Koolakamba / Koola-Kamba

[Anonymous]

Has anyone here ever heard about a creature called the Koolakamba? I know you are all going to hate me for this but i just recently visited Rickys new forum thinking i was going to read a bunch of made up creature storys and UFO sightings but i was pleasantly suprised when i read his Oliver thread in his Crypto section of his Forum.
He has said that Oliver the Ape was a Koolakamba and has a few pictures of him which isnt new but he has another picture of a different ape which is black where as oliver had a white looking face and his theory is that this ape which is known as the Cameroon Ape is from the same species. They do look amazingly similar which does give rise to the thought are these apes a new species of unknow ape? could it be the ape recently discovered that is thought to be half chimp half gorilla?
It is well worth a look if you find this interesting, hopefully the forum he has created doesnt turn into a flame fest.

 

[DerekH16]

I thought Oliver had recently been proved to be a chimp, or did I get it wrong again?

 

[Anonymous]

well i think what the scientists where doing is seeing if Oliver had any human in him which he didnt. They said he was more likely to be an Chimp but not that he was simply a common Chimp, this could include a sub species which i think is likely after what ive recently read.

 

[evilsprout]

Oliver was proven to be nothing more than a deformed chimpanzee, trained to act in certain ways for the circus (if I remember rightly).

Though of course Big Charlie F taught us to beware of scientific "proof"... there was one theory that Oliver was a wildman from the area he was found in, or a chimp/wildman cross. I can't remember the name of the actual wildman legend in that area, so it could well have been Koolakamba.

Other theories about Oliver were human/chimp cross, chimp/bonobo cross and Downs Syndrome chimp.

 

[Anonymous]

If that is true EvilSprout then explain why a ape that looked and acted exactly the same way as oliver was found living in a zoo in cameroon. I doubt a circus can teach a creature to always walk on 2 legs, yes its possible to teach an animal to walk on 2 legs for a while but oliver always walked on 2 legs and never used his arms at all.
The scientific evidence says he is a chimp but this doesnt mean that he is a common chimp, it means that he belongs to the chimp family and he could be a subspecies which i would say is a possibility due to the discovery of the Cameroon Ape.

 

[evilsprout]

Like I said, I was not 100% certain if my memory served me correctly about Oliver's "diagnosis". I'll seek out relevent information and return to this thread...!

 

[evilsprout]

...ok, a rather in depth page about the Koolakamba here first off, which does sound rather Oliver-esque I have to agree.

Karl Shuker's FT article about Oliver's "results" is here...

(here's the science bit, concentrate...)

Swett asked Chicago University geneticist Dr David Ledbetter to examine Oliver's chromosomes, which he did in autumn 1996. His studies revealed that Oliver had 48, not 47, chromosomes, thus disproving the earlier claim and confirming that he had a normal chromosome count for a chimpanzee. Swett, however, desired further analyses to pin-point Oliver's precise status. Accordingly, he persuaded DNA analysis expert Dr John fly from Texas's Trinity University and cytogeneticist Dr Charleen Moore from Texas University's Health Science Center to conduct the most extensive genetic studies ever undertaken with Oliver. Their results were published in 1998 by the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and disclosed the following.

Standard chromosomal studies fully supported Ledbetter's findings that Oliver had the diploid chromesome count expected for chimpanzees (i.e. 48 or 24 pairs). They also revealed that his chromosomes possessed banding patterns typical for the common chimpanzee but different from those of humans and bonobos, thereby excluding any possibility of Oliver being a hybrid.

Moreover, when they sequenced a specific portion (312 bp region) of the D-loop region of Oliver's mitochondrial DNA they discovered that its sequence corresponded very closely indeed with that of the Central African subspecies of common chimpanzee; the closest correspondence of all was with a chimp specimen from Gabon in Central-West Africa. This all strongly suggests that Oliver also originated from this region and is simply a common chimp - an identity entirely consistent, therefore, with my own little-publicised opinion from 1993.

After decades of mystery, Oliver's identity had finally been uncovered, exposed by his genes. But what of his external idiosyncrasies? Fly and Moore's paper contained some eye-opening infermation dating back to the 1970s, but which was presumably not sensational enough to attract the interest of the media and thus had not previously received publicity.

For instance, although media accounts had noted that Oliver was toothless (his teeth had been pulled), they had not revealed that primatologist Dr Clifford Jolly had examined Oliver as long ago as 1976. Jolly found that Oliver did not share the strikingly prognathous (projecting) jaw line of other chimps due to resorption of the alveolar bone, a shortened maxilla and premaxilla (upper jaw bones), and underdeveloped temporal musculature. Jolly had concluded that these features were in turn caused by Oliver's toothless condition. He also concluded that Oliver's habitual bipedal gait was due to conditioning.

As for Oliver's cranial morphology, ear shape, freckles and baldness, these were nothing more than individual variations, well within the range of variability exhibited by the common chimpanzee - a species that presents, in the words of primatologist Professor W.C. Osman Hill: "a bewildering variety of individual variations".

But, always beware of the scientific "proof". I'd still say the Koolakamba theory could be valid.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

The kooloo-kamba or Koolakamba is a possible gorilla/chimp hybrid, which has been reported in Africa as early as the mid 19th century.
Whilst hard evidence to support its existence seems to be minimal, zoologist Peter Jenkins photographed a strange looking ape in Yaounde Zoo (Camaroon) in November 1996, with a wider face and a larger skull than that of a chimpanzee but smaller than that of a gorilla and suspected that the creature might be a gorilla-chimp hybrid.

