Their origin has been the subject of speculation since the first was discovered in 2007.
Now investigations have revealed the truth about 12 human feet which have washed up on Canada's Pacific coast in the past five years.
Most belonged to suicide victims who had thrown themselves into the Fraser river, which flows into the Pacific near Vancouver, a coroner has found.
Their bodies decomposed, but the feet were preserved because they were in rubber-soled shoes, and were carried along the coast by the tide.
Stephen Fonseca, a British Columbia coroner, said some of the deaths could have been accidental, but dismissed theories they belonged to victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami, or stowaways on a container ship.
