Biped Zoo Gorilla Throws Light on Filmstar Patty

Walk Like a Man: Gorilla Walks Upright on Video

Most Gorillas knuckle-walk, using both their legs and their long arms, putting pressure on their knuckles, with the fingers rolled into the hand. Many have seen this type of gait. On the other hand, gorillas rarely walk using only their legs, though it is not unknown.
However, the fact that Ambam, a silverback western lowland gorilla at The Aspinall Foundation's Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent, southeast England, walks upright, like a person, has been captured on video and spread to YouTube has made both the park and Ambam a gorilla. Still, as the zoo notes, it's not all that unusual.



In a press release, gorilla keep Phil Ridges said, "All gorillas can do it to some extent. But we haven't got any who do it like Ambam, and he is quite a celebrity at the park."
Ambam is 21. Ridges adds that Ambam's father also exhibited the same behavior. "Ambam's father Bitam used to display the same behaviour if he had handfuls of food to carry. Ambam also has a full sister, Tamba, and a half sister at Howletts, who also sometimes stand and walk in the same way. "
Ambam hasn't decided to emulate any more lyrics from the Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons song. One of the other lines is "Talk like a man."
Silverback western lowland gorillas are endangered, as you might expect, and the park is asking those who might appreciate Ambam's newly publicized gait to help them, and adopt one. Such adoptions can be made at this link.

This unusual behaviour for a gorilla does afford us one important feature in a Cryptozoological sense: we can compare how Ambam looks walking upright to the longer-legged Sasquatch filmed by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in 1967, "Patty"

Many viewers note that "Patty's" top part looks overall like a gorilla and often skeptics use this to say that Patty's anatomy is impossible since Gorillas are not capable of walking upright, their center off gravty is too low (Napier says this famously in his book, Bigfoot) Skeptics say that Patty must be a man wearing a gorilla suit. I don't think so because Patty's top part has more anatomical resemblances to an actual gorilla than to any gorilla suit ever made.

One of the features that Patty shares with Ambam is the way that they both can swing their arms while walking. Patty's legs ARE much longer than Ambam and she obviously has a better adaptation for walking on them and a smoother gait. However now it cannot be said that Patty's build is too top-heavy for prolonged upright walking.

Patty's anatomy is also different in that she has developed prominent buttocks behind. Yet even there, it can be seen that the way her mid-back and upper pelvis are made arre much like the gorilla. In particular, this is the reason why she has the priominent crease at her middle and the "Baggy Pants" look under that: Ambam actually shows both of the same features, although his gluteus maximus muscles are located in a different position and aimed down when he is standing up.

Following is a series of parallel photo pasteups to show Ambam and Patty compared together while walking.

 

 and slightly larger:

 

Here is a series of comparisons from the Amazing Randi discussion boards: pasteups which started off in an attempt to make it look like the Patterson film showed a man inside a suit but have been through the mill a few rounds by this point. point out here that somebody went to a lot of pains originally to paste a very nice illustration of a human skeleton over the "Patty" image from the film in a deliberately deceptive manner. While I was working with these photos, I noticed that the original artist had deleted half of the poor man on the right's cranial capacity in order to make his head seem to fit into the costume. HE LOOKED LIKE A PINHEAD. This was a deliberate misrepresentation and I have restored the man's forehead at left.

The pasteup redone by a second party has done an admirable job of pointing out (quite correctly) that "Patty" has a longer spine at a different angle than the man does, and the arms are longer and legs shorter when both are reduced to the same size.

Here is one of the original artist's attempts at doing the skeleton overlay. I do not know who is responsible, but the person made too large of a head at top (NOT aligned with the actual head depicted in the film), and has made the hands fall far short of the hands depicted in the film (which can be seen to flex and are NOT empty gloves), and pushjed the skeleyon's feet through the bottom of the assumed "Costume's" feet for a distance of several inches. Like I said, an obvious and quite unprofessional attempt to deceive the onlookers.

Below Left, a second artist demonstrates that the human skeleton is a mismatch for the proportions of the supposed costum going by the much shorter length of shin shown, and at right a public-domain illustration comparing a human skeleton to  that of a gorilla. "Patty's upper body shows several features more reminiscent of a gorilla's skeleton and the joints move consistently within that framework. John Green did say at one point that Sasquatch was basically like a gorilla with longer legs. See my older CFZ blog
 http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/12/dale-drinnon-on-identity-of-east-asian.html

This version has my attempt to morph the skeleton into a better representation of what the action of the body shows while walking. It is not a typical human skeleton but has several features like a gorilla: and on the whole it does resemble a larger version of a robust Australopithecine. Gigantopithecus and the Robust Australopithecines came from the same Sivapithecine ancestors and could very easily have parallel-evolved the same anatomy for walking upright.

