint was then given by the user atavus68 in this response, so really, it's all up in the air.

I still think that it's fairly obvious what this thing will really end up being:

3

Alien Baby Drowned by a Farmer in Metepec, Mexico

Hype:
On May 11, 2007 Mario Moreno Lopez (who is in no way related to AC Slater but is actually a farmer in Metepec, Mexico) found this creature in the steel trap he had put out for his rats meaning that Mr. Lopez is used to some pretty serious f*cking rats.

He had to drown it three times in order to kill it (which really just means he only drowned it once, doesn't it?) The creature is tiny (the farmer described as being 70 cm. long) and has an elongated head, which led to the possibility of it being an alien baby with a high level of intelligence. Skeptics stayed closer to home, calling the creature a reptile or skinned squirrel monkey to explain its tail and spine, and large head and eyes.

Mario Moreno Lopez mysteriously died in a car fire (the fire was at an unusually high temperature for a normal fire) some time after having drowned the creature, leading UFO enthusiasts to believe that the alien baby's guardians had sought revenge against Lopez, which also begs the question: where the hell were they when it was stuck in a rat trap?

Supposedly there have been many reports of UFO sightings and mysterious crop circles in Metepec, which could just mean the locals are superstitiously making up stories and producing images and carcasses that the Weekly World News would KILL for or that an actual alien baby was left behind.

No loving little kids, no Reese's Pieces, just huge traps and slow, unsuccessful drowning.



Reality:
Mexican UFO specialist Jaime Maussan was the first to discover the story, buy the corpse off Moreno for $32,000 and say it was not a hoax, which further convinces skeptics that the so-called alien baby had been a scheme.The alien baby was investigated by History Channel's MonsterQuest.

The Metepec creature has so far stumped scientists, who found that its teeth are not rooted like human teeth. To disprove the initial possibility that the creature was a skinned monkey, forensic scientists found that the creature still had a unique kind of tissue and had not been tampered with.



UPDATE: Looks like the weirdo who decided to take a dead squirrel-monkey, dress it in a bunch of random animal blood and say it was an alien baby finally came clean: it's fake. He passed himself off as a veterinary assistant named Angel Palacios Nunez in the news but really was Urso Moreno Ruiz, Mario Moreno's nephew and a taxidermist.

"I must say I didn’t claim it was real. That was Maussán who claimed it was real. He believed it. All the show was a hoax that got out of control, but after four years I’m happy to see one of my creations going around the world and through many scientists and tests and they still haven’t figured out what it is. I may have fooled science! LOL," Ruiz said in an internet forum.

This guy will probably never get laid again.

4

The Blue Hill Horror in Cerro Azul, Panama

Hype:
Around September 17, 2009, four adolescents playing in Cerro Azul, Panama claimed they saw the rubbery E.T. look-alike run out of a cave. According to them, it started chasing them, so they threw rocks at it until it was dead (yay humanity!) They then pushed its body into the water.

The UK tabloids called it Gollum (the creature from the Lord of the Rings) because it was living in a cave. While other papers just gave it the name "The Blue Hill Horror" because that'll make a better original SyFy movie title than "That Thing That Looks Like If E.T. and Gollum From Lord of the Rings Had a Baby Somehow".





Reality:
Scientists found that the adolescents' tale was false because the sloth had been decomposing before that day. Its long decomposition in the river had removed its hair and given it its bloated and rubbery skin. It was a dead sloth, which now makes this sad instead of mysterious and awesome.

5

Alien Corpse in Thai Ceremony

Hype:
A series of images depicting a ceremony for an alien-looking creature held by Thai villagers in 2007, complete with incense and baby powder, resurfaced in 2010 through social networks. Speculators suggested it was anything from an alien with its large, globe-like head and gray skin to a satyr with its tiny hooves and tail.

A satyr:



A debate over the nature of the ceremony also took place with some believing it to be a respectful funeral rite for the creature, treating it as a human. This idea came from the apparent grief on the villager's faces. Who knows, maybe they just ran out of baby powder and there wasn't enough for everyone. Others said the ceremony was performed to dispel themselves from the evil surrounding the creature. There were even some who said the Thai villagers were worshipping the creature as a deity.




