Emerging Science Note/Asian Big Foot

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Air Date: Week of February 3, 2006

Is Big Foot back? Maybe in Malaysia. Rachel Gotbaum reports.

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GOTBAUM: Bigfoot or big joke? The Malaysian government intends to find out.

For several generations, indigenous groups in southern Malaysia have reported the existence of a ten-foot tall, hairy, ape-like creature that walks on two legs. Amid several recent sightings and almost daily media headlines, local government officials have decided to investigate the Bigfoot rumors. The habitat of choice for the Asian Bigfoot is Endau-Rompin National Park, a rainforest roughly the size of the island of Singapore known for its monkeys and gibbons, but nothing that could possibly be confused with the giant biped reported.

For the indigenous people of Endau-Rompin, Bigfoot is nothing new. For generations they called the creature the "snaggle-toothed ghost" in folklore and tribal history. Government officials from the state of Johor plan to send two teams of scientists to scour the rainforest in search of the elusive Asian Bigfoot. One team is on a mission to track him down. If they find him, the other team intends to study him. And just in case the government needs some help, 20 members of the Singapore Paranormal Investigators group are lending their special expertise to the search to find out if the truth is really out there.

And that's this week's Note on Emerging Science. I'm Rachel Gotbaum.