The black bear has long been a potential suspect in Bigfoot sightings. The size fits, as a bear can go about 7 feet tall when standing on two legs. And researchers have pointed out before that sasquatch sightings have been heavy in areas with lots of black bears. This study compared the locations of Bigfoot sightings with the North American distribution of black bears, Live Science reports. The study found an average of one Bigfoot sighting for every 5,000 black bears. The findings, published in the Journal of Zoology on Jan. 13, show that if the bear population goes up, so do reports of Bigfoot sightings.
A biology professor not involved in the study said there's a logic to the explanation but added a caution. "Correlation doesn't mean causation," Michael Hickerson wrote in an email, "but there might be so much correlation between black bears and Bigfoot sightings in most areas that the parsimonious [simplest] explanation is people misidentifying bears as sasquatches." The amount of forest area also correlated with the black bear population. Using 2006 data, researchers documented that for every 1,000 added bears in an area, Bigfoot sightings rose 4%.
Black bears are the most common bear in North America, present in 32 states and nearly every Canadian province, per Live Science. But Florida confounded the researchers. Numerous Bigfoot sightings are reported in the state, though it has few bears. Florida also doesn't have much forest cover. "Shouldn't less forest area predict fewer sasquatch sightings, not more?" Hickerson said. "And if there are more humans but very few bears, what are the mistaken identifications coming from?" (More bigfoot stories.)
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