The cover of Richard Freeman’s book “Orang Pendek: Sumatra’s Forgotten Ape”

Cable television is full of folks knocking about the woods looking for Bigfoot — Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot” even came to Maine to search — but there’s not much finding for all of that looking.

We asked Maine’s own Loren Coleman, a world-famous cryptozoologist working in the field of as-yet-undiscovered creatures for more than a half-century, why he thinks that is.

Part of the answer could be technology, he said. Having the right camera, at the right time.

“By the time you get out your cellphone and turn it on, the Bigfoot has already left,” he said. “I think all of the tree knocking, howling, finding nests, they’re all really getting distracted. The way that Bigfoot will be discovered is in one small area of the Pacific Northwest when a group of women go out and just stay in the woods for six months.”

Maybe impossible, Coleman said, given people’s busy lives. But he has a theory.

“I have a feeling that there’s something in the pheromones in males that are driving Bigfoot from them, and most of the success that’s occurring is with small groups of women that are having contact with no guns, maybe not even cameras, and really not getting all excited because they don’t find evidence right away,” he said. “Jane Goodall and every other primatologist that’s had success has been female, and I think that’s going to be the future.”

In the meantime, he predicts New Guinea and Sumatra may be the locations of the next as-yet-undiscovereds to be found.

“I have been predicting for quite a few years now that New Guinea will be the source of new animals being discovered, new species, and not too far away from there, Sumatra, is, I think, the next place where a little hairy creature called the Orang Pendek will be discovered,” Coleman said. “All of those people looking for the Loch Ness Monster, looking for Bigfoot, they’ll keep doing it, but the real success will be in Southeast Asia, in that area. I think more and more that will become the place to find new animals.”

International Cryptozoology Museum Director Loren Coleman talks about the museum during a recent tour of the museum in Portland. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

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