The other monkey

 

Something new is always coming out of Africa. Or something old. Primordially old. Muh-hah-hah! 

Likweli

 

Credit: Daniel Rosengren

En glad nyhet? Kanske. Eller kanske inte. Likweli-apan har upptäckts av sina evolutionära kusiner... 

Sensationell apa hemlighölls i fem år

The perfect shave

 

Attributed to Charles Darwin: "Whilst Man, however well-behaved, at best is but a monkey shaved!"

Tell me about Peter Hocking

 

"Hocking...Hocking...Hocking..."

I actually mentioned Peter Hocking in an old blog post from 2018 and then forgot about him. So here is the return of this maverick zoologist! Please disregard the weird "Sabian" astro-stuff somewhere in the middle. That´s just the AI having a hash out...

Can you tell me about the cryptozoologist Peter Hocking and his work in South America?

Peter J. Hocking (1938–2022) was a Peruvian-American ornithologist and zoologist who became a legendary figure in South American cryptozoology. While he was a respected scientist—discovering several legitimate bird species—his private passion was investigating "hidden" animals in the remote cloud forests and jungles of Peru.

His work is significant because he didn't just chase rumors; he interviewed indigenous hunters and attempted to collect physical evidence (skulls and skins) to bring these creatures into the realm of formal science.

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1. The "Isnachi" (The Giant Peruvian Monkey)

Hocking’s most famous investigation was into the Isnachi (a Quechua word meaning "strong man").

• The Description: Indigenous groups across the Peruvian Amazon described a massive, bipedal, tail-less monkey or ape—similar to a chimpanzee or a small gorilla—living in the high cloud forests.

• The Evidence: Hocking collected numerous eyewitness accounts from hunters who claimed to have seen or killed these creatures. He even investigated a "lost" 1985 photograph taken by a botanist named Benigno Malo, though the photo itself has never surfaced publicly.

• The Scientific View: Many mainstream zoologists believe "Isnachi" sightings are misidentified Spectacled Bears, but Hocking argued that the hunters—who know the bears well—insisted the Isnachi had primate-like hands and flat fingernails.

2. Mystery Big Cats

Hocking was obsessed with reports of "anomalous" jaguars that didn't fit the standard spotted pattern.

• The "Striped Tiger": He obtained a skull from a hunter in the Yanachaga Mountains of an animal described as having tiger-like stripes rather than spots.

• The "Anomalous Jaguar": He found another skull of a cat with an unusually robust build and different markings.

• The Resolution: In 2014, Hocking collaborated with renowned zoologist Darren Naish. Using morphometric analysis (measuring the bones), they determined the skulls actually belonged to Jaguars (Panthera onca). However, this confirmed that some jaguars in the region likely possess rare, unstudied genetic mutations causing stripes—essentially proving the "mystery" was a real biological variation.

3. The "Tigre Dantero" (Sabre-toothed Cat)

Hocking also investigated the Tigre Dantero (Tapir-killer), a cat reported to have long, protruding fangs.

• The Theory: Hocking and other cryptozoologists speculated that these might be relic populations of Smilodon (the prehistoric sabre-toothed cat) or Thylacosmilus (a marsupial equivalent) that survived in the isolated pockets of the Andes.

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Hocking’s Legacy

Peter Hocking passed away in late 2022. He is remembered as a bridge between Traditional Ecological Knowledge (the wisdom of indigenous hunters) and Western Zoology. Even when his "cryptids" turned out to be known animals, his work helped document the incredible biodiversity and rare mutations within the South American wilderness.

A "Sabian" Alignment

Given your interest in the Blue Tiger and the Moa, Hocking’s work fits perfectly with your Moon in Capricorn. Capricorn energy loves the "old, rugged, and enduring." Hocking spent his life looking for ancient lineages that refused to die out—a very "Capricornian" quest for the roots of the world.

Would you like me to find out more about any other South American cryptids he studied, like the "Ucumari" (the Andean Bigfoot)?

Yes, please. Also: didn´t Hocking study cryptid birds, too?

