An early lithograph of the spotted
cuscus – the identity of Cape York Peninsula's mystery monkeys? (public domain)
Zoologically speaking, Australia is most famous for its marsupials (pouched
mammals) and monotremes (egg-laying mammals). It does contain a number of
native species of placental (higher) mammal too – the predominant mammalian
category everywhere else in the world – in the form of various rodents and bats. Since this island continent was
colonised by humans, however, many non-native placental mammals have been
introduced here as well, such as domestic cats and dogs (notably the dingo during a very early stage of human colonisation), deer, sheep, cattle, foxes,
and rabbits. However, there is no official confirmation that Australia has ever been home to monkeys – which is why an
outbreak of monkey reports here during the early 1930s is so intriguing, and,
although all-but-forgotten today, has never been satisfactorily resolved.
One of the world's last unspoiled wildernesses, boasting
a rich abundance of relatively undisturbed habitats including tropical rainforest
and wooded savannahs, Cape
York Peninsula is a vast,
remote triangle jutting northward from northernmost Queensland into the Torres Strait,
separating Australia at that point from New Guinea. If mystery animals could exist undetected
anywhere in northern Australia, this is where they would be. And sure enough, in autumn
1932, after a party of bold, adventurous gold prospectors had penetrated this
secluded realm, they came back home to Townsville with tales of having
encountered there some very strange and, for Australia, extremely unexpected creatures – monkeys. And not
just a few monkeys either. According to a remarkable report appearing on 19
September 1932 in an Adelaide, South Australia, newspaper entitled the News,
"several thousand" of these mystifying creatures had been seen (though
this count was reduced to "hundreds" further down in that same
report).
The prospectors had journeyed to the region of Cape York Peninsula situated between the Lockhart and Pascoe Rivers, 130 miles south of Cape
York and 40 miles from
the coast. This area's almost impenetrable terrain, apparently having never
before been explored by Westerners, was so densely packed with large trees
bearing great quantities of red nuts that they "had to fight their
way" through, and it was here where they encountered the monkeys, after
having initially being alerted to their existence by natives. The monkeys were
inhabiting an area 60 miles long by 30 miles wide, and according to the
prospectors they "seemed to be of the Malayan breed, about the size of an
average dog, and weighing about 30 lb".
Cape York Peninsula monkeys report in the News (Adelaide), 19
September 1932 - click to enlarge for reading purposes (public domain)
Versions of this report simultaneously appeared in
a number of other Australian newspapers too, including one in Queensland's Townsville
Daily Bulletin claiming that the monkeys seen by the prospectors were in
groups of about 15-20 individuals, and that there were "numerous"
such groups. These reports were followed by a second account emerging just a
day later, on 20 September, from a gold prospector named R. King. As again
covered in a wide range of newspaper reports across Australia, he stated that
he had not only encountered some monkeys but had even shot a couple of them
while exploring one particular area of Cape York Peninsula. According to a report
that appeared in the Maryborough Chronicle on 20 September
1932, documenting King's
testimony:
The
area in which King located the animals is south-east of the Batavia goldfield,
embracing the McIlwraith Range [a rugged granitic plateau], the area being
about 30 miles wide and extending along the peninsula for approximately 60
miles. King said today that he journeyed on the western side of the range
searching for gold. There was nothing there that suggested human beings had
ever been in that locality. Progress was difficult with horses being impeded by
sugarcane grass growing to enormous heights, in some instances up to 15 feet. In
this scrub the prospector saw mobs of monkeys frequently during his four or
five weeks' stay. They were generally in parties from 15 to 25.
But that was not all:
Though
he could not get closer than rifle range he shot a couple during his stay.
Observations he made seemed to indicate that the male was much larger than the
female and the largest would not exceed about 30lb.
