KUALA LUMPUR: The Wildlife Department will investigate claims that "Bigfoot"- man-like beasts - are roaming the jungles of Johor, an official said yesterday.

Newspapers have this week aired stories of sightings of the legendary creatures, and photographs of a giant footprint left near a jungle swamp.

The department"s Biodiversity Conservation Division director, Siti Hawa Yatim, said they would examine the prints, which reportedly measure up to 45cm. .

"We are going to check first if the case is a true one," Siti Hawa told AFP.

She said officials would interview people living around the Kota Tinggi area, where workers last month reported seeing two huge creatures and its young, and may set up cameras in jungle areas to try to capture images of any beasts.

"If we can"t work out from the evidence what it is and we can see if the footprint is still there, and there"s the possibility of something other than animals, then maybe we would put camera traps," she said.

"If there"s a possibility of it really being the Bigfoot, then I think we should do it," she said, although venturing a guess the creatures are actually large "sun bears".

Johor is home to large tracts of jungle, including the Endau-Rompin National Park, and unconfirmed sightings of large creatures surface periodically.

An adviser to the Johor branch of the Malaysian Nature Society, Vincent Chow, has been lobbying the government to look into the claims and said an investigation could spur global interest.

Chow took the photographs of the footprint and estimated the beast was 3m tall, based on a broken tree branch found hanging over the site. Brown hair, reeking of body odour, has also been retrieved around the area, he said.

Sightings of mythical ape-like creatures have been reported in wilderness all over the world. They are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the United States and Canada, and yetis in Asia.