You’re absolutely right—Peter Hocking’s primary scientific background was in ornithology (the study of birds), and his "mystery bird" investigations are arguably some of his most fascinating contributions because he applied rigorous scientific standards to sightings that others dismissed.

1. The Mystery Birds of Peru

Hocking spent years documenting birds that didn't appear in any field guides. Two of his most famous "cryptid" bird investigations include:

• The Macaw with the White Head: Hocking received multiple reports from indigenous hunters in the dry forests of Peru about a large macaw that was primarily blue or green but possessed a stark, white head. While it sounds like a simple variation, no such species is officially recognized. Hocking suspected it might be a relict population or a hybrid that has yet to be formally described.

• The "Amazonian" Mystery Parrots: He often investigated reports of parrots with "impossible" color combinations—specifically blue parrots in regions where only green ones were known. He believed that the vast, vertical layers of the Peruvian cloud forest could easily hide small populations of distinct species that never descend to where humans usually travel.

2. The Ucumari (The Andean "Bigfoot")

As you asked, Hocking was deeply involved in investigating the Ucumari (or Ukumar-zupai).

• The Creature: Described as a bear-like man or a very large, bipedal ape, the Ucumari is a staple of Andean folklore. Unlike the North American Bigfoot, the Ucumari is often described as having a more "bear-like" face but with primate-like hands and the ability to walk upright for long distances.

• Hocking’s View: He collected accounts from the Yanachaga-Chemillén National Park area. He remained open to the idea that the Ucumari could be a surviving Giant Ground Sloth (Mylodon) or a yet-undiscovered species of large primate.

• The "Bear" Connection: While mainstream science says these are just Spectacled Bears (Tremarctos ornatus), Hocking pointed out that local hunters are experts at identifying bears and specifically distinguish between a "spectacled bear" and the "Ucumari."

Hybrids like us

 

OK, the dog-fox hybrids are strange. Sure of that one? And why would conservationists "condemn" big cat hybrids? I mean, I assumed everyone loves ligers! Note also that polar bears are moving further south and hybridize with grizzlies as they go along. Are these hybrids fertile? If so, it seems the polar bear doesn´t need "saving", after all. Life will find a way. Finally, what´s up with those strange fish accidentally "created" by some crazy scientists in Hungary (I mean, where else)?   

10 of the strangest hybrid animals

Scientists accidentally create "impossible" hybrid fish

Cladistics

 

Look, it´s a chimpanzee singing the creationist song "You can´t make a monkey out of me". 

The monkey-man

 

Wtf is this? Millions of years ago, a bipedal monkey (yes, monkey) may have been roaming the vast expanses of Eurasia. Was it on a similar evolutionary trajectory to our own?

I can sense a new scy fy franchise based on this stuff. Or make that Manga!

Ape kill monkey

 

Kinda funny (or maybe not) that many people on YouTube who comment the film franchise "Planet of the APES" refer to the main non-human characters as MONKEYS. 

There´s even a joke in one of the films about exactly this kind of linguistic confusion. LOL!   

Hanuman attacks Lanka

 

This is not *really* funny, but I couldn´t help myself...

Monkey blamed for nation-wide power cut in Sri Lanka

The real question

 

If evolution is true, why are there still humans?

Our autistic overlords

 

Some slightly disturbing studies suggest (but don´t definitely prove - yet) a connection between autism or social anxiety disorder and...wait for it...the bacterial biome in our guts! Not only that, bacteria may have caused or at least enhanced our evolution towards intelligence, either by somehow stimulating the intelligence itself, or by doing something to the energy metabolism of our primate ancestors which made it possible for them to develop bigger brains. 

Chapter two of the saga "we are controlled by micro-organisms"... 

Why are there still monkeys?

 

Krishna and Darwin dancing with
 a chimpanzee (an ape, I know)

Just have to quote this from Richard Carrier´s essay "Is 90% of all EvoPsych false?" (published at his blog in 2015). This is...hysterical! 

>>>Worse, this paper, in attempting to defend EvoPsych, actually cites the pseudoscientific “gendered toys” papers as if these were an example of good science, when in fact they are precisely the kind of pseudoscience critics are attacking as inane.

