Jane Goodall on Bigfoot

Eminent primatologist and conservationist 87-year-old Jane Goodall (left) has just launched a new initiative called Trees for Jane to restore the world's forests and help stop climate change. 

Sure, this is important and I’ve blogged about the importance of planting trees previously. There is no doubt that tree-planting has become a cornerstone of many environmental campaigns. The call to plant trees is everywhere, seen as a simple and effective way to help reduce the impact of carbon emissions and restore natural ecosystems. 

But in this post, I’m on a different tangent, i.e. the topic of Bigfoot (also commonly referred to as Sasquatch). 

In fact, in a GQ interview this month itself, Goodall has spoken publicly about the possibility that there may be undiscovered primates hiding in remote locations around the globe. Check out her response to the question about the existence of Bigfoot: 

“For various reasons. And I'll tell you one, my most striking one. I was in Ecuador. We'd flown for two solid hours over unbroken forest in a small plane and we visited four tiny little communities. 30 to 50 people, no roads, and they communicate with each other by means of like in the old days – it was the town crier, but these are hunters actually, and they carry the news from one village to another and letters and things like that. So I had an interpreter and I said to him, "When you next meet one of these hunters, could you ask if they've ever seen a monkey without a tail?" Three of the hunters came back and said, "Oh yes. We've seen monkeys without tails. They walk upright and they're about six foot tall". 

Now this was an interpreter from the village. He knew nothing about Bigfoot, nothing at all. Every single country has its version. Yeti, Yowie in Australia, Wild Man in China. So I don't know if it's perhaps a myth that stems from maybe the last of the Neanderthals. But then is the last of the Neanderthals still living in these remote forests? I don't know. But I'm not going to say it doesn't exist and I'm not going to say people who believe in it are stupid”.