Could there be a 'lost' Ameranthropoides
loysi photograph out there somewhere, awaiting rediscovery and looking
something like this? (original photograph © Attilio Gatti, utilised here on a
strictly non-commercial, educational Fair Use basis only; photo-manipulation ©
Dr Karl Shuker)
Earlier this year, I posted here on ShukerNature
an extensive two-part article of mine concerning Ameranthropoides loysi,
the supposed bipedal, tailless ape encountered and shot dead in the Venezuelan
jungle in 1920 by a team of geologists led by Dr François de Loys, but whose
carcase was subsequently propped upright on a crate in a sitting position and
photographed – the resulting picture becoming one of the most iconic but
contentious images in the entire annals of cryptozoology, and which was
finally, conclusively exposed as a blatant hoax earlier this present century. To
read my article on ShukerNature, please click here
for Part 1 and here for Part 2.
One of the many curious aspects of this case that
had already raised suspicions among its more sceptical investigators several
decades before the true nature of the creature in the photograph was finally
exposed, however, was why only a single photograph existed of such an
ostensibly momentous zoological discovery as a South American ape. In
particular, critics queried why no photos had been snapped of the creature's
back view, in order to confirm that it was naturally (not artificially)
tailless, as claimed by de Loys, and as seen in all Old World apes.
In response, as noted in my earlier article, de
Loys had explained away this anomalous situation by alleging that there had
indeed been more photographs but that only the famous one known today had
survived a subsequent capsizing of the boat that had been carrying them and its
crew down a river – the other photos had all been lost. How convenient.
The familiar background-cropped
version of the only known photograph of de Loys's supposed 'ape' – in reality
nothing more than the deftly-posed body of his pet marimonda spider monkey that
had died recently at the team's camp and whose tail had earlier been amputated
after it had become infected (public domain)
In view of how de Loys had hoaxed the world for
so long with that single photograph, it is not surprising that today few people
believe that any other photos had ever even been taken, let alone lost. Yet if
some additional pictures had genuinely existed and had actually survived,
especially any that portrayed some of de Loys's party standing alongside the
carcase, that would have provided a much clearer guide to the creature's size.
True, it would still have been only a marimonda spider monkey, but who knows,
it might have been an unusually large specimen and therefore worthy of note in
its own right.
And indeed, as I discovered to my great surprise
while researching the complicated case of Ameranthropoides, and in
flagrant disregard of de Loys's claim to the contrary, at least one such photo
might truly have existed, and survived. Not only that, in a fascinating scenario readily
recalling the equally tantalising case of the supposedly missing thunderbird
photograph (click here to read all about this), it may even have been published - judging from the fact that I
have on file the testimonies of several wholly independent but highly qualified
eyewitnesses who all claim to have seen it! First made public by me in a series
of accounts published variously in Strange Magazine and Fortean Times, read
them all here now, and then judge for yourself.
Back in the late 1990s, Dr Susan M. Ford was an
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Southern Illinois
University's Department of Anthropology. During correspondence in November 1997
concerning Ameranthropoides, Dr Ford informed me that sometime in the
early 1980s a student had shown her a popular-format wildlife book that
included a spread containing an Ameranthropoides photograph - but not
the famous one reproduced by me in this present article in both cropped and
uncropped form, and which, as already noted here, is the only such photo
presently known to cryptozoologists. According to her recollection of the
photo, it was:
…a black and white photo of the animal (looking a lot like a big
spider monkey), dead, propped between two native males who were standing. They
appeared to be adult but of possibly short stature; I recall no scale in the
picture or reference in the text to the height of the humans. It was a chapter
specifically dealing with this animal, in a book about unusual animal
discoveries. I seem to recall it being hard bound with a dark cover, and not a
large or thick book. It was small [in a separate communication she suggested
that it was possibly 100 pages long, probably had an 8" x 6" format,
and was a rather old book], the size perhaps of an average journal today. I
recall neither title nor author of the book...I can visualize the picture quite
clearly, however, and there were two males on either side of the dead monkey.
The native men were presumably two of the
geological expedition's local Indian helpers. As for the student who showed Dr
Ford the book, she could no longer remember who this was.
A marimonda spider monkey,
the true identity of Loy's 'ape' (© Ewa-Flickr/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)
Moving from one side of the Atlantic to the
other, I also learned in 1997 from Scottish-born zoo keeper Alan Pringle that
one of his colleagues, education officer Jon Flynn at Cricket St Thomas
Wildlife Park in Somerset, England, was convinced that several years previously, he too
had seen a photograph of de Loys's ape that included some men standing on
either side of it. Unfortunately, however, he could not recall any details of
the publication containing this picture.
