BRINGING TO LIFE THE (IN)FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH OF LOYS'S APE: A SHUKERNATURE VIDEO(S) OF THE DAY

 

A couple of photo-stills from my two AI-generated video clips of the familiar cropped version of the notorious Ameranthropoides loysi photograph (the centre image here) coming to life (AI photo-stills and videos created by me using Adobe Firefly)

It's been several months since I posted here on ShukerNature a ShukerNature Picture of the Day (click here to access the most recent one), and I have never posted a ShukerNature Video of the Day – until now, that is. Moreover, because I'm a generous kind of guy, I've posted two, not just one, as you can see. But what is their theme, their subject matter? Here's my answer:

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Loys's ape Ameranthropoides loysi had been genuine, not a hoax, and its fake photograph had come to life? Wonder no longer!

These two video clips were generated for me yesterday by the AI image-generation program Adobe Firefly in response to two separate prompts provided to it by me – one was a detailed verbal description written by me, the other was a visual prompt consisting of the original Ameranthropoides loysi photograph, reproduced below:

Allegedly dating from 1917, this is the less familiar uncropped version of the notorious Loys's ape photograph, revealed several decades later to have been a hoax, featuring the dead body of a pet spider monkey (public domain)

One ever-present, ever-surprising factor that I've encountered numerous times when utilizing various different AI image-generation programs to create the pictures and most of the videos appearing in my pictorial biker/motorcycling-themed blog RebelBikerDude's AI Biker Art, is the sheer unpredictability and often truly surreal nature of their output, in which all manner of unexpected, wholly unprompted visual details are frequently included by the programs in their generated images (bikers anomalously sprouting wings comes readily to mind with my AI biker art blog!). Sure enough, the second video in this present ShukerNature article will be seen to include – albeit only very briefly – some strange large object appearing and disappearing behind the creature's back. What it is is anyone's guess!

To read my comprehensive three-part coverage on ShukerNature of the entire A. loysi photo saga, be sure to click here, here, and here. It also appears as an entire, fully-updated chapter in my book ShukerNature Book 2: Living Gorgons, Bottled Homunculi, And Other Monstous Blog Beasts.

There is also a shorter version in one of my earlier books, Extraordinary Animals Revisited: From Singing Dogs To Serpent Kings, which features a sepia-tinted version of the Loys's ape cropped photo on its front cover:

And which has an unnerving habit of coming to life if not watched closely!

Video created by me using Grok Imagine

 

 

'SHUKERNATURE BOOK 3: CRYSTAL PALACE DINOSAURS, JUNGLE WALRUSES, AND OTHER BELATED BLOG BEASTS' - MY BRAND-NEW, 34TH BOOK IS NOW PUBLISHED!

 

The full wraparound cover of my brand-new, 34^th book ShukerNature Book 3: Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, Jungle Walruses, and Other Belated Blog Beasts (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publishing)

I'm very happy to announce today that my 34^th book is now officially published, and as you can discern from its title – ShukerNature Book 3: Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, Jungle Walruses, and Other Belated Blog Beasts – it's a third compendium of my most significant ShukerNature blog posts, expanded and updated wherever possible, packed with colour and b/w illustrations, and 404 pages long.

If you have purchased either or both of my previous two (as I'm sure you have!!), you will know that ShukerNature Book 1 was devoted to creatures I'd blogged about that I referred to in its subtitle as cryptic. That is, not merely cryptozoological in most cases but also (indeed, especially) little-known, esoteric examples - from the likes of locust dragons, king hares, giant oil-drinking cathedral spiders, and Linnaeus's hellish fury worm, to medieval snail-cats, glowing lightbulb lizards, tizheruks, tsmoks, and many more offerings from the most obscure realms of unnatural history.

For ShukerNature Book 2, I concentrated upon creatures I'd blogged about that I referred to in its subtitle as monstrous. That is, straddling the often ill-defined borders between the mythological and the mundane, fantasy and fact, reverie and reality - such as living gorgons, bottled homunculi, fossil griffins, Lewis Carroll's mock turtle, Harry Potter's ambiguous amblypygid, and Doctor Dolittle's pushmi-pullyu, the Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui, Wisconsin's giant grasshoppers, South America's photographed but non-existent 'ape', and all manner of other fascinating if macabre curiosities and caprices from the shadowy hinterlands of darkest zoology.

