Yu Zhenhuan, above, wants to carry the Olympic torch before the Beijing Games. One of the world’s hairiest men, who nicknames himself “King Kong”, has launched a campaign to carry the Olympic torch during the relay ahead of next year’s Beijing Games. (Reuters: Claro Cortes IV)

Occasionally skeptics will try to debunk a Bigfoot case from the past by pointing to abnormally hairy people or feral human beings as a solution. Is this possible? Feral adults and wild children certainly have existed and have been found. The Tenth Edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (1758), lists seven cases of “wild children,” and down through the years real historical incidents of dozens of feral people have filled the pages of psychology journals and natural histories. Deserted children raised by wolves and bears are more than folklore, but they have little to do with our survey of undiscovered primates. Misidentifications of “wild children” and “wild people” seem highly unlikely since the individuals are often dirty but not hairy, often elusive but not uncatchable. These individuals are more a matter for human psychology than primate biology. Likewise, on very rare occasions, otherwise normal humans will display a recessive gene that leads to an excessive amount of body and facial hair. These hirsute anomalies became the “bearded ladies” of former circus freak shows. But there really is no foundation to arguments about feral or hirsute people being mistaken for the hairy bipeds of this field guide. The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates, page 164.