Click here to see the rest of the pictures of the ceremony

Science:
Apparently it's a cow. Many guessed that the creature was a deformed cow, a fact that the villagers may have known all along, but it was so terrifyingly humanoid that a proper ceremony was given to it because hell, nobody's gonna eat that. Speculators point to the rising number of weird births of animals around the globe, going as far as suggesting that aliens are conducting experiments on animals and are creating weird creature hybrids that will one day take over the earth and eat us all (that last part isn't true... for now.)

So maybe the thing that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico all those years ago was just a cow that fell out of a plane...

Read more at http://www.ranker.com/list/the-10-strangest-most-terrifying-creatures-ever-found/ivana-wynn#MPqhl31jIK5KLpsz.99 

6

Tiny Humanoid Found in Chile

Hype:
While vacationing with his family in Concepcion, Chile, Julio Carreno found a tiny humanoid creature measuring 7.2 centimeters in a bush on October 1, 2002. The creature, which has a large human-like head was alive and opened its eyes before dying eight days later. It had fingernails and slanted eyes. Its originally pinkish color turned darker and the corpse stayed warm before quickly mummifying itself. The family suggested that maybe this had occurred because they were keeping it in a first aid kit box in the refrigerator -- just where you keep most dead humanoid creatures, next to the ham.

Several rumors spread about the story, such as people saying that the creature had made telepathic contact with the mother of the family. Others said the being had stood up but the family denied that this had happened. Speculation of the creature's identification included the possibility of it being a wild cat's fetus or an alien.



Science:
The corpse was studied by veterinarians in Santiago, who are still divided over the creature's identity. They confirmed that the creature was neither a fetus nor the remains of a feline. Some matched the creature's physical characteristics to a mouse opossum, a common animal in Chile. Others disagreed because the creature did not have the small, pointed teeth or tail of a mouse opossum and its head was double the size of one.

I say that Captain America should just solve this problem because it's obviously a failed attempt at cloning his arch nemesis:


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7

Chupacabra Sightings in Texas

Hype:
The creature people have called the Bigfoot of Latin America has been sighted several times in Puerto Rico and the U.S, particularly in Texas. The legend behind the creature is that it kills livestock and drinks their blood. The name chupacabra literally means "goat sucker."

Chupacabra, when first discovered in the mid 90s, was supposed to look like some of these pictures:





The Elmendorf Beast, or the real Chupacabra, was a twenty-pound dog or coyote-like creature that was shot and killed in August 2004 by farmer Devin McAnally in Elmendorf, Texas after having mauled 34 chickens. The creature had no hair and blue-graying skin. Its DNA was sent to UC Davis, where scientists concluded it was a coyote with mange.

In Cuero, Texas in August 2007 Phylis Canion found the carcasses of three coyote-like creatures similar to the Elmendorf Beast. She took pictures of the corpses and froze one of their heads. She connected the beasts to the Chupacabra legend because thirty of her chickens had bled out in the past few years without being eaten or carried away. DNA testing determined that the animal was a hybrid wolf/coyote with mange.





In September, 2009 CNN reported on a taxidermist in Blanco County who had preserved the body of a coyote-like creature that people were calling a chupacabra. The creature had been poisoned after being discovered in a barn and its body was later given to the taxidermist Jerry Ayer.



Science:
University of Michigan scientists believe that the origin of the chupacabra legend began with these very, very diseased coyotes. Its ability to suck chickens and goats dry, though, remains unexplained.

I still prefer to remember the days when people in Latin America thought it was some Gremlins-esque dinosaur/humanoid thing.

8

Alabama Boy Kills Giant Boar

Hype:
On May 3, 2007, an 11-year-old named Jamison Stone shot a huge boar, which weighed 1,051 pounds and measured nine feet four inches, with a .50 caliber pistol near Delta, Alabama. This meant Stone had shot himself a pig bigger than Hogzilla, the famed boar that had been killed in Georgia in 2004.

Stone, who killed his first deer at age 5 was hunting with his dad Mike Stone on the day he killed the boar. He had to shoot the boar eight times and chased it for three hours. When the pig finally went down, trees had to be cut down to get it out of the woods. The father and son had the boar's head mounted to keep as a prize and made around 500 to 700 pounds of sausage from it.

