Sunday 11 March 2012

Devil Monkeys Demolished

When I mentioned the subject of Devil Monkeys before, I mentioned the fact that there were distinct and different kinds of them and most notably the tailed kind as opposed to the tailless or short-tailed kind that is possibly the same as the Freshwater Monkey creature or Kappa. The long- tailed creature has an elongated doglike snout, ears that are pointed and pricked up, a long thick tail that can be reported as a brush like a  fox's tail, and they are reported  to leap like a kangaroo and leave a three-toed elongated track. Several cases do also say "three or four toed tracks." The coat is usually a brownish grey but it is often reddish or dark (black) and the fur is shaggy at the shoulders. When it stands on its hind feet it is generally three to four feet tall, or up to five feet (Coleman/Hughe/ Trumbore Field Guide pages 60-61, illustration on page 61 by Harry Trumbore reproduced below)
When such a creature opens its mouth it shows distinctive long sharp canines: it has "dog teeth"

There is a known creature native to North America that matches this description, is that size and shape, and it is known to sometimes "Leap like a Kangaroo"is the coyote.note the body posture assumed while leaping in the photograph reproduced below.



Here is the coyote in dark coat phase, assuming a more upright position, and the approximate scale comparison to a human being as shown below in my mock-up diagram. Coyotes can frequently assume a vertical position in order to pounce on small creatures on the ground, like rodents. in
 the photograph, the animal is shown in the process of doing exactly that.

http://www.americanmonsters.com/site/2010/12/devil-monkeys-north-america/
[The following site was mentioned as a comment added after the last "Devil Monkeys" posting]

DEVIL MONKEYS: (NORTH AMERICA)

5 Comments 06 December 2010
These vicious, marsupial-like primates have reportedly attacked humans across North America since 1934.
Devil Monkeys are a unique breed of NAPE (North American Ape) that have been described as being about 3 to 4-feet tall, although some eyewitnesses have sworn that these furry fiends can reach a height that is in excess of 7-feet. It seems clear, however, that those who have had an encounter with this larger version of the beast are actually describing a run-in with a prototypical HAIRY HOMINID and not the smaller, more primate-like Devil Monkey.
Unlike the legendarily gorilla-like BIGFOOT or YETI, these creatures — which have been seen throughout the American South and Mid-West and as far North as Alaska — have been described as a shaggy, canine-faced baboon-like creatures with powerful, almost kangaroo-like legs, a trait they share with the South America’s notorious “goat sucker” the CHUPACABRA. [Devil Monkeys are indeed closest to one type of Chupababras-but WITH the hair still on! - DD]
Other distinguishing traits that Devil Monkeys are said to bear include 3-toed, razor-clawed feet, tiny pointed ears and a long, often bushy, tail.
The first reported encounter with this swift, dangerous predator occurred in 1934, in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee. According to the reports — which were allegedly published in national newspapers — eyewitnesses described a mysterious beast that could “leap across fields” with “lightening speed.”
This ability to jump great distances — up to 20-feet according to some accounts — have led some to speculate that these animals may have something in common with the MYSTERY KANGAROOS that have been seen throughout the United States for decades. The suggestion is that those who think they’re seeing kangaroos from a distance are, in fact, spying Devil Monkeys.[This is an unwarranted assumption and misplaced kangaroos are automatically a more likely possibility than any currently-unknown species simply on the basis that we KNOW there are kangaroos and that they are frequently imported: see also the recent Kappas article concerning their appearance in Japan-DD]
While these 1934 encounters may or may not be associated with this phenomenon, the first “official” Devil Monkey sighting occurred in 1959, while a couple by the name of Boyd were driving through the mountains near their home in Saltville, Virginia.
According to their account, an ape-like beast attacked their car, leaving three scratch marks on the vehicle. The The Boyd’s daughter, Pauline, described the terrifying attacker:

