(Original headline: These are made by humans, but who made these? )
If you see footprints like these in Batam, don't get alarmed.
No, the mythical 'Bigfoot' that was 'spotted' in the Johor jungles late last year has not made its way to the Indonesian island.
The giant footprints are actually the handiwork of several Singaporeans who are trying to check whether the Bigfoot sightings in Johor are credible or nothing more than a hoax.
The members from the Singapore Paranormal Investigators (SPI), a non-profit club here, told The New Paper in an interview last month that they were scheduled to conduct an expedition into the jungles in Johor to search for tell-tale signs to prove the existence of the Bigfoot.
TREK NO-GO
But at the eleventh hour, their request to trek into the jungle were turned down by the Malaysian authorities.
So the SPI decided to take matters into their own hands, or rather feet, and conduct a Bigfoot experiment in Batam.
Last month, nine SPI members went to a mangrove in Batam to test whether the prints published in Malaysian papers, allegedly belonging to a large, ape-like beast, could have been made by a human wearing scuba-diving flippers.
SPI member Alvic Tan, 29, donned a pair of flippers and left some footprints on the soft mangrove mud.
These were later compared to the photo of footprints that were published in Malaysian papers last December.
SPI president Kenny Fong, an assistant professor based in Macau, said: 'The Malaysian Bigfoot photo that was in the papers showed a footprint in a triangular shape but without toe marks, resembling a waddle.
'It was therefore speculated to be possibly a diver's footprint on the soft mud.'
He added that SPI had chosen to conduct the experiment in a muddy swamp similar to the river shore in Kampong Mawai where the Bigfoot prints were allegedly photographed.
FLIPPERS OR SUN BEARS?
Diving flippers was one of the four theories proposed on SPI's online forum on what could have made those 'Bigfoot' prints.
For example, army divers could have been walking about in their diving gear while on training.
The other theories include humans wearing wide, triangular sandals and animals like the sun bear.
Mr Tan, who works in IT, volunteered to wear the flippers because 'no one else wanted to try as it was dirty and muddy'.
He said: 'Someone's got to do it. I was quite happy to oblige because it's my interest. We wanted to find out if the shape of the photographed footprint can be created by fins.'
At first, he walked with the flippers on the soft mud soil.
Those footprints didn't look anything like the Bigfoot 'prints'.
The part that sank into the mud was on the heel position, whereas the front part only left a slight border mark on the mud.
Dr Fong noted that this ruled out the theory that the tracks were made by divers walking normally in flippers.
NOT EASY
They took the experiment a further step in which he stepped on the front part of the flippers worn by Mr Tan. This resulted in footprints that did look more like the alleged Bigfoot ones.
This raised the possibility that the footprints were falsely created.
But based on SPI's experiment, Mr Tan said that it would not be easy to create the Bigfoot prints using fins.
'The photographed footprint published seemed to have a vague toe outline, which can't be made using flippers,' he said.
'Of course if we have the chance to see the actual print in Johor, that would help.'
For now, the jury is still out on the big footprints sighted in Johor.
A FarShores thanks to Charles Goh, of API, for forwarding this link.
