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Orang Pendek / Orang Dalam / Sedapa [South-East Asia]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4754424.stm

Johor bans foreign ape man hunt
27 February 2006
By Jonathan Kent
BBC correspondent in Kuala Lumpur


The southern Malaysian state of Johor has threatened to jail foreigners who venture into its jungles looking for a legendary ape man, dubbed 'Big Foot'.

The state's Forestry Department says Big Foot enthusiasts found on its land without a permit will face up to three years jail or a fine of up to $2,500.

The hunt for Big Foot has gripped Malaysia after a spate of sightings.

Now authorities are determined that if the ape man exists, Malaysians will be the first to find him.

Malaysians are being invited to pay just over $1 for a permit to roam around Johor state's forest reserves, where most of the reported sightings have taken place.

The state also plans to sponsor a scientific expedition, and although Malaysia has few primate specialists, foreigners will again not be invited.

Local tourism industry leaders told the BBC the ban on non-Malaysians entering forest reserves was daft and should be rethought.

The country hopes to lure 20 million foreign visitors next year and its main attractions are its beaches and its jungles.

Tourism bosses say the move will simply confuse and possibly drive away just the people they want to attract.
 
Tourism bosses say the move will simply confuse and possibly drive away just the people they want to attract.

But look on the bright side, there will none of those pesky foreigners witnessing illegal logging, forest clearences, etc.
 
Tourism bosses say the move will simply confuse and possibly drive away just the people they want to attract.

But look on the bright side, there will none of those pesky foreigners witnessing illegal logging, forest clearences, etc.


Perhaps I should file this under 'conspiracy'
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4754424.stm

Johor bans foreign ape man hunt
27 February 2006
By Jonathan Kent
BBC correspondent in Kuala Lumpur


The southern Malaysian state of Johor has threatened to jail foreigners who venture into its jungles looking for a legendary ape man, dubbed 'Big Foot'.

The state's Forestry Department says Big Foot enthusiasts found on its land without a permit will face up to three years jail or a fine of up to $2,500.

The hunt for Big Foot has gripped Malaysia after a spate of sightings.

Now authorities are determined that if the ape man exists, Malaysians will be the first to find him.

Malaysians are being invited to pay just over $1 for a permit to roam around Johor state's forest reserves, where most of the reported sightings have taken place.

The state also plans to sponsor a scientific expedition, and although Malaysia has few primate specialists, foreigners will again not be invited.

Local tourism industry leaders told the BBC the ban on non-Malaysians entering forest reserves was daft and should be rethought.

Well, BBC's Jonathan Kent managed to do some more exploring - this is his latest report - though I must point out the typo error - Johor is NOT an Indonesian state!!

Hunting for Malaysia's 'Bigfoot'
By Jonathan Kent
BBC correspondent in Kuala Lumpur

The village of Mawai Lama in the Indonesian state of Johor is a sleepy row of wooden fronted shop-houses set back from the Sedili River.

Yet Mawai is one of the most intriguing places in Malaysia.

According to local historians, Mawai's original name was Mawas, and Mawas is the name locals give to a legendary creature known the world over as Bigfoot.

The people of Mawas certainly seem to believe in the creature from which their village takes its name.

Some, like Aji the boatman, say they have seen it.

"It was about 10 or 11 at night. I saw something, but I didn't know what sort of creature it was. But I can definitely see the eyes were red. And it made a noise, Woooooo!" Aji said.

"Maybe it was scared off by my headlight and I was scared by him so we both rushed off in different directions and later I came back and found the footprints," he said.

Hunt for food

Mawai lies at one end of the Panti mountains, a densely forested and steep-sloped ridge at the southern end of the Malay peninsular.

On the other side of the range is Kampung Batu Empat. A few weeks ago some unusual muddy footprints were found on the road nearby.

Vincent Chow, of the Malaysian Nature Society, had some photos.

"Based on what we've learned, this is the southern end of their migratory route and because the forests have become fragmented they're rather confined now," Mr Chow said.

Traces of the muddy prints were still on the road.

"They move around looking for fruits, sometimes they go looking for them in villages. They're also looking for a mate and for salt."

Prompted by the footprints and a recent spate of sightings, the Johor state government is planning a team to start looking for Bigfoot.

The reports of sightings are nothing new. Five years ago, while driving up Malaysia's main North-South highway, public relations consultant Eva Hawa says she saw a creature fitting Bigfoot's description crossing the road in broad daylight

"It was hairy, it was big, it was about six to seven feet tall. He moved right across in front of my car. He has a hunch and walked like a very old man," she said.

