The Amazon anomaly

 A South American ape and its dubious existence 

  Several species of primates live in America, with a very large distribution from the southeast of Mexico to the north of Argentina in South America, and with a presence in the Antilles until a few centuries ago, all of them being of such varied and strange shapes that it is difficult to list them all.

There are many species, from the small Titis León to the howler monkeys, but there is a very strange enigma, and that we will talk about today.

The enigmatic loys ape

    The expeditions of the late 19th century and early 20th century to those unexplored places were splendid events for the time, where a group of people headed by a leader faced the unknown, in search of new things, often returning with strange stories, as is the case of the Swiss geologist François de Loys who, in one of his explorations in South America, encountered a possible species of monkey with anomalous characteristics.

          [a photo of loys]

The story is long, but in summary Loys was leading an oil exploration expedition near the Tarra and Maracaibo rivers when two creatures approached his group in an aggressive manner and with the intention of attacking, François de Loys shot the creatures in an attempt to defend himself, the male fled into the jungle and the female was killed by the gunshots, Quickly upon seeing the enigmatic creature, I managed to measure it and arrange it by taking some photographs, here we have one:

When François de Loys returned to Switzerland, he did not tell anyone about the creature, but nevertheless, in 1929, anthropologist George Montadon discovered the photo while searching for information in Loys' notes on the indigenous tribes of South America and convinced Loys to publish it in an English newspaper, later several articles about the mysterious creature were published in France, and George Montadon proposed its scientific name to the French Academy of Sciences: Ameranthropoides loysi.

But, in the end the naturalists and zoologists were skeptical, the British naturalist Sir Arthur Keith, He stated that the photograph only showed one species of spider monkey with its tail intentionally cut off or hidden in the photograph, but these are almost 110 cm (3.5 ft) long in height when upright and de Loys, on the other hand, had measured his ape at 157 cm (5 ft), plus he had preserved the skin on the skull but they were lost.

In the end, historians Pierre Centlivres and Isabelle Girod published an article in 1998 stating that the entire story of the strange encounter was a hoax perpetrated by the anthropologist Mounting due to his racist vision of human evolution and although he tried to validate it in three separate articles for scientific journals, he never succeeded, leaving this as a fraud...oh maybe not.

Even more mysteries in everything and possible myths 

  The reality sometimes turns out to be stranger and there have been reports and sightings from reliable sources about possible apes in the South American jungles.

The first occurred in 1533 when the conquistador Pedro Cieza de León reported sightings of natives and a Spanish colonist, en sus escritos, Chronicler Sir Walter Raleigh made brief note of reports of large ape-like creatures in South America; he himself did not see such a creature, but considered it credible noting the ubiquity and consistency of the reports, so for centuries there was talk of creatures like this roaming the Amazon.

In the end American scientist Philip Herschkowitz, who traveled through the same areas as de Loys, concluded that the story was a myth whose origin was the spider monkey, but also in the In the 80s, a mycologist from New York University claimed to have seen the animal, so this case is very difficult to clarify.

Be that as it may, if this creature really existed, it would pose a new path and branch to the evolutionary study of primates and the study of the evolutionary path regarding the family of primates and great apes.

[[[[Reading links]]]]]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2016/01/31/de-loys-ape-was-a-well-played-anthropological-fraud/#397ce15b4d25