This sounds like a straightforward question. When we try to answer it, however, the issue becomes a thorny mess. More questions are raised, and despite what some people might claim, no clear answers emerge. Before we can attempt to answer the original question—is it okay to kill a Bigfoot—we must ask ourselves questions such as the following:

• Is Bigfoot closely related to humans or not?
  • If so, should we grant them basic human rights?
  • If not, do animals deserve treatment equal to humans?
• Is it okay to kill any animal, for any reason?
• Can Bigfoot be proven to exist without killing one?

Anyone who answers yes to the last question either has not really thought it through, does not understand what is required to prove scientifically that a creature exists, or simply chooses to lie about the required evidence in order to further their own cause (whatever that may be). This issue has become known as the kill/no-kill debate.

Where do I stand on this issue? As I’ve said, the answer is far from clear or simple. I’m neither pro-kill nor anti-kill. Both sides make valid points. Both sides get some of the facts wrong, either by ignorance or deception. I’m not sitting on the proverbial fence. I steer clear of the fence altogether. Why? Because in order for the kill/no-kill question to become applicable, someone must be in a situation where he or she has the chance to take down a Bigfoot.

And that’s never going to happen.

Specimens, like this black-footed ferret, are necessary to prove a species exists. (Photo by Ryan Hagerty/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Let’s imagine that Joe the Bigfoot hunter got close enough to shoot a Bigfoot. He has his rifle in hand. He raises it, takes aim, and—

The Bigfoot runs away.

Ask any deer hunter and he’ll admit that more times than not, he walks out of the woods sans buck. The critters all evaded his efforts. And this is an animal everyone knows exists. An animal we can spot easily. An animal most everyone has seen in their lifetime. Yet when hunting season arrives, the deer seem to vanish. A lucky hunter might get his sight zeroed in on a buck, only to have the bugger dash off at the last second. Why?

They don’t want to get shot!

Duh. This seems inordinately obvious. Why should Bigfoot be any different than deer? I’m sure most Bigfoot researchers would say, as I would, that Bigfoot are at least as smart as deer. Shooting a Bigfoot will be at least as hard as, if not harder than, shooting a deer.

But let’s return to the  main question. Is it okay to shoot a Bigfoot? If we want to prove scientifically that Bigfoot exists, then we must be willing to collect a specimen. The hard truth is that “specimen” equals “body”—dead or alive. Capturing a live Bigfoot is even less likely than killing one, which means it’ll never ever happen.

Some people claim that DNA alone will suffice for proving Bigfoot’s existence. Baloney! Anyone who says this does not understand the nature of scientific evidence. That’s why I devoted an entire chapter of my book Top Secret Sasquatch to the issue of DNA and Bigfoot. Once we understand the problems with DNA, the truth becomes clear.

Only a specimen, alive or dead, will prove Bigfoot’s existence.

However we feel about killing a Bigfoot, we must accept this indisputable fact. Crying and moaning, or yelling and swearing, about it won’t change the reality. The kill/no-kill debate centers around the wrong question. Rather than arguing, often with great rancor, about whether it’s acceptable to kill a Bigfoot, we ought to drill down to the core of the matter. The kill/no-kill debate obscures the real issue. I suggest a different tactic. Wipe away the mud slung by folks on both sides of the debate. Take a good, hard look at the core of the issue. Then ask yourself one question.

Do you want to prove Bigfoot is real?

Everything else is irrelevant until this most salient question is answered. Personally, I don’t care if the scientific establishment ever accepts Bigfoot’s existence.

“Bigfoot is a human!”

Photo © 2009 Lisa A. Shiel

In Bigfoot research, these two competing statements get tossed around like water balloons. And, as in a water balloon fight, in the end everybody gets soaked but nobody has much to show for the battle. The problem is, the folks on both sides of the ape-vs-human debate like to inflate the evidence for their pet theory, yet in reality neither argument has enough substance to hold up under scrutiny.

Now anybody who’s read any of my books may be asking a question at this point. “Hey Lisa,” my readers might say, “don’t you pitch balloons for the Bigfoot-is-human team?”

