Comments on: Orang Ikan

By: Dan Gannon

Dan Gannon — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 07:09:03 +0000

Just a quick note about the reports about these hominids having mouths like carps: Incidentally, if you look at the mouth of the tiny, enigmatic, Pedro Mountain Mummy, and LB1′s (“Hobbit’s,” Homo floresiensis’) face before it fell apart and was cleaned off of the skull, (as seen in the program, “The Hobbit Enigma,”) they both have rather broad-looking mouths, with relatively thin lips. (Could conceivably be described as carp-like.)

Google images search: carp mouth

I wonder if “spikes” on the head could have been wet hair.

As an aside, I just watched the recent Monsterquest episode, which analyzed the “best” evidence for Bigfoot/Sasquatch. (Episode name: Critical Evidence.) From the enhanced images, I would like to note several things:

1. The creature’s cranium appears very much like certain “Toumai” reconstructions! (Toumai is a roughly 7 million year old fossil. Toumai is morphologically very similar to Homo floresiensis, as well.)

2. You don’t get a very clear look at the lips, but in the frames where the lips are most visible (these have been shown in other analyses, not just this program,) the mouth appears broad and relatively thin-lipped.

3. The way the creature’s head and neck are connected, appears to imply that the foramen magnum may be further back on the skull, than what is seen in “modern humans.” Perhaps nearly identical to what is seen in the Toumai specimen? (Not round and fully posteriorally positioned, as in most quadrupeds, but intermediately placed, and perhaps oval-shaped like Toumai’s foramen magnum.)

By: Fhqwhgads

Fhqwhgads — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:21:15 +0000

In the Pleistocene, the robust australopithecines A. robustus and boisei seem to have dwelt in more open, possibly cooler and generally dryer places, in the vicinity of shallow and relatively stagnant waters of lakesides, lagoons, marshes and riverbanks. Dental and microwear studies suggest that the australopithecines, more than Western lowland gorillas, regularly fed on aquatic herbaceous vegetation (AHV). Homo fossils, on the other hand, as suggested by the paleo-environmental data, are more frequently discovered near lakes, seas and rivers where molluscs were abundant. Shellfish could provide a dietary supplement for their omnivorous diet. This is how early hominines might have learned to use stones to crack bivalves. Source

By: norman-uk

norman-uk — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:54:01 +0000

RE my reference to ”real mermaids” this refered to Korean Jeju divers. Women who dive for a living for sea food. They are possibly evolving to facilitate this enterprise but are interesting in themselves and somewhat to be admired.

Unfortunately the link I gave to them didnt seem to work.

By: norman-uk

norman-uk — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:42:34 +0000

I wonder if Paranthropus and H Ikan had a common ancestor the former maybe keeping to the land and the latter finding the sea to its liking, then H Ikan evolving needle teeth to catch fish.

Isn’t it a general rule that terrestial animals returning to the sea end up catching prey with their mouths. Hands and feet becoming specialised for propulsion ? In the early stages hands would no doubt be the favoured instuments of capture and how this would change to mouth only is difficult but has happened before we know. Would the H Ikans mouth with the needle teeth have been used only for carrying its prey and maybe still was/is ? Up to the point it is sufficiently adapted to be fast enough to catch fish just with its mouth.

Assuming H Ikan is intelligent and social it would need some method of carrying fish to share, which is -a big mouth and needle teeth

By: Ceroill

Ceroill — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:54:11 +0000

I figured I might as well mention how much these descriptions match up with the fictional ‘gill man’ designed for Creature of the Black Lagoon. From the ‘carp like mouth’ to the needle sharp teeth, the long, webbed fingers, even to the spines. I guess that is tribute to the relatively logical design work done for the movie.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:35:37 +0000

Fhqwhgads: good catch on that SciAm article. Teeth are considered to be excellent diagnostic fossils and this in particular is a good example. A nice example of convergent evolution regarding teeth in that context is seen if one google images of “sea otter teeth”. You can see how they’d be just dandy for shellfish processing and how similar they look to ourown…more than chimps or gorillas, but not orangs. You might have caught an earlier comment or two on the theory of asian ape origin of hominins and the dental evidence which supports it according to some.
And ultimately, to me, the idea that a gigantic ecological niche such as the coastal areas of East Africa all the way along to the coast of the Indian Ocean, throught he South China Sea and up to the Aleutians, as rich in all the right nutrition, and so complimenting our other human requirements and attributes, is so overlooked that I think has to do with a kind of cultural bias in our logic (most of our civilization and history takes place where we live; on land) and the salient fact (conspicuous by its absence rather) that if shorelines have preserved fossils from that period of hominin evolution, they are most likely to be under hundreds of feet of seawater and along shores of the interior rift valley lakes along which they once roamed and where we are now finding fossils. Naturally we consign our ancestors to arid savannah punctuated with lakes and seasonal surface waters. I see it’s the most parsimonious of explanations but the least satisfying and leaves me wondering if these people who are creating these theories have never lived along a wild productive beach to fully appreciate the ancient adage; “the tide is out, the table is set”.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:58:11 +0000

