I am greatly indebted to American cryptozoological investigator Todd Jurasek for the following information and kind permission to publish it, and also to acclaimed cryptozoological artist William Rebsamen for the wonderful artwork above.
In autumn 2002, Todd visited the village of Siawi in a remote region of Papua New Guinea roughly 18 miles east of the border with Irian Jaya just below the mountains, and approximately 6 miles from the Sepik River. During his stay there, he interviewed members of several different tribes in the hope of extracting information of cryptozoological relevance, with the aid of a missionary called Jason acting as interpreter.
He obtained some information concerning giant monitors (the apparent identity of the Papuan artrellia) and also giant snakes, as well as some more surprising testimony concerning the alleged existence here of a lion-sized cat (no feline species is known to exist on New Guinea) and also a possible large canine cryptid. But by far the most extraordinary information obtained from these interviews concerned an alleged bigfoot-like man-beast, which was described to Jason by members of both the Siawi and the Amto tribes.
According to their accounts, this New Guinea ape-man, known to the Amto people as the kayadi, was at least man-sized (i.e. about 5 ft 5 in tall, judging from the average height of most native peoples on New Guinea), hirsute, and bipedal, but also able to climb trees very rapidly, and strong enough physically to throw humans if confronted. One Amti tribesman stated that in 1981 a kayadi had been startled by his uncle while digging for eggs in a cave near his village, and another claimed that a local girl had actually been kidnapped a while back by one of these man-beasts.
Many of the major islands or island groups in the vicinity of New Guinea can lay claim to reports of man-beasts - such as the yowie in Australia, maero or macro in New Zealand, orang pendek in Sumatra, batutut in Borneo, and mumulou in the Solomon Islands. However, as far as I am aware, this is the first time that a named man-beast has been reported from New Guinea, thereby making Todd's findings a very notable contribution to cryptozoology.
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Hi Karl! Very interesting. Do you remember the photo of the strange orang-utan-like wooden figurine from Papua I once sent you?
ReplyDeleteHi Karl from me, too.
ReplyDeleteIn my case I have published apelike carvings from New Guines but I thought they were more likely Celebes apes [which are monkeys]
I had heard of the "Bigfoot" rumors secondarily and oddly enough from Vietnamese informants that said the New Guinea version was the same as their local unknown ape, and that they got the information from sources in Hong Kong. I never had any more information on the matter than that. 5' 5" would have been about the height they gave, too, and black the color.
The artrellia you mentioned is interesting because it seems there are two types of crocodile monitor lizards in the New Guinea are, the rumored one about twice as long as the one we have abundant specimens of. I imagine that the name refers to more than one species and that the Indopacific crocodile is in the same situation. Those would be more taxonomic wrangles than actually dealing with unknown animals.
Hi Markus, Yes I do - I also have reports of hairy dwarf-like entities from New Guinea. One day I'll have to write them up. All the best, Karl
ReplyDeleteHello Doctor! We are big fans of you at the BigfootLunchClub.com. We linked to your blog and posted an excerpt from your post today. Just wanted to say you have tons of fans across the pond!
ReplyDeleteHi Dale, Thanks for the additional New Guinea bigfoot info - interesting. And thanks, EpicGilgamesh for your kind words - it's always so encouraging for a writer to know that readers around the world like his work, so thanks again! All the best, Karl
ReplyDeleteI published by observation of this species and its vocalization in 2008 in my book Australian Cryptozoology available on my webpage garyopit.com In 1973-74 I was studying the fauna of the Papua New Guinean rainforest with biologists at the Wau Ecology Institute, a field station of the Bishop Museum of Hawaii. Over a one-year period I recorded fauna species, primarily birds, and their behavior, with an ornithologist, Thane Pratt, on the slopes of Mount Missim in undisturbed Castanopsis Oak rainforest at Poverty Creek, at an elevation of 1500 metres (4,900 feet).
ReplyDeleteOn 25 November 1973 at Vickery Creek, Mount Missim, at 1,200 metres (3937 feet) elevation, I was walking along an old logging track towards a bird hide in which Thane Pratt was observing nesting superb fruit dove. It was then that I observed a dark bipedal figure crossing the track 200 metres (656 feet) in front of me. At first I took it to be a native Melanesian but was surprised to see no sign of clothing at this high altitude, no weapons and the unusual fact that he was alone and that the figure did not walk or even glance along the track but instead moved through dense vegetation traveling down the slope. It was about 5.5 feet high & very human-like & it walked back & forth looking down towards Thane before continuing down towards him. When I reached the hide there was no sign of the figure & Thane had not observed the figure as he was sitting further down hill. It was a great mystery to me as to the identification of a human-like figure paying no attention to the track that it was crossing. We never encountered any other individuals during the many months of fauna surveys in this remote, high altitude, undisturbed environment.
On 6, 14 and 19 December 1973 and on 16 and 25 October 1974 we heard during daylight, very loud and powerful mammal calls. These consisted of a series of deep, base notes repeated without variations over a period of 5 seconds that produced a bellowing-roar clearly audible through the rainforest from perhaps a kilometer (0.6 miles) away. At one instance I was standing on a rock outcrop above the trees and clearly heard the calls emanating from a forested valley approximately 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) below me. We had particularly specialized in the identification of fauna from their calls so were surprised to hear powerful calls that sounded to my ears as primate-like.
Having spent some time listening to the vocalizing of chimpanzees, gibbon and other primates at Taronga Zoological Gardens in Sydney, I was forced to the conclusion that I was listening to the calls of a very large and powerful primate. As Papua New Guinea has an Australian faunal assemblage with no primates I found it hard to believe that such a creature as I was hearing could exist. I had read newspaper articles of Yetis and Bigfoot in the Northern Hemisphere but had never heard of unknown primate bipeds in this part of the world.
Rex Gilroy in his 2001 book Giants of the Dreamtime the Yowie in Myth and Reality has 10 pages of reports concerning hairy hominids in New Guinea including my (Gary Opit) data, (as described above) that he received from me in 1981. Congratulations to Todd Jurasek for his data collection. Having spent 2 years in New Guinea in the 1970s I know that only true explorers / adventurers can reach the remote locality that Todd Jurasek collected his data.
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