“(It had) light, taffy colored hair, with a white blaze down its neck and underbelly… it stood on two, large well-muscled back legs and had shorter front legs or arms.”
Boyd went on to describe a second Devil Monkey encounter that occurred just days later in the same region: “Several days after this incident, two nurses from the Saltville area were driving home from work one morning and were attacked by an unknown creature who ripped the convertible top from their car.” Luckily the nurses — though surely frightened out of their wits — were unharmed.
In 1969, esteemed mystery ape researchers RENE DAHINDEN and JOHN GREEN looked into accounts of a long-tailed “monkey” beast that eyewtinesses claimed was lurking near Mamquam, British Columbia. This creature was said to have left a series of distinctive, three toed tracks — much like those attributed to Devil Monkeys as well as the legendary HONEY ISLAND SWAMP MONSTER — in its wake. [Earlier sightings of the type go back to 1935 in BC-DD]
In 1973, famed cryptozoologist and author LOREN COLEMAN investigated reports of three, black bushy-tailed “giant monkeys” that were said to have slaughtered livestock in Albany, Kentucky. Coleman mentioned the event in an interview with Animal Planet:
“I investigated that case in depth. I interviewed the people, who were very sincere. In the whole context of devil monkey reports, it seemed extremely sincere. You have these reports of hairy, monkey-like creatures with tails, very different from Bigfoot.”
In 1979, there was a spate of reported encounters with a bipedal, monkey-like critter known as the BELT ROAD BOOGER, which hailed from the rural depths of Georgia. One female eyewitness described it as: “The ugliest looking thing I’ve ever seen… (it had a tail) like a beaver’s, but it’s bushy.” She also claimed in bore “a face like a dog.” These traits are all known to be Devil Monkey characteristics.
In fact, more than a few eyewitnesses have describe these beasts as resembling a wild dog at a distance, which suggests that this creature may employ both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion. This depiction of the creature coincides with what some consider to be the most recent — and controversial — Devil Monkey encounter on the books to date.
According to the report, On January 12, 2006, an anonymous witness claimed that he and his family entered their Chicago home to discover what he asserted was a “devil-like creature violently attacking my 6 year-old labrador dog.”
[To all appearances this "monster" is--a black labrador dog!!-DD]
The man further described the beast as being “an unsual combination of a monkey, wolf, and devil” with “long fangs, a monkey-like tail and extremely bright glowing eyes.” It should be noted that while “unnaturally” glowing eyes have been associated with the MURPHYSBORO MUD MONSTER and Ohio’s ORANGE EYES, it is not something generally associated with the Devil Monkey phenomenon.
Surprisingly, this fellow — unlike so many others who are taken aback by their first encounter with an ostensibly violent cryptid — claimed that he remained calm enough to grab a nearby camera and snap a photo of the allegedly diabolical fiend. It was after the flashbulb’s burst that this creature purportedly “sprang to its hind legs and ran,” nearly pushing over this lucky fellow and his family in an effort to escape through the open door behind them.
This unnamed observer also claimed that his neighborhood had been hereafter plagued with numerous reports of missing pets and even went so far as to state that there was an additional — as yet wholly unsubstantiated — account of yet another individual seeing an identical beast hanging from a local tree by its tail.
While we here at American Monsters pride ourselves on being champions of the bizarre, rather than judges — a chore we leave up to you dear readers — it seems fairly obvious to us that this image depicts not an unknown cryptid but a typical canine with it’s eyes reflecting the camera’s flash. The Labrador, which it was supposedly “attacking,” does not appear to be in a state of duress — as one would assume it might be in such a situation — and there even seems to be an indication of a collar around this allegedly “unknown” animal’s neck.
