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Bigfoot or Bear?
Illustration by Randy Pollak
Bad news for Bigfoot fans: People who’ve reported sightings of the legendary creature have probably just seen black bears, a recent study concluded. Floe Foxon, a data science student at the University of Leeds in England, studied black bear sightings in 37 states and seven Canadian provinces across a one-year period. He found that for every 5,000 black bears, there’s an average of one Bigfoot sighting—and if bear numbers increase, the number of Bigfoot sightings do too. It makes sense: Bigfoot is typically described as large and covered in hair, and black bears—the most common bear in North America—can stand up to 7 feet tall on their hind legs. Some Bigfoot believers point out that sightings sometimes occur in places where black bears don’t live, but Foxon speculates that those are probably other animals—or even humans. Other experts agree. “It’s all the product of people’s overwrought imagination,” Chuck Neal, a retired federal ecologist, told Cowboy State Daily. “People can conjure up a Bigfoot sighting out of just about anything.”