First of all, no.

Second of all, no.

Let me explain. I offer two negative responses to this question because, though the person asking the question may not realize it, the query raises two issues masquerading as one. First, the question assumes that I throw verbal water balloons—i.e., statements that rely on inflated evidence that lacks substance. Second, the question reveals a basic misunderstanding of my ideas about Bigfoot. I do not think Bigfoot is a human. I like the theory that Bigfoot may be a type of hominid—but not Homo sapiens.

The biggest pitfall in the ape-vs-human debate centers on a misunderstanding of the word human. What is a human? Some of the folks in the Bigfoot-is-human camp actually mean that they think Bigfoot is a human being, but others clearly suffer from an ignorance of what the term human really means. Who can blame them? Even scientists can’t decide what is a human and what is not. When we see a headline that declares “3-million-year-old human remains discovered” or “new member of human family found,” it’s easy to get confused. Even reading the articles may not clear up matters. Scientists often toss around the word human with all the caprice of children playing catch.

While researching my books, I’ve delved deep into this issue. What have I found? Well, I needed a whole chapter in The Evolution Conspiracy to explain it, so I’ll have to encapsulate the issue here. A human is a primate that walks upright as its standard mode of locomotion and exhibits advanced language and reasoning capabilities. We speak, we write, we create sophisticated artwork, and we invent complex technology. The nonhuman hominids, those allegedly extinct species whose fossils inhabit museums, seem to have walked upright. They seem to have used sophisticated stone tools. Any artwork found at ancient sites, however, is attributable to members of our species, Homo sapiens. The available evidence tells us that nonhuman hominids never made computers or even compound bows.

Does this make them less intelligent than humans? No. The fact is, the available evidence tells us very little about their mental abilities. However, the evidence does suggest they lacked the key traits that make us human. Even species crammed into the same genus as humans, such as Homo erectus, seem less like humans than like Bigfoot. (Scientists assign hominid species to the genus Homo rather arbitrarily, for reasons too complex to get into here.)

What’s the point? A hominid is not necessarily a human. So when I say Bigfoot might be a hominid, I’m not saying it’s a human.

What about the idea Bigfoot might be a feral tribe of humans? Whenever I hear this idea, I can’t help but chuckle. Proponents of this notion have apparently taken their cues, whether on purpose or unwittingly, from the newspaper stories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Articles about sightings of “wild men” (aka Bigfoot) often dismissed hairy, bipedal creatures as escaped lunatics gone feral. The escaped lunatic hypothesis represents one of the earliest efforts at debunking the Bigfoot phenomenon.

The issue boils down to this—the available evidence for Bigfoot is inconclusive and too malleable to fill our balloons with anything but water. Perhaps instead of arguing over whether Bigfoot is an ape or a human, we should spend the time figuring out what those terms actually mean and what the evidence actually illustrates.

Photo Credit: NASA

DNA evidence is touted as the foolproof method for proving who did what to whom. Forensic analysts test samples from crime scenes. Archaeologists collect samples from ancient sites and artifacts. Modern taxonomists rely on DNA to help them create family trees for living things. DNA from modern humans has been used to trace our species’ ancestry back through time. Given the myriad uses for DNA, and its portrayal as foolproof evidence, shouldn’t we expect genetic evidence to present the conclusive proof for Bigfoot’s existence and identity?

Not so fast.

In a previous post, “The Myth of Bigfoot DNA,” I discussed the problems with proving the existence of a previously unknown species via DNA alone. Other problems plague DNA evidence too. Contamination may be the biggest issue affecting DNA analysis and its accuracy. The DNA Initiative, which operates under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice, has this to say about contamination:

DNA evidence can be contaminated when DNA from another source gets mixed with DNA relevant to the case. This can happen when someone sneezes or coughs over the evidence or touches his/her mouth, nose, or other part of the face and then touches the area that may contain the DNA to be tested.

