Plug

Member of The Crypto Crew:
http://www.thecryptocrew.com/

Please Also Visit our Sister Blog, Frontiers of Anthropology:

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/

And the new group for trying out fictional projects (Includes Cryptofiction Projects):

http://cedar-and-willow.blogspot.com/

And Kyle Germann's Blog

http://www.demonhunterscompendium.blogspot.com/

And Jay's Blog, Bizarre Zoology

http://bizarrezoology.blogspot.com/

Friday 17 May 2013

Algonquin Park Ape on Bizzare Zoology

 
A recent posting by Jay Cooney at Bizzare Zoology compared the screen capture of an Algonquin Park drive-by video purporting to show a kind of ape. Jay said it was a Bigfoot and that he thought the head matched the skull of a Paranthropus (Robust Australopithecine) I disagrred and said it was something more apelike (If it is indeed a live creature and not a mock-up of some sort)
 


Here is the panoramic view of the shot where the apelike figure appears, and below a cropping of it


 
My comment was that the image was much too blurry to be certain of anything, and we needed a face-on view to be comparable whereas we would need a profile shot of establish if it was a Paranthropus or not. A Paranthropus has a more vertical profile where a common ape has a protruding muzzle and prominent canines. And as a counter-proposal, I did the comparison with an ordinary ape, an orangutan, the lower one with a direct superimposition of the skull on the photo (The skull is still not quite at the proper size and it is a mite too large for the direct comparson)

 
Here is a reconstruction of a Miocene Sivapithecine together with a reconstruction
 of the fossil skull (which was partial) Below is the Canadian "ape face" again 
                 
Although it is difficult to make out I think I the lower face definitely has
 a more elongated muzzle than a Paranthropus would have. 
 
Jay also suggested that it was the samne as the Western Sasquatch
 such as is shown in the Patterson-Gimlin film   

 
A direct comparison shows that this Wood Ape from Canada has a smaller head
more pinched-in shoulders and much longer arms than 'Patty' has;

 
While by the same token, Patty is  bigger and more heavily built than the Paranthropus, but once again a smaller head and longer arms, and is intermediate to the regular ape proportions in that.

 
In comparison to the Paranthropus , the Algonquin Park Wood Ape shows these
 same features in an even more exaggerated sense. Head much smaller and arms longer still.

 
And so I did a series of comparisons to more mundane apes.
First a chimpanzee:

 
Then a comparison to a gorilla:
 (The head seems closest here)

 
And then to the orangutan.
All in all I think the orangutan wins out because the overall
 appearance is most similar, and especially the limb proportions are most similar.


Here is the source, from the Time-Life Nature Library book Evolution (the appendix)



And a comparison of the apes in general. I noted when I included this Harry Wilson Deviant Art illustration earlier that the Ufiti is in the Bili Ape size range and that the West African Bonobo is still an "Unknown animal"-classification of apes into species is still uncertain and cointroversial.

Here is the source video from YouTube. I believe Jay got his information about this from Bigfoot Evidence.



7 comments:

  1. Nice article Dale, you may be on to something with this. But the only thing is that, if this Algonquin ape is a real animal, then it is one individual of a certain age. Differences it shares with Patty may be due to age, gender, or individual differences. The same goes with the Paranthropus differences. But nice article either way!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ordinarily you might have a point...but in the relative lengths of arms and legs, though, that is something that is much more consistent within the species and sufficiently different in most cases to regularly tell the species apart. You can certainly have individual differences in Sasquatch or in Partanthropus...but greatly longer arms and greatly shorter legs would not ordinarily be expected among those differences. It especially shouldn't happen that a Paranthropus would suddenly sprout arms and legs with the proportions typical of orangutans.

      Delete
  2. This video bothered me when I first saw it, not just the circumstances, but the proportion as well. Later I was able to put my finger on the problem and I do believe this is a costume. The elbows are too low in comparison to arm length even if the arms are bent. An apes lower arm is longer than the upper in all cases. If you look at the place where the under arm contacts the body and then begin your arm measurements, I think it will end up looking more like human proportions. The place where the arm connects to the shoulder at the top, is pinched in like a false shoulder on a shirt. It should be rounded outward due to muscle bulk like an ape shoulder and arm. This means that the head and shoulders have been added to a man to try to make him look taller with longer arms. This would be the reason the head is too small for this size of animal. Why people need to fake bigfoot sightings I don't really understand. But it is what it is.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Exelent assessment! Yes, the place where the elbow comes is bothersome and I noticed it was peculiar when I was doing the comparisons. Because the head was so very small relatively, I had crossed a costume off of my list of possibilities early on. But I did think it was possibly a dummy or a puppet. Since you explained the way it all goes together, I have no problem with your assessment. It also bothered me not a little that is seems to be a "Generic ape" in so many ways.

    Best Wishes, Dale D.

    ReplyDelete
  4. And if it actually IS a fraud it is best to get it out of the way. I can visualise a scenario where Jay at the Bizzare Zoology site had put this up and said it was the same as the Patterson Bigfoot, and then later this was determined to be a man in a suit. It becomes a very messy situation with all kinds of accusations and counter-accusations resulting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dale, I do want to make it clear that I myself never did state that it absolutely was a real Sasquatch or a real animal for that matter. I simply found it to be an intriguing video which should warrant further examination, but I left it as such. So if it is proven to be a hoax, there should be no reason for such a messy situation which you are envisioning to occur.

      Delete
    2. Understood, and that hypothetical messy situation is NOT going to occur now. However, perhaps the both of us should have put up stronger disclaimers that we were examining the potential identity of the subject on the assumption that it was real and without any claim that the video actually was not a hoax. I think its kind of self-evident we were both approaching the problem from that angle but its still better to be safe and to have such things stated clearly.

      Delete

This blog does NOT allow anonymous comments. All comments are moderated to filter out abusive and vulgar language and any posts indulging in abusive and insulting language shall be deleted without any further discussion.