The first link includes a reference to this being reported in issue 100 of Fortean Times.

https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/12/31/yaounde-zoo-mystery-ape
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koolakamba
https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Koolakamba

 

[Mythopoeika]

It's got a 'killer' look about it.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

It's got a 'killer' look about it.

Definitely something a bit psycho about that stare.
Mind you, if any of us had been kidnapped away from our family and forced to live in a cage for years, we might end up with a similarly certifiable gaze.
As the photo was taken 26 years ago and the ape, judging from the dark facial complexion and the beard, looks like it had already reached adulthood, it is almost certainly now deceased. A shame that no follow-up investigation was ever carried out.
Whether a genuine chimp-gorilla hybrid or some hitherto unknown sub-species of chimp, it was certainly an interesting creature.

 

[EnolaGaia]

The kooloo-kamba or Koolakamba is a possible gorilla/chimp hybrid, which has been reported in Africa as early as the mid 19th century. ...
The first link includes a reference to this being reported in issue 100 of Fortean Times.
https://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/12/31/yaounde-zoo-mystery-ape

This ScienceBlogs link is strongly recommended for anyone interested in the Youande Zoo mystery ape story and the kooloo-kamba. It includes voluminous and detailed comments that summarize sightings, taxonomic attributions, hypotheses, and references extending back to the 19th century.

The three photos have gone MIA in the blog page's opening post. the photos can be seen in the copy of this blog article archived at the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/2012081...odzoology/2009/12/31/yaounde-zoo-mystery-ape/

The first photo is the one posted above. The third photo is a Heuvelmans photo of a Pygmy gorilla, shown to illustrate variability unrecognized by the researchers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here's the third photo along with the associated text:

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t does now seem that the kooloo-kambas of the older literature reflect the fact that both gorillas and (especially) chimps are more variable in facial anatomy, body size and overall appearance than many primatologists were once willing to accept. Chimps of some populations, for example, are larger, darker-skinned, and superficially more ‘gorilla-like’ than many of the chimps first brought back to Europe, but this doesn’t mean that such animals are hybrids, or intermediates. Indeed, Shea (1984) concluded that the ‘kooloo-kambas’ present in osteological collections are either large male chimps, or small female gorillas. Various other controversial African apes – most notably the Pygmy gorilla Pseudogorilla mayéma (see Groves 1985) [shown here, photo ©, by B. Heuvelmans] – also tell us more about our poor understanding of variation, and don’t necessarily point to the presence of additional distinct taxa.

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SOURCE (WAYBACK MACHINE):
The Yaounde Zoo mystery ape and the status of the Kooloo-Kamba
Posted by Darren Naish on December 31, 2009
https://web.archive.org/web/2012081...odzoology/2009/12/31/yaounde-zoo-mystery-ape/

 

[EnolaGaia]

The second of the three photos is interesting because it illustrates a type specimen characterized as a chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes kooloo-kamba. This photo is taken from a 1913 book and reflects a mid-19th century interpretation of the kooloo-kamba taxonomic classification. Here's the photo and relevant text:

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Apparently little known is that there is a long history of debate over the existence of an alleged gorilla-like chimpanzee, known as the kooloo-kamba (an onomatopoeic reference to its call). W. C. Osman Hill was supporting the distinction of this form (as a Pan troglodytes subspecies) as recently as the late 1960s (Hill 1967, 1969). Supposedly, P. t. kooloo-kamba [originally Troglodytes kooloo-kamba Du Chaillu, 1860; sic: hyphens are not permitted in scientific names] has a gorilla-like nose, ‘an extremely prognathic face’, an entirely black face, and small, black ears. It also lives singly or in small groups, rather than in large troops. It was thought to inhabit Cameroon, Gabon and the former French Congo, and to live alongside chimps of the nominate subspecies (Hill 1967, 1969) [type specimen of P. t. kooloo-kamba (61.7.29.10 of NHM collection) shown below, from Elliot (1913)].

While Hill regarded the kooloo-kamba as a distinctive chimp subspecies, previous authors regarded it as a distinct species somehow ‘intermediate’ between chimps and gorillas, or as the product of gorilla-chimp hybridisation. Supposedly, several individuals were kept in captivity during the late 1800s and ealy 1900s, including ‘Mafuca’ of the Dresden Zoological Garden, and ‘Johanna’ of Barnum and Bailey’s circus collection. There’s a substantial literature on these animals. Some mammalogists said that they were gorillas, others than they were chimps, and others said that they were hybrids, or intermediates (see Shea (1984) and references therein). It has most recently been argued that ‘Mafuca’ was a Bonobo P. paniscus (see de Waal 1997), in which case at least some ‘kooloo-kambas’ were definitely not gorilla-chimp hybrids or intermediates at all.

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SOURCE (WAYBACK MACHINE):
The Yaounde Zoo mystery ape and the status of the Kooloo-Kamba
Posted by Darren Naish on December 31, 2009
https://web.archive.org/web/2012081...odzoology/2009/12/31/yaounde-zoo-mystery-ape/