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A New Species Of Giant Ape?
jd writes "The New Scientist, The Age (an Australian newspaper), Daily Telegraph (a British newspaper), BBC, and the Discovery Channel are talking excitedly about a strange primate, found in the Congo. Locals say it is notorious for killing fully-grown adult lions. Optimists hope that it is a new species, maybe related to the gorilla. Pessimists claim it's an overgrown chimpanzee. In either case, primates aren't discovered every day, making this a rare find indeed."
Wasn't this story reported -- and discussed here -- in august last year as well?
8 /1 0/0014206&tid=134&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/0
(Of course, I didn't RTFA)
this seems to be related and has pictures and better info - just look at the size of those footprints?
http://karlammann.com/bondo.html
Bigfoot ?
Nick...
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Its nothing more than sensationalist press...
The apes do exist but they are simply chimpansees. According to collected DNA not even a new subspecies but part of the 'schweinfurthii' family.
They just get larger then most chimps, which is not totally uncommon.
Jeroen
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Hardly surprising - his book was inspired by the same tales that brought researchers to the same area, looking for the same creatures.
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Well, the BBC article removed the quote from it's context.
From Daily Telegraph:
"We could hear them in the trees, about 20 feet away," she said. "My tracker made a sound of an injured duiker [antelope] and four came rushing through the brush towards me.
"If this had been a bluff charge, they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet. And they were huge. They were coming in for the kill. I was directly in front of them, and as soon as they saw my face, they stopped and disappeared."
The apes thought they were going after a wounded antelope, when they realized they had been tricked, they ran away.
Guess BBC found it more "dramatic" out of context.
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http://karlammann.com/bondo.html They printed the phylogenetic tree as well as wrote up the findings. I lazily skimmed the text but the phylogenetic tree makes it look not that exciting. A new subspecies but not very diverse from other known species. Enjoy~
for the faint at heart, the link contains a lot of pictures, among them a rather disturbing picture of a semi decapitated ape with a lot of blood. Given how human they look, it might not be suitable for all.
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http://www.vpro.nl/wetenschap/index.shtml?3626936
On the left side you can see some photos and a family tree. The yellow spots are where the DNA samples fitted in the tree.
Jeroen
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Even the reports on the behaviour are overstated:
-only the males nest on the ground, females nest in the trees. And the simple explanation is that they are to heavy to have good support in a tree.
-The nests are not like gorilla's (besides the fact that they also don't sleep in trees) The chimps nest in moist places, gorillas hate water and would never do that.
(I don't sleep in a tree, does that make me half-gorilla?)
-They don't howl at the moon, but are simply more vocal on moon lit nights.
They might be interesting because of there (size related) behaviour but the articles are definitly based on some sensationalist pseudo scientists.
Jeroen
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