Living Legends

Bigfoot sightings go back for several decades at least, but it would be very surprising if a large humanoid had managed to live mostly undetected in North America. Bigfoot believers can take some encouragement from the fact that the world?s most famous former cryptid is a nonhuman primate. English sailor Andrew Battell, who was held captive by the Portuguese in West Africa around 1600, claimed to have seen a monster on the Dark Continent: ?The Pongo is in all proportions like a man; for he is more like a giant in stature than a man ... They cannot speak, and have no more understanding than a beast.? (Descriptions of hairy, manlike creatures were scattered throughout early Western literature as well.) In all likelihood, Battell was describing the gorilla, although the animal would remain just a rumor to Western scientists until an American missionary brought a gorilla skull to an anatomist in the mid-19th century. Perhaps our reluctance to accept the existence of near-human creatures comes from some revulsion at their appearance. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins notes, ?where other animals such as cats or deer could be seen as beautiful in their own way, gorillas and other apes, precisely because of their similarity to ourselves, seemed like caricatures, distortions, grotesque.?

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