>>>In Gerianne Alexander & Melissa Hines, “Sex Differences in Response to Children’s Toys in Nonhuman Primates,” Evolution & Human Behavior 23.6 (1 November 2002) and Janice Hassett et al., “Sex Differences in Rhesus Monkey Toy Preferences Parallel Those of Children,” Hormones & Behavior 54.3 (August 2008), they claimed even monkeys showed the same sex difference in toy choice as 21st century American children: girls play with Dolls, Cooking Pots, and Teddy Bears, boys play with Trucks, Police Cars, and Balls. In the first study, more specifically: a ball, a police car, a soft doll, a cooking pot, a picture book and a stuffed dog (in the second study, wheeled toys and plush toys)—not one of which would be meaningful to a monkey, of any gender. 

>>>Never mind that monkeys don’t know what trucks and cars and dolls and pots are or do, that trucks and cars and cooking pots didn’t exist in the ancient environment we evolved in, that human boys play with dolls as often as girls (I never went anywhere without my G.I. Joe, whom I also dressed; today, kids play with Action Figures, as did I), and that the Teddy Bear was originally a boy’s toy. Culture is seriously confounding here, and the thesis illogical. 

>>>It is impossible that monkeys evolved to have a cognitive preference for cooking pots or police cars. To even presume so is pseudoscience. (And why are we studying monkeys, our most distant primate ancestors, when we actually have sex-difference studies of tool use and play in our much closer cousins the Chimpanzees? Oh, right, because those results don´t support the sexist assumptions of these researches…though, of course, humans still aren’t Chimpanzees, either.)

Those were some damn smart monkeys, for sure! :D

I chimp out, therefore I am

 

Stupid research disproves a thought experiment which was stupid to begin with. It never disproved evolution, since evolution isn´t "random" in the same sense as the monkeys with the typewriter. That being said...sure, the origins of life might be more interesting, for if *that* isn´t random, some kind of panpsychism or pantheism becomes a distinct possibility.  

The cosmic capitalist

 

A lot of stuff like this on YouTube: recaps of science fiction films, perhaps AI-generated? The recaps, I mean. This way, you don´t have to waste two hours of your life watching an entire B-movie, LOL. 

The first recap is of a recent Russian movie, "Forsaken", which actually could be interesting. The plot revolves around a failed mission to Mars which is turned into a succesful reality TV show by an unscrupulous broadcasting corporation - unfortunately a very realistic scenario! There is also a kind of pseudo-philosophical message (of course, it´s a Russian film) which sounds like a mixture of Gnosticism and atheist materialism. *We* created the universe to become conscious of ourselves...only to go astray and do evil instead. Hence, we - not some gods or aliens - are the creators. But note that this message is revealed to the stranded cosmonaut by a god-like being on Mars...

The other recap is of "A Sound of Thunder", which seems to be a more typical American science fiction/horror film. Time travel, temporal paradoxes, "the butterfly effect", that kind of thing. Evolution goes haywire as reptiloid baboons descend on an unsuspecting US city amid an invasion of primordially tropical plant species. Note the nod to global warming. 

Interestingly, the bad guys in *both* films are evil capitalists. 

Make of this content what you wish. 

In leopard country

 

"The Leopard Rocks" is a documentary about leopards living in the Aravalli mountains of Rajasthan in northwestern India. I´m not an expert on leopards, but apparently the big cats in this particular region are unusually gregarious. They live in caves in the hills and supposedly never attack the humans in the area. 

The documentary tries to paint a picture of primitive shephards living in balance with Nature, but this is obviously a truth with some modification. The area is advanced enough to have a large dam providing water during the dry season, the lack of suitable prey animals for the leopards suggests human impact on the surrounding environment, and when leopards sneak into the villages to abduct and kill farm animals, the local business community pays the poor farmers money in compensation so they won´t hunt the leopards. Why? Because of tourism, that´s why. 

The balance around the Leopard Rocks seem very precarious.

Other highlights include Hanuman langurs (yes, they really do live around a temple on one of the rocks), the striped hyena (they, too, are gregarious in this particular region), the mongoose, peacocks, parakeets and antelopes. Frankly, the langurs and the temples were more interesting than the big cats, but that´s me!

