Theories on Bigfoot: The Breakdown
A simple guide for evaluating unusual claims
Over the past few months I’ve been summarizing different theories on Bigfoot. I wrote about other topics too, such as bones, pictures, and even institutions. Before I turn my attention to other Bigfoot-related things, I want to put a bow on the Theories on Bigfoot series. In total I wrote six posts (Parts 1 & 2 and Parts 3.1 - 3.4) on this topic and maybe 15,000 words, which is far too much to remember, especially considering that debunkers think our ability to remember anything is bullshit. So this post condenses almost everything we learned into a convenient framework.
The Big Three Theories… or Maybe Just Two
As I reviewed my previous posts, I realized I could collapse my thinking into three main theories about what Bigfoot could be. One theory is that Bigfoot is a Natural Species, as much as a bear, beaver, or baboon is a natural, biological animal.
The second theory appeared under different names in my posts. Daegling referred to it as “human agency,” which I felt to be inaccurate and therefore dubbed it a theory concerning the “residuals of human nature.” In retrospect this seems pedantic on my part, and honestly I think we both failed to find a worthy descriptor. What we really meant —if I can speak for Daegling — is that Bigfoot is a product of Deception. This hit me after writing about hoaxing, which I based largely on Peter Hancock’s work on the subject.
The third theory is that Bigfoot is an Unnatural Creature. This includes what I would call fringe ideas of Bigfoot as an inter-dimensional, extra-terrestrial, paranormal, or experimental (as in a genetic lab experiment) creature. See my early post Theories that Color our Social World for more on these ideas. While I like to keep an open-mind about such things, I want to recognize this theory as an option to consider and then gently place it aside. No disrespect to the those who believe Bigfoot to be unnatural, but applying this theory can be like explaining alien abductions using a poltergeist theory. It’s too untenable for me.
If we drop the Unnatural Creature theory, this leaves us two opposing theories: Natural Species and Deception. Here’s a foundation for our framework, including the “X” over the Unnatural Creature theory.
A Word on Myth
Before I get into specific hypotheses within our two theories, I want to briefly mention the concept of myth and how this fits with Bigfoot. In my last post on Myth and Reality I wrote about myth in relation to the African wolf. Both Napier and Daegling ultimately concluded in their books that Bigfoot is either a real animal or a mythical one. This seems to be a common dichotomy in the social world of Bigfoot, and self-styled skeptics (to borrow Henry Bauer’s term in my Ideals & Institutions post) have latched on to it with unbounded vigor. Joe Nickell, writing for the Skeptical Inquiry in 2017, outlined what he called the “Seven Phases of Mythmaking”1, which reads more like a Psychology 101 case study on apophenia and confirmation bias than it does an attempt to explain Bigfoot encounters from a disciplined perspective of myth.
My point is no commonly understood definition of myth exists in the social world of Bigfoot. Napier and Daegling used different definitions, and while Napier seemed to dismiss myth as a plausible explanation for Bigfoot but not for Yeti, Daegling wholeheartedly embraced it, as did Nickell. I side with Napier but will go a step further:
Bigfoot in western culture is neither myth nor legend nor folktale nor folklore. Bigfoot is simply something people report to encounter in remote places. There is no moral lesson or symbolism or origin story or supernatural element. We don’t need to be motivated by Virgil, Joseph Campbell, or brothers Grimm. Contemporary culture and our human vices provide all the necessary instruments for deception.
I’ll dig deeper on this idea in a later post. For now, I’m integrating “Contemporary Culture” into our framework. Myth is an artifact of culture, so I’m not completely dismissing myth. I just think the role of myth in Bigfoot sightings is neither direct nor significant. When it comes to deception, Bigfoot is merely a prop with no deeper meaning. I hope this will become clearer —for both of us — in the coming weeks. For now, let’s acknowledge the amorphous idea of culture as something that affects our Bigfoot as Deception theory.
Main Hypotheses: Level 2
While theories provide a way to understand and interpret the world around us, hypotheses are closer to the data and evidence at hand. We can test our hypotheses and build support for our theory. There are two main hypotheses associated with the Bigfoot as a Natural Species theory: the hominin and the hominid hypotheses. In the post Theories that Color our Social World I highlighted the confusion between these terms but settled on hominin as a reference to modern and extinct human species and their immediate ancestors, and hominid as a reference to modern and extinct great apes including gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees.
Differentiating between hominin and hominid based on reported observation and circumstantial evidence is difficult. Generally, I lean toward hominid, because I rarely hear about Bigfoot incorporating knowledge-based tools in their behavior — no sharpened stones or spears, no fire, no clothing made from animal hides, etc. Nor do they appear to have a written language, whether symbols or drawings. There are reports of a verbal language and manipulating objects in the environment, such as throwing rocks and knocking on trees, but these are no different from other intelligent animals. I’m not familiar with what all our human ancestors did regarding tool use, but based on current evidence the hominid hypothesis seems more likely.