Now consider the case of Germany’s Phantom of Heilbronn. For two years, police sought not just a serial killer but a rare female serial killer. DNA evidence collected from forty crime scenes implicated a single woman in  crimes ranging from burglary to the murder of a police officer. Other people who had been convicted of some of the crimes denied any knowledge of the Phantom. The confusing menagerie of evidence finally led police to reexamine the DNA results — and conclude that the cotton swabs used to collect DNA samples had likely been contaminated at the factory that produces them.

Next, we must consider that DNA analysis relies on computers to process the results. For instance, when tracing the origins of humanity scientists have used DNA as a vital part of their evidence. Computer software dutifully swallows the raw DNA data and spits out a family tree for humanity. Yet, as geneticists themselves have pointed out, the exact same data could impart different trees depending upon what software is used to process it and how many times that software analysis is run. Thousands of possible family trees might lurk inside the data collected by a single team of scientists. Which version to choose depends upon what outcome is desired.

For example, the most famous use of DNA analysis in human origins research came from scientists at the University of California at Berkeley. A scientist at another institution noted how the Berkeley team had — in two separate papers, both published in 1991 — listed two different populations as the root ancestors of all humanity. In the first paper, the team listed Kung bushmen as the root; in the second, pygmies occupied that slot. Both could not be true. This case highlights the way in which software can, inadvertently or by design, influence the outcome of DNA analysis.

What’s the lesson here? Before we can even get to the question of whether DNA can prove the existence of Bigfoot, we must first ask whether DNA samples can be collected completely free of contamination and whether the analysis itself will influence the outcome. DNA is far from foolproof. And when it comes to Bigfoot, the problems are only compounded by the elusive nature of the animal being studied and the far-from-ideal circumstances in which samples are collected.

Does this mean DNA analysis is useless in Bigfoot research? Of course not. The problems with DNA analysis do mean, however, that we should not expect genetics to offer the ultimate proof of Bigfoot’s existence — especially not without a body.

And it may take more than one body.

References

“Evidence Collection and Preservation.” In What Every Law Enforcement Officer Should Know about DNA Evidence. DNA Initiative/Department of Justice. http://www.dna.gov/audiences/investigators/know/collection/

Himmelreich, Claudia. “Germany’s Phantom Serial Killer: A DNA Blunder.” Time, 27 March 2009.  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888126,00.html

Stringer, Christopher & Robin McKie. African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity. New York: Owl Books, 1996.

Photo © 2008 by Lisa A. Shiel. All rights reserved.

Any field of research that relies on eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence will incite plenty of argument among researchers. The study of Bigfoot-type creatures is no different. I’d speculate that Bigfoot research has encouraged more bickering than most any other branch of paranormal research. So what topics get everybody’s tempers boiling? Here’s my list of the top controversies:

1. Belief
   Bigfoot researchers have taken fear of belief to befuddling extremes. Many proudly proclaim they have no theories; others extol the virtues of “nonbelief.” They say say they don’t believe anything about Bigfoot, and they don’t “believe” witnesses. They fear the word belief so much they must place it in quotes, as if handling it with thick gloves to avoid contaminating themselves.
2. The Word Paranormal
   Bigfoot is not paranormal! Bigfoot is not paranormal! This chant echoes through most email discussion lists, online forums, and other discussion venues devoted to Bigfoot. Yet, by its very existence, Bigfoot is paranormal. The arguments will never end, however; simply uttering the word paranormal in the presence of Bigfoot researchers can trigger an attack so vicious it makes killer bees look tame.
3. Repeat witnesses
   Everybody knows you can see Bigfoot only once, and only in a chance encounter while out backpacking or hunting. Witnesses who claim to have had ongoing encounters with hairy hominids often become objects of ridicule and disdain. Only one issue can rile Bigfooters more than repeat witnesses…
4. UFOs & high strangeness
   Witnesses who see Bigfoots in conjunction with UFOs or who have missing time after seeing Bigfoots might think the worst has passed once their strange encounter ends. If they report the sighting to the average Bigfoot researcher, however, they may suffer a rude shock. Many researchers won’t consider a sighting that involves high strangeness. They might toss out the report and forget it, or they might treat the witness with contempt. Nothing—and I do mean nothing—instigates more arguments than the issue of Bigfoot and high strangeness.