but i agree with evryone else, it is very exciting.

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.

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.

“…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.

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.