She said officials would interview people living around the Kota Tinggi area, where workers last month reported seeing two huge creatures and a youngster, 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 the footprint is still there, and there's the possibility of something other than animals, then maybe we would put out camera traps," she said.
"If there's a possibility of it really being the Bigfoot, then I think we should do it," she said.
Yatim ventured a guess that the creatures are actually large sun bears.
Johor is home to large tracts of jungle, including its famed Endau-Rompin National Park, and unconfirmed sightings of large creatures surface periodically.
An advisor 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.
"We are sitting on a wonderful opportunity by way of the Bigfoot research to spur ecotourism in Johor, taking the cue of Loch Ness in Scotland," Chow was quoted as saying by the
New Straits Times.
Chow took the photographs of the footprint and estimated the beast was three meters (10 feet) tall, based on a broken tree branch found hanging over the site.
Brown hair reeking of body odor has also been retrieved around the area, he said.
Sightings of mythical, ape-like creatures have been reported in wilderness areas all over the world. They are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the United States and Canada, and yetis in Asia.
