Bigfoot Cousins Claimed in Many Countries

Considering Benjamin Radford is a skeptic, he even has a top ten list "Why Bigfoot is Bunk" we find it awfully nice of him to provide us with a brief description of the primary Bigfoot variants around the world. If you really want to get an idea of these variants in a visual geographic context follow the link to the AKA Bigfoot World Map.


Bigfoot Cousins Claimed in Many Countries

By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist
posted: 12 October 2010 10:41 am ET

A group of Chinese researchers has announced that they are mounting an expedition to seek evidence of the yeren, the Chinese version of Bigfoot. There have been other searches for the yeren in decades past, all failing to find conclusive evidence of its existence. The team, led by a man named Luo Baosheng, is hoping to raise $1.5 million to launch the search.

While Bigfoot is by far the best-known of mysterious bipedal creatures said to inhabit the world's wilds, it is far from the only one. Many countries and cultures have stories of hairy, feral man-like creatures.

Canada's Sasquatch
The Canadian Sasquatch is essentially the same creature as the American Bigfoot, though it is claimed to be primarily nocturnal and a fast runner. Some say it steals food and abducts women — and men: A logger named Albert Ostman claimed that in 1924 while camping in British Columbia he was kidnapped by a Bigfoot family and held for nearly a week. Ostman suspected that he had been captured as a potential breeding mate for the young female Sasquatch of the family, but before he could do the dirty deed he escaped when the male elder choked on Ostman's snuff tobacco. Needless to say, Ostman offered no evidence of his experience.

Nepal's Yeti
The Yeti, formerly known as the Abominable Snowman, is said to live in the forest below the Himalaya Mountains' snow line, though its tracks are occasionally found in snow. It is said to be muscular, covered with dark grayish or reddish-brown hair, and weigh between 200 and 400 pounds (90 to 180 kilograms). The Yeti is relatively short compared with Bigfoot, averaging about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in height. Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Everest, found no evidence of the creature. Mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who spent months in Nepal and Tibet researching the Yeti found that large native bears were mistaken for Yeti sightings and tracks. The Yeti made news in 2007 when Josh Gates, host of the TV series "Destination Truth," claimed that he found large, mysterious footprints that might be from the Yeti. Despite extensive media publicity nothing more was learned about the tracks; they are now on display at Disney World.

Australia's Yowie
Yowie, the wildman from Down Under, reportedly stands anywhere from 5 to 11 feet (1.5 to 3.4 meters) tall, and has yellow or red eyes deeply set inside a dome-shaped head. Yowies are said to have tan, black, gray, or white hair covering black skin, with arms so long they nearly reach the ground. According to George Eberhart's encyclopedia "Mysterious Creatures" (ABC-CLIO, 2002), the name Yowie comes from the Aboriginal word "yuwi," which means "dream spirit."

Indonesia's Orang Pendek
According to "The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide" (Avon Books, 1999), "The natives of Sumatra have long believed in the orang-pendek, which means 'little man.' The orang-pendek seems to have a large pot belly and may be dark gray, dark black, yellow, or tan in color." It is also said to have very long head hair, and stand anywhere from 2.5 to 5 feet (0.8 to 1.5 m) tall. One of the first alleged sightings of the orang pendek occurred in 1923, when a Dutch settler in Sumatra saw one in a tree; though he was armed he refused to shoot it, because it resembled a human.

Though most of these creatures share similar features, there is more variation within the types than between them. The other thing they all have in common is a lack of hard evidence for their existence. Perhaps the new Chinese expedition for the yeren will yield real results, but if history is any guide the search will likely be both difficult and fruitless.

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Benjamin Radford is managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of two books about mysterious creatures: lake monsters and el chupacabra (out in March). His Web site is appropriately named Benjamin Radford.

You may also like to view all these variants on the Bigfoot Lunch Club'c AKA Bigfoot World Map.




View AKA Bigfoot World Map in a larger map

Chinese Plan to find Bigfoot is muddy

Well, we did start our coverage about Chinese Scientist with a joke about all they need is funding. It seems to be more prolific than we thought. Not only is the financing for the project in question, so are the true intentions of original news release.

Plan to find Bigfoot is muddy
Source: Global Times [00:55 October 12 2010]



By Fu Wen

A fresh campaign to find "Bigfoot" - a legendary half-human, half-ape figure - may be suspended due to a lack of financial support, according to the archaeologist overseeing the project.

Two days after a global recruitment drive was announced to find volunteers for the search team, the organizer said funding might prevent them from going after the ape-like creature.

The Hubei Wild Man Research Association announced Saturday that they were looking for team members between 25 and 40, with good physical health and knowledge of biology.

