What a Search Can and Cannot Show: teacher key

Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, grade 6 edition, written for 6th grade. Hairs, DNA, sonar and hoaxes: how scientists test the stories of Bigfoot and Nessie, and what each test can and cannot tell us.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What did the hair tests find?
   • Almost all came from known animals (answer)
   • All came from a new ape
   • None came from animals
2. What was the saola?
   • A large forest animal found in 1992 (answer)
   • A kind of eel
   • A hoax photo
3. Why could the 2018 team not say giant eels exist?
   • Eel DNA does not tell how big the eels are (answer)
   • They found no eel DNA
   • They did not test the water
4. What did the Natural History Museum experts say about the 1933 footprints?
   • They came from a plesiosaur
   • They were made with a hippo-foot umbrella stand or ashtray (answer)
   • They came from a bear
5. What does "verified" mean in "No one has verified it"?
   • Filmed
   • Lost
   • Confirmed by checking (answer)

Words

• hoax: a trick
• sonar: sound finder
• DNA: body code
• plesiosaur: sea reptile
• verified: confirmed