Under the Bigfoot as Deception theory there are three main hypotheses. Sensory deception relates to mistaken perceptions of inanimate or animate objects. Cognitive deception involves a miscommunication about the true nature of the world. This will sound familiar if you read my posts on hoaxing. This hypothesis is tricky, as the person reporting the encounter could either be the perpetrator of the miscommunication or the victim of it. Finally, we have Self-deception. In these cases, the encounter is created in the mind of the reporter. Here’s our framework again, now with main hypotheses within each theory:
Sub-hypotheses: Level 3
This brings us to the sub-hypotheses under the Bigfoot as a Natural Species theory. Whether hominin or hominid, Bigfoot is either a known species thought to be extinct or Bigfoot is an entirely undiscovered species with no known record in our documented history. This is a scary thought, but as Matt Pruitt points out in his recent book The Phenomenal Sasquatch, we have likely missed a high percentage of species that have walked this earth in our attempt to document life on this planet. Many species have just slip through the cracks of history. It’s sad to consider there have been creatures on earth that will never be known and remembered. Time and evolution will get us all in the end, I suppose.
These sub-hypotheses are beyond us and can only truly be addressed with a DNA test, either taken from a body or from the environment. Let’s keep this mind as the ultimate goal of a Bigfoot researcher — not only proving their existence but identifying them as hominin or hominid. Our real focus on TSB is evaluating the Bigfoot as a Deception theory: whether sensory, cognitive, or self-deception serve as the most plausible explanation.
Under sensory deception, there are two sub-hypotheses: pareidolia and observer error. These should be familiar if you’ve been reading my posts. Pareidolia is our tendency to see patterns in inanimate objects. Observer error is more commonly referred to as the misidentification of one animal for another. As we learned previously, the term “misidentification” as it’s used in the social world of Bigfoot fails to accurately reflect the scientific literature. Observer error is the term I prefer here. See my post The Inscrutable Misidentification Argument to understand why.
Cognitive deception comes from the work of Peter Hancock and I wrote a couple posts on hoaxes, the people that commit them, and the people that fall for them (my post Big Hoaxes and Little Lies gets into this). If you remember, Hancock defines cognitive deception as a miscommunication about the true state of the world. We got into the motivating vices of the deceiver and the motivating needs of the deceived: These are core elements of any cognitive deception.
There are three sub hypotheses under self-deception. In The Art of the Hoax post I wrote about apophenia —our tendency to see causal patterns in data or information when they don’t exist; the darker cousin to pareidolia — as a factor that makes us vulnerable to cognitive deception. In our framework, I put this tendency under self-deception as I think it fits better here. I could change my mind, but for now this is where it lives. I also lump in here confirmation bias, or a tendency to see the data in a way that supports our beliefs. I wrote about a similar concept called motivated reasoning in my Ideals and Institutions post.
Memory, or more specifically unreliable or poor memory (see the post The Life you Remember is Complete Bullshit), refers to cases where a once uncertain encounter mutates into a Bigfoot encounter. Finally we have the sub-hypothesis of the disordered mind, or encounters that are best explained by a psychological or cognitive dysfunction. This one should be used with caution, as diagnosing a disordered mind is better left to professionals. I should find one, see what they have to say about Bigfoot reports, and write a post about it. This would be cheaper than buying Barbara Wasson’s out-of-print Sasquatch Apparitions book.
The Bottom-line
Reported encounters with Bigfoot reflect either a natural species or a deception. That’s it. There are many modes through which deception can operate and we need to be familiar with all of them. Throughout Part 3 of the Theories on Bigfoot series I tested Jay’s encounter in north Tennessee against most of the sub-hypotheses under the Deception theory. We were hard-pressed to find a plausible explanation for Jay’s encounter as a deception, but we couldn’t fully discount deception without knowing a little more about Jay, his friends, and the context of the encounter. There are no easy answers when it comes to Bigfoot, but we’re getting closer to the truth.
At its core, this framework is about telling truth from falsehood, and in this way the framework applies to just about any information that comes your way. Am I being deceived and by what mechanism? is a question we can ask whenever confronted by someone with unusual claims. Now you know what to look for... and you have a colorful framework.
Next time on TSB
Honestly, after taking a week off I feel a little rusty in my writing. But there’s always a balance to be achieved and for the next few months I’m back to posting every other week. I plan to do more Substack Notes in the interim, provided I can figure the damn things out! For the next post, I’ll cover either the concept of myth in greater detail or start exploring more Bigfoot encounter reports like Jay’s. Encounters are fascinating to me, and much like theories we can break them down into common themes and assign them to specific categories. So next time we’ll either get mythological or get organized. Life is full of little surprises.
Thanks for reading and don’t be a Stranger!
DC | TSB
You can find the Nickell article here: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2017/09/bigfoot-as-big-myth-seven-phases-of-mythmaking/