Furthermore, in a letter to me of 15 January
1998, Steven Shipp, then proprietor of the mail-order book service Midnight Books, based in Sidmouth, Devon, England, wrote:
I am certain that I too have seen a picture of this monkey
flanked by two people! My first thought when I saw the photograph [the familiar
cropped version] (before reading the text) was why has it been cropped,
leaving out the people either side? Then I read the article and realised it was
a different photograph! I believe that I saw the picture in one of those
mysteries anthologies covering all aspects of the unexplained - probably during
the time I would have been buying books for the catalogue [Steven's own mail-order catalogue of books for sale] - so that pins it down to the last nine
years! It may have been in an older book as Susan Ford says but I am sure it
was in a big format, well illustrated book. Of course I cannot remember which.
But I will certainly keep an eye out for it again and let you know immediately
if I locate it. I don't believe this is a case of my memory deceiving me as I
can clearly see the image in my mind's eye.
Several months after
receiving Steven Shipp's communication, I received a letter on this same subject
from Lawrence Brennan, hailing from Liverpool, England, which (curiously) was dated 31
June 1998! (I am assuming that he meant 30 June.) Anyway: in his letter,
Lawrence was adamant that he too had seen such a photograph - so much so that
until reading my account on this subject, he had no idea that there was any
mystery surrounding it. According to his testimony, he saw it in a book when he
was aged around 13-15; and as he was 30 at the time of his letter to me, this
means that the book had been published no later than the early 1980s.
The photo depicted de
Loys's 'ape' sitting upright on a crate, flanked by at least two humans - who
were also sitting, one on either side of it, and likewise presumably on crates,
as they seemed to be of comparable height to the ape. At least one of the
humans may have been dressed in what Lawrence referred to as "full 'Great
White Hunter' garb", with a rifle resting in his hands, but he was not
absolutely certain of this because, as he pointed out: "The ape is
obviously the thing you tend to concentrate on and remember!". He went on
to say that there were possibly other persons, probably natives, standing
behind, and he reiterated that the creature was of similar size to the humans.
As for the book that
contained this photo: Lawrence claimed that his father had obtained it for him
from the local library, and that its subject was man-beasts from around the
world. He believed that the book was entitled something like "Giants Walk
the Earth", or "There are Giants Among Us", and was certain that
the word 'Giants' featured in it somewhere.
There
are Giants in the Earth, by Michael Grumley (© Michael
Grumley/Panther Books – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial,
educational Fair Use basis only)
Needless to say, as
soon as I read this, I immediately thought of the book by Michael Grumley
entitled There are Giants in the Earth, first published in 1975, which
is indeed a book surveying man-beasts worldwide, including de Loys's 'ape'. I
lost no time in seizing my own copy of this volume from my cryptozoology
bookshelves, and painstakingly going through it - how ironic (and
embarrassing!) it would be if the 'missing' photo proved to be in a book that I
actually owned!
Consequently, it was
with somewhat mixed feelings that I ascertained that it was not present in the
book. True, the familiar photo of Ameranthropoides was included, but far
from showing anyone standing alongside the ape, it had been so extensively
cropped for publication in this particular book that the creature's hands,
feet, and even the top of its head had been cut off! Another dead end.
Rough
mock-up of what a photograph snapped at the same time as the familiar one but
featuring a western 'big game' hunter and some smaller, native hunters
alongside Loys's 'ape' sitting upright on a crate might look like (original
photograph © Attilio Gatti, utilised here on a strictly non-commercial,
educational Fair Use basis only; photo-manipulation © Dr Karl Shuker)
In October 1998, I
received a letter from Robert Hill of Cardiff, Wales, who claimed to have seen
a photograph of de Loys's ape with two persons alongside it when he was younger
than twelve, i.e. before November 1976. He was sure of this because he remembered
seeing it while he was on one of his childhood holidays in Porthcawl, South
Wales. He looked at it while inside a newsagent's shop or bookstore, and,
interestingly, he went on to say: "It sticks in my mind because I had just
bought (or had bought for me) a copy of There are Giants in the Earth by
Michael Grumley (which I still have!)".
Robert's statement is
important, demonstrating independently of my own search through it that
Grumley's book and the book containing the mystery photograph are indeed different,
notwithstanding Lawrence Brennan's thoughts regarding the latter's title. It
also pinpoints Robert's sighting of the mystery photo to the years 1975-76
(1975 being the publication date of Grumley's book, which he had received before
seeing the mystery book; and 1976 being the last year in which, until November,
he was still less than 12 years old).
Robert believed that
the publication in which he saw it was a wildlife book of some sort. Moreover,
since seeing it he had always assumed (until reading one of my afore-mentioned magazine
accounts) that the familiar photograph depicting the ape by itself was simply a
cropped version of the picture that he had seen in the mysterious wildlife book
encountered by him all those years ago in Wales.
