![]() ![]() Other reports attribute this statement to Ammann. Then there are the "lion killers", which seldom climb trees, are bigger and darker, and are unaffected by the poison arrows. There are the "tree beaters", which disperse high into the trees to stay safe, and easily succumb to the poison arrows used by local hunters. Īccording to Williams, who claims she learnt Lingala, the local populace classified great apes into two distinct groups. They were coming in for the kill – but as soon as they saw my face they stopped and disappeared". These guys were quiet, and they were huge. If this had been a mock charge they would have been screaming to intimidate us. Williams reported on her close encounter, "we could hear them in the trees, about 10 m away, and four suddenly came rushing through the brush towards me. Williams returned to the US with videos, apparently purchased from one of Ammann's long-term trackers. Also recruited by Ammann was Shelly Williams, an experimental psychologist affiliated with National Geographic magazine, who claimed to be the first scientist to see the 'Bili apes'. Īfter the Second Congo War ended in 2003, it was easier for scientists to conduct field research in the Congo. In 2001, an international team of scientists, including George Schaller and Mike Belliveau, were recruited by Karl Ammann to search for apes, but the venture came up empty. Although they did not see any chimpanzees, they did find several well-worn ground nests, characteristic of gorillas rather than chimpanzees, in swampy river beds. Īmmann, with a group of foreign researchers, returned in 2000 to an area described by a Cameroonian bushmeat hunter he had sent to scout the area first a few years earlier. Ammann also measured a faecal dropping three times as big as normal chimpanzee dung and casts of footprints as large as or larger than a gorilla's. Ammann purchased a photograph from hunters of what looked like a very big chimpanzee. Instead, Ammann bought a skull that had dimensions like that of a chimpanzee, but with a prominent sagittal crest like that of a gorilla. Karl Ammann, a Swiss Kenyan photographer and anti- bushmeat campaigner, first visited the city in 1996, looking for the gorillas. Colin Groves examined the skulls in 1970 and determined that they were indistinguishable from western gorillas. These were sent to the colonial power of Belgium in 1927, a new subspecies of gorilla, Gorilla gorilla uellensis, was described based upon these specimens. Skulls of gorillas were first collected near the town of Bili in 1908. Genetic testing with non-nuclear DNA in 2003 immediately indicated that it was in fact part of the already described eastern chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), a subspecies of the common chimpanzee. Scientists soon determined they were common chimpanzees, and part of a larger contiguous population stretching throughout that part of northern Congo. "The apes nest on the ground like gorillas, but they have a diet and features characteristic of chimpanzees", according to a 2003 National Geographic article. The Bili apes, or Bondo mystery apes, were names given in 2003 in sensational reports in the popular media to a purportedly new species of highly aggressive, giant ape supposedly inhabiting the wetlands and savannah around of the village of Bili in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But Margaret Rey, who penned these books with her artist husband Hans, says, "We loved monkeys and just wrote a book about a monkey," Hmmmmm.make of this what you will.Chimpanzees in the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo Bili ape This should be easy, right? No tail means that he's an ape. Now that you can tell the difference between monkeys and apes, what do you make of Curious George? Monkeys Have Tails.īlack-handed Spider Monkey from Costa Rica While most apes are larger than monkeys, gibbons and siamangs are smaller than some types of monkeys. Other Ape Species Include.Īnd Gibbons and Siamangs (lesser apes). ![]() Lesser Apes, referring to their smaller body size, include Gibbons and Siamangs. You are much more closely related to apes than you are to monkeys on the evolutionary tree! Humans are part of the group called Greater Apes which also includes Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Orangutans and Gorillas. How can you tell (and what's the difference, anyway)? Most monkeys have tails. But when someone says, "look at the monkey" when they are looking at a chimpanzee, it's more than we can take.Ĭhimps (and their close cousins Bonobos) are not monkeys. ![]() ![]() Walking through the zoo, people love to "ooh" and "aah" over the animals they see. Or maybe not, given the content of our website. ![]()
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