Four days ago my [workers] heard Bigfoot calling in the jungle. They've found footprints
Abdul Rahman Ahmad

Factors which can be argued in favour of Bigfoot's existence include the legends from different parts of the world which seem to bear a degree of similarity to one another, despite having emerged separately. There are the sightings. And there is the fact that a giant ape, Gigantopithecus blacki, is known to have lived in Asia until around 300,000 years ago.

And there is the discovery, on the Indonesian island of Flores in late 2004, of skeletons interpreted by some anthropologists as belonging to a hominid population dubbed hobbits. There are still natural wonders to be discovered, even in this day and age, not least in the forests of South East Asia.

The primatologist Jane Goodall is one of those who expect Bigfoot to be found.

"People from very different backgrounds and different parts of the world have described very similar creatures behaving in similar ways and uttering some strikingly similar sounds," she said in a newspaper interview three years ago. "As far as I am concerned, the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real probability."

Doubters

However, the doubters - and they are legion - ask why no giant ape remains more recent than a quarter of a million years old have been found. And as the forests and wilderness shrink, why has Bigfoot not broken cover and been definitively recorded?

One man who has no doubts is Abdul Rahman Ahmad, a former factory manager. His late brother was Johor's Chief Game Warden and had seen Bigfoot footprints 30 years ago.

When we arrived to visit him, Abdul Rahman was very excited.

"Four days ago my [workers] heard Bigfoot calling in the jungle. They've found footprints."

Early the next morning, accompanied by four of Abdul Rahman's Indonesian workers, we set off to find the site where the prints were spotted. As we trekked through the forest there was a crashing in the trees. We had disturbed a herd of wild water buffalo.

But when we got to the riverside where the workers said they had seen Bigfoot tracks, all we found was buffalo hoof marks. There was nothing. We pressed on. I was shown a branch "broken by Bigfoot", another stripped of leaves "by the ape man".

For almost three hours the Indonesians led us through the trees, through rivers and for all I know around in circles.

Finally we reached the first river at a point higher up than we had originally explored.

And there, beside the river, in the soft sand, were footprints.

They were distinctive, perhaps 20cm across and 40, perhaps 45cm long.

There was a bulge where a human corn might be, as though the foot had an opposable thumb rather than a big toe. There were three of them, some better defined, some more complete, than others.

All I can tell you is they were big, they were foot shaped and they were there.

Go here to see the nice pictures of footprints http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4759018.stm
 
More New Tracks

More photos of Malaysian tracks make for new analyses and more conjecture on what the prints might be.

RUFF says, this seems like (I have a feeling) its going to go on forever! I think I'm gonna wait for a photo of the thing ! till I post again , sheesh ! anyway go to http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/more-tracks/
for the most recent tracks with comparison to “Orang Pendek,” again.
 
I read in the newspaper today that despite offering 500 permits for hunting the creature, Malaysian authorities haven't received one application. Does this mean there are illegal hunts going on, or is nobody bothered?
 
Has Coleman Flipped Out?

Have you seen Cryptomundo lately? Loren Coleman announced that homo erectus has been found, and it turns out that what really happened is that he was hired to write the forward of a book. The book SUPPOSEDLY will show photos of the "mawas" or Malaysian bigfoot. Coleman doesn't claim to have seen the photos yet, but he's printed a headline declaring it homo erectus. Even if he had seen the supposed photos and found them realistic, that doesn't mean it's "homo erectus" does it? The atmosphere is very Barnum-like even by Coleman standards. His only "proof" is a guy named Peter Loh repeating that he really really really really believes the guy who claims to have the photos-- really! He really seems sincere! Why would a hoaxer not try to seem sincere? And why would a man with scientific evidence not produce the photos immediately for the press and the world? Peter Loh tells us that nobody could fake photos of bigfoot. I'm not kidding, he wrote that the technology doesn't exist. Someone else corrected him. I contributed a post giving some more info about exactly HOW one could fake bigfoot movies and photos using various relatively cheap software. The post was deleted, presumably by Barnum-- I mean Coleman-- himself.

But he did respond to my post in a sense by offering a new entry on the site. This new headline promised "The face of the Johor Mawas! Chow and the photographs!" So I clicked on the link, and sure enough the "face" of the Johor Mawas is a cartoon that looks like a character from Ren and Stimpy. The "photos" in question were of the guy who claims to have the photos.

