Watch First Peek at Kentucky Bigfoot BBC Documentary

Charlie Raymond from Kentucky Bigfoot visit his group at KentuckyBigfoot.com

Last month in a posts titled "Kentucky Bigfoot Gains Notoriety and Media Attention" and "Kentucky is where Bigfooting is at" we mentioned the uptick in Kentucky Bigfoot's visibility. Not only did they go bigfooting with Larry the Cable Guy, but they also had the opportunity to show BBC how bigfooting is done in Kentucky. You can watch the video and read the full article here. The complete text from the article is below.

Trackers in Kentucky show the BBC the various methods they are using in the hopes of catching Bigfoot. By Brian WheelerBBC News, Kentucky
Not since footage emerged of a giant, ape-like figure in the California woods in the late 1960s has there been so much interest in proving the existence of Bigfoot. So how do you go about finding a creature most people believe to be a myth?

It could be a human footprint. Let's not rule that out.

Kentucky Bigfoot investigators pride themselves on their scientific rigour.

They compile detailed reports, take copious notes, and rely on high-tech recording equipment to set their traps and document their work.

Every twisted branch or broken twig is carefully examined for clues. Every distant sound in the trees seized on as a possible sign of "activity".

FootprintWhich is how I came to be standing on the bank of a stream on a warm spring day staring at an indentation in the shingle.

Bigfoot is notoriously camera shy - but there are plenty of artists' impressions

Someone had pointed it out as a potential footprint. It was certainly big enough. Maybe even too big.

But as Charlie, our team leader, got to work with a tape measure, I assured myself that it was probably human.

And that's when I knew they had got me. Probably is not a word I would have used a few hours ago, when we set out.

Back then I would have said it was definitely human. But back then my scepticism was impregnable. Now it was starting to fray at the edges.

Maybe this is how it starts.

Yahoo-huntingPeople have reported seeing strange, ape-like creatures in the forests of North America for centuries.

It's big and it was apparently made by a foot - but is it Bigfoot?

Frontiersman Daniel Boone is meant to have shot and killed one of them. He dubbed the 2.5-m (8.2-ft) tall beast a Yahoo, after the creatures in Jonathan Swift's classic novel Gulliver's Travels.

The Yahoo's descendants have come to be known as Bigfoot in some circles, Sasquatch in others. Whatever you call it, it is currently big news. YouTube is awash with "sightings". Most of them are obvious fakes.

But what has really given new life to a very old legend is reality TV and its remorseless appetite for eccentric characters.

It seems like every Sasquatch-spotter, from Canada to the Florida Keys, is in talks with a production company or has already been featured in a reality show of his own.

Life-changing encounterWhen a TV crew arrives with a list of pre-planned shots and outlandish things for them to say, the Bigfoot-hunters generally play along.

They know they are being held up to mockery, on some level, but they seem to be in little doubt about Bigfoot's existence.

Joy, a middle-aged healthcare consultant, is the lead investigator with the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization.

She says she saw Bigfoot for the first time last autumn. Or, rather, it saw her.

As she was changing out of some wet clothes on a camping trip, she became aware of a hairy male face peeping at her under the tent flap, she told me. 

According to Joy, there was an overpowering odour. And she heard a low, guttural grunt. Whatever the creature staring at her was, it was not human.

Joy's boyfriend, Ben, smiled as she told her tale. He is a Bigfoot sceptic - but it's a good excuse for a hike in the woods.

Some native American tribes in the north-west of America believe the Sasquatch is real. Most think of him as a spiritual being, whose appearance before man is meant to convey some kind of message.

One member of the Kentucky group told me he also thinks Bigfoot could be a spiritual manifestation.

Bart Nunnelly has written several books on the mythical creatures that he believes live in the Kentucky forests.

When he was nine, his family told a local newspaper they were being terrorised by giant ape-like creatures.

He has been the subject of ridicule ever since.

After all, there is little conclusive proof that Bigfoot is anything but a myth. Despite their emphasis on scientific fact, the majority of the group's evidence comes in the form of anecdotal bigfoot sightings collected on their website.

The footprint we found, they decided, was most likely human.

But Mr Nunnelly, like all the Bigfoot devotees I met in Kentucky, is not worried about the mockery of sceptics and non-believers.

He seems certain about what he has seen, and that it wasn't human.