Below are more comparisons from the Amazing Randi Educational Boards to show that Patti is built MUCH more broadly than a conventional human being, something like half again broader. The argument goes that you can make a suit that is that much broader than a human being but then you cannot have the human skeleton's shoulder and hip joints appear to move natually in the indicated places. What you need then is a basic skeleton that is half again broader than a normal human skeleton. And included is John Green's drawing from his book Sasquatch estimating the girths (circumferences) of Patty at different points.

A film for comparison was made after Patterson shot the original "Patty" sequence and using 6'6" Jim McLaren as a subject to show the scale. When he was at the same spot, the two sequences were cut together for this comparison. "Patty" is unquestionably much taller and bulkier than the man.

Below is a Pre-Film drawing of a female Sasquatch after Ostman's account compared to the film Patty. Patty is like the traditional Sasquatch of the older reports, only now we have a more precise view of what those reports were describing.

Nearly ALL of the arguments made above were previously made in GroverKrantz's book on Sasquatch and ALL exceptions to Krantz's statements are simply gainsaying the plain facts of the matter. And with this much to go on, any statements about Roger Patterson's dealings, financial affairs, trustworthiness or untrustworthiness, are all beside the point.

Grover Krantz
Anthropologist Grover Krantz offered an in-depth examination of the Patterson film.^[35] He concluded that the film depicts a genuine unknown creature. Primarily, Krantz' argument is based on a detailed analysis of the figure's stride, center of gravity, and biomechanics. Krantz argues that the creature's leg and foot motions are quite different from a human's and could not have been duplicated by a person wearing a gorilla suit.^{[citation needed]}
Krantz pointed out the tremendous width of the creature's shoulders, which (after deducting 1" for hair) he estimated at 28.2 inches, or 35.1% of its full standing height of 78", or a higher percentage of its 72" "walking height," which was a bit stooped, crouched, and sunk into the sand.^[36] The creature's shoulders are almost 50% wider than the human mean. (For comparison, André the Giant had a typical human ratio of 24%. Wide-shouldered Bob Heironimus (see below) has 27.4%. Only very rarely do humans have a shoulder breadth of 30%.) Krantz argued that a suited person could not mimic this breadth and still have the naturalistic hand and arm motions present on the film.
Krantz wrote, "the knee is regularly bent more than 90°, while the human leg bends less than 70°." No human has yet replicated this level lower leg lift while maintaining the smoothness, posture, and stride length (41") of the creature.^{[citation needed]}
Krantz and others have noted natural-looking musculature visible as the creature moved, arguing this would be highly difficult or impossible to fake. Hunter and Dahinden also note that "the bottom of the figure's head seems to become part of the heavy back and shoulder muscles... [and] the muscles of the buttocks were distinct"^[37]
Krantz also interviewed Patterson extensively and, as noted below, thought Patterson lacked the technical skill and knowledge needed to create such a realistic-looking costume.
Krantz reports that in 1969 John Green (who at one point owned a first-generation copy of the original Patterson film) interviewed Disney executive Ken Peterson, who, after viewing the Patterson film, asserted "that their technicians would not be able to duplicate the film."^[38] Krantz argues that if Disney personnel were unable to duplicate the film, there is little likelihood that Patterson could have done so.
More recently, Krantz showed the film to Gordon Valient, a researcher for Nike shoes, who he says "made some rather useful observations about some rather unhuman movements he could see."^[38]
[38]Grover Krantz (1992). Big Footprints: A Scientific Inquiry Into the Reality of Sasquatch. Johnson Books. ISBN 1-555660-99-1.

My statement has always been that I defer to Krantz and nobody has ever shown any reason to say otherwise on the subject. And that means especially ANY non-experts in human and primate anatomy. [At this point I am unable to examine the statements made by David J. Daegling and Daniel O. Schmitt, but it would seem they were quite in error if they said the anatomical features I spoke of were NOT evident in the film. They were so evident, and Patty is NOT a man in a suit.
I am also putting this blog entry under the category of "Frauds and Hoaxes" as well, because IMHO, the skeptics who are trying to say that Patty could be a man in a suit and who produce such illustrations as the ones supposedly showing how a human skeleton would fit in there, which include such features as too large of a cranium going outside the outlines of the head or feet protruding below the level of the feet of the creature in the film, are knowingly being fraudulent in their misrepresentation and are collectively guilty of promulgating an actual HOAX.] 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterson-Gimlin_film