I’m still pretty green at this Crypto stuff—I’ve only been
part time studying for about 6 years. My
“real job” is researching hauntings phenomena and Cryptozoology is sort of a
side. I’ve decided to share my learning
journey here on this blog, beginning with Sasquatch.
Today we’re looking at Bigfoot’s feet. Most footprint casts look like this:
Most notably, each of these images appears to have five
toes. Racoons have five toes, but there
would be evidence of claws in the tracks.
Bears also have five
toes, but the front tracks have a short sole.
The hind track is a bit larger.
Both are wider near the toe than the above tracks. Note too that there are no signs of claws on
any of these casts. An animal large
enough to leave these prints would step deeply enough to leave signs of any
claw attached.
These tracks appear most closely related to human tracks,
but is that enough to classify bigfoot as humanoid? Not just the tracks. When we add in the probability that whatever
made the tracks walks upright, this lends a better probability that this
creature is structurally much like a human.
From the footprint casts we can also deduct relative weight
and height. The depth of the imprint is indicative
of the weight of the creature who made it.
This is fairly easy to determine in the field. Choose an investigator with a similar size
footprint (or the largest one available) and have that person run barefoot over
the same area where the cast was taken (given the same level of wetness of the
soil or snow). Measure that footprint’s
depth and add the subject’s known weight into this formula:
Depth of human track/weight of human=depth of unknown/x
where x equals the weight of the unknown.
More specifically, if you have a 3 inch depth on your 200
pound human (3/200) and a 4 inch depth on your unknown (4/x) you can solve for
the weight as such: 3/200=4/x or
3x=1200, meaning x would be 1200/3 or 400 pounds. This works much more accurately than analysis
of the Patterson-Gimlin tracks where the tracks were compared to horse
tracks. Clearly, the weight distribution
is different on a hooved animal with four weight bearing limbs than on a five
toed bipedal animal.
Because of the structure of the human foot, it is easy to approximate
the height of the person it belongs to.
Keep in mind that this does not allow for deformation like spinal
compression or curvature, so the height is not exact. Deducing this is to get a general idea of how
large a creature would be. In humans, the length of a person's foot is
approximately 15 percent of his or her height.
The formula is 15/100=foot inches/height inches. So if a man has a 10 inch foot you can expect
him to be about 67 inches tall.
15/100=10/x where x is his height becomes 1000=15x or about 67 inches. If the cast length is 20 inches, you should
expect your creature to be no more than 133 inches or about 11 feet tall.
Using the data above, we can assume that from a track that
is 20 inches long and 4 inches deep which has 5 toes without claws, our
mysterious creature would be 11 feet tall and weigh about 400 pounds. It is estimated that Gigantopithicus was
about 10 feet tall, and weight 1200 pounds.
In comparison, male gorillas generally top out at about 400 pounds and 5
and a half feet tall. It would seem then
that our Sasquatch should be relatively tall and thin. Alternately, if we
estimate size based on the creature’s weight (as estimated above) rather than length of
foot and our control is a “fit human male” at 6 feet, 200 pounds, then we would
expect our bigfoot to be about 12 feet tall.
In either case, the bulky illustrations we see of purported Sasquatch do
not fit.
Witness testimony places much more bulk on our Sasquatch—broader
at the shoulders than a man, so different musculature would be present and this
would vary the weight considerably.
Factoring in all three—height, weight, and bulk, it would seem
appropriate to believe that a male bigfoot would be about 9 or 10 feet tall and
weigh in the neighborhood of 800 pounds.
A more accurate estimate of height comes from measuring
stride, but we’ll talk more about that when we work our way up to his legs.
Feet have basically two purposes—movement and weight
bearing. The Sasquatch casts show a
clear ball and heel, and some casts show an arch. The larger first toe gives clues to his
ability to move. This larger toe is
stronger and we depend on it for propulsion.
In most casts, this first toe is not significantly larger than the rest
which would lead us to believe that all toes on this creature assist with
propulsion, making movement very fast.
Human feet have three arches, the one we most commonly refer to as “the
arch” at midfoot, one along the outer edge, and a “transverse” arch that runs perpendicular
to these other two. All of these arches
assist in balance, and generally the “flatter” the arch, the more contact the
foot has with the ground. In the casts
above, the arches are barely noticeable.
This should mean that there is a difference in the bone and muscle
structure in a Sasquatch foot. Such flat
feet would render a human in great pain and limited mobility and we’re pretty
certain that is not the case with Sasquatch. The Sasquatch is thought to have a mid-tarsal break, which unlike humans would give it enough flexibility to grab objects with its foot. Additonally, Sasquatch has a gray pad on the sole of the foot called the Ostman pad.
Understanding the Sasquatch foot would be important in
placing the creature into comparison with human evolution. W E H Harcourt-Smith and L C Aiello write:
In the last 80 years or so there have been a number of proposed theories addressing the evolution of hominin bipedalism from the point of view of comparative anatomy. Historically, these theories can be placed into two categories. First, there are those theories based primarily on observed anatomical differences between extant hominoid taxa, and secondly there are those theories based more on fossil material. Because the vast majority of early hominin fossil remains have been found since the 1960s, theories prior to that date rested almost exclusively on the comparative anatomy of modern humans and the extant primates, particularly the great apes. They addressed the question of the probable postcranial morphology and associated locomotor repertoire that immediately preceded the appearance of hominin bipedalism. By contrast, ideas about the evolution of hominin bipedalism since the 1960s have tended to be highly influenced by fossil finds and to focus on questions of bipedal evolution within the human clade.
Sasquatch
feet do not fit nicely into any evolutionary delineation. Perhaps we are dealing with a descendent of
the Red Deer Cave People or even an undetermined new hominid species.
Next up-“If you don't have a leg to stand on, you can't put
your foot down.” ~Robert Altman
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