Could Escaped Animals Account for Bigfoot Reports?

[Garrison Hilliard]

Analysis by Benjamin
Radford<http://news.discovery.com/contributors/benjamin-radford/>
Tue Aug 14, 2012 01:51 PM ET


A chimpanzee who rampaged through a Las Vegas neighborhood last month made
a second escape from her backyard enclosure this weekend, but her
caretaker
thinks she had human help this time. Timmi De Rosa says the 13-year-old
chimp, CJ, didn't get loose Saturday by bending steel bars without help.
She thinks someone let CJ out of her cage. De Rosa says the 180-pound
animal was captured quickly and was never a threat to neighbors. On July
12, CJ and her mate Buddy broke free and roamed the neighborhood, pounding
on vehicles and climbing in an unoccupied car. An officer shot and killed
Buddy when the animal frightened bystanders.

What might this sort of bizarre and scary incident have to do with
Bigfoot<http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bigfoot_at_50_evaluating_a_half-century_of_bigfoot_evidence/>and
other mysterious creatures? Plenty.

*NEWS: Bigfoot and Yeti DNA Gets
Serious<http://news.discovery.com/animals/big-foot-genetic-testing-120522.html>
*

The field of cryptozoology doesn't merely include unknown animals like
Bigfoot, but also those "out of place" -- animals known to exist but
rarely
if ever reported outside of their natural habitats.
[image: athletes]
*VIDEO: Five spooky scientific mysteries you may never have heard
of.*<http://news.discovery.com/videos/news-top-5-science-conspiracies-theories-and-hoaxes.html>

If a person walking in the woods sees a large, hairy bipedal creature, he
or she is likely to assume it's Bigfoot. But Bigfoot is of course not the
only large hairy animal that can stand on two legs; bears, for example,
can
stand and even briefly walk on two legs, as can chimpanzees, bonobos,
baboons and other animals.

Other large animals such as moose or elk, when seen from behind and/or in
near-darkness, can also appear to be standing on two legs and therefore
Bigfoot-like.

In these cases the reason that an eyewitness rules out a known animal in
favor of an unknown one is that he or she assumes that there are no wild
animals in the area that could look like that. Clearly, that is not always
the case.

As wild animals lose more and more of their native habitats they are drawn
closer to cities and towns. Coyotes and bears, for example, have become an
increasingly common sighting in many areas. And that's only the tip of the
iceberg.

* *

*Exotic Animal Escapes*

* *

In 2010, two camels and a tiger were found in the woods in Canada. The
animals were among several being moved from Nova Scotia to a private zoo
outside of Toronto, and they escaped when the truck carrying them was
stolen by thieves in Quebec.

In 2009 an Oklahoma couple driving home from church on U.S. 81 about an
hour north of Oklahoma City swerved to avoid an eight-foot-tall,
4,500-pound elephant on the highway. It had escaped earlier that day from
a
circus at the Garfield County Fairgrounds, and amazingly no one had been
able to track or find it.

*PHOTOS: 10 Reasons Why Bigfoot's a
Bust<http://news.discovery.com/animals/bigfoot-bust-reasons-photos-111012.html>
*

Then of course there was the bizarre and tragic case in October 2011 when
an Ohio man released his private menagerie of exotic animals into the
wild<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/us/police-kill-dozens-of-animals-freed-from-ohio-preserve.html?pagewanted=all>before
killing himself. In all nearly 60 animals including wolves, grizzly
bears, lions, Bengal tigers, leopards and monkeys scattered into the woods
outside of Columbus. All were (apparently) eventually recovered, though
many had to be killed.

There are many other cases similar to these, and likely even more that go
unreported. Some people whose exotic pets escape may not want to report it
to police for fear that they will be fined or jailed (either for illegally
keeping them in the first place, or for allowing them to escape), or that
their animal will be shot and killed.

These misplaced animals don't always escape from private zoos or circuses.
Last year a 140-pound cougar was killed on a highway in Connecticut, far
outside its natural habitat. As the *New York
Times*<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/opinion/the-cougar-behind-your-trash-can.html>noted,

So where had this cougar come from? Now we know the answer, and it
couldn't
be more astonishing. Wildlife officials, who at first assumed the cat was
a
captive animal that had escaped its owners, examined its DNA and concluded
that it was a wild cougar from the Black Hills of South Dakota. It had
wandered at least 1,500 miles before meeting its end at the front of an
S.U.V. in Connecticut.

One wonders how many people saw the cougar during its journey halfway
across the United States; did anyone see the elusive creature and think it
might be an unknown creature or monster?

*How Stuff Works:
Bigfoot<http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/bigfoot.html>
*

While some of these unusual animals were recovered within hours, others
spent days or weeks roaming rural areas; it's likely that they were
spotted
at some point. It's also important to remember that most Bigfoot sightings
(like Bigfoot photos) are not clear, detailed, close-up and well-lit; most
reports are merely of something large, dark, and unidentified in the woods
at a distance behind trees and foliage in shadows or at dusk. Under those
conditions, with some imagination just about anything can look mysterious.
Elephants in Oklahoma, camels in Canada, cougars in Connecticut and chimps
in Las Vegas? Escaped and unusually mobile animals cannot, of course,
explain every mysterious animal sighting -- but then again they don't have
to. It only takes a few unknown reports to generate and fuel the belief
that unknown animals lurk nearby.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/could-escaped-animals-account-for-bigfoot-reports-120814.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

*Photo: A bear stands at attention for tourists at Yellowstone National
Park; if seen briefly at dusk from a distance, it could be mistaken for a
Bigfoot. Credit: Benjamin Radford. *
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