Cryptomundo » Discovering The Bili Ape

Discovering The Bili Ape

Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 13th, 2007

Williams Cast

Dr. Shelly Williams holds the Bili Ape cast for media photographs in 2003.

Deep in the Congolese jungle is a band of apes that, according to local legend, kill lions, catch fish and even howl at the moon. Local hunters speak of massive creatures that seem to be some sort of hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla.

Their location at the centre of one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has meant that the mystery apes have been little studied by western scientists. Reaching the region means negotiating the shifting fortunes of warring rebel factions, and the heart of the animals’ range is deep in impenetrable forest.

But despite the difficulties, a handful of scientists have succeeded in studying the animals. Early speculation that the apes may be some yeti-like new species or a chimp/gorilla hybrid proved unfounded, but the truth has turned out to be in many ways even more fascinating. They are actually a population of super-sized chimps with a unique culture - and it seems, a taste for big cat flesh.

The most detailed and recent data comes from Cleve Hicks, at the University of Amsterdam, who has spent 18 months in the field watching the Bili apes - named after a local town - since 2004. His team’s most striking find came after one of his trackers heard chimps calling for several days from the same spot.

When he investigated he came across a chimp feasting on the carcass of a leopard. Mr Hicks cannot be sure the animal was killed by the chimp, but the find lends credence to the apes’ lion-eating reputation.

“What we have found is this completely new chimpanzee culture,” said Mr Hicks. Previously, researchers had only managed to snatch glimpses of the animals or take photos of them using camera traps. But Mr Hicks used local knowledge to get closer to them and photograph them.

“We were told of this sort of fabled land out west by one of our trackers who goes out there to fish,” said Mr Hicks whose project is supported by the Wasmoeth Wildlife Foundation. “I call it the magic forest. It is a very special place.”

Getting there means a gruelling 40km (25-mile) trek through the jungle, from the nearest road, not to mention navigating croc-infested rivers. But when he arrived he found apes without their normal fear of humans. Chimps near the road flee immediately at the sight of people because they know the consequences of a hunter’s rifle, but these animals were happy to approach him. “The further away from the road the more fearless the chimps got,” he added.

Mr Hicks reports that he found a unique chimp culture. For example, unlike their cousins in other parts of Africa the chimps regularly bed down for the night in nests on the ground. Around a fifth of the nests he found were there rather than in the trees.

“How can they get away with sleeping on the ground when there are lions, leopards, golden cats around as well as other dangerous animals like elephants and buffalo?” said Mr Hicks.

“I don’t like to paint them as being more aggressive, but maybe they prey on some of these predators and the predators kind of leave them alone.” He is keen to point out though that they don’t howl at the moon.

“The ground nests were very big and there was obviously something very unusual going on there. They are not unknown elsewhere but very unusual,” said Colin Groves, an expert on primate morphology at the Australian National University in Canberra who has observed the nests in the field.

Prof Groves believes that the Bili apes should prompt a radical rethink of the family tree of chimp sub-species. He has proposed that primatologists should now recognise five different sub-divisions instead of the current four.

Mr Hicks said the animals also have what he calls a “smashing culture” - a blunt but effective way of solving problems. He has found hundreds of snails and hard-shelled fruits smashed for food, seen chimps carrying termite mounds to rocks to break them open and also found a turtle that was almost certainly smashed apart by chimps.

Like chimp populations in other parts of Africa, the Bili chimps use sticks to fish for ants, but here the tools are up to 2.5 metres long.

The most exciting thing about this population of chimps though is that it is much bigger than anyone realised and may be one of the largest remaining continuous populations of the species left in Africa. Mr Hicks and his colleague Jeroen Swinkels surveyed an area of 7,000 square kilometres and found chimps everywhere. Their unique culture was uniform throughout.

However, the future for the Bili apes is far from secure. “Things are not promising,” said Karl Ammann, an independent wildlife photographer who began investigating the apes 1996. “The absence of a strong central government has resulted in most of the region becoming more independent and lawless. In conservation terms this is a disaster.” by James Randerson, science correspondent, “Found: the giant lion-eating chimps of the magic forest,” Saturday July 14, 2007, The Guardian.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Expedition Reports, Forensic Science, New Species. You can follow responses via our RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.

