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To speculate that Sasquatch exhibits autistic traits IS NOT an attempt to anthropomorphize it. Quite the opposite. It would appear it did not evolve in our species, but is exhibited in Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals hybridization. Just look at the facts. Sasquatch reportedly doesn’t like daytime or is sensitive to light. Sasquatch are not found in large social groups. Sasquatch likes solitude and wild places. Interestingly Grendel in the story of Beowulf attacks Heorot the mead hall because the Vikings partying there drove him crazy. The noise… Sasquatch are clumsy when it comes to tool manufacturing or use or they simply avoid it, from a Homo Sapiens perspective. If Neanderthals are the source of autism in Homo Sapiens? How many other archaic hominid species like Neanderthals also exhibited similar behaviors? Imagine living in a cave in Ice age Europe. Your small family unit may be the only humans you have ever known in your life. It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s lonely, it’s brutal. Most modern humans would go crazy in a situation like that. It’s well known that suicide rates are higher in places like Alaska or Russia. Autism is a coping mechanism that has manifested itself by mistake in our species. Because we build cities, we sing, we dance, we make art, we are highly social. It’s probably why we are still here and Neanderthals are not. Quite frankly Sasquatch makes Neanderthals look like modern humans by comparison. Sasquatch exhibits more autistic characteristics than Neanderthals do by a wide margin. This simply could be the march of evolution at play. It’s not a ridiculous assertion, it’s quite valid. I am not suggesting that Sasquatch is just a Homo Sapien suffering from autism, or even a hybrid. But making the assumption that Sasquatch and Humans are distant cousins? It’s entirely plausible that we share much more than bipedalism.🤷‍♂️

Autism itself isn't a mental illness. It's a physical difference in the brain structure that manifests as different perceptions resulting in different behaviors. If those behaviors are sufficiently damaging to the life of the person exhibiting the behaviors, it can be called a disorder. But it's not an illness. I am autistic. I rock back and forth without thought because it brings the world in focus and eliminates random noise. I often do so to a beat at a half or quarter the tempo of the beat like a metronome. It gets super obvious when I'm a bit tipsy as my threshold for distractions decreases and the need to focus becomes more important. So what we call autistic in humans might be entirely neurotypical for sasquatches. It can't cause a disorder because it can't disrupt their lives (and they can't be diagnosed, they won't answer the diagnostic questions lol). Their apparent behavior certainly could be compared to the behavior of autistic humans, sharing some behaviors, but it's illogical to tie the two together because different animals have different senses and different neurological makeup. Calling them autistic is like saying a lion is broken for eating a zebra. No, that's just what lions do.

He refused to behave on lead, sooooo.........

I was watching bald faced hornets hunting flys in my goat pen. I knew they were about to give chase when they started rocking back and forth. When my stepdaughters parrot was contemplating mayhem, it would start rocking back and forth.

A definite maybe. Humans and some aspects of machine vision use 'contrast detection', aka edge detection, for depth-of-field focusing. Same goes for animals. If true for Sasquatch, I would call the activity 'targeting'. Be alert for anything in the 'incoming' category. Use Plan D: duck. The autism theory for Sasquatch is unfounded. Their motions could be acoustic targeting. If you have seen images of the mounted King's Guard in the UK, you have noticed that some of visitors that have special needs are wearing full surround headphones. They are not listening to radio BBC. They wear headphones to attenuate ultrasonic noise that surrounds them. Where I live, schools solicit all types of supplies for students just before their school year starts. I asked why they were asking for ear buds with mic booms. The answer; Autistic children can hear above the normal hearing threshold of about 20 kHz. It is believed that ultrasonic noise thoroughly disrupts their learning experience. The noise coming from modern lighting and electronics is alarming. Your dog and cat can hear up to about 45kHz and 64kHz respectively. Many animals can hear above 20kHz. Humans make ultrasonic noise by: breathing through your nose, rubbing your fingers together and wearing 'modern' synthetic clothing that rubs against itself to name a few. Yes, I have ultrasonic detection equipment. Your ancestors hunted while wearing leather, wool and cotton. They were/are quiet. Working backwards and referring to Sasquatch as having a mental illness in the way of autism because they can hear above humans in the ultrasonic range is ludicious. They hear us a mile away. If you get bored, put your dog close to your trail camera and watch.