"It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big," Stone told the Associated Press. He was later offered a small part in a horror movie based on Hogzilla.





Science:
Stone wasn't able to enjoy his fame (his dad even put up a website called monsterpig.com for him) for long before he received death threats for having led the boar to suffer a long and painful death as he repeatedly wounded him. 800 people signed a petition world-wide advocating for the boy's prosecution on charges of animal cruelty. Skeptics believe the whole story was a hoax and the boar was really a farm animal fattened up to make a sensational story, which even I'm particularly skeptical of myself. Mostly because, according to this website, it was an obvious Photoshop job. Charges were never pressed because too much time had elapsed from the day of the crime before an investigation was conducted.

Sadly, this was yet another example of how America's news sources do absolutely 0 legwork nowadays.

9

Oriental Yeti Trapped By Hunters in China

Hype:
In April 2010 a group of hunters trapped a hairless possum-like mammal that was described as looking like a bear with a tail like a kangaroo and making distressed cat noises. The creature became a media sensation, being dubbed the "Oriental Yeti." According to legend, the Yeti was a bear-like figure that towered well over the height of men. This creature was only two feet long...



Science:
Bigfoot researcher Loren Coleman dismissed the Yeti speculations as "media madness." "If the Asian press starts using the word "˜yeti"€™ for every unidentified animal it'€™s going to muddy the waters of cryptozoology," said Coleman. He believed the creature was a palm civet with a serious case of mange. The beast was shipped to Beijing for DNA testing but the results were never released in the media.

Looks like another case of mange making people think they're actually seeing something like this:

10

Crab-like Creatures Found in a Trench in Russia

Hype:
Crabs have been called the cockroaches of the sea and this creature frighteningly makes that saying quite literal. These creatures, which were found in an abandoned foundation pit in Chelyabinsk, Russia, have a hard shell, several stacked appendages and a tail poking out of their shell. People hypothesized that the creatures were huge triops, horseshoe crabs, a facehugger from Alien, or trilobites, which were extinct even before the dinosaurs lived.



Science:
Apparently, the crustaceans were an absolutely amazing species that are 200 million years old and have somehow not evolved at all for that amount of time. Apparently, they are perfect, so take notes fellas. These triops are not actually as large as purported, but they do exist and are basically always around.

I still want it to be a baby facehugger, but hey, who's counting.

Read more at http://www.ranker.com/list/the-10-strangest-most-terrifying-creatures-ever-

Bigfoot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Sasquatch" redirects here. For other uses, see Sasquatch (disambiguation) and Bigfoot (disambiguation).

Bigfoot

(Sasquatch)
Frame 352 from the Patterson-Gimlin film, alleged by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin to show a Bigfoot, and by some others to show a man in anape suit.[1]
Creature
Grouping	Cryptid
Sub grouping	Hominid
Data
Country	United States
Habitat	Forest

Bigfoot, also known as sasquatch, is the name given to an ape-like creature that some people believe inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid. The term sasquatch is an anglicized derivative of the Halkomelem word sásq’ets.^[2][3]

Most scientists discount the existence of Bigfoot and consider it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax,^[4] rather than a living animal, because of the lack of physical evidence and the large numbers of creatures that would be necessary to maintain a breeding population.^[5][6] A few scientists, such as Jane Goodall,^[7] Grover Krantz, and Jeffrey Meldrum, have expressed interest and some measure of belief in the creature.^[8]

Contents   [hide]  1 Description 2 History 2.1 Before 1958 2.2 After 1958 3 Prominent reported sightings 4 Proposed explanations for sightings 4.1 Misidentification 4.2 Hoaxes 4.3 Gigantopithecus 4.4 Extinct hominidae 5 Scientific view 6 Bigfoot DNA claim 7 Bigfoot organizations 8 Popular culture 9 See also 10 Footnotes 11 Further reading 12 External links

