AI Analysis Reveals New Findings on Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film

Posted Tuesday, July 07, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

A fascinating new video has surfaced on YouTube that dives deep into what artificial intelligence uncovered when it was finally tasked with analyzing the most famous piece of Sasquatch footage ever recorded. The Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967 has been debated for nearly six decades, and this latest examination might be the most thorough one yet. The footage in question was captured on October 20, 1967, when Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were riding horses along a dry gravel riverbed at Bluff Creek in Northern California's Six Rivers National Forest. Patterson had been investigating reports of large unidentified creatures in the region for years and had even self-published a book about Sasquatch in 1966. Critics would later point to this obsession as evidence the whole thing was staged, but as the video points out, that argument cuts both ways. What happened next has been analyzed frame by frame by everyone from Soviet biomechanists to Hollywood special effects artists. Patterson's horses spooked, he fell off his mount, scrambled to his feet with his rented 16mm Kodak camera, and began filming a large, dark bipedal figure walking along the opposite bank of the creek. The figure crosses a sandbar and disappears into the treeline, but not before turning to look directly at the camera in what became known as the Patty frame. The video does an excellent job breaking down why this 59 seconds of footage has refused to be debunked despite six decades of attempts. Bob Heironimus claimed in 2004 that he was the man in the suit, but he could never produce the costume, demonstrate the walk, or provide corroborating evidence. The Hollywood costume designer he claimed made the outfit, Philip Morris, gave a description of the suit's construction that forensic analysts said simply could not produce the movement patterns visible in the film. Multiple special effects professionals with million-dollar studio budgets have examined the footage over the years and consistently said they could not replicate the figure with 1967-era materials. The muscle movement visible beneath the surface, particularly in the gluteal and thigh areas, was beyond what costume technology could achieve. This wasn't Bigfoot believers talking, this was the people whose actual job is building convincing creature costumes. Dr. Dmitri Donskoy, chief of biomechanics at the USSR Central Institute of Physical Culture, spent months analyzing the film in 1971 and concluded the gait, stride pattern, and weight distribution were inconsistent with a human in a costume. His work was largely ignored in the West, partly because of Cold War politics and partly because the conclusion was inconvenient for the debunkers. Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, spent years on the same analysis and reached similar conclusions. He published papers, wrote books, and was mocked by colleagues for daring to take the subject seriously. But here's where things get really interesting. In 2024, a team of biomechanical engineers, forensic imaging specialists, and computer vision experts conducted the most comprehensive technical analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin film ever attempted. They used photogrammetric reconstruction to extract precise three-dimensional measurements from the two-dimensional footage, neural network pattern recognition trained on thousands of hours of documented primate locomotion, and machine learning algorithms capable of detecting surface deformation patterns at the subpixel level. The AI wasn't asked whether Sasquatch is real. It was asked a much narrower question: are the physical properties of the figure consistent or inconsistent with a human being wearing a costume? That's a question with a measurable answer. The findings were presented in three major parts, and according to the video, they get progressively more unsettling. The first finding dealt with the walk itself. Human bipedal locomotion follows predictable patterns, and the AI was able to articulate precisely what casual viewers in 1967 sensed but struggled to put into words. Something about the gait looked too smooth, too fluid, too wrong. The video goes into much greater detail about all three findings and the methodology behind them, and honestly, this is one worth watching in full. The way the researchers approached the analysis, removing human subjectivity and confirmation bias from the equation, represents a genuine shift in how this footage can be examined. Whether you're a longtime believer or just someone who's always been curious about why this film has never been definitively debunked, there's something here that's going to stick with you. Check out the full video on the Uncovered Expedition channel for the complete breakdown of all three findings and what they might mean for the future of Sasquatch research.