I'm not discounting any theories of Sasquatch characteristics or behavior since we have no Jane Goodall's of the squatch as of yet. Anthopomorphizing is a common way to test theories of unknowns to some extent. Compare and contrast. For example, something with a pincer grasp in the woods besides Boy Scouts and bored humans takes to elaborate geometric patterning making use of cellulose in it's varied forms. Something in the woods with speech producing vocal cords (besides humans) can create phonemes and animalistic tapestries and assemblages of sounds and the captures are evidence of something with unusual capacities in that regard. If you call that anthropomorphizing then it works for me. ASD is a complex spectrum of symptoms creating a disorder of language, socialization and coordination of varying degrees including disorders of attention. It can now be identified in infants that are videotaped. Along with the disorder can come huge strengths and savant-type skills in many. I have spent 40 years of my life in the study of autism and ASD so excuse me for the abstract or summary here. ASD can be found in the DSM-V but it is not psychopathology in the true sense of the word-- although earlier theories in child psychiatry tried to force that square peg in the round hole-- that said ADHD, anxiety and obsesssive-compulsive behaviors can be comorbid in individual cases. I agree the swaying can be like the echolocation of a barred owl moving it's head to triangulate prey so I see auditory and visual advantages to the tactic. Perhaps like many things there are manifold advantages of movements like that in Sasquatch. Then again, it may be a separate and distinct movement disorder which is fodder for an entire thread.

If I could only force them to only walk quadrupedally and grow a tail..........

Both of these theories seem sound, given that I did some swaying on a hike a long time ago, both to improve my vision of an object and to calm my nerves. No bs, there I was (if I may digress, that's how many veterans start their war stories; the difference between a war story and a fairy tale is that the latter starts with "once upon a time"). So, no bs, there I was at the end of a long (12 miles) hike through the Black Rock state forest in the lower Hudson Valley. https://www.blackrockforest.org/. Like most parks there are a lot of short, heavily trafficked trails for the tourists and longer ones which the locals know - mine was longer because I started from my house and hiked 2-3 miles just to get to the park. I'm on the return trip when I casually look to my right and about 75-100 yards away in the woods is ... A freaking African lion, female I presume, because there is no huge mane. But I can clearly see the beautiful tawny yellow-brown fur of the head and ears peaking up just above some brush looking at me. I stop dead in my tracks facing the lion. I stare at the lion. The lion stares at me. I'm telling myself that there is no way an African lion is in the woods of rural, nearly suburban, southern New York. But I can see it. But I know that it can't be an African lion. So I started shifting my position to the left and right, trying to get a better view. (I didn't want to make any sudden moves and startle it or invite it over for dinner.) Meanwhile, I'm using the time to collect my wits (not many, I know), but all I am still seeing is a lion. But the lion isn't moving. So I take one or two small sidesteps and/or blink and I am suddenly looking at ... the butt end of a recently sawed down tree. I had looked at from just the right angle to hide the trunk of the tree, the stump was covered by shrubs and brush, and the downed crown of the tree blended into the background brush. The trunk wasn't perfectly circular, so I "saw" ears and there were some defects in the wood that I perceived as "eyes." I cursed and laughed at myself the whole way home, thankful that I had worn my brown pants (I'll put the full joke in the Tar Pit). On another walk in town, I saw a 10-12' foot tall extremely skinny person walking toward me. I knew he had to be really tall because the speed limit sign behind him only reached to just under his armpit. As we walked closer together, the angle of my vision changed, the speed limit sign disappeared behind the dip in the road which I knew was there, and he was just a regular guy again. No swaying that time, but I certainly slowed up just a minute when I first say this "alien."