03/28/2018
Last week a friend told me about a set of tracks that he found in the snow near his home. He described them as quite large and almost human-like. I emailed him this photo of a black bear’s hind foot and he confirmed that it matched the tracks he’d seen. When a bear walks on all fours, the heel of its hind foot doesn’t show in its tracks. But when it stands or walks on its hind legs–a stance known as plantigrade–the heel does show and indeed resembles a human footprint, except that the big toe is on the outside rather than on the inside. It makes me wonder that when people claim to have found “Bigfoot” tracks in the snow out West, if they’re not really seeing the tracks of a large grizzly bear walking on its hind legs. And of course, once the snow melts the evidence is gone.