If only King had brought back the body of one of
the shot monkeys (or at least some portion of it) for scientific examination. Having said that, however,
carrying what would have been a rapidly-decomposing, stinking carcase back with
him through difficult terrain in the humid conditions prevalent in this
locality would not have been the easiest or most pleasant of tasks, so I can
certainly understand why he didn't do so, even if such a thought had indeed occurred to him. Equally, as he was not a professional zoologist himself, he probably would not have realised the scientific significance that even just a selection of one of the shot monkey's teeth and/or a single jawbone, for instance, would have held for zoologists examining them,
Nevertheless, according to an article published on
1 October 1932 by a Cairns, Queensland, newspaper entitled the Northern
Herald, King was willing to self-finance a two-man expedition, consisting
of himself and a scientific representative, back to the location where he'd
seen the animals, provided that "a substantial reimbursement were
guaranteed on production of the specimens". As far as I am aware, however,
no such expedition was ever launched, so presumably King did not receive any
such guarantee.
Well worth recalling at this point is that during
the second half of the 19th Century, a number of acclimatisation
societies sprang up all over Australia. Their shared goal was
to introduce into the wild a vast diversity of exotic, non-native species that
their members considered would be beneficial for food, for cultural exchange
purposes with other countries, or, in some cases, for purely aesthetic reasons
(i.e. they were attractive species, or were familiar ones that reminded the societies'
members of Europe). In order to achieve this, the societies sought to create
captive-breeding colonies from which releases into the wild could subsequently
be carried out until self-sustaining populations had established themselves
there.
Madagascan ring-tailed lemurs
roaming wild in Australia? It
nearly happened! (© Dr Karl Shuker)
Among the mammalian species on their lists of
proposed releases were such geographically and taxonomically diverse creatures
as South American agoutis, African elands, Madagascan ring-tailed lemurs – and
several species of monkey. Indeed, in 1861, Edward Wilson, the founder of Victoria's acclimatisation
society, wrote to this Australian state's governor requesting that monkeys be
released into the Victorian bush: "…for
the amusement of the wayfarer, whom their gambols would delight as he lay under
some gum tree in the forest on a sultry day". Happily, however, for
the survival of Australia's unique, irreplaceable
endemic fauna, very few of these alien species bred successfully even in
captivity at the societies' various breeding centres (let alone in the wild).
Consequently, most of the planned releases never took place, and I am not aware
of any record of official monkey releases having occurred anywhere on this continent.
But might there have been some unofficial, undocumented, unpublicised
acclimatisation efforts involving monkeys that were successful, with Cape York Peninsula being deemed an ideal
locality for such creatures to live and thrive (which, indeed, it is)? Yet if
not, what other explanations can be offered for the gold prospectors' sightings
here?
During
the weeks that followed the two prospector accounts being widely disseminated
by the Australian media, several additional articles were also published,
containing opinions regarding the possible identity of Cape York Peninsula's
supposed monkeys, as proffered by a range of scientists and others who were
variously interested in or dismissive of this mystifying affair. But once its initial novelty had
worn off, however, and (as always happens with ephemeral subjects like this)
the media began looking elsewhere for curiosities to publicise, the Peninsula's enigmatic primates
vanished from the headlines, and eventually from all but the most tenacious
memories within the zoological community too.
Indeed, if referred to at all nowadays (which it
seldom is), this entire episode is normally dismissed as the outcome of a regrettable
misidentification by the gold prospector eyewitnesses, mistaking one or other
of two already-known types of marsupial for monkeys. As will now be shown here,
however, neither of these 'official' identities stands up to close scrutiny.
Having said that, there seems little doubt that some form of creature was
encountered (and in some numbers) amid this peninsula's remote backwaters, so what
might it have been?
An 1884 lithograph of
Lumholtz's tree kangaroo (public domain)
When the story of the alleged monkeys in the Peninsula broke, two different but
equally popular mainstream identities were variously proposed for them by a
number of different authorities. One of these identities was some form of tree
kangaroo – as suggested, for instance, by Ludwig Glauert, then Curator of Perth
Museum.
Two species are native to Australia, and both occur in a
small portion of Cape York Peninsula's easternmost basal region. The smaller and more
common of these is Lumholtz's tree kangaroo Dendrolagus lumholtzi, a
rainforest-inhabiting species predominantly black and grizzled grey in colour,
with somewhat short limbs but an exceedingly long tail, and only weighing up to
around 20 lb maximum. Larger and rarer here is Bennett's tree kangaroo D.
bennettianus, dark chocolate-brown above and fawn below, with longer limbs,
a very long tail, and weighing up to 30 lb in adult males (females are much
smaller). It inhabits both mountain and lowland tropical rainforest, but is
notoriously elusive.