While the aforementioned case may reek of a hoax, some investigators feel that there is an intriguing link between these vicious, new world primates and the still controversial DERIDDER ROADKILL photos — which appeared on the internet in 1996 — and seem to depict the CURIOUS CARCASS of an unidentified, baboon-like animal with canine features on a Louisiana road side.
It’s worth mentioning that in 1996, Louisiana was also the site for another strange eyewitness report that seems very much like a Devil Monkey. The report was posted online by an biologist — who works as a consultant for a biotechnology firm and, understandably, withheld his name – in July of 2009. From his own account:
“As I sat there alone, gazing out at the rain, I noticed some movement to my left in a large field next to the property. This field is separated from the property by an old fence with scattered pine trees next to it… I turned to look and saw something, I honestly don’t know what, running extremely fast on all fours from the field towards our property.”
“At first I guess I kinda thought it may be a dog, but as it got closer I realized I was wrong. The thing, whatever it was, ran on all fours to a spot in the fence were the trees were about thirty feet apart, and lept over the five-foot fence in one hop.”
“Once on my side of the fence, this thing stood up on two legs! It was only thirty feet from me at that point, and I got a really good look at it. It was about four feet tall, maybe a little bigger. It had really big, yellowish eyes, large pointed ears, and a sparse coat of shaggy fur. It stood on its tiptoes, and had a long, somewhat bushy tail, kinda like a squirrel, but not nearly as thickly furred.”
“The snout was very cat-like… I was close enough to make out thick hairs on the face. I’m inclined to believe that these may have been whiskers. Once it stood, it kept its arms to its sides, much like a human, but slightly bent at the elbows. Its hands had identifiable fingers with noticeable claws.”
With its bushy tail, pointed ears, “noticeable” claws and penchant for leaping it is difficult not to associate this eyewitness report — as well as his extraordinary illustrations — with those of classic Devil Monkey sightings. One of the responses to his post even referred to American Monster’s original Devil Monkeys article, which brought forth this response:
“I know I saw something that day that I could not explain, and I am hard pressed to ask others to blindly accept what I say at face value. I am not trying to convince anyone, but rather find answers for myself… in any case, after considering the evidence, I firmly believe that what I saw was indeed a so-called devil monkey.”
While most are convinced that this is a heretofore UNCLASSIFIED species of primate — or perhaps even a remnant species of an ancient family of simians known as Tarsiids — there are some who believe that Devil Monkeys belong less to the world of cryptozoology and more to the shadowy realm that exists BEYOND MYTHOLOGY.
These researchers tell of a creature that comes to us from the legends of a Native American people who originally hailed from the Southeastern United States known as the Choctaws.
The Choctaws told tales of the NALUSA FALAY, which they claimed were thin, black, humanoid beings — much like SHADOW PEOPLE — with beady eyes and long pointy ears. It was believed that Nalusa Falaya stalked their victims by sliding on their stomachs like a snake, which is, admittedly, a far cry from the bounding approach often accredited to Devil Monkeys.
There are some investigators who have even speculated that these animals might hail from OUT OF THIS WORLD or may even be related to the FORMERLY EXTINCT primate Theropithecus oswaldi — an ancient, giant relative of the modern day gelada — which has been associated with the notorious African predator known as the NANDI BEAR.
© Copyright Rob Morphy 2002 — 2011