BBC News: Pangboche Finger is Human, not Yeti

DNA tests support Pangboche finger is human

If you stayed up late last night (or actually early this morning)  you could hear the conclusion of the DNA test on the Pangboche Finger. As we announced yesterday on our post BBC Radio 4: Full Results of Pangboche Yeti Finger Test the Pangboche Finger was an artifact that was stolen from the Pangboche Monastery and believed to belong to a Yeti.

Below is an Excerpt from the a BBC article that followed the broadcast of the Radio show. The article confirms the results that support the finger is, indeed, human.

Yeti expeditionProfessor Hill's notes recorded that the finger had been brought to him by Peter Byrne, a former explorer and mountaineer. 

Mr Byrne is now 85, and living in the United States, I discovered. When he recently visited London, I arranged to meet him. 

He did indeed bring the yeti's finger to London, he explained. His story began in 1958, when he was a member of an expedition sent to the Himalayas, to look for evidence of the legendary Abominable Snowman. 

"We found ourselves one day camped at a temple called Pangboche," Mr Byrne told me. 

Peter Byrne was photographed in 1958/9 with the head lama at Pangboche monastery

"The temple had a number of Sherpa custodians. I heard one of them speaking Nepalese, which I speak.  

"He told me that they had in the temple the hand of a yeti which had been there for many years. 

"It looked like a large human hand. It was covered with crusted black, broken skin. 

"It was very oily from the candles and the oil lamps in the temple. The fingers were hooked and curled." 

"Osmond Hill said, 'You have got to get this hand. We've got to see it. We want to examine it.' But I had already asked the lamas there if I could have the hand and they said no, it would bring bad luck, disaster to the temple if it was taken away."Prof Hill and Mr Slick asked Mr Byrne to go back and at least try to get one finger with permission from the temple's custodians. 

The plan was to replace the missing finger with a human finger. Prof Hill then brought out a brown paper bag and tipped out a human hand onto the table."It was several months old and dried. I never asked him where he got it from."Returning to the temple, he gave a donation in return for the finger, and then wired the human finger onto the relic. 

The expedition sponsor Tom Slick helped ensure the finger would reach London safely with the help of his friend, the Hollywood actor James Stewart and his wife Gloria who were in India at the time. 

They were to meet in the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, said Mr Byrne.Continue reading the main story"They were a little bit worried about customs, so Gloria hid it in her lingerie case and they got out of India no trouble." 

"They arrived at Heathrow, but the lingerie case was missing," 

A few days later, a customs official returned the case to the Hollywood couple, reassuring Gloria that a British customs officer would "never open a lady's lingerie case." 

The finger was handed over to Prof Hill after which, Mr Byrne explained, he lost contact with him. 

DNA testBut could this finger really have come from a yeti? 

The Royal College of Surgeons granted a request for a DNA test to be carried out on a tiny sliver of the finger. 

The finger is of human origin, according to Dr Rob Jones, senior scientist at the Zoological Society of Scotland. 

"We have got a very, very strong match to a number of existing reference sequences on human DNA databases. 

"It's very similar to existing human sequences from China and that region of Asia but we don't have enough resolution to be confident of a racial identification."

Src: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16264752 

Want to listen to the conclusion? Matthew Hill presents Yeti's Finger on BBC Radio 4.  

Hobbits 'are a separate species'

It has been accepted by two separate studies that Homo floresiensis is indeed a separate species!

This is delightful news. Although it does not necessarily prove Bigfoot is possible, it definitely supports that Bigfoot is possible.

One of the primary theories of bigfoot is the species may have a common ancestor with a modern day primate. This is exactly the case with Homo floresiensis approx 1 million years ago. The theory is not completely fleshed out, but the common ancestor may have been Homo erectus .

reported by the BBC is the following...

Hobbits 'are a separate species'

The Hobbit's foot is in many ways quite primitive
Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.

The one metre (3ft) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.

Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.

Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human.

The team, which discovered the tiny remains in Liang Bua cave on Flores, contends that the population belongs to the species Homo floresiensis - separate from our own grouping Homo sapiens .

They argue that the "Hobbits" are descended from a prehistoric species of human - perhaps Homo erectus - which reached island South-East Asia more than a million years ago.


Over many years, their bodies most likely evolved to be smaller in size, through a natural selection process called island dwarfing, claim the discoverers, and many other scientists.

However, some researchers argued that this could not account for the Hobbit's chimp-sized brain of almost 400 cubic cm - a third the size of the modern human brain.

Original article at BBC News Worls America