An 1894 lithograph of
Bennett's tree kangaroo (public domain)
In terms of dimensions, maximum-sized Bennett's tree
kangaroos are comparable to the largest 30-lb alleged monkeys as estimated by
King and the other prospectors; but in terms of morphology, neither species of Peninsula tree kangaroo is
particularly simian. Moreover, whereas both species have very long, noticeable
tails, no mention of tails occurred in either of the two gold prospector
reports – indicating, perhaps, that the creatures that they encountered were
either tailless or only possessed short, inconspicuous tails?
In addition, whereas all Old World monkeys are
strictly diurnal, as the creatures encountered by the prospectors clearly were too, both
of these tree kangaroo species are principally nocturnal (exhibiting only limited, spasmodic daytime activity), so they wouldn't have been
readily perceived or even met with by their eyewitnesses, and neither species
occurs in large groups or parties like the creatures sighted anyway (Lumholtz's
occurs in small, loose-knit reproductive groups of just 3-5 adult members). Also,
if they had indeed been nothing more than tree kangaroos, the region's native
inhabitants would surely have known this, and therefore would not have
specifically called the prospectors' attention to them.
Instead, and even before his own first-hand encounter
with the alleged monkeys, King had already been informed by aboriginals
inhabiting the Daintree River area that monkeys lived in the Peninsula.
However, he had discounted their claims, assuming that the creatures that they
were referring to were simply tree kangaroos – until he saw them with his own
eyes, and realised that they were not. This also demonstrates that King knew
what tree kangaroos looked like, and therefore would not have been confused by
them.
Ion Idriess (public domain)
At the time of the media reports concerning the Cape York Peninsula monkeys, one of the few
Westerners to have explored sizeable portions of this region was Australian
writer Ion Idriess. When media reporters asked his opinion as to these mystery
animals' possible identity, he speculated that they may have been either a
species of tree kangaroo or, his personal preference, a very large phalanger –
which brings us to the second popular mainstream identity offered for the
Peninsula monkeys.
Phalangers are arboreal marsupials closely related
to the possums and sugar gliders, and the largest phalangers are the cuscuses
(the biggest species of which is New Guinea's black-spotted cuscus Spilocuscus
rufoniger, up to 4 ft long and weighing as much as 15 lb). Although cuscuses
are predominantly found in New Guinea and on certain
Indonesian islands close by, two New Guinea species also occur in Australia's Cape York Peninsula.
Taxiderm specimen of the
spotted cuscus (© Markus Bühler)
Of these two, the species less likely to explain
this region's supposed monkeys is the well-named spotted cuscus S. maculatus,
because in the male its thick brown fur is indeed handsomely and very noticeably
patterned with irregular white spots and blotches, which sometimes are so extensive
that the animal appears white with brown blotches (females are unspotted). This
striking characteristic is of course conspicuous only by its absence in the
prospectors' monkey accounts, yet due to its eyecatching nature it would surely
have been reported by them if it had indeed been exhibited by the monkeys (some
of them would certainly have been males).
The second cuscus species native to this peninsula
is the grey cuscus Phalanger mimicus (which is closely related, and
similar in overall appearance, to the more familiar ground cuscus P.
gymnotis). Its woolly unpatterned fur is grey-brown dorsally and laterally,
and off-white ventrally, with a brown mid-dorsal stripe extending along its
spine from its ears to its rump.
Ground cuscus (public domain)
As with the tree kangaroos, however, both of these cuscus
species are predominantly nocturnal, do not occur in large groups (they are
generally solitary animals), and are so cryptic that they are seldom spied even
by the region's aboriginals. They are also sluggish and slow-moving, unlike
typically active, agile monkeys. Additionally, neither of them attains anything
like a weight of 30 lb; on the contrary, no bigger than typical domestic cats they
rarely exceed 8 lb in the wild (sometimes more in captivity), with the spotted
cuscus being slightly bigger than its grey-furred relative.
