Just before Christmas we were lucky enough to interview cryptozoologist Loren Coleman about his long career – more than six decades now – searching for legendary beasties like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. We also talked about a wide range of related topics, asking Loren for his thoughts about the attempted ‘de-extinction’ of animals like the thylacine (‘Tasmanian tiger’), the search for surviving members of the Flores ‘Hobbit’ species, and the impact of modern social media influencer culture on the field.
During our chat RPJ also had to ask Loren for his take on the now-famous – or perhaps infamous? – Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage which has embedded itself in the public consciousness. Loren initially joked about having never heard about it (there’s a number of laugh-out-loud funny parts of the interview, it was good fun!), before then offering his view:
I think that it’s very easy for me to say, that I consider the Patterson-Gimlin film the best evidence of Bigfoot – and it’s 98% sure that it probably is real.
There’s always the possibility that someone could have faked it, but when you look at it and you think: You do not have costumes from Hollywood that had breasts that hung down and swang around. And also the whole idea that you can look at the film closely and see muscle movement underneath the skin. So there’s a lot of little things – and why would you fake a female, when so many more of the sightings are males?
See Loren’s full comments on the Patterson-Gimlin film, and so much more besides, in our interview:
