The Orang-Pendek

The Orang-Pendek
There�s no denying it � we are impressed by big things: dinosaurs, whales, rhino, skyscrapers. Mention mystery apes to the man in the street and he will imagine bipedal hairy giants, at least 10 feet (3m) tall. And, indeed, many reports do speak of large creatures, such as the yeti, the yeren, the Sasquatch, and the yowie. But, for every bigfoot there is a littlefoot � and none are so famous as Sumatra�s orang-pendek.

Basically the author goes on a hazardous and ultimately wildly unsuccessful expedition to find this bipedal ape like creature. I suppose the name 'Orang-pendek' is related to the name 'Orang-utan'

An interview with someone who saw it?
Debbie Martyr: I was travelling in Sumatra as a journalist in 1989. I was climbing Mount Kerinci and heard of a legendary animal that I thought would add a bit of colour to my travel piece. Then I started meeting people who claimed to have seen something. At that stage I didn�t believe or not believe; I was trained as a journalist, which is a respectable profession, so I took a look into it.

I have to wonder about all this tho. The Orang-pendek is supposed to be a ground dwelling bipedal forest ape, living in part of the jungles of south east asia. But this niche seems rather unlikely to me (of course, what the heck do I know anyways eh?). In the hominid 'line', bipedalism is generally thought to be a result of the progressive aridification of the jungle environment our ancestors lived in. Grasses grew taller, and stands of trees became more widely dispersed. This forced the normally tree dwelling apes to spend more time on the ground, even if only to move from one stand of trees to the next. This in turn put a 'selective pressure' on the populations to develop bipedalism (although, see this abstract for a dissenting study) The reason for this is that, for walking long distances, two legs is thought to be more biomechanically efficient than four legs (or at least the awkward walking mode of other apes). (Nature363, 587 - 588 (17 Jun 1993))

So I don't see why a population of canopy dwelling apes is going to adopt bipedal locomotion. Especially when one considers that the canopy of jungles is thought to have the highest biodiversity (as opposed to the floor). Seems like staying there would be a succesful strategy. Certainly, since Orang-utans still exist today, one can't say that the niche itself is unstable or anything like that.

stories like this always send my BS meter off scale , the presence of a large primate , which has such a radically different ecology to all other known primates in the area , would hardly go un noticed by

believers point to the discovery of previously unvnown sub speciese of deer , rat and other mamals - blithly ignoring their size - and similiarity to other known creatures - which make mis idenification common , especially when they are caught and skinned

the laotian rock rat , which i posted a story on earlier this month is a prime example -- at the end of the day it is JUST another rat - that at arms lengh or greater - is hard to distinguish from other rats

and more important - the locals rarely care to distinguish it - they are all easily caught and tasty - one more for the pot

i have has a wuick skim through the availiable into on orang pendek - and found lots of hype , but no emperical evidence ,

orang utang has been studied extensivly in its natural habitat - as have other asian primates - but orang pendek - has NEVER been filmed , nor has any remains . trail casts etc been produced

it also eluded the victorian grea white hunters who shot everything that moved .

sorry - i remain unconvinced

Well, Bipedalism is now considered to be not due to coming out of a jungle environment and into plains areas, but rather because it makes bringing up offspring easier. Also, free arms (or other tools of manipulation) mean more intelligence, and probably also more ability to hide from humans.
And yes, it is more efficient with two legs than four. The reason they invented "stick-walking" or "dry-skiing" whatever you want to call it, that everyone is doing now, walking/hiking with a ski-pole in each hand, is because it burns more calories. It really messes up your coordination though, so don't do it. (No, this is not the mountaineering-walking/glacier-walking with two short ski-poles, but I bet that's half of where they got the idea. This is walking on asphalt with a jogging suit and sneakers-hiking.)
Jungles have very little food in them, and bipedals are more efficient EVERYWHERE, so why not go bi? Maybe they just by coinsidence or by competition were forced out of the trees by orangutangs or other apes, or just suddenly found themselves walking instead of swinging/climbing.


Everything is possible.

[edit on 17-4-2006 by Christian IX]

Originally posted by Nygdan
I suppose the name 'Orang-pendek' is related to the name 'Orang-utan'

Orang-pendek is literally 'short person' while orang-utan is literally 'jungle person'. Orang = person (in malay)

You'd think that this day and age that largish mammals aren't undiscovered, but since I first made that post, there've been a few, and of course there are many sorts of birds that have been newly discovered too.

True, in most cases, these things are radically different, however, there used to be lots of bipedal primates, like homo, australpithecus, kenyrathropus, etc, etc. Of course, most of them were limited to africa.

Regardles, an upright orang wouldn't be all that big of an animal, and in dense jungles, especially where corpses rot into nothingness quickly, there just might be room for some of these creatures. If they lived in jungles throughout their history, then they'd tend to not be preserved in a fossil record also.

Perhaps this organism isn't related to the australpithecines and the like, but stems from asiatic apes? Then again, considering the strange transformations that erectus underwent to become florensis, perhaps this is some strange off-shoot from that line.

Here is an article which has a short video attached and also an interview with Debbie Martyr about what she saw.

Tracking down the 'jungle yeti'

Debbie Martyr

[edit on 8/31/2006 by librasleep]