Description

Bigfoot is described in reports as a large hairy ape-like creature, in a range of 6–10 feet (2–3 m) tall, weighing in excess of 500 pounds (230 kg), and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair.^[5][9] Purported witnesses have described large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge, and a large, low-set forehead; the top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, similar to thesagittal crest of the male gorilla. Bigfoot is commonly reported to have a strong, unpleasant smell by those who claim to have encountered it.^[10] The enormous footprints for which it is named have been as large as 24 inches (60 cm) long and 8 inches (20 cm) wide.^[9] While most casts have five toes — like all known apes — some casts of alleged Bigfoot tracks have had numbers ranging from two to six.^[11] Some have also contained claw marks, making it likely that a portion came from known animals such as bears, which have five toes and claws.^[12][13] Proponents claim that Bigfoot is omnivorous and mainly nocturnal.^[14]

History

Before 1958

Wildmen stories are found among the indigenous population of the Pacific Northwest. The legends existed prior to a single name for the creature.^[15] They differed in their details both regionally and between families in the same community. Similar stories of wildmen are found on every continent except Antarctica.^[15] Ecologist Robert Michael Pyle argues that most cultures have human-like giants in their folk history: "We have this need for some larger-than-life creature."^[16]

Members of the Lummi tell tales about Ts'emekwes, the local version of Bigfoot. The stories are similar to each other in terms of the general descriptions of Ts'emekwes, but details about the creature's diet and activities differed between the stories of different families.^[17]

Some regional versions contained more nefarious creatures. The stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai were a nocturnal race that children were told not to say the names of lest the monsters hear and come to carry off a person—sometimes to be killed.^[18] In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the native people about skoocooms: a race of cannibalistic wild men living on the peak of Mount St. Helens.^[12] The skoocooms appear to have been regarded as supernatural, rather than natural.^[12]

Less menacing versions such as the one recorded by Reverend Elkanah Walker exist. In 1840, Walker, a Protestant missionary, recorded stories of giants among the Native Americans living inSpokane, Washington. The Indians claimed that these giants lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from the fishermen's nets.^[19]

Various local legends were compiled by J. W. Burns in a series of Canadian newspaper articles in the 1920s. Each language had its own name for the local version. Many names meant something along the lines of "wild man" or "hairy man" although other names described common actions it was said to perform (e.g. eating clams).^[20] Burns coined the term Sasquatch, which is from the Halkomelem sásq’ets (IPA: [ˈsæsqʼəts]),^[2] and used it in his articles to describe a hypothetical single type of creature reflected in these various stories.^[12][20][21] Burns's articles popularized both the legend and its new name, making it well known in western Canada before it gained popularity in the United States.^[22]

Frontiersman Daniel Boone reported having shot and killed "a ten-foot, hairy giant he called a Yahoo." Folktale scholar Hugh H. Trotti has argued that Boone’s account may have been the inspiration for some of the Bigfoot stories told in North America.^[23]

After 1958

In 1951, Eric Shipton had photographed what he described as a Yeti footprint.^[22] This photograph generated considerable attention and the story of the Yeti entered into popular consciousness. The notoriety of ape-men grew over the decade, culminating in 1958 when large footprints were found in Del Norte County, California by bulldozer operator Gerald Crew. Sets of large tracks appeared multiple times around a road-construction site in Bluff Creek. After not being taken seriously about what he was seeing, Crew brought in his friend, Bob Titmus, to cast the prints in plaster. The story was published in the Humboldt Times along with a photo of Crew holding one of the casts.^[12]

Locals had been calling the unseen track-maker "Big Foot" since the late summer, which Humboldt Times columnist Andrew Genzoli shortened to "Bigfoot" in his article.^[24] Bigfoot gained international attention when the story was picked up by the Associated Press.^[12][25] Following the death of Ray Wallace – a local logger – his family attributed the creation of the footprints to him.^[5] The wife of Scoop Beal, the editor of the Humboldt Standard, which later combined with the Humboldt Times, in which Genzoli's story had appeared,^[26] has stated that her husband was in on the hoax with Wallace.^[27]

1958 was a watershed year not just for the Bigfoot story itself but also for the culture that surrounds it. The first Bigfoot hunters appeared following the discovery of footprints at Bluff Creek, California. Within a year, Tom Slick, who had funded searches for Yeti in the Himalayas earlier in the decade, organized searches for Bigfoot in the area around Bluff Creek.^[28]

As Bigfoot has become better known and a phenomenon in popular culture, sightings have spread throughout North America. In addition to the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes region and theSoutheastern United States have had many reports of Bigfoot sightings.^[29]

Prominent reported sightings

Distribution of reported Bigfoot sightings in North America.