Echoing comments by
Steven Shipp and Robert Hill, when I first began investigating the mystery of
the 'lost' Ameranthropoides photograph(s) I too had initially speculated
that perhaps the explanation was simply that the familiar Ameranthropoides
photo was indeed a cropped image, which had originally contained people
standing on either side of the animal, i.e. that the 'lost' photo was merely
the original, uncropped version of the familiar one.
However, I
subsequently recalled having seen a copy of the familiar picture in its rarely
reproduced, uncropped form – it appeared in the 1995 reprint of Heuvelmans's book On
the Track of Unknown Animals, which contains several pictures not present
in the original edition from 1958. It is also reproduced below – and as can
readily be seen, there are no people in it.
The
uncropped version of de Loys's famous Ameranthropoides loysi photograph
(public domain)
In view of the
above-quoted testimonies, I feel that there really could be a second 'missing' Ameranthropoides
photograph somewhere out there, inconspicuously residing amid the vast
worldwide library of wildlife literature - and also, I would assume, held
(apparently without knowledge of its cryptozoological value) in one or two
picture libraries. Who knows - there may even have been others too, judging at least from the differing numbers and descriptions of persons reportedly seen in the mystery Ameranthropoides photos alluded to by the above eyewitnesses (plus an additional one included by me in an update of 20 November 2017 below) in their testimonies presented here.
De Loys's own, now-discredited account
of encountering the creature and its mate first appeared as an article in the Illustrated
London News on 15 June 1929, with the famous photograph as its
illustration. One plausible scenario that comes to mind is that when de Loys
sent in his article to the ILN, he submitted with it not just one but a
selection of photos from which the magazine's picture editor could select the
most eyecatching example with which to illustrate it - a common enough
occurrence in publishing. Judging from Dr Ford's account, the second, 'lost'
photo, depicting the creature's dead carcase supported between two men, would
be less dramatic, and certainly less photogenic, than the famous photo, depicting
the creature by itself, deftly propped upright in quite an arresting, life-like pose by the
long slender pole.
Consequently, if both
of these images were indeed submitted (and perhaps others, too, maybe even
depicting the geologists alongside it in similar poses to those adopted by the
native men, and also showing the creature from the back as well as the front?),
it can be readily appreciated why the now-famous photograph would have been the
one selected for reproduction. The other(s) would normally have been returned
to de Loys, but what if they were mislaid somehow, going astray, and were
therefore never returned? Where might they be now?
There is, of course,
another, decidedly different interpretation of this tantalising case, one with
which devotees of the long-running saga of the missing thunderbird photograph
will be only too familiar. For, just as with that latter 'lost' crypto-image,
sceptics will no doubt claim that such a photo never existed - that it is
merely a figment of the imagination, or is a half-remembered, distorted memory
of some superficially similar picture.
Might
some early photograph such as this one, from 1912, depicting two native hunters
holding upright a very large dead chimpanzee (now known to be one of the
elusive Bili apes), have elicited false memories of
a comparable but non-existent photo featuring Ameranthropoides loysi?
(public domain)
Certainly, just as
there are many early pictures in existence of large birds with their wings
outstretched that mirror the alleged thunderbird photograph, so too are there
numerous early pictures of hunters standing alongside carcases or stuffed
specimens of gorillas and other large primates that might conceivably be
capable of generating false memories of Ameranthropoides images with
some eyewitnesses.
Moreover, in a letter to
me of 12 January 1998, Alan Gardiner of West Sussex, England, even nominated,
as a possible false-memory trigger, a famous hoax photograph consisting of a
photomontage that depicts a supposed alien bipedal entity flanked by two government
agents (in reality, this picture was part of a satirical section making fun of
UFO/aliens hysteria that was published by the German photo-magazine Neue
Illustrierte in its 1 April 1950 issue).
The
above-mentioned hoax 'alien' photograph published on 1 April 1950 by Neue
Illustrierte (© Neue Illustrierte – reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial, educational Fair Use basis only)
Could a distant,
confused or mis-remembered memory of one such photograph explain why my
correspondents believe that they have seen a currently unknown photo (or even photos) of
Ameranthropoides? An intriguing variation on this theme was proffered by
Argentinian biologist Mariano Moldes in a letter to me of 2 February 1998.
Discounting the false memory scenario, he suggested that what may have happened
is as follows:
The book alluded to by them [the eyewitnesses of the
missing photograph] probably existed and had a chapter on Ameranthropoides
loysi - illustrated with a wrong photograph. It's quite common that
laypeople in charge of editorial technical tasks mistake similar illustrations
on a subject, and the frequency of such an event increases with decreasing
general quality of the publication. Dr Ford says that it was a "rather
old" book with forgettable author and title. It's true that the witnesses
couldn't have mistaken an allusion to a well-known simian...But what if they
saw a bad photograph of, say, a bonobo chimp (Pan paniscus) or a siamang
(genus Symphalangus) surrounded by misleading text?
