They revealed at the end of the program I was watching that they were 'ordinary' human hair.And, a foot expert said the foot castings could not have come from a bipedal creature. So...(keep looking)
There is a respectable looking/sounding PhD guy who has begun a ten year program of installing 50 heat and motion sensative cameras in the jungle. After one month of picture taking, he has some interesting pictures of all kinds of known creatures but no Orang Pendek. He intends to check the cameras every month for ten years.
I wish we had been shown better shots of those casts. Its true that we were shown little but based on what he said (at least what was preserved after editing) and the little we were shown, Im afraid that I could not have come to the same conclusion that they were not from the same kind of creature (Im not saying that they were from a Pendek).
The interview, such as it was presented, has him start by dismissing any similarity based on dissimilarity of length/width ratios between the casts and the way the creature of the one cast poked its toes into the front of the print. He then went on to allude that the longer flatter cast was a hoax based on the "misplacement" of the thumblike big toe.
Firstly, I would say that the length/width ratio and toe poking issue was ridiculous as presented. The long flat one appears as though it may have been made in damp compacted sand or a dry loamy area moistened by a flash rain, clear and relatively shallow with the substrate supporting the weight of the body through the stride. The short wide one appeared more like a footprint made in soaked clay or swamp edge muck, deep and ill-defined with a shortened, arch kinked "toe down" print at the bottom of the track hole. I couldnt help but to get the feeling that if he had seen a cast of your footprint from a relatively dry field edge and my bare footprint from a swamp that he would have said we were different species.
That leaves the thumb toe issue that was flat out foolish, once again, at least the way it was presented. Place your hand palm down on a table and imagine a heel bone extension, its would be the same as that print. That kind of thumbtoe placement is exactly what should be expected mechanically if the creature in question had a diet similar to small frugivorous monkeys but on a creature of larger size. Apes spend most of their time feeding and socializing closer to the ground and they travel there so ground travel feet are required. Small monkeys may spend several days engaging in all of lifes activities in a single tree, when its time to move they can go from one small branch to another to transfer to a new tree. A large frugivorous monkey would regularly and quickly deplete the food in any given tree. Trees with enough food to make it worth transferring to wouldnt necessarily be tip to tip with another and the greater weight of the monkey would mean that branch tip transfers werent possible anyway. Now we would have a monkey that is required to regularly walk distances of some significance on the ground but would also be required to regularly "walk" up and down trees and then acquire a secure multipoint purchase to feed in case the strength of one branch failed.
My final point was an extensive rant about the difference between academics and researchers, that I don’t think that this guy could find his way around a park, and that a big game guide would have been a better “expert” if a researcher type couldn’t be found but my browser crapped out and Im irritated so Im stopping now.
Anyway, if what I thought I saw is what I thought I saw then they may not have found a human relative but may have found new monkey equivalent of an orangutan...