About a third of all reports of Bigfoot sightings are concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, with most of the remaining reports spread throughout the rest of North America.^[12][30][31] Some Bigfoot advocates, such as John Willison Green, have postulated that Bigfoot is a worldwide phenomenon.^[32] The most notable reports include:

• 1924: Prospector Albert Ostman claimed to have been abducted by Sasquatch and held captive by the creatures in British Columbia.^[33]
• 1924: Fred Beck claimed that he and four other miners were attacked one night in July 1924, by several "apemen" throwing rocks at their cabin in an area later called Ape Canyon, Washington.^[34] Beck said the miners shot and possibly killed at least one of the creatures, precipitating an attack on their cabin, during which the creatures bombarded the cabin with rocks and tried to break in. The supposed incident was widely reported at the time.^[35] Beck wrote a book about the alleged event in 1967, in which he argued that the creatures were mystical beings from another dimension, claiming that he had experienced psychic premonitions and visions his entire life of which the apemen were only one component.^[36] Speleologist William Halliday argued in 1983 that the story arose from an incident in which hikers from a nearby camp had thrown rocks into the canyon.^[37] There are also local rumors that pranksters harassed the men and planted faked footprints.^[12]
• 1941: Jeannie Chapman and her children said they had escaped their home when a 7.5 feet (2.3 m) tall Sasquatch approached their residence in Ruby Creek, British Columbia.^[38]
• 1958: Bulldozer operator Jerry Crew took to a newspaper office a cast of one of the enormous footprints he and other workers had seen at an isolated work site at Bluff Creek, California. The crew was overseen by Wilbur L. Wallace, brother of Raymond L. Wallace. After Ray Wallace's death, his children came forward with a pair of 16-inch (41 cm) wooden feet, which they said their father had used to fake the Bigfoot tracks in 1958.^[5][12] Wallace is poorly regarded by many Bigfoot proponents. John Napier wrote, "I do not feel impressed with Mr. Wallace's story" regarding having over 15,000 feet (4,600 m) of film showing Bigfoot.^[39]
• 1967: Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin reported that on October 20 they had captured a purported Sasquatch on film at Bluff Creek, California. This came to be known as the Patterson-Gimlin film. Many years later, Bob Heironimus, an acquaintance of Patterson's, said that he had worn an ape costume for the making of the film.^[12] However, Patterson and Gimlin claimed that they sought various experts to examine the film. Patterson claimed to have screened the film for unnamed technicians "in the special effects department at Universal Studios in Hollywood... Their conclusion was: 'We could try (faking it), but we would have to create a completely new system of artificial muscles and find an actor who could be trained to walk like that. It might be done, but we would have to say that it would be almost impossible.'"^[40]
• 2007: On September 16, 2007, hunter Rick Jacobs captured an image of a supposed Sasquatch by using an automatically triggered camera attached to a tree,^[41] prompting a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Game Commission to say that it was likely an image of "a bear with a severe case of mange."^[42] The photo was taken near the town of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, in theAllegheny National Forest.^[43][44]

Proposed explanations for sightings

Various types of creatures have been suggested to explain both the sightings and what type of creature Bigfoot would be if it existed. The scientific community typically attributes sightings to either hoaxes or misidentification of known animals and their tracks. While cryptozoologists generally explain Bigfoot as an unknown ape, some believers in Bigfoot attribute the phenomenon toUFOs or other paranormal causes.^[45]

Misidentification

Photo of an unidentified animal the Bigfoot Research Organization claims is a "juvenile Sasquatch"^[46]

In 2007, the Pennsylvania Game Commission said that photos the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization claimed showed a juvenile Bigfoot were most likely of a bear with mange.^[43][47] Jeffrey Meldrum, on the other hand, said the limb proportions of the suspected juvenile in question were not bear-like, and stated that he felt they were "more like a chimpanzee."^[48]

