I got a number of blog hits the other day from folks looking at an earlier picture I put up of a bear with mange (picture at right).I thought nothing more of it until this morning when I got the Newshound feed from J.R. Absher's excellent blog, where he reports that some bo-ho is claiming his trail cam picked up a picture of Big Foot in Pennsylvania.
J.R. is skeptical, and so am I. Bears with mange (along with coyotes with mange, dogs with mange, fox with mange and goats with mange) are not uncommon, and things without hair DO look rather odd and other-worldly.
Of course, headlines and hype are helped quite a lot by the fact that most "crytozoologists" (who are almost never actual zoologists) have rarely spent too much time in forest or field. Like small children who have just read a book about Kenya, when they hear hoof beats they assume it must be a herd of zebra rather than one small pony.
It helps for good headlines, of course, if you send your blurry photos (and they are always blurry) to the "Big Foot Research Organization" for identification, rather than to the Division of Natural Resources or State Game Commission.
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