Judging by the fact that this has been going on for days at his site and I don't see anyone commenting here, I'm guessing you all think this latest set of "developments" is as full of garbage as I do???
 
Its awfully difficult to judge. Loren is singed up here and is welcome to reply to such comments so it should be interesting.

The whole thing sounds so tenuous though.

The pictures you mention are here:

www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/facemawas/

If I understand properly they are from Peter Loh based on Vincent Chow's description of what the creature in the photograph looks like. That all stinks of a con.

Equally I find his replies unconvincing too:

In reply to those critics who say Chow should release the photographs immediately, beside the whole issue of them not being entirely in his control, he has this to say:

I am not in a hurry to please the skeptics and cynics but doing it more for serious researchers who know the value of the presence of Homo erectus. The distorted views and imageries of Bigfoot as a monstrous ape to entertain man’s follies and satisfy the ego, and as an object to be viewed with abject ridicule should never be condoned.”

Sounds like hype to boost book sales - I'd suspect that releasing the pictures too early would adverely impact that.

It does seem to be the way things go - some odd claims followed by someone jumping on the bandwagon milking it for all its good for and the actual story gets lost as it all gets caught up in our more huamn craziness.

Let's hope that Loren's rep doesn't get too tarnished if he gets caught in the fallout.

Again I stand ready to eat my hat but we'll see...

Previous entries:

www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/mala ... ot-update/

www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/erdimorph/
 
It reminds me of all the hype surrounding the release of the Roswell autopsy film or the Majestic 12 documents. In both cases, respected researchers were suckered in by the long buildup and hype, only to end up having to do lots of backpedalling once they realised that things weren't quite what they had been cracked up to be.
 
mORE CRAP!
If There was a real missing link ( bigfoot) it make Pravda headlines and weekly world news!! :hah:
 
ruffready said:
mORE CRAP!
If There was a real missing link ( bigfoot) it make Pravda headlines and weekly world news!! :hah:

Techncially I think it writes them!! No wonder no one has ever found it!!
 
Well it seems the photos turned out to be a hoax after all. There's a surprise. Still, so long as Loren Coleman comes out of it smelling like roses, everything's okay in the wibbly wobbly world of cryptozoology, isn't it.

A Species Odyssey

More Pix
 
Explorer hopes plaster cast will raise funds to search for Bigfoot
By Sebastien Berger in Lukut
(Filed: 10/10/2006)

In the jungle of southern Malaysia, where legends of a giant man-ape echo along with the calls of forest wildlife, a plaster cast of a huge footprint is precious evidence.

Syed Abdullah Alattas, the founder of Paranormal Seekers Malaysia, found the footprint outside Lukut, in Johor.

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But it is difficult to raise enough cash to help prove the existence of a creature unknown to science and Mr Abdullah has put his best asset up for sale. A private museum in America offered $50,000 (£27,000) for the cast, complete with five toes.

"We need equipment and material for our paranormal investigations and research but we have no funding nor aid from the government," he said. "Therefore we are forced to put the cast up for sale."

The search for Bigfoot has special resonance in Malaysia. "In Malaysia there are different ways of thinking about how the world works and some of them are supernatural," said Eric Thompson, the assistant professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.

"Belief in ghosts is pretty prevalent," he said, with several types said to exist, including the pontianak, a vampire that can take various forms, and the orang minyak, which attacks people in their homes but can be warded off with a type of yellow bamboo.

Unusually, the Bigfoot is widely believed to be a physical animal, rather than a supernatural one, and the inhabitants of Lukut are convinced it exists.
http://tinyurl.com/qqlj3
 
Orang-pendek samples

Dr Lars Thomas of Copenhagen University will be carrying out some new tests on a sample of orang-pendek hair i brought back from Sumatra, live at the Weird Weekend this year.
 
I thought the tests had been done and had been inconclusive?what will these tests consist of?
 
Lars and his team have looked at all the samples we have brought back over the years. This latest batch was split between New York and Copenhagen. Dr Scott Dissotel's tests were inconclusive as he could not gey DNA from them.
However Lars' team got some very exciting results from their first round of tests. However we are keeping it under our hats untill it can be verified. A second round of trets featuring new techneques will be carried out very soon.
Laars himself will be examining the hair at the WW. I don't know exactly what he is doing but i'm sure it will be intresting.
 