All of the
above-proposed explanations undeniably have merit, but in this particular
instance I consider them unsatisfactory. After all, the eyewitnesses of the missing photograph(s) whose vocations are known to me include a wildlife education
officer, a highly-qualified university anthropologist, and a dealer in
cryptozoology books - hardly the kinds of eyewitness likely to suffer problems
in distinguishing (or subsequently remembering) photos of gorillas and other
extremely familiar primates from that of a highly distinctive, wholly
unfamiliar beast resembling an exceptionally large ape-like spider monkey.
Mariano Moldes's
suggestion has more merit - I am certainly aware of many instances, especially
in older wildlife books, in which photos have been wrongly identified, or a
section of text concerning a particular species has been accompanied by a photo
of the wrong species. Even so, I still consider it unlikely that those
eyewitnesses with zoology-related expertise would fail to spot such a mistake.
Consequently, I am
currently willing to believe that one or even more additional Ameranthropoides photos may
indeed exist, concealed somewhere amid the world's vast archives of wildlife
literature. Perhaps there is someone reading this present ShukerNature blog
article of mine who has seen a 'lost' Ameranthropoides photo, or knows
where such an image has been published. If so, I would greatly welcome any
information that you may wish to send to me – many thanks indeed! Clearly, even
though the history of Ameranthropoides loysi is nowadays totally
discredited as a hoax, it may still be capable of offering up some genuine
surprises.
Finally: When deciding to prepare – and now included as this present ShukerNature article's opening illustration (and reproduced a second time halfway through this same article of mine) – the mock-up photograph of Ameranthropoides posed alongside people, and knowing all too well how effectively the internet works when it comes to disseminating fake news, it occurred to me that my mock-up may subsequently be reproduced on other websites and be erroneously claimed on at least some of them to be a genuine, hitherto-lost de Loys photograph of Ameranthropoides! Consequently, in order to defeat any such claims, not only have I painstakingly captioned it here with full details of its nature and origin, but also, when creating it, I deliberately sabotaged any chance of it being deemed genuine by using as my original image a photograph that featured recognisably African native hunters (two Congolese pygmies) rather than South American ones, plus a readily-identifiable western hunter (Italian explorer Commander Attilio Gatti), who, moreover, had no links whatsoever to South America. So please bear all of that in mind if you should indeed see this mock-up photo turning up elsewhere online, which no doubt it will, sooner or later...
And sure enough, here is one especially preposterous use of it, in a YouTube video whose creator ludicrously claims that it depicts a British(!) explorer posing alongside some pygmies and a "hominid" in – wait for it – New Guinea! Is it any wonder that cryptozoology nowadays receives such short shrift from many mainstream zoologists when this kind of wholly inaccurate reporting fills the internet?
A
different time, a different outlook: the original vintage photograph –
featuring Commander Attilio Gatti, two Congolese pygmies, and a hunting-trophy
gorilla – that I photo-manipulated to create the mock-up photo of Ameranthropoides
loysi with people alongside it (original photograph © Commander Attilio Gatti,
utilised here on a strictly non-commercial, educational Fair Use basis only;
photo-manipulation © Dr Karl Shuker)
UPDATE - 20 November 2017
Today, I received the following very interesting email from American correspondent Glen McClelland, who has most kindly permitted me to include it here - many thanks indeed, Glen! It constitutes a hitherto-unpublished and therefore very valuable first-hand sighting by him of what he believes may have been a second Ameranthropoides loysi photograph:
I have debated
with myself about emailing you about the Ameranthropoides loysi photo discussed
in your blog of November 2nd, but have decided to do it.
I saw the photo of Ameranthropoides loysi with an individual standing next to
the animal while I was attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas between 1974 and 1979. I
don’t remember the exact year. The photo was in a book in the university
library. I wish I could remember the title, but it escapes me. I do remember
there were other topics concerning cryptozoology but I don’t remember if the
entire book was dedicated to the subject. I do remember that the book appeared
to be fairly new and probably a recent publication. Also in the book was the
un-cropped photo of Ameranthropoides on the wooden box. This was one of the
very few times I have seen that photo. I have never seen the photo with the
person in it again. The fact that both photos were in the book really stood
out. I do remember thinking that with a person standing next to the animal it
showed that it was large and not a small spider monkey.
I have a degree in chemistry and supervise a quality control lab. In that
environment the work is scientifically based. I mention this because I do not
believe this is case of false memory inspired by reading about the photo.
Hopefully I am more analytical about things I see and read.
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