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12 Responses to “Discovering The Bili Ape”

Mothmanfan responds: July 13th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Big monkeys/chimps that can kill lions.. thats scary…
sschaper responds: July 14th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Makes me wonder at the similarities and differences between the Bili chimps and the eastern Napes.
Sharmz responds: July 14th, 2007 at 2:33 am
How big are those chimps?
Dr. Galen responds: July 14th, 2007 at 5:08 am
Nothing “breaking” and little “just released” here. This was all reported in Hicks presentation in Uganda a year ago and subsequently in New Scientist, Discover, and other outlets.

There is zero evidence of lion-killing and nothing yet documenting they are any bigger than chimps in other populations.

This story continues to be improperly sensationalized when it should focus on the need for conservation- as Amman has pointed out.
crypto-steve responds: July 14th, 2007 at 7:20 am
I am extremely excited about this discovery. Sure, it’s not a yeti, but it shows that there are still some surprises left in the world of nature. I think one of the main points to take away from this article is found in the following sentence:

“…Mr Hicks used local knowledge to get closer to them and photograph them.”

Local cultures always know far more about their environment than what we, as outsiders, will ever know. Cryptids are only unknown to us, not to them. Unfortunately, we tend to think of people who live in remote places as being primitive themselves and believe their stories to be full of exaggerations and superstitions. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These are intelligent people who know all about the animals that they may encounter in their lives. For them, it is about survival. I can’t help but wonder what incredible animals would be known to us if more biologists and anthropologists would just listen to what native peoples have to tell us.

On that note, I wouldn’t be surprised if these new chimps did occasionally howl at the moon.
dogu4 responds: July 14th, 2007 at 10:21 am
The description of these ape’s behavior makes it very tempting for me to revisit Edgar Rice Bourroughs’ original Tarzan novels, which, unlike the movies, are populated by the anthropoid apes which play such a crucial role. I can remember as a young reader fantasizing about an undiscovered species that did in fact reflect the presumably ficticious creations of ERB..maybe some of those old stories upon which the Tarzan tales were thought to be based were in fact closer to the truth than anyone would have guessed.
mystery_man responds: July 14th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I am very interested in the Bili ape story, and have followed it for some time now. One thing that I think people should avoid doing, however, is taking the native claims of what these creatures can do at face value. In many cultures, mundane animals are often attributed with bizarre powers or abilities, sometimes to the point that if you didn’t know it was a real animal, you’d think it was pure myth. I think there will need to me more investigation and verification before we start assuming that these apes can kill lions, catch fish, or howl at the moon.

The lion killing stories for example can be explained by other possibilities. Maybe some natives found these apes at a corpse of a lion that had already died, this could explain the ape with the leopard too. Someone might see this and put two and two together and think the ape killed it when in fact that may not be the case, and this could snowball into a myth. Perhaps the reason why they do not fall prey to predators is due to impressive defensive displays. All they have do is frighten away the predators, and not necessarily do battle with them. I actually feel that aggressiveness to the point of attacking or hunting such large, potentially dangerous predators would be very odd for even a large species of primate. Most animals will typically avoid fighting with other creatures that can potentially seriously hurt them unless it is absolutely necessary, such as protecting young or over food, as even a minor wound can become life threatening in the wild. Fighting large animals is just not a good survival technique. It doesn’t make sense that an ape would actively pursue large, dangerous predators when so much risk is involved. I think that even if these apes do kill large predators, it was probably a last resort after their defensive bluff failed.

There are explanations for the alleged fish catching and howling at the moon too. All of these abilities may very well be real, but I feel we should wait for more evidence along these lines before we accept them as actual behaviors exhibited by this animal.
LiberalDem responds: July 14th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Interesting. Are there any pictures available? It’d be nice to see what these guys actually look like.
Dan Gannon responds: July 14th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
These do appear to be much larger than other chimps. Aside from the sheer size of the foot cast that Dr. Shelly Williams is holding (at the beginning of this blog entry, above,) see this photo, of one of the Bili apes that hunters (quite sadly) shot:

http://karlammann.com/bili13.php

That is just HUGE for a chimp.

There are some more photos at Karl Ammann’s site, and additional photos can be found with a Google image search.
LiberalDem responds: July 15th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for the URL! Those guys are REALLY big!
things-in-the-woods responds: July 16th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I agree with Dr GAlen- this really isn’t breaking news..

but i agree with evryone else, it is very exciting.
snake responds: November 4th, 2007 at 6:38 am
When the Bili Apes’ large nests and other traces of their activities are discovered, it’s safe to deduce that they have been living there. When evidence of Big Foots’ existence have been discovered for many years, still people do not believe in the existence of Big Foot.

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