Is this the same story as mentioned on this page?
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays ... _cats.html
Positive proof of a leopard on the loose in north Devon and a tantalising glimpse of the true identity of the orang-pendek were some of the highlights of this year’s Weird Weekend, the annual conference organised by the Centre for Fortean Zoology in the little village of Woolfardisworthy in Devon.

I was there to give a talk on how to identify hair samples, but through the good grace of Danish production company Nature and Science – who were shooting a documentary about crypto­zoology – and Olympus Denmark, I had also been able to bring along some serious microscopic equipment enabling me to do on-the-spot analysis in case somebody brought some hairs along.

Just to make sure there would be some hairs to analyse, I twice visited nearby Huddisford Wood where locals have seen big black cats for several years. The first visit was in the company of the Danish film crew, the second in the company of Andrew Perry, Colin Stott and several other members of Wiltshire Phenomena Research. Between us we managed to find a number of scats and hair-samples. Most of these were of well-known local animals – badgers, dogs, voles, even humans – but two of the samples contained some 30–40 hairs from a big cat. Closer examination revealed the hairs to be from a leopard. By pinching a sample from a leopard skin brought to the WW by big cat researcher Jon McGowan, I even managed to do a comparison: they were a perfect match. There is no way to know when the hairs were dropped, but there is absolutely no doubt that at least one leopard has been out for a walk in Huddisford Wood.

Other big cats revealed themselves during the weekend. The Wiltshire group had brought along a long black hair found in Longleat Forest. It had already been identified as coming from a cat, and further examination proved it to be from a leopard. Jon McGowan had also brought a selection of the samples he has found during his time in the field in Dorset. There were several hairs from big cats in these, although most of them could not be identified as to species – apart from one sample, where I was able to extract several puma hairs, and thus confirm Jon McGowan’s own results.


The cats were exciting enough in themselves, but the highpoint of the weekend came when I started looking at hairs from what could be an orang-pendek – the Indonesian Wildman. The hairs were brought back from Sumatra by an expedition undertaken by Adam Davies and the CFZ [see FT266:50–53]. Earlier analysis seemed to indicate the hairs are from an unknown primate, while my own analysis showed a great resemblance to the orang-utan, although the hairs are not completely identical. At the very least, they are proof of a previously unknown population of orang-utans; at the very best, they are proof of a completely new species of primate, perhaps even a great ape. Various attempts to conduct a DNA analysis of the hairs have been inconclusive, but in the near future I hope to be able to reveal the identity of the supposed orang-pendek hairs once and for all.
There seem to be a suspiciously large number of leopards out there in the British countryside.
 
Nice article, that. Certainly piqued my curiosity.

There are big cats about. Especially sneaky ones. :)
 
Yesthose are the hairs. I hopesome of the new tests will be finnished by Uncon.
 
I'd like to see independent confirmation of these leopard hairs, to be honest. The idea that there is 'absolutely no doubt' that a leopard has been walking about in an English wood is difficult to credit from a single test.
 
Another possibility that springs to mind is that these hair samples have been planted for someone else to find. The chances that a leopard was walking around in these woods is almost exactly nil. (speaking as a skeptic, of course).
 
It's not nil. There are leopards about in zoos and meageries in Britain. They have been kept as pets, sometimes illegally. There are big cat sightings.

ABCs are top of my, 'cryptos most likely to exist' list. There are even a few possibles wandering about on the Continent.
 
Okay; there may be a few jungle cats or even leopard cats knocking about; bodies have been found out there. These are only slightly larger than wildcats.

But a full-sized leopard is another thing, I think.

A leopard did escape from Howlett's zoo,back in the 70's (Aspinall was always eccentric).
The leopard lived in the wild for a few months- so it is in theory possible, but I would point out that they knew it was gone...
 
The Howlett's animal was a clouded leopard. In fact leopard hairs have been found in a number of areas in the UK. A group called the Four Teans (nice pun) found leopard hair in some woods in Longleat. Incidentaly the Safari Park at Longleat does not have leopards.

As for independent confermation Dr Ross Barnett from Durham University who has done DNA analysis on them, and has confirmed that they are Pantherine, probably leopard.

Many locals have reported seeing panters in the area for years and i have personly examined a shep kill that looked to me like the work of a big cat in the very same area. I think its more likley to have been a panther walking through thosewoods than a human being planting panther hair.
 
This would seem to be worth a return trip,any plans for that?
 
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