4 Comments so far

  1. Lacie Hall says:
    I live in a small town in West Virginia, and I was with my brother and my mother driving home one night. It was around 7:30 or 8:00 I can’t really be sure, but we were laughing and talking and just having fun. I saw something run in front of the vehicle, and my brother saw it but my mother didn’t. What we saw wasn’t necessarily alarming but it looked like a monkey/lemur with a really long tail.
    It was small, like a lemur and it had a tail like a lemur, but it ran like a monkey. It just freaked me out.
  2. ganixle says:
    Found this site after seeing a black monkey like creature running around in my neighborhood in the Florida Panhandle. Creature appears to be about 3 feet in height, lanky and seems to hang with some feral cats in the neighborhood. It runs away when I approach and cleared a 6 foot chainlink fence with 3 strands of barbed wire on top the other night. Real creepy thing that causes some uneasiness when it is around.
  3. Chupacabra says:
    Reminds me of reports of escaped killer chimps. Could the devil monkey be an evolution from escaped chimps?
    Look up monsterquest: killer chimps on youtube.
  4. keeganjohn says:
    keep in mind not everything has a cryptozoological explination, lacie. what you saw might have been something called a sherman’s fox squirel. ive never seen one my self, but they are a very endangered species that fits your discription almost exactly.



Checking the "Biologist's" track with the tracks of coyotes and wolves seems to show that the wolf too big and broad to be the 'toe' part of the Devil Monkey's track, and the individual toes are too big, but the smeared and skidded track of a coyote in the snow can be about the right size and shape. It should be noted that all the depictions of the Devil Monkey show it is a digitigrade animal like a canid and not a plantigrade like a primate at all: furthermore the pricked and pointed ears at the top of the head are nothing like a monkey's ears but exactly like a wolf or coyote. And actually, it is much more common for a dog track to seem three-toed,  or a wild dog to be missing a toe, than it would be for a primate to be missing TWO toes

3-Toed, Skidded, Coyote Track in Snow
 At approximately scale indicated, From Trail Below



Another trail in snow with skidded coyote tracks; This one is a male and he has sat down and left the imprint of his scrotum at the bottom of the photo between his hinder footprints


IMHO, the comparison of the two body profiles in running is close enough to say it is an exact match
Some more comparisons of the "Biologist's" drawings with coyotes. The ears being laid back are a submissive gesture. The Devil monkey's narrow protruding chest is that of a quadruped in the imporoper posie coyote" the tions and lengths and shapes of the limbs are similar. The tail is probably twice too long but that part is consistently represented and probably results from a false impression on the part of the witness. The end of the tail is the appropriate "Brush" shape. And the eyes do not only glow in the same way, they do so in the same colour.


"Dogfaced" portraits above, comparing cotote to the illustration at American Monsters. Please note the doglike and UNmonkeylike ears.  Below are some more  photos of coyotes "Jumping around like kangaroos" to help prove the point. Yes, coyotes have been reported to leap six feet high and twenty feet broad, equivalent to the performance level of a human athlete in good condition.



The Devil Monkey is supposed to be the origin for the Louisiana/Chocktaw legendary creature,
The Nalusa Falaya according to Mark Hall. This is illustrated below but it looks to be merely another local variant on the Werewolf legend. Tis creature is said to "Sneak up on prey while crawling along on its belly like a snake" and coyotes do THAT part as well.


It is also noteworthy that the range of the Devil Monkeys in North America lagely coincides with the range of the coyote, in red on the map from Wikipedia reproduced below. The significant departure is that Devil Monkeys are not reported in the areas of the Great Plains and Southwest where coyotes are better known and seen routinely by the locals, going by the map in the Coleman/Huyghe Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide.


This article posts photographs including copyright notices for other individuals than this author. This author is not claiming ownership of those photos or trying to make any representation that he MIGHT have ownership of those images: those images are posted here as educational aids and they were chosen solely to make a visual comparison with other articles posted in this article. These photos and text quotes are all under the definition of "Fair Use" as per the legal notice posted at the bottom of each page of this blog.

7 comments:

  1. In this case I think that the biologist's sighting may actually be a large feral cat. Cats can stand on their hind legs for short periods of time, and I know this from experience with my cat. And the leaping ability also matches. Even my cat, who is rather overweight, can easily leap over a fence. In this case, the laid-back ears would actually be an aggressive gesture.

    Best regards,
    Tyler Stone

    ReplyDelete
  2. I will admit he drew something which LOOKS like a large cat on its hind legs. However: 1) the coyote is much larger than a house cat and in the right size range for the sighting, 2) the running posture is a VERY close match, save only that the "Biologist" made the tail probably twice too long, obscuring the fact that it is a "Brush" tail and not a cylindrical typical cat's tail, and 3) the tracks are also closerin size to a coyote's tracks, allowing for the fact that the heel being placed down on the ground is uncharacteristic (also in the drawing, the creature is digitigrade).

