Bigfoot Footprints: The Problem of the Distribution Shape

A scientific study on Bigfoot footprints and other such data was published in the late 1990's:

Fahrenbach, W. H. (1997/1998). "Sasquatch: Size, Scaling, & Statistics," Cryptozoology, 13, pp. 47-75).

This work admirably attempted to tabulate and present 40 years worth of Bigfoot evidence data. I won't even get into the issue of what the researcher is counting as "good" or "acceptable" data to include in this collection of samples. Instead I want to focus here on the footprint data, because it appears to create an especially problematic issue for Bigfoot believers.

The paper considers over 700 footprint measurements purported to be left by the ever-elusive and mysterious Sasquatch creature. Here's the problem: The foot size distribution should be bimodal (with two 'peaks' or 'spikes' in the histograms) due to different sizes between males and females. But the paper (Figure 1) clearly shows only one peak in the data. The author interprets this finding as suggesting NO sexual dimorphism between males and females, but this is incredibly unlikely for the following reasons:

In primates, males are almost always larger than females. And the larger a primate is, the bigger the difference between males and females (they display a larger sexual dimorphism with increasing size). Maybe you didn't notice, but Bigfoot is supposedly 8 to 10 feet tall and weighing in at something like 400 lbs or some such nonsense (yet it's able to run with incredible speed, take bounding leaps, and elude all attempts at detection like a stealthy ninja in the woods? Right.).

The three largest primate species ever to exist (Gigantopithecus blacki, bilaspurensis, and giganteus) were truly massive, with some potentially approaching 10 feet in height and 1200 lbs in weight. All three of these species are now extinct but are thought to have possibly coexisted with very early human ancestors. Some wild and implausible theories suggest that Bigfoots are remnants of one of these Gigantopithecus species that have survived until modern times. The oversized height and weight certainly seem to match Bigfoot descriptions.

The problem is that these species had huge differences in size between males and females, exactly as we would expect, given real primate data on body size features. For instance, in the G. blacki species, males were twice as large as females, and so their footprint distributions would have been unmistakenly bimodal. And so should any of their remaining relatives, such as Bigfoots. Any primate that is as large as Bigfoot is claimed to be should have obvious sexual dimorphisms and differing footprint sizes. But the Bigfoot footprint distribution is unimodal! Even if Gigantopithecus were not Bigfoot's ancestor, the expected male-female size differential for primates should result in a bimodal histogram of footprint sizes.

The unimodal distribution of supposed Bigfoot footprints simply does not support the existence of the mythical creature, as the cited research paper suggests. Where we would expect to see two peaks in the histograms, we see only one. The shape of the distribution observed in the Bigfoot footprint data is more suggestive of hoaxers randomly selecting larger-than-human footprint sizes, or completely understandable misidentifications or misinterpretations of human/animal footprints or of just random patterns that aren't any form of footprints at all. It's another poor attempt at "proof" of an undiscovered but oft-sighted primate species secretly living in modern North America. Sorry Squatchers, but again, your supposed Bigfoot evidence just does not stand up to any serious scientific scrutiny.