People hunting for Bigfoot use sophisticated techniques for collecting and validating evidence, drawing on scientific methods to try and prove its existence, research shows.

Dr Jamie Lewis of Cardiff University spent three years conducting more than 150 interviews with Bigfooters and those interested in Bigfoot. He found those seeking proof of the creature’s existence draw on the esteem of science and modern technologies to add credibility to their claim that the creature exists.

Bigfooters are members of a passionate community of cryptozoologists, with many going to great lengths searching for evidence of a creature which has never been confirmed by conventional science. Together with Dr Andrew Bartlett of Sheffield University, Dr Lewis has used these interviews to explore the ways in which Bigfooters make and contest mainstream knowledge claims.

Interviewees include Dr Jane Goodall, Professor Jeff Meldrum, Professor Todd Disotell, stars of the TV programme Finding Bigfoot – Matt Moneymaker, James ‘Bobo’ Fay, Cliff Barackaman – stars of the TV show Expedition Bigfoot – Ronny LeBlanc and Bryce Johnson – Les Stroud, the star of Survivorman, as well as Peter Byrne who was heavily involved in early Yeti and Bigfoot expeditions during the 1950s and 1960s.

Dance is a form of cultural expression that has endured all of human history, channeling a seemingly innate response to the recognition of sound and rhythm. A team at the University of Tokyo and collaborators demonstrated distinct fMRI activity patterns in the brain related to a specific audience’s level of expertise in dance. The findings were born from recent breakthroughs in dance motion-capture datasets and AI generative models, facilitating a cross-modal study characterizing the art form’s complexity.

Researchers from Aalto University used network theory to develop a method for measuring the impact of individuals on societal division. While the method can be applied to any case around which social media data can be gathered, the initial study utilised Twitter data collected before Finland’s 2019 and 2023 parliamentary elections. The results reveal how a relatively small elite can have a disproportionately large influence on shaping polarizing environments.