Let's tackle the big one. Is Bigfoot real?
We're a Bigfoot site, so you might expect us to shout "YES!" and move on. But we think the honest answer is more interesting, and we'd rather you trust us than just cheer with us. So here's what scientists have actually done, what they found, and why the question still fascinates people.
The short answer
According to Wikipedia's summary of the scientific literature, the expert consensus is that claims about Bigfoot are not credible. Mainstream scientists generally explain reports through a mix of:
- Folklore, the long tradition of wild-man stories in many cultures
- Misidentification of known animals, especially bears
- Hoaxes, from carved wooden feet to costumes
There is no accepted body, skeleton, or fossil of a North American ape. Without physical remains, science can't recognize a new species.
Some scientists put it bluntly. 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." Wikipedia also notes that in the 1970s, when self-styled Bigfoot experts got a lot of media coverage, most scientists simply refused to debate the topic at all.
That said, scientists have looked. Here's some of what they've tested.
The bear map (2009)
In 2009, J.D. Lozier and colleagues published a study in the Journal of Biogeography comparing where Bigfoot reports come from in the Pacific Northwest with where American black bears live. They used a technique called ecological niche modeling, which uses the locations of sightings to work out the habitat an animal prefers. The two patterns lined up very closely. The authors argued it was highly unlikely that two different species would have such similar habitat preferences, and concluded that sightings that weren't outright fabricated were likely misidentified black bears.
That finding keeps coming up. Black bears have been recorded walking upright, often because of an injury, and an adult standing on its hind legs is roughly 5 to 7 feet tall. More recently, data scientist Floe Foxon found that more people report Bigfoot where black bears are documented, and summed it up this way: "If bigfoot is there, it may be many bears."
It's a good reminder for anyone in the woods: a standing bear, at a distance, in poor light, can look surprisingly human.
The DNA study (2014)
In 2014, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford and Lausanne's Cantonal Museum of Zoology published the first systematic genetic analysis of hair samples said to come from Bigfoot, its Himalayan cousins and other "anomalous primates." The study appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The roughly thirty samples came from the United States, Russia, the Himalayas and Sumatra. The team cleaned each hair to remove surface contamination, sequenced a short fragment of mitochondrial DNA and compared it against GenBank, a public database of known species.
The results came back as known animals. Black and brown bears made up most of the samples, along with cow, horse, dog/wolf/coyote, sheep, goat, deer, raccoon, porcupine and even tapir. Only one sample was from a primate, and it was human. Two Himalayan hairs briefly made headlines because they seemed to match an ancient polar bear, but a second test identified them as a rare type of brown bear. None of the samples pointed to an unknown primate.
The FBI files (1976–77, released 2019)
This one sounds like a movie plot, but it's real. In the 1970s, Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in Oregon, asked the FBI to examine about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of tissue. In June 2019, the FBI made the file public in its online records vault. The lab's conclusion, signed by Jay Cochran Jr., assistant director of the FBI's Scientific and Technical Services division, and sent in early 1977, was that the hairs were "of a deer family origin."
Experts who took it seriously
Not every scientist has waved Bigfoot off. A few have looked closely and written about it:
- John Napier, a British primatologist, wrote Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (1973). He wrote that, based on the scant hard evidence, science would have to declare that Bigfoot does not exist. But he couldn't dismiss thousands of alleged tracks "scattered over 125,000 square miles" or the many hundreds of eyewitness accounts. His conclusion: "There must be something in north-west America that needs explaining, and that something leaves man-like footprints."
- Grover Krantz, an anthropologist at Washington State University, spent decades studying footprint casts and argued that Bigfoot deserved serious study. He was one of very few academics to do so openly, publishing several articles and four books. Critics, as Wikipedia notes, found multiple scientific failings in his work, including falling for hoaxes.
- Jeff Meldrum, an Idaho State University anthropologist and expert on primate foot anatomy and locomotion, wrote Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (2006) and studied footprint casts in detail.