In view of such notable discrepancies between
cuscuses and monkeys, I was nothing if not surprised, therefore, to discover,
via a brief single-line reference to the Cape York Peninsula monkey saga
contained in her book Possums: The Brushtails, Ringtails and Greater Glider
(2001), that Anne Kerle considered that the grey cuscus was
"undoubtedly" the origin of the monkey reports. Further back in time,
but no less surprising, was that in his book Furred Animals of Australia
(8th edition, 1965), Australian zoologist Ellis Troughton stated
that spotted cuscuses have "a remarkably monkey-like appearance" and
that this species may therefore have inspired the Peninsula monkey reports
(notwithstanding this cuscus's unmissable spotting?). Moreover, an old,
now-obsolete colloquial name for the grey cuscus is 'monkey cuscus', and
another, even older (and taxonomically inaccurate!) name for it is 'monkey
opossum'. (Taxonomically, the term 'opossum' is restricted to the didelphid
marsupials of the Americas.)
I find these allusions to the supposed monkey-like
appearance of cuscuses to be very perplexing, even bizarre. For as someone who
has seen living cuscuses at close hand in captivity while visiting Australia, I
can readily affirm that they do not look like monkeys at all – being far closer
in appearance to certain lemurs among the primates. Nor am I alone in that
view, because it was also expressed back in the 1930s by various commentators
in relation to the possible identity of the Peninsula monkeys.
A decidedly (and accurately)
lemurine representation of the spotted cuscus in an 1890s engraving (public
domain)
For instance: in an article focusing upon the
Peninsula's cuscuses and published by the Queenslander newspaper on 22 August
1935, the columnist 'Wanderer' uncompromisingly stated: "How the cuscus came to
be called the "monkey opossum" I cannot say, but the name is not appropriate,
for the creature is neither monkey-like in appearance nor habits". Similarly,
in an Adelaide Advertiser article of 10 December 1932, its author,
Donald Thomson, who was leading an expedition in the Cape York district,
bluntly confirmed that when a cuscus is closely examined: "…it does not
look at all like a monkey". Amen to that!
Equally, as with the tree kangaroos, the Peninsula
aboriginals would have been familiar with the cuscuses living there, so surely they
would not have attempted to portray them to the prospectors as anything other
than cuscuses. Also of note is that when Australian naturalist-prospector
William McLennan suggested to King that what he had seen were cuscuses, King denied
this, stating that he was familiar with cuscuses, and that what he had seen
were monkeys, not cuscuses.
No other native mammals in Cape York Peninsula look
like monkeys either, so if we sensibly choose to dismiss as implausible the
premise that not only the prospectors but even the native aboriginals had all
been extremely unknowledgeable regarding the animals encountered by them there
and even less adept at identifying them correctly, the true nature of these
supposed monkeys remains a mystery – unless of course they really were monkeys!
Yet if this is true, how can the presence of such blatantly non-native animals in
the wilds of Australia be explained?
William H.D. Le Souef (public
domain)
During his newspaper account, prospector King
opined that these reputed monkeys had come from Malaya during the early days of
trading between southeastern Asia and Australia, and had remained in reclusive
anonymity ever since within the Peninsula's dense scrub where Westerners had
not penetrated prior to the recent forays there by himself and the other
prospectors. This notion was echoed by Ion Idriess, who conceded that it was
plausible that a few monkeys had originally escaped ashore from trading
steamers or from wrecks, had thrived and bred in the Peninsula, and had eventually
given rise to a self-sustaining population there. Even the eminent Australian
naturalist William H.D. Le Souef from Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo
stated that it was quite possible that the prospectors' information was
correct.
But even if this were so, what kind of monkey might
they have been? King and the party of prospectors variously made comparisons
between the Peninsula creatures and Malayan monkeys, and suggested a
Malayan origin for them, and it is true that 11 different species of monkey
collectively exist in mainland Malaysia and in its two states
on Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak). They fall into two categories – very slender, long-limbed,
long-tailed langurs or leaf monkeys (7 Malaysian species), and sturdier,
shorter-limbed, often only short-tailed macaques (4 Malaysian species,
following the recent taxonomic splitting into two of the pig-tailed macaque).
