Posted on 10/07/2004 1:15:07 AM PDT by aculeus
An elusive new species of great ape, known to locals as the "lion killer", may have been discovered in remote forests of the Congo.
The creatures are far larger and more aggressive than normal chimpanzees and have provoked much debate among experts. Some believe that the lion killers are a previously unknown species and should join the other great apes: the chimp, bonobo, gorilla and orang utan.
But others say they are unusually aggressive chimps with odd gorilla-like characteristics.
Legends of lost apes of the Congo basin go back more than a century and inspired the 1980 novel Congo by Michael Crichton. In the 1990s, Karl Ammann, a Swiss photographer, travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to track them.
Locals told him about giant apes with a reputation for killing lions, New Scientist magazine reports today. Their ridged skulls were typical of gorillas but they behaved like chimps, and unlike either they made permanent nests.
Last year Shelly Williams, an independent primatologist affiliated to the Jane Goodall Institute in Maryland, in the United States, became the first scientist to see the creatures close up and is sure that they are a new species.
"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."
However, Dr Colin Groves, of the Australian National University, Canberra, who has studied their skulls, said: "There is no doubt from the measurements that this is the skull of a chimp, although the crest is strange."
Dr Andrew Whitten, of St Andrews University, questioned whether behavioural differences were enough to suggest a new ape. "There are huge cultural differences among chimpanzees," he said.
"I do not think that behaviour makes a good marker for sub-species in great apes as flexible as chimps."
Are you saying they can't shoot worth a darn?
You know what double coyote is?
Where you chew one arm off to get away, and chew the other one off so you NEVER make that mistake again...
LOL!
"I thump my foot and wiggle my floppy ears at thine person!"
*Poster denies being a bunny.*
A+Bert ?
Incidentally, I've noticed that almost nowhere else do I see the "RED HOT" attached to the "DEVIL BUNNIES". I wonder why that is.
This story isn't news per se; apparently, these primates first were documented early in the 20th century but have been forgotten. But placing the villages associated with these lions has proven difficult. It appears that they are on the northern frontier of eastern Congo, presumably north of the dense swampy tropical jungles but still within the Congolese war zone. The largest Bondo on MSN map lies on a river at 3.8°N.
Even Bangassou, Central African Republic (4.8°N, longitude similar to Bondo) has a tropical savanna climate because of its notable "winter" dry season. The trees probably aren't dense enough and the ground not wet enough to prohibit these huge creatures from moving across vast tracts of tropical savanna (albeit rather lacking in tree-free space). The dense, swampy rain forests and jungles, which, like most of America today, have no dry season, are relatively tightly constrained to the Equator--including Kisangani.
Now for my 2 cents.
"There is no doubt from the measurements that this is the skull of a chimp, although the crest is strange."
So we have skulls? We have DNA then? It either is, or isn't a chimp. The crest of the skull is "strange" meaning what? It ain't a chimp? Make up your mind.
It either is/or it isn't different from the species of "chimp." I can't tell if this is baloney or not, but it wouldn't surprise me for there to be another species out there. The world is still a big place.
Maybe it is the "missing link." Imagine that.
I think when the missing link is discovered, it will be found along with the holy grail, Blackbeard's treasure, and Hoffa's body. All in one big cave.
LOL!! good one
You're up early. Oh, but it is early here, morning there. Good morning.
Ahh, the mysteries of life. The missing link, the holy grail. (I don't consider Hoffa a mystery. . . He's just dead somewhere. . . My wife loves to read crime stuff. . . Makes me very aware of how many people have been murdered throughout the years. . . Hoffa is just one more . . . A small one at that . . . )
I did a Google recently on "transitional species" and my what a plethora of articles that brought up. Lost a whole day researching that. The ID-ers want to pretend all this doesn't exist, but it does.
Wonder where the missing link is. Could it be Kerry? He's definitely not human.
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