Wikipedia notes that many other scientists criticize this work and say the evidence doesn't hold up. It's a lively debate, and you can find these books in our research library and our upcoming best Bigfoot books list.
And then there's Jane Goodall. On NPR's Science Friday on September 27, 2002, the famous chimpanzee researcher said she was fascinated by Bigfoot reports and added, "Well now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist." Later in that conversation she said, "I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist." She also acknowledged that the lack of a body was a real problem: "Where is the body? You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to." When the Huffington Post asked her again in 2012, she said she was "fascinated and would actually love them to exist," while noting it was strange that there had never been a single authentic hide or hair.
Field studies that came up empty
In 1974, the National Wildlife Federation funded a field study looking for Bigfoot evidence. It made no notable discoveries. The same year, the North American Wildlife Research Team built a wooden "Bigfoot trap" in southern Oregon's Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest and baited it with animal carcasses. It caught several bears, but no Bigfoot. Upkeep stopped in the early 1980s, and in 2006 the U.S. Forest Service repaired the trap, which is now a hiking stop on the Collings Mountain trail.
What about the footprints and the film?
Footprint casts are the most common physical evidence. The trouble is that they can be faked, and some famous ones were. In 2002, the family of Ray Wallace revealed carved wooden feet tied to the 1958 Humboldt County tracks. (Read Where the Name Bigfoot Came From.)
The 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film is the most famous piece of visual evidence. People have argued about it for nearly sixty years. Some say it shows a person in a suit, and others say it doesn't. We'll give it a full post later this year.
Why do scientists stay skeptical?
The scientific objections usually come down to a few points:
- No body. No carcass, skeleton, or fossil has ever been found in North America, and no great ape has turned up in the fossil record of the Americas.
- Population size. For an animal to survive for generations, there would need to be a breeding population. Cultural anthropologist Phillips Stevens of the University at Buffalo put it this way: "What it takes to maintain any species, especially a long-lived species, is having a breeding population. That requires a substantial number, spread out over a fairly wide area where they can find sufficient food and shelter to keep hidden from all the investigators."
- Climate and range. Every recognized nonhuman ape lives in the tropics of Africa and Asia. Bigfoot is said to live in temperate northern latitudes, and reports come from nearly every state, across very different climates.
- Missing traces. In a 2016 Scientific American article, paleontologist Darren Naish argued that a real Bigfoot would leave far more evidence: consistent calls heard across the continent, like any other large animal; plenty of tracks that experts could easily find, as they do for other rare large mammals; and confirmed DNA. Instead, he noted, the sounds reported are scattered and varied, experts agree that many tracks are fake, and there is no confirmed DNA at all.
- Known explanations. Bears, hoaxes and the power of suggestion explain many reports.
So why do people keep looking?
Because the woods are big, the stories are old, and wondering is fun. A 2020 poll cited on Wikipedia found that roughly one in ten Americans believe Bigfoot is real. Millions more enjoy the legend whether they believe or not. According to a 2023 data study cited on Wikipedia, "Bigfoot" and "Sasquatch" are typed into search engines more than 200,000 times a year in the United States alone.
And people keep filing reports. The public BFRO dataset behind our sightings map holds 4,045 mapped reports. The BFRO says it investigates reports before publishing them, by phone or a field visit, and splits them almost evenly between Class A (2,015 clear sightings) and Class B (2,014 distant or poor-light views, plus all sound-only reports), with 16 secondhand Class C reports. None of that is proof, and a careful skeptic would point out that a witness can be sincere and still mistaken. But it shows how many people have come away from the woods convinced they saw or heard something.
At Everything Bigfoot™, we're happy to sit right in the middle of that campfire. We'll tell you what the science says, link our sources, and still celebrate the festivals, museums, road trips and tall tales that make Bigfoot part of American life.
Believer, skeptic, or somewhere in between? You're welcome here. Check out the organizations doing field research in our upcoming Bigfoot research organizations guide, and decide for yourself.