Hoaxes

Both scientists and Bigfoot believers agree that many of the sightings are hoaxes or misidentified animals.^[11]

Bigfoot sightings or footprints are often demonstrably hoaxes. Author Jerome Clark argues that the Jacko Affair, involving an 1884 newspaper report of an apelike creature captured in British Columbia, was a hoax. Citing research by John Green, who found that several contemporary British Columbia newspapers regarded the alleged capture as very dubious, Clark notes that the Mainland Guardian of New Westminster, British Columbia, wrote, "Absurdity is written on the face of it."^[49]

On July 14, 2005, Tom Biscardi, a long-time Bigfoot enthusiast and CEO of Searching for Bigfoot Inc., appeared on the Coast to Coast AM paranormal radio show and announced that he was "98% sure that his group will be able to capture a Bigfoot which they have been tracking in the Happy Camp, California area."^[50] A month later, Biscardi announced on the same radio show that he had access to a captured Bigfoot and was arranging a pay-per-view event for people to see it. Biscardi appeared on Coast to Coast AM again a few days later to announce that there was no captive Bigfoot. Biscardi blamed an unnamed woman for misleading him and the show's audience for being gullible.^[50]

On July 9, 2008, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton posted a video to YouTube claiming that they had discovered the body of a dead Sasquatch in a forest in northern Georgia. Tom Biscardi was contacted to investigate. Dyer and Whitton received $50,000 from Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., as a good faith gesture.^[51] The story of the men's claims was covered by many major news networks, including BBC,^[52] CNN,^[53] ABC News,^[54] and Fox News.^[55] Soon after a press conference, the alleged Bigfoot body arrived in a block of ice in a freezer with the Searching for Bigfoot team. When the contents were thawed, it was discovered that the hair was not real, the head was hollow, and the feet were rubber.^[56][57] Dyer and Whitton subsequently admitted it was a hoax after being confronted by Steve Kulls, executive director of Squatchdetective.com.^[58]

In August 2012, a man in Montana was killed by a car while perpetrating a Bigfoot hoax using a ghillie suit.^[59][60]

Gigantopithecus

Fossil jaw of Gigantopithecus blacki, an extinct primate

Bigfoot proponents Grover Krantz and Geoffrey Bourne believed that Bigfoot could be a relict population of Gigantopithecus. Bourne contends that as most Gigantopithecus fossils are found in China, and as many species of animals migrated across the Bering land bridge, it is not unreasonable to assume that Gigantopithecus might have as well.^[61]

The Gigantopithecus hypothesis is generally considered entirely speculative. Gigantopithecus fossils are not found in the Americas. As the only recovered fossils are of mandibles and teeth, there is some uncertainty about Gigantopithecus's locomotion. Krantz has argued, based on his extrapolation of the shape of its mandible, that Gigantopithecus blacki could have been bipedal. However, the relevant part of mandible is not present in any fossils.^[62] The mainstream view is that Gigantopithecus was quadrupedal, and it has been argued that Gigantopithecus's enormous mass would have made it difficult for it to adopt a bipedal gait.

Matt Cartmill presents another problem with the Gigantopithecus hypothesis: "The trouble with this account is that Gigantopithecus was not a hominin and maybe not even a crown-group hominoid; yet the physical evidence implies that Bigfoot is an upright biped with buttocks and a long, stout, permanently adducted hallux. These are hominin autapomorphies, not found in other mammals or other bipeds. It seems unlikely thatGigantopithecus would have evolved these uniquely hominin traits in parallel."^[63]

Bernard G. Campbell wrote: "That Gigantopithecus is in fact extinct has been questioned by those who believe it survives as the Yeti of the Himalayas and the Sasquatch of the north-west American coast. But the evidence for these creatures is not convincing."^[64]

Extinct hominidae

A species of Paranthropus, such as Paranthropus robustus, with its crested skull and bipedal gait, was suggested by primatologist John Napierand anthropologist Gordon Strasenburg as a possible candidate for Bigfoot's identity,^[65] despite the fact that fossils of Paranthropus are found only in Africa.

