Searching for Sasquatch

Bigfoot hunters and their brethren are often depicted as outcasts, misfits, or passionate amateurs toiling in solitude. But has this always been the case? This fresh and entertaining study looks at the surprisingly complex relationship between professional scientists and cryptozoologists. The traditional heroic narrative of monster-hunting in the late twentieth century treats mainstream, academic scientists (the eggheads) as villains who reject the possibility of anomalous primates and cryptozoology as unworthy of study. It gives a privileged place to passionate amateur naturalists (the crackpots) who soldier on against great odds and an obstinate public to bring knowledge of these creatures to light. However, as historian Brian Regal shows, this is misleading: many professional scientists eagerly sought anomalous primates, examining their traces and working out evolutionary paradigms to explain them. Even though scientific thinking held that creatures such as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti did not and could not exist, these scientists risked their careers because they believed them to be a genuine biological reality.