“I feel my greatest achievement in life was seeing
 the Orang pendek,” says Holden. “And my great failure in life was
 not photographing it.”





because of its relationship to the why-don’t-we-have-a-photo yet? objection of scoffers and skeptics.

No one should reasonably expect such a shot, really. At least not a public one.

Don’t know about you. But if I’m getting a good look at an animal, I want to LOOK AT IT. I’m not worried about posterity or millions. (First of all, I see all the millions Patterson made with a movie. Sheesh.) Recently saw a bobcat, some distance away on a fire road, my first one ever while hiking. I had a camera, and didn’t think about it, once. I did manage to pull out a little spotting scope in my pack, and got as good a look as I was going to get. But I didn’t have to worry about telephoto or focus or settings. I wanted to LOOK AT IT, to see it.

And that was a known animal, one I had seen before (albeit on only one occasion). I don’t care how much photography Holden has done or how much time he has spent in the bush. If you’ve never seen a cryptid, you never expect to see one. And you simply are not ready for a shot when the opp comes. Patterson is the only exception; he’s the only one who combined sufficient time with absolute readiness (a movie camera, in a sadedleside holster, ready to pull on a moment’s notice). He went out there to get the shot, and spent the required time. He was, in other words, expecting to see one and to shoot when he did. A clear index of his preparedness was getting the shot after being thrown from his horse.

I submit that on that score, that we know of, he is it. If you know of another, you will have to tell me. And weekenders don’t count, because they haven’t put in the time that any serious wildlife shooter will tell you is needed.

Holden may have failed to get the shot. But he shouldn’t beat himself up over it. He simply wasn’t ready. Why? You only have to read:

“When he followed Martyr on her quest to find
 the Orang pendek, he says, he doubted the creature could exist. No hide, skull or other physical evidence had ever been recovered or 
seen by Westerners. But that skepticism evaporated when a gibbonlike creature passed him, walking upright in a way that seemed to him nothing 
less than human. He was so shocked, he didn’t get the shot.”

He doubted. Patterson didn’t. Patterson was confident the animal existed; that recent evidence indicated one in the area; and that he’d shoot when the time came.

Could there be other shots out there, that we don’t know of? Sure there could be. Look what happened to Patterson’s, and you’ll know why we don’t.

The evidence appears clear (to me at least) that the orang pendek and the Hobbit are quite different, and almost certainly not in the same genus.

Although (given the sasquatch) I’ve gotten very leery of concluding anything from feet, you’re right about the OP having feet that are much more “apelike” than ours are. Or, OK, the sasquatch’s for that matter.

(Which is why I get so leery of concluding from feet. But anyway.)

Can’t remember whether foot bones were found for floriensis. But the conclusion seems clear from what I read that it’s in genus Homo; and all near-humans (including those both in, and not in, Homo) in the fossil record seem to have feet speculated to be very close to ours.

It lends something to the OP evidence, for me, that the feet appear pretty anomalous from trackways (in other words, we know this isn’t getting hoaxed).

Maybe neither here nor there; but speculation on the yeti’s foot, from the famous “Shipton track,” shows a similarity to a gorilla’s - something i sure wouldn’t expect for a “sun-melted fox track.”

Just like that for the sas and the yeti, the OP evidence seems more than enough “different” - while still being what one could reasonably expect for such an animal - to be worthy of attention.

“Indeed, last August, the Wildlife Conservation Society reported that 
a population of about 75,000 Western Lowland gorillas had been overlooked 
in a swampy area of equatorial Africa. “I’m not a Bigfoot fan,” says 
Patterson. “But the discovery of this population of gorillas in a 
relatively intact ecosystem is an indication that some large animals 
that may still be abundant can escape our attention, particularly in 
poorly studied tropical locations.”





NOT a Bigfoot fan! (AND his name’s Patterson! lol)

THIS is what should happen when scientists simply follow evidence with their minds.

Hope springs eternal. Not for the animal, mind you; I just want to see the evidence. Hope for science. We count on science to think like this. Maybe someday it will.

I know this: Holden and Martyr wouldn’t be people I would ask the “gibbon question.”
Not even just to make sure. OK, maybe, but I’d apologize first.

When folks with some scientific street cred come forth and say they saw something, look what happens. National Geographic takes the orang pendek seriously. Not so much the sasquatch and the yet, even post-Hobbit.

I did have a question about this blog, though. It was about this quote: “I had spent time in New Guinea trying to photograph a habituated troop of 19 chimpanzees,” says Holden.

Chimps? in New Guinea? Did Holden really mean, say, Equatorial Guinea…?

That said, he makes a good point. Noisy animals have a tendency to get confirmed; everyone wants to know what the noise is. With this one, sightings appear all we have. Shoot, even the sas and the yeti seem noisy by comparison with the orang pendek.

Another thing. About seeing the face, and the nightmares. I’ve always considered that it would be way cool to see a hairy hominoid. But I guess the ramifications of seeing a face with humanlike features never came home to me until I read that passage.

Of course, many describe their sasquatch sightings as looking like a gorilla. And Sumatran locals don’t seem too hung up on the human-like-ness of the orang pendek.

I guess we have to chalk that up to people’s subjective responses, eh?

As to the hobbits, were foot bones found? Orang Pendek has a rather ape-like foot with the big toe further back on the foot, like a thumb. Is this the case with the hobbits? I didn’t think that it was, in which case, they are two different things.

Where’d that come from?

The “identikit” WWF composite drawing, taken from many locals’ descriptions, doesn’t look like a gibbon to me. Does it to you?

I actually think that one couldn’t expect a mainstream treatment of this topic to go much more balanced than this.