However, Wang Shancai, founder of the association, told the Global Times Monday that there is no detailed plan for the recruitment drive as they are still looking to raise enough money to support the exploration.

He said they want to prove or disprove the existence of Bigfoot in the Shennongjia area.

More than 400 people claimed to have seen Bigfoot in the Shennongjia area over the last 100 years including villagers, reporters, tourists and explorers. However, there has been no hard evidence to prove its existence, the Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Wang is hoping that this renewed effort could put the Bigfoot mystery to rest.

"We encourage any companies, social groups and the public to donate or cooperate with us and contribute to the reso-lution of this long-term mystery," said Wang, who is also a researcher with the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

The planned year-long exploration needs 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) and some 50 people to work in small teams.

The exploration will focus on the area around the Shennongjia Natural Reserve, a 76,950-hectare forest in Hubei Province. Wireless cameras will be installed in caves to capture tracks of Bigfoot.

Witnesses have described Bigfoot as a creature that is more than 2 meters tall, walks upright and has a gray, red or black hairy body.

The last organized expedition to find the mysterious creature was in the early 1980s.

The new Bigfoot expedition has triggered controversy on the Internet with some saying the exploration is a campaign to boost tourism.

Tourists to Shennongjia surpassed 1.66 million in 2009 and brought in 550 million yuan ($82 million) to the region. The Shennongjia area reported a 70 percent jump in visitors during the 7-day national holiday, according to the Hubei-based Chutian Metropolis Daily.

"Our exploration is a pure scientific research activity. We don't accept government subsides because we do not want to become their financial burden," Wang said.

A documentary on China Central Television earlier this year said that some hair-like samples collected in Shennongjia, which were suspected of belonging to Bigfoot, turned out to be a new type of fungi that was not discovered in the region before.

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Russian yetis start a war with bears

I swear we did not make this headline up. Its lifted directly off an English language Russian news website. We have reprinted the article in full. The translation is theirs.

We should also mention, this is somewhat of an update to our previous post Igor Burtsev to head another Bigfoot Expedition in Siberia

Russian yetis start a war with bears
Andrei Smirnov
Oct 11, 2010 17:15 Moscow Time


Bigfoot. Photo: RIA Novosti
(The Voice of Russia) -- An expedition that was looking for the mysterious yeti in Mountain Shoria – a faraway region in the Siberian taiga - has recently returned home. The expedition’s members claim that the forest fires of this extremely hot summer made Altai yetis move to the Kuzbass region, where they have started a “war” with local bears.

Searches for this mysterious creature, also known as “bigfoot” or “snowman”, started several decades ago. People look for yetis – or, at least, their traces – elsewhere: in Canada, Europe, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Russia. Several times, yetis’ traces have been found – footsteps that resemble that of humans but are too big for a man, flocks of hair or gigantic branch shelters in forests. In 1967, a certain Roger Patterson even filmed a yeti in northern California, but experts still argue whether this shooting is real or fake.

This year’s expedition to Mountain Shoria is already the third. One of its participants, the director of the International Center for Hominology Igor Burtsev assures that yetis leave traces of their stay in the taiga and fight with local bears.

“They make strange pyramidal constructions of trunks and branches in the wood – sometimes 3 or 4 meters, sometimes only 30 cm high. Sometimes they bend huge trees and twist their trunks like wheels. A human being is just not strong enough for that, and there seems to be no need for bears to do this. At first, we thought that yetis do this to make shelters, but then we came to the conclusion that this is a sort of landmark for them. Or, maybe, this is a way for a yeti to say something to its congeners.”

Igor Burtsev has talked with local residents who claim that they have seen yetis with their own eyes. Sometimes, farmers take them for wood goblins.

“Folk beliefs say that the wood goblin is the master of the woods. All animals, even bears, submit to him. The wood goblin has a strong hypnotic power, thus he is not afraid of any animal.”

Scientists think that these ancient beliefs do have some grounding – it seems that today yetis in Siberia are competing with bears, and the yetis are winning – they are obviously stronger and have rudimentary intellect. If this “war” between yetis and bears continues, there is a risk that bears will not sleep this winter because of a shortage of food, instead going to villages in search of something to eat. To prevent this, the region’s authorities plan to organize bear feeding. However, it seems that local residents have already found a common language with the yetis – they leave candies for them and communicate with them mentally – yetis are believed to be telepathic. Igor Burtsev even claims that to a certain extent, yetis can imitate the human language. “I would, without doubt, call the yeti another species of man,” he says.

SRC: The Voice of Russia

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EXTERNAL LINKS
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