Michael Rugg, of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, presented a comparison between human, Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus skulls (reconstructions made by Grover Krantz) in episodes 131 and 132 of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum Show.^[66] He favorably compares a modern tooth suspected of coming from a Bigfoot to the Meganthropus fossil teeth, noting the worn enamel on theocclusal surface. The Meganthropus fossils originated from Asia, and the tooth was found near Santa Cruz, California.

Some suggest Neanderthal, Homo erectus, or Homo heidelbergensis to be the creature, but no remains of any of those species have been found in the Americas.^[67]

Scientific view

See also: Formal studies of Bigfoot

The scientific community discounts the existence of Bigfoot, as there is no evidence supporting the survival of such a large, prehistoric ape-like creature. The evidence that does exist points more towards a hoax or delusion than to sightings of a genuine creature.^[5] In a 1996 USA Today article, Washington State zoologist John Crane said, "There is no such thing as Bigfoot. No data other than material that's clearly been fabricated has ever been presented."^[68] In addition to the lack of evidence, scientists cite the fact that Bigfoot is alleged to live in regions unusual for a large, nonhuman primate, i.e., temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere; all recognized nonhuman apes are found in the tropics of Africa and Asia.

As with other proposed megafauna cryptids, climate and food supply issues would make such a creature's survival in reported habitats unlikely.^[69] Great apes are not found in the fossil record in the Americas, and no Bigfoot remains are known to have been found. Scientific consensus is that the breeding population of such an animal would be so large that it would account for many more purported sightings than currently occur, making the existence of such an animal an almost certain impossibility.^[6] In the 1970s, when Bigfoot "experts" were frequently given high-profile media coverage, the scientific community generally avoided lending credence to the theories by debating them.^[70]

A few scientists have been less skeptical about the claims of the existence of Sasquatch. Idaho university professor Jeffrey Meldrum characterizes the search for Sasquatch as "a valid scientific endeavor",^{[citation needed]} and says that the fossil remains of an ancient giant ape called Gigantopithecus could turn out to be ancestors of today’s commonly known Bigfoot.^[71] John Napier asserts that the scientific community's attitude towards Bigfoot stems primarily from insufficient evidence.^[72] Other scientists who have shown varying degrees of interest in the legend are anthropologist David Daegling,^[73] field biologist George Schaller,^[68][74][75] Russell Mittermeier, Daris Swindler, Esteban Sarmiento,^[76] and discredited racial anthropologist Carleton S. Coon.^[77]

Jane Goodall, in a September 27, 2002, interview on National Public Radio's "Science Friday", expressed her ideas about the existence of Bigfoot. First stating "I'm sure they exist", she later went on to say, chuckling, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist", and finally: "You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."^[7]

Bigfoot DNA claim

After what The Huffington Post described as "a five-year study of purported Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) DNA samples,"^[78] Texas veterinarian Melba Ketchum and her team announced that they had found proof that the Sasquatch "is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species." Ketchum called for this to be recognised officially, saying that "Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a 'license' to hunt, trap, or kill them."^[79]

Failing to find a scientific journal that would publish their results, Ketchum announced on February 13, 2013 that their research had been published in the DeNovo Journal of Science. The Huffington Post discovered that the domain had been registered anonymously only nine days before the announcement. The current edition of DeNovo is listed as Volume 1, Issue 1, and its only content, thus far, is the Bigfoot research which costs $30 to read.^[80][78][81]

Bigfoot organizations

There are several organizations dedicated to the research and investigation of Bigfoot sightings in the United States. The oldest and largest^{[citation needed]} is the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The BFRO also provides a free database to individuals and other organizations. Their internet website includes reports from across North America that have been investigated by researchers to determine credibility.^[82]

Wikinews has related news:Reported Bigfoot sighting in Clarence, New York a hoax

Popular culture

Main article: Bigfoot in popular culture

Bigfoot has had a demonstrable impact as a popular culture phenomenon. It has "become entrenched in American popular culture and it is as viable an icon as Michael Jordan" with more than forty-five years having passed since reported sightings in California, and neither an animal nor "a satisfying explanation as to why folks see giant hairy men that don't exist".