Fhqwhgads- Yes, I tend to agree that a primate at this apparent stage of adaptation to an aquatic environment would also be more inclined to use its hands to a large extent. It indeed does not make much sense that a primate should forgo its well developed hands in order to rely on its mouth. However, the descriptions say what they say, no matter how we would like to think these things should have evolved. I am merely trying to make sense of the features mentioned in the reports.

Assuming these Orang Ikan even existed at all, since there is mention of the carp-like mouth and teeth that are indicative of a piscivore, I tend to thing that there must have been some advantage incurred from these features regardless of the presence of hands and a primate’s likely tendency to rely on them. Maybe these particular creatures utilized both hands as well as their mouths to some extent in procuring food items.

Perhaps these Orang Ikan use a little of both its hands and mouth in order to make more use of a wider variety of aquatic food resources. It could be the mouth and teeth helped them to grip prey that they had grabbed with their hands, and maybe these features evolved in response to a branching out to other food sources beyond just crabs and shellfish. It’s possible there was a tendency to generalize rather than specialize, and these features helped them in this regard, for example catching fish or octopi, which may have supplemented the diet of shellfish and crab. Or maybe the mouth was useful to more effectively sift through sand on the bottom in search of food hidden there, something a carp’s mouth is good for. Whatever the reasons, it is difficult to disregard the descriptions of these adaptations since these accounts are all we really have to go on.

I don’t think that the use of hands for gathering food would have been lost, and agree that hands would be used to a large degree. However, useful mutations are useful mutations, and anything that increases the survival of those genes would be carried on into further generations. Animals don’t choose what sort of adaptations they get, it is randomness focused by selective pressures. If descriptions of the Orang Ikan are to be believed, then apparently in addition to the use of hands, these other adaptations had some important role to play in these creatures’ survival.

Norman-uk- There are all sorts of remains of various cryptids alleged to be kept in museums and shrines throughout Japan. Quite a few Kappa mummies actually, not to mention Mermaids, Tengu, Tsuchinoko, and demon mummies. Most of these are no doubt fabrications, and indeed the Japanese are historically famous for their expert craftsmanship in making gaffes and feejee mermaids. However, I too wonder if maybe, just maybe, there is something real among these various specimens.

By: norman-uk

norman-uk — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:43:20 +0000

Very interesting site re robustus and is it still with us ? Amazing bit of research but what happened since as the report was in 2006? See here for what may have happened to robustus! But if you want to see real mermaids see here. I wonder if among the fakes in Japanese museums there are bits or more of real unknown creatures like Homo ikan? Anyone care to look? I think there is a Kappa somewhere too and in 1902 parts of a Sea Monster was reportedly taken to Osaka museum and other bits given to the Emperor. I have this idea that in old boxes, in cellars there are bits of cryptids, calling out to me, not thrown out or burnt like the last Dodo !

By: Fhqwhgads

Fhqwhgads — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:10:08 +0000

Even if an ape adapted to water, it would almost certainly attempt to catch fish with itshands, not with its mouth, so no convergent evolution should be expected with fish, gharials, or other animals that catch fish with their mouths. It would be much more likely to be convergent with sea otters, which use their hands to grab shellfish and tools to open them. In fact there is some evidence that Paranthropus robustus had teeth adapted for opening shellfish.

By: CryptoInformant 2.0

CryptoInformant 2.0 — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:52:45 +0000

Well, the traditional merbeing stories do have a long history of being linked to dugongs and the like, and that has by now become one of the first things I check for when reading these stories – does it sound like it might be a dugong. With stories like the present one, I am comfortable with taking a more in-depth look at it, because the answer to that initial question was no.

(If anyone ever combines the interest and the resources, I would really like to see some effort to try and identify the actual island mentioned here)