Friday, April 06, 2012

Predicting the Distribution of Sasquatch in Western North America

This well researched article was written tongue-in-cheek for the Journal of Biogeography by three gentleman: J.D. Lozier from the University of Illinois, Department of Entomology, Pete Aniello from ESRI Professional Database Services and M.J. Hickerson from the Biology Department at Queens College City University of New York in Flushing, New York.

In the report the authors compare the distribution of Bigfoot sightings with an ENM (ecological niche model) for the black bear, Ursus Americanus, and suggest that "many sightings of this cryptozoid may be cases of mistaken identity".

The authors were not writing an article on how to document the presence of Sasquatch, but to educate researchers on how to utilize and process information in a database to rule out causes for error or misinformation.

"Although it is possible that Sasquatch and Ursus Americanus share such remarkably similar bio-climatic requirements, we nonetheless suspect that many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears".

You can read the entire article as a pdf here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02152.x/pdf

Acknowledgment goes to Rebekah Sisk for sharing this article with me.

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