Rich Travs
Thu, Jul-13-06, 06:23
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,19625346-5001-
028,00.html
June 29, 2006
A TRIBE of apes living in remote forests in the northern
Democratic Republic of Congo are unusually large chimpanzees,
not a new species of giant ape or a chimp-gorilla hybrid, New
Scientist says.
Zoologists became excited after people living around Bili,
a town about 200 kilometres east of the Ebola River,
recounted tales of seeing huge ferocious apes with a taste
for killing lions.
From photographs, the creatures were estimated to weigh about
100 kilos and their footprints, at up to 34 centimetres, were
longer than a gorilla's.
But a year-long hunt by Cleve Hicks and colleagues from the
University of Amsterdam shows there is only a "negligible"
chance that the enigmatic apes are a new branch of the
primate tree.
Hicks was able to observe the animals for a total of 20
hours.
"I see nothing gorilla about them. The females definitely
have a chimp's sex swellings, they pant-hoot and tree-drum,
and so on," he told the British science weekly, whose report
appears in Saturday's issue.
Samples of a DNA recovered from faeces also put the animals
in a recognised subspecies of chimp, Pan troglodytes
schweinfurthii.
Even so, the Bili apes are unusual, as they have a
gorilla-like crest on their skulls and howl during the
full moon. ...
Oh well. There's always Loch Ness ;)
028,00.html
June 29, 2006
A TRIBE of apes living in remote forests in the northern
Democratic Republic of Congo are unusually large chimpanzees,
not a new species of giant ape or a chimp-gorilla hybrid, New
Scientist says.
Zoologists became excited after people living around Bili,
a town about 200 kilometres east of the Ebola River,
recounted tales of seeing huge ferocious apes with a taste
for killing lions.
From photographs, the creatures were estimated to weigh about
100 kilos and their footprints, at up to 34 centimetres, were
longer than a gorilla's.
But a year-long hunt by Cleve Hicks and colleagues from the
University of Amsterdam shows there is only a "negligible"
chance that the enigmatic apes are a new branch of the
primate tree.
Hicks was able to observe the animals for a total of 20
hours.
"I see nothing gorilla about them. The females definitely
have a chimp's sex swellings, they pant-hoot and tree-drum,
and so on," he told the British science weekly, whose report
appears in Saturday's issue.
Samples of a DNA recovered from faeces also put the animals
in a recognised subspecies of chimp, Pan troglodytes
schweinfurthii.
Even so, the Bili apes are unusual, as they have a
gorilla-like crest on their skulls and howl during the
full moon. ...
Oh well. There's always Loch Ness ;)