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Concept
Bili ape
Summary
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. "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.
Scientists soon determined they were common chimpanzees, and part of a larger contiguous population stretching throughout that part of northern Congo. 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.
Skulls of gorillas were first collected near the town of Bili in 1908. 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. Colin Groves examined the skulls in 1970 and determined that they were indistinguishable from western gorillas.
Karl Ammann, a Swiss Kenyan photographer and anti-bushmeat campaigner, first visited the city in 1996, looking for the gorillas. Instead, Ammann bought a skull that had dimensions like that of a chimpanzee, but with a prominent sagittal crest like that of a gorilla. Ammann purchased a photograph from hunters of what looked like a very big chimpanzee. 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, 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. 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.
Official source
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