Locals Look for Malaysia “Bigfoot”
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 23rd, 2006
The Malaya Mail is reporting the logical next step in the unfolding “Bigfoot” story in Malaysia. Local scientists want to beat all the promised international media and expeditions to the punch.
What will the locals discover their unknown hairy hominoids actually look like? And how do these cryptids compare to other hairy hominoids seen in the region, as shown in The Field Guide to Bigfoot?
“Local experts want priority in the hunt,” proclaims today’s headline.
The Kuala Lumpur newspaper on January 23, 2006, notes:
Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Animal Science Department head Professor Dr Azahar Kassim said, with numerous Bigfoot sightings reported and physical evidence like footprints and hair samples, it was high time Johor launched a full-scale search for the creature.
“I personally would like to join the expedition. I am sure many other experts in the country are looking forward to it, too, so I hope the Johor Government and other authorities go ahead with it,” said Dr. Azahar.
Yes, I would enjoy being on that expedition too. But short of that, I hope the Malaysians utilize the id-kit availability within my forthcoming new The Field Guide to Bigfoot, to be published this spring by Anomalist Books. The old edition’s drawing were employed in Cameroon and Indonesia to narrow down what locals were seeing, and such a tool certainly would be good to zero in on the descriptions of what the Malaysians feel their “Bigfoot” looks like.
A local expedition is a fantastic idea. They would have the liberty to perhaps search longer for the important evidence. And their discoveries could be earthshaking. A veterinarian by profession, Azahar is quoted today as saying an unknown hominoid DNA “find would revolutionize the scientific community’s understanding of human existence in the world.”
I always encourage locals to do as much of their own investigations as possible, because of specific regional knowledge of their own animals, folklore, and language. The eventual goal of cryptozoological inquiry is to have well-respected and established local field operatives conducting round-the-year investigations. Then this network of worldwide individuals can cooperate and collaborate with other zoologists and anthropologists, as well as supportive credible specialists in cryptozoology, those few of us known as “cryptozoologists.” The advent of the internet and emails has made such inquiries not the hope of the future, but the rather common standard practice of today.
I congratulate those in Malaysia who are organizing a serious search and collection of data on their local reports.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
You can add one more cryptozoologist to that short list, since I don’t have to get a degree or anything like that!