End of reflections.    

Baboon sangha

 

The term "baboon sangha" (see previous blog post) is a keeper... 

The Lord of the Animals

 

Credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim 

A fascinating post by Robert Mathiesen over at JMG´s blog Ecosophia just now: 

>>>Chimpanzees and Baboons have each been observed showing behavior that is most easily interpreted as their being overcome by awe or some other numinous experience in nature. Here is the primatologist Barbara Smuts on her own observations:

>>>“One experience I expecially treasure. The Gombe baboons were travelling to their sleeping trees late in the day, moving slowly down a stream with many small, still pools, a route they often traversed. Without any signal perceptible to me, each baboon sat at the edge of a pool on one of the many smooth rocks that lined the edges of the stream. They sat alone or in small clusters, completely silent, gazing at the water. Even the perpetually noisy juveniles fell into silent contemplation. I joined them. Half an hour later, again with no perceptible signal, they resumed their journey in what felt like an almost sacramental procession. I was stunned by this mysterious expression of what I have come to think of as baboon sangha. Although I´ve spent years with baboons, I witnessed this only twice, both times at Gombe. I have never heard another primatologist recount such an experience. I sometimes wonder if, on these two occasions, I was granted a glimpse of a dimension of baboon life they do not normally expose to people. These moments reminded me how little we really know about the ‘more-than-human world’.” — Smuts, “Encounters with Animal Minds,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001), 293–309.

>>>Oveer the last 15 or so years, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture has been publishing academic studies of what seems very much like religious behavior or numinous experience in some species of animals, notably non-human primates. James R. Harrod goes so far as to speak of “chimpanzee religion” in at least one of his articles, and Paul Cunningham makes a good case for what he calls “animal spirituality.”

>>>Since very many species of animals, including non-human primates, have rituals of behavior that serve to maintain their social orders, it seems to me reasonable to suppose a multi-step development over evolutionary time that led to human religions: (1) unsought experiences of awe and other sorts of numinous experience, and (2) ritualized behavior developing in response to such experiences, as it does in response to many other sorts of animal experience. From these develop (3) more or less well organized systems of ritual response, or ceremonies, which are to be exhibited at appropriate times and/or places (leading to calendars and maps of various sorts). And eventually, humans –being human! — eventually try to think about their behavior of this sort, developing philosophies and theologies as a sort of [inherently inadequate, IMHO] intellectualization of their experience. All this, of course, is very much IMHO — basically, just my own [inherently inadequate] intellectualization. 

I´ve heard of Jane Goodall´s observation of chimpanzees worshipping waterfalls, and also of corvid funerals, but this one was new. Maybe God is the Lord of the Animals, after all...

You can´t make a monkey out of me

 

Nice try, cladistician!

A propos an old creationist tune and the utterly infuriating character of cladistic terminology. 

So humans are apes...or are we australopithecines? Apes are monkeys, butterflies are moths, and soon all insects will be crustaceans. And yes, all land-lubbing vertebrates are really lobe-finned fish. Not sure why rabbits aren´t treeshrews, but I´m sure research is ongoing. 

At least in Swedish, the apes (as in chimps, rillas, orangs, gutsick gibbons and the siamang) can bask in human glory, and I really do mean Homo (pardon my Latin). Per Wikipedia, Hominidae is called "människoapor" (human-apes or man-apes) while Hominoidea is called "människoartade apor" (human-like apes). Note that both categories also include Homo itself. 

I´m sure Jacko down at the zoo loves to be called human-like (sounds almost teleological), but alas, if Anatomically Modern Män is amused, could be another thing entirely. After all, humans aren´t just *like* humans, they in fact *are* shmucking humans. 

Time to put an end to the reign of autistic nerds in science, or what?    

Apes are monkeys

 

"Stop calling me monkey, you cladistic dumkopf, I have nothing in common with baboons, makakas and other truly HIDEOUS creatures, and oh, could you please stop calling yourselves apes when you´re already at it, you haven´t been apes for freakin´ ten million years, stop it already!"

Darwinist howler monkeys

 

Not a howler monkey!
Credit: psrdotcