Nature
PUBLISHED
You are deep somewhere in a North American forest and you see a hairy bipedal beast lumbering around. But if that somewhere is in New Jersey, you can put away your tin foil hat. Chances are, you’ve come across “Pedals” – the bipedal bear.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.New Jersey local news NJ.com reports that Pedals is alive and well, after fears that he may not have made it through the winter. The news outlet goes on to say that this black bear’s odd manner of walking came about from an injury to his front paws, most likely from a car accident. He was first spotted last August and since then has become quite the online celebrity with more than 13,000 followers on his Facebook fan page.
Last year even saw a GoFundMe page raise nearly $28,000 to relocate the injured bear to a nearby animal sanctuary. However, the project fell through after they failed to acquire a permit to move the bear from the Division of Fish and Wildlife.
Check out a video of Pedals filmed on June 20, 2016. As you can see, comparisons of Pedals to Sasquatch are evident. Outside the world of urban folklore and popular culture, there's very little in the way of scientific evidence for the existence of bigfoot. But, as you can imagine, it’s easy to see how sightings of a huge bipedal bear might spark some imaginations.
