Searching for Sasquatch

This fresh and entertaining look at the search for Sasquatch concerns more than just the startling and controversial nature of monsters and monster hunting in the late 20th century, but the more important relationship between the professional scientists and amateur naturalists who hunt them--and their place in the history of science. The traditional heroic narrative of monster hunting situates mainstream, academic scientists (the eggheads) as villains rejecting the existence of anomalous primates and cryptozoology as something unworthy of study. It gives a privileged place to untrained, but passionate amateur naturalists (the crackpots) who soldier on by themselves against great odds, and the unwarranted obstinacy of the mainstream to bring knowledge of these creatures to light. Drawing on new, original manuscript sources, Brian Regal shows this model to be inaccurate: many professional scientists eagerly sought anomalous primates, examining their traces and working out theoretical paradigms to explain them. Even though if mainstream scientific thinking held that anomalous primates--Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti--did not and could not exist, these scientists risked their careers and associated themselves with eccentric amateurs because they believed these creature to be a genuine biological reality.