 

My first two ShukerNature compilation books (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

For this present, third ShukerNature book, however, I elected to veer off into a very different direction when selecting its contents as drawn from my blog. I've been a professional cryptozoological researcher and writer for almost 40 years now, so, as you can imagine, I've covered a vast array of subjects during that lengthy period of time. Yet however many I do document, there are always countless others jostling for position on the literary sidelines, impatiently agitating to secure their place in a future book or article of mine. Of these, there are a number that I have fully intended to blog about for many years, but for a multitude of different reasons I have somehow never got around to doing so in spite of just how much they have always fascinated me. Equally, there are subjects that my many readers down through the years have persistently asked me to blog about but which again, inexplicably, I've never actually done so.

During the lengthy, enforced periods of social lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, however, I made a determined effort to rectify my previous procrastination concerning these undeservedly delayed subjects, by researching and blogging about as many of them as possible. Having now done so with a sizeable selection, it is these, therefore, that constitute the theme of this third ShukerNature book – which in turn safeguards them from the uncertainties of ongoing online existence by preserving them for all time in print.

They include such long-awaited topics as the awe-inspiring Crystal Palace dinosaur statues that I visited and photographed over a decade ago but never wrote up afterwards (but which are now the subject of my book's spectacular wraparound cover – the very first such cover that has ever graced any of my books), my personal (and undoubtedly controversial, iconoclastic, heterodox) views regarding the (in)famous Surgeon's Photograph reputedly depicting an unknown object in Loch Ness, the huge but mysterious animal head discovered in an ancient Egyptian boat, and the muddle of misidentification surrounding Lake Dakataua's aquatic migo.

Longstanding friend and awesome artist Anthony Wallis's stunning portrait of the Nandi bear that he prepared exclusively for inclusion in this latest book of mine – thanks Ant! (© Anthony Wallis)

Plus the Nandi bear specimen that was actually examined by two of the world's foremost scientists before it mysteriously vanished, the officially-impossible elephant hybrid whose existence proved all the experts wrong, the wry comedy of zoological errors enshrouding the huge but hysterical imperial flea, as well as an eclectic assemblage of jungle walruses, flying monkeys, hairless hyaenas, Koch's monstrous Missourium and horrid Hydarchos, Beebe's black-and-white mystery manta ray, the giant lizards of Papua, a tenacious tomb-shattering pterodactyl, and lots more too.

So many of these curious, charismatic subjects have been a long time coming, I freely confess – but now that they are finally here for you to read about and ponder over, I hope very much that, as with all the best things in life, you'll consider them well worth the wait. More details concerning my book can be found on its dedicated page here, in my official website.

As always, my new book can be ordered directly through Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and other online bookstores, or ordered via your local physical bookstore anywhere.

 

Vintage engraving of 19^th-Century sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's Crystal Palace studio in 1853, containing some of his completed prehistoric animal statues (public domain)

 

 

JOCKO IS NO JOKE! A SHUKERNATURE PICTURE OF THE DAY

 

Vintage illustration for Jocko ou le Singe du Brésil (public domain)

It’s been quite a while since I last posted a ShukerNature Picture of the Day, so the recently-received eyecatching illustration presented above provides an ideal example with which to remedy this situation.

Not so long ago, I was sent this picture by a correspondent who had encountered it by chance online but without any accompanying details. So he wondered whether it may depict anything of cryptozoological interest or significance.

I had never seen this very dramatic-looking but decidedly strange image before, and was greatly intrigued by it, bearing in mind that it seemingly portrayed some form of giant indri-like lemur abducting a young child while being viewed closely by a large aquatic serpent. As I was unaware of any such event ever having been reported, however, I wondered whether it may instead be some form of satirical representation, a pictorial joke of some kind, rather than any literal depiction.

But as is so often the case with cryptozoological matters, first impressions can be deceiving, as I soon discovered after conducting an image search online.

It turns out that this picture is actually an illustration of an event in a two-act play by French writer and dramatist Edmond Rochefort entitled Jocko ou le Singe du Brésil ('Jocko or the Monkey of Brazil'), first staged in 1825, and inspired by Jocko, a bestselling novel by French author Charles de Pougens, published the previous year. Also inspired by this novel and again first staged in 1825 was a ballet by Fredéric-Auguste Blache, with music by Alexandre Piccinni, and sets by Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri, which proved so successful that numerous adaptations and copies of it were subsequently produced and staged for many years thereafter.

