Exactly 50 years ago, a video was filmed in California, which still causes heated debate. After all, it is believed that none other than the Bigfoot is captured in it.
Over the past half century, the video has become famous. Still - at the moment this is the only shooting in the world of a mysterious creature known as a yeti, bigfoot or sasquatch (the last two terms are used in America). The video has been analyzed many times. Some researchers come to the conclusion that on the film a man dressed in a monkey costume, others claim that this is a primate unknown to science.
So she is a woman
In the fall of 1967, the American Roger Patterson, along with his friend Robert Gimlin, went on horseback to Bluff Creek. From these places came reports of meetings with a mysterious creature - Bigfoot. Patterson had a 16mm movie camera with him.
“They drove up to a fallen tree and, when they went around it, they found a creature squatting near a stream,” says Igor Burtsev, director of the International Center for Hominology, cryptozoologist. - Seeing the people, the creature got up and went from them towards the forest, turning around along the road. Patterson's horse reared up, and he fell off it, but managed to pull out the movie camera and start shooting. The recording lasted 60 seconds until the creature disappeared into the trees."
The camera captured a large hairy ape-like figure with short black hair covering most of its body. This is how most eyewitnesses who met Bigfoot describe him. Of greatest interest in the one-minute video is the 10-second fragment, where the creature can be seen more clearly, including the female breast. So the researchers realized they had encountered a female. Patterson later estimated her height to be 7 feet (210 cm), stride length 1 m, and foot length 37 cm.
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Learn from Bigfoot?
Academicians immediately rejected the Patterson-Gimlin film. They did not even study it, considering it a fake depicting a man in a monkey costume.
In the USSR, members of the Seminar on relict hominoids (humanoid creatures) became interested in the film. (By the way, the Academy of Sciences used to have a Commission for the Study of the Bigfoot.) The film was investigated by involving specialists in biomechanics, employees of the Research Institute of Prosthetics and Prosthetics, film industry workers and even experts from the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department.
“As a result, we came to the conclusion that the film was genuine and indeed captured the female Bigfoot Sasquatch,” says Burtsev. - The main arguments: this creature has different, different from human features of gait and anatomy. It shifts the center of gravity from one leg to the other in a different way. A person with great difficulty will be able to reproduce such a gait. This creature also has a very mobile ankle joint, a specific pattern of movement of the muscles, in particular the muscles - the extensors of the thigh, and a very flexible foot."
Doctor of Biological Sciences Valentin Sapunov generally believes that we should learn how to move from Bigfoot: “How do we walk? Our center of gravity of the body wobbles left and right and up and down. And the filmed creature moves in a straight line. This is a more rational movement! Less energy is expended this way. And many athletes - skiers, for example - would benefit from adopting this technique. It will help them improve their results."
As for the scientific results, they are as follows. Already in the 1990s. a number of American researchers (anthropologists, forensic experts, special effects specialists) have confirmed the authenticity of the Patterson-Gimlin film, finding no signs of falsification in it. Attempts to shoot a similar video, dressing up a man as a monkey, were unsuccessful. Someone, with the help of computer analysis, continues to explore the film to this day, up to a detailed study of the movements of the lips and eyes of a mysterious creature.
“But this does not provide a fundamentally new knowledge. The main thing is that we have no one to present the results to! - Igor Burtsev laments. - There is no such commission or other body in the academic community that would pay attention to these studies. They just don't notice them. We are told: bring the corpse of Bigfoot, or even better - bring him alive. But this is beyond our power. And on this, alas, all discussions end."
Dmitry Vladimirov