    I believe the witness saw the face head-on, misjudged the length of the snout as too short and hence thought the face was more catlike, and made up the drawings under that misapprehension.

    Even excepting that one case, it still is a better case that the general run of the tailed Devil Monkey reports are coyotes, from the other witness' drawings and the usual run of the descriptions.

    Incidentally, I also have more coyote tracks I found subsequently to publishing this, and several of the tracks have the inner two toes close enough together that their imprints regularly make only a single imprint, and it does look as though there are only three toes.

    Best Wishes, Dale D.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Never thought of a coyote as a culprit in the "devil monkey" sightings, probably because I grew up in California and coyotes are commonplace there. Still I find it surprising that so many people can not recognize a coyote as they do not look much different many common dog breeds such as the German shepherd. By the way I always thought the Deridder Roadkill was just a dead chow.

    I agree with Tyler Stone that the animal in that sighting may have been a cat. But not necessarily a common house cat. Could it have been a puma or an escaped leopard cat or serval? The last two are imported regularly into the United States for the creation of certain cat breeds. Indeed one of these breeds, the savannah cat(a serval/domeatic hybrid)can be up to 30 lbs in weight and about 20" (or a bit more) at the shoulder compared to the 8 lbs of the average domestic cat.

    Come to think of it the proportions are not far off either...

    http://www.savannahcat.com/public/index.php?page=detail&id=79&photo=1#1

    http://www.mchinformation.com/Cat-Savannah.html

    PS. Sorry if you got this post twice I am having computer difficulties.

    ReplyDelete
  4. OK, I have made my case and in the felids vs canids debate I have made three statements which need to be addressed if you are going to say that a cat is more likely than a distorted version of a more common dog. Among those is the point of the tracks, Which I felt I found a good correspondance to (I also posted one of the clearer "Lopsided" coyote prints in another article following this). If you can produce a leopard cat or serval cross that will leave the resemblance to a 3-toed (or merge-toed) track including the heel and the claws on the print, I will grant you might have a contender.

    Best Wishes, Dale D.

    ReplyDelete
  5. No need to get angry, I did not mean that ALL tailed sightings devil monkey sightings may be cats just that one particular sighting. The man who gave the sighting did not mention any footprints, the picture just combined a mock-up of the creature in the sighting compared to a man plus the most commonly reported footprint type. These footprints probably are coyote tracks.

    What I meant to imply was that coyotes are very common, they routinely wander into cities in broad daylight even as far east as New York and should be recognized by an American biologist unless he is a very very inexperienced one. Savannahs (and similar breeds) on the other hand are still very rare and may well be occasionally reported as cryptids, especially some of the so-called phantom cat reports.

    Other reports can be easily coyotes as most people seem woefully ignorant of even the commonest of animals. If the biologist's sighting was of a coyote then that biologist should go back to school, he clearly needs additional learning.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am not angry, far from it. And my understanding was that the drawing of the footprint WAS intended to go with the drawing of the creature. Effectively, that put the creature sighting into the "Phantom Pantther" category--And that category DOES include a history of mistaken sightings of Canids. In this case, I'll still stick to my observation that the body secrion of the animal running is a dead-on exact match for the phot of the coyote riunning that I had for comparison. And once again, I am not angry: perhaps I was trying a mite too hard to make a point which I considered to be valid. I get a little passionate at times, nothing to worry about.

    Best Wishes, Dale D.

    ReplyDelete
  7. BTW,The "Biologist" is not further identified, we do not know his/her name or their credentials, we do not even know if their interest was in animals, plants, fungi or microorganisms. In other words, they could very well have been even a professional Biologist in any of a number of fields and still not have seen a live coyote in the wilds, strange as though that may sound.

    But I do appreciate their attempt at drawing a creature they did not recognise. I believe some parts of their drawings to be closely accurate, but that they misremembered things especially around the edges. That happens a lot of time and you can tell where witnesses focused their attention by the part of the description which seems the most accurate.

    Best Wishes, Dale D.

    ReplyDelete

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