Moreover, both of these monkey types socialise in large groups (sometimes
extremely large in the case of macaques), just as reported by the prospectors
for the creatures that they saw.
An 1800s lithograph of a
langur or leaf monkey (public domain)
Confined to Borneo, the largest Malaysian
langur, the famous proboscis monkey Nasalis larvatus with its huge
grotesque nose in the adult male, can surely be eliminated from consideration
straight away. This is because not only is its nasal appearance so distinctive
that the prospectors would have assuredly mentioned it specifically in their
accounts, but males can exceed 60 lb in weight, i.e. more than double the size
estimated by the prospectors for even the largest of the creatures that they
saw. Other Malaysian langurs, conversely, such as the silvery (crested) langur Trachypithecus
cristatus and the spectacled langur T. obscurus, only attain half
the weight claimed by the prospectors for the largest of their alleged monkeys (little
more than a third in the white-fronted langur Presbytis frontata), and (like
tree kangaroos) they possess extremely long, visible tails.
Macaques native to Malaysia include the crab-eating
macaque Macaca fascicularis and the two near-identical pig-tailed
macaque species M. leonina and M. nemetrina. Unlike a number of
other macaques, however, the crab-eating macaque does have a long tail, and
males attain a maximum weight of only around 20 lb. Yet, interestingly, this is
a notable invasive species, having been successfully introduced to a number of non-native
territories where it now thrives, including New Guinea, which as noted earlier
is immediately to the north of Australia's Cape York Peninsula, separated from it only
via the Torres Strait.
Crab-eating macaque (public
domain)
During the course of history, many large species
have spread from one region to another via rafting across stretches of water on
floating debris, vegetable mats, etc – could specimens of this macaque species
have done the same, from New Guinea to Cape York Peninsula? The pig-tailed
macaques have only a fairly short tail, but their males are slightly smaller in
size than those of the crab-eating macaque, as are those of the stump-tailed
macaque M. arctoides, which has an even shorter tail.
A pig-tailed macaque (public
domain)
A third option is also worth a consideration –
might these so-called monkeys have actually been apes, specifically gibbons? After
all, laymen frequently refer to gibbons (and other apes too) as monkeys. Four
species exist in Malaysia, of which the siamang Symphalangus
syndactylus is much too big, but the other three – the agile gibbon Hylobates
agilis, lar gibbon H. lar, and Müller's Bornean gibbon H.
muelleri – are smaller and, like all gibbons, are tailless.
When I first read the two prospector accounts
describing the alleged monkeys witnessed by them, however, I immediately
thought of macaques, in terms of both their appearance and their large groups.
These monkeys also have a much closer affinity with humans than langurs and
gibbons, being frequently kept as pets aboard ships, as well as used in
scientific research (the famous rhesus monkey Macaca mulatta, a
commonly-used laboratory species, is a macaque). Consequently, if we assume
that the Peninsula mystery beasts were real, and that they were indeed monkeys,
perhaps they were macaques that had escaped or been released there by Malay
traders visiting northern Australia, with their body size either exaggerated by
the prospectors or, with no notable predators in this secluded region, larger
than normal specimens having subsequently arisen. Of course, the prospectors'
claim of seeing "several thousand" of these monkeys is worrying with
regard to their account's authenticity, but this may well be due to journalistic
hyperbole, because "hundreds" was used further down in the same
newspaper articles covering their account.
Rhesus monkey (public domain)
Today, approximately half of Cape York Peninsula has been given over to
cattle grazing, but much of the remaining half is preserved as a national park,
with its virgin wilderness still a haven of largely undisturbed tranquillity for
its wildlife. Is it conceivable, therefore, that a colony of monkeys genuinely
existed here less than a century ago, having descended from some specimens
originating from Malay ships and/or rafting across from New Guinea (or possibly
even stemming from some unpublicised, covert acclimatisation-based
introductions)?
If so, and, with nothing having occurred during the
interim period to have eradicated wildlife in much of this vast,
scarcely-penetrable locality, might they still be there today?
An 1890s lithograph of
Lumholtz's tree kangaroo (public domain)