 

Famous French dancer and mime artist Charles-François Mazurier taking the role of Jocko in the original ballet version, as illustrated by French artist Godefroy Engelmann, 1825 (public domain)

The principal storyline of Jocko centres upon the capture of a large monkey in Brazil by a rich travelling Portuguese man, who names his captive Jocko. During the subsequent Atlantic crossing back to Europe, the man's vessel is shipwrecked, but Jocko saves the man's small son, Laurençon, from drowning, though in so doing Jocko is himself killed. When the play was performed for the very first time, however, the audience was so outraged by the death of the brave Jocko that it insisted he survive, and so in all subsequent performances he did!

What I find so interesting about the above picture, in which Jocko is in fact rescuing Laurençon from the clutches of the snake, is just how lemur-like, and just how monkey-unlike, he is portrayed, not to mention his great size and bipedal stance. Whoever had depicted him had clearly not based their portrayal upon an actual specimen of any known modern-day species of New World primate, that's for sure!

Speaking of known – or, rather, unknown – modern-day species of New World primate, however, Jocko's great size and bipedal nature do readily call to mind various cryptozoological reports describing alleged encounters with very large bipedal ape-like monkeys in many different parts of South America, including Brazil (where they are known locally as the caipora) – creatures that still remain undescribed by science.

(Indeed, incidentally, such reports even inspired the infamous hoax photograph of a supposed shot specimen of just such an entity that was published in an Illustrated London News article by Swiss geologist and Venezuelan explorer Dr François de Loys in 1929, and which French zoologist Prof. George Montandon deemed to be a major new species, naming it Ameranthropoides loysi – click here for Part 1 of my extensive 3-part ShukerNature coverage of this controversial saga, which is also contained in my book ShukerNature Book 2.)

Is it possible, I wonder, that the artist responsible for this illustration of Jocko had also heard of such reports, some of which do indeed date back as far as the early 19^th Century (and even earlier, in fact), which duly influenced his portrayal of his simian subject? A memorable example, if true, of cryptozoology and culture combined!

 

De Loys's infamous fake photograph of a supposed bipedal South American ape-like monkey shot by him in 1917 and subsequently dubbed Ameranthropoides loysi by Montandon – it was actually a dead pet spider monkey artfully arranged to look bigger than it actually was (public domain)

 

SHUKERNATURE BOOK 2 IS HERE! LIVING GORGONS, BOTTLED HOMUNCULI, AND OTHER MONSTROUS BLOG FAUNA

ShukerNatureBook 2 is here! – which also just so happens to be Book #30, my 30^th published book in 31 years of cryptozoological research and writing  (and not counting those many additional volumes for which I have acted as consultant and/or contributor rather than sole author) (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

Here be monsters! Following the success of my first ShukerNature book, published by Coachwhip in April of this year, I now take great pleasure in inviting readers to pay a second visit in hard-copy format to my long-running, award-winning blog – which for over a decade has been uniquely uncovering and documenting the most extraordinary, and truly monstrous, denizens of cryptozoology and unnatural history ever reported and investigated.

Within this second spellbinding Coachwhip-published compilation in book form of blog articles selected and updated from ShukerNature, you will encounter such incredible entities as an eight-legged blue devil in Belize and the big grey man of Ben MacDhui, thylacines in New Zealand, Chile's lost mini-llamas, and Canada's elusive duck beavers, medieval bottled manikins, the garden of a water-horse, and the menagerie of Medusa, resurrected lijagupards and rediscovered litigons, Lewis Carroll's mock turtle and the cryptids of Doctor Dolittle, a marvellous mini-beast named after yours truly, Herman Melville's Polynesian mystery cat and Harry Potter's giant whip scorpion, plus Loys's South American 'ape', gargantuan grasshoppers, and other fascinating fauna of the fraudulent kind, chupacabra chimpanzees, griffinosaurs, celestial stags, Australian monkeys, Europe's last wildmen, what may (or may not?) be the real-life biblical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a decapitated unicorn from South Africa, and so much more besides.

Its full wraparound cover (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

Its gates are open wide, waiting only for you to step inside its sequestered, shadowy domain and see with your own disbelieving eyes the monsters and miracles lurking there! From living gorgons to hidden homunculi, it's high time for a return visit in tangible, page-turning state to ShukerNature!

Copies can be ordered directly from Amazon US here, from Amazon UK here (please ignore the latter UK site's glitch-generated overlong delivery estimate), and at all good online or shopping street bookstores.

Holding my very own first copy of ShukerNature Book 2 (© Dr Karl Shuker)