Help Finding Picture (De Loys' Ape)

[Ringo]

Hi Guys,

I'm giving a lecture on Friday about variuos paranormal things and I'm missing a picture that I want to show; namely, an image of a "monkey woman" with her head supported on a stick, with a man standing on each side of her.

Can anyone provide me with a link. I've searched around and found nada.

Thanks for the help,

Ringo.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

Do you mean de Loy's ape? Not exactly a woman though.

 

[Ringo]

That's the one. I seem to recall a different version with men on either side but maybe I'm mixing it up with another image. Thanks for finding it for me. I can rest easy now.

Ringo.

 

[LaurenChurchill]

Not to bring down the tone or anything, but that's pretty clearly a monkey-man 8) :lol:

 

[Xanatico]

I think it´s surprising how little follow up there has been on this. Even if not an ape, it would still be interesting to find out more about them.

 

[Mister_Awesome]

I think it´s surprising how little follow up there has been on this. Even if not an ape, it would still be interesting to find out more about them.

I've read quite a bit on it. (There's probably a thread for it somewhere, actually.) During an expedition into the Amazon, three apes appeared and threw feces at the party. They managed to shoot the one in the picture, but the others ran off. There are arguements for and against it being an unknown species of ape.

Against: It looks quite a bit like a spider monkey. De Loys had a motive to produce a hoax: this was during the time when racist thought was using evolution to prove the superiority of white people. This school of thought proposed that white people were created by God, but other races were descended from apes, and so there was a lot of searching for apes on continents without known apes.

For: The expedition was in horrible shape, and nearly the entire group died; making hoaxes probably wasn't foremost on his mind. It's said that the crate is of the wrong size for it to be a spider monkey.

I tend toward believing it, myself. Unfortunately the one picture and story are all there is to be told about this animal.

 

[Xanatico]

I know the story of the DeLoy expedition itself. It just seems odd that you don´t hear more about attempts to find this creature, wether ape or monkey. I guess sightings might have been very rare since.

 

[LaurenChurchill]

I recall having seen this picture before, and at the time I remember there being something else in the photo that deomnstrated its size. Possibly as Ringo said, it was people, though I can't remember it clearly enough to say for sure. In fact, I can't remember where it was that I saw it either. I do remember that it was many years ago, when I was little, and it scared me quite a lot. I'll have a hunt through my old books.
I'd like to know more about this though, if anyone has any links to the background of this photo

 

[Mister_Awesome]

I know the story of the DeLoy expedition itself. It just seems odd that you don´t hear more about attempts to find this creature, wether ape or monkey. I guess sightings might have been very rare since.

It seems to be widely dismissed as a hoax, and I have never heard of a single sighting since. I wonder what the local natives have to say about it...

 

[WhistlingJack]

I recall having seen this picture before, and at the time I remember there being something else in the photo that deomnstrated its size.

The uncropped photo has a load of cowboys with a thunderbird stood to one side...

 

[Xanatico]

It may have been a hoax, but surely the creature itself was real. I doubt he made it out of paper mache. So where is it now?

 

[Fats_Tuesday]

It is clearly a spider monkey and not an ape, but I have always been intrigued in that it doesn't look like any known species of spider monkey (or at least I've never been able to find any pictures of a similar looking spider monkey).

If it was a hoax, did they just kill a normal spider monkey and somehow doctor the corpse, to make it look radically different from its natural appearance (If you look carefully, it may have had the hair shaved from around the face and forehead, in an attempt to give it a more ape-like appearance)? I just don't know, but as a sceptical naturalist, I still find this one of the most fascinating cryptid photographs.

 

[Ringo]

I have read somwehere that it is in fact a female and the appendage in question is in fact a clitoris. Albeit a very large one.

 

[Mister_Awesome]

It may have been a hoax, but surely the creature itself was real. I doubt he made it out of paper mache. So where is it now?

As I stated before, the expedition had a very difficult time. I think they barely made it back at all, and they probably weren't too worried about keeping the corpse around, if it was real. (I believe they found it relatively early in the expedition.)

And yeah, it does look like a spider monkey, and yet... not like a spider monkey. If it's an ape, it's certainly an odd one.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

I recall having seen this picture before, and at the time I remember there being something else in the photo that deomnstrated its size. Possibly as Ringo said, it was people, though I can't remember it clearly enough to say for sure. In fact, I can't remember where it was that I saw it either. I do remember that it was many years ago, when I was little, and it scared me quite a lot. I'll have a hunt through my old books.
I'd like to know more about this though, if anyone has any links to the background of this photo

The first time I recall seeing it was on David Attenborough's Fabulous Animals.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

(or at least I've never been able to find any pictures of a similar looking spider monkey).

I don't think it's that different from one such as this, although there's clearly some deformity or doctoring around the mouth:

 

[Fats_Tuesday]

(or at least I've never been able to find any pictures of a similar looking spider monkey).

I don't think it's that different from one such as this, although there's clearly some deformity or doctoring around the mouth:

Could be - if it is, they've shaved the forehead as well, possibly in an attempt to make it look more human.

Which species of spider monkey is the one in your link?

Another interesting thing that many people overlook is that many known species of spider monkeys are actually pretty big animals any way, getting to be over 2 foot tall.

There's a comparitive size diagram with a human at:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/a ... onkey.html

 

[Dr_Baltar]

I believe it's a Colombian Black, possibly Brown.

The forehead isn't necessarily shaved on the Loy's, it could be a lighter patch of hair which, from what I've seen from photos, isn't that unusual. It certainly looks like a "bald spot" but it's very hard to tell for sure from an old monochrome photograph.

 

[EnolaGaia]

A new summary of the de Loys ape photo - including ostensible explanations for the actual subject (de Loys' pet spider monkey) can be accessed at:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/his ... -loys-ape/

The part I found most interesting relates to a letter to the editor of some 50 years ago, which claims to give 'the real story'. I hadn't seen any mention of this letter before. Here's the relevant excerpt about this letter:

Finally in 1999 the July-August edition of the Venezuelan scientific magazine “Interciencia” published a letter send in 1962 from Doctor Enrique Tejera to the editor Guillermo José Schael of the magazine “Diario El Universal“:

“[...] This monkey is a myth. I will tell you his story. [...]
Mister Montandon said that the monkey had no tail. That is for sure, but he forgot to mention something, it has no tail because it was cut off. I can assure you this, gentlemen, because I saw the amputation…[].
Who is speaking here in 1917 was working in a camp for oil exploration in the region of Perijá. The geologist was François de Loys, the engineer Dr. Martín Tovar Lange. De Loys was a prankster and often we laughed at his jokes. One day they gave him a monkey with an ill tail, so it was amputated. Since then de Loys called him “el hombre mono” (the monkey man).
Some time later I and Loys went in another region of Venezuela: in an area called Mene Grande. He always walked along the side of his monkey, who died some time later. De Loys decided to take a photo and I believe that Mr. Montandon will not deny it is the same photograph that he presented today. [in 1929 Montandon presented the Ameranthropoides in a public lecture].
More recently during a visit to Paris my astonishment was great visiting the Museum of Man. On top of a monumental scale, filling the back wall, there was a huge photo with the caption: “The first anthropoid ape discovered in America.”
It was the photograph of de Loys, beautifully modified. The plants were no longer visible in the background, and it was not possible to understand on which kind of box the monkey was sitting. The trick is done so well that within a few years the monkey will be over two meters high [...].
Finally, I must warn you: Montandon was not a good person. After the war he was executed because he betrayed France, his homeland.

Sincerely, Your friend Enrique Tejera.“

 

[IamSundog]

I saw it in Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World published around 1982.

 

[amyasleigh]

I have read somwehere that it is in fact a female and the appendage in question is in fact a clitoris. Albeit a very large one.

Bernard Heuvelmans -- discussing the de Loys photo in his "On the Track of Unknown Animals" -- expresses certainty, pretty much: that whatever animal, precisely, the photo may show, it is a female; and he considers the picture to look, certainly, reminiscent of a spider-monkey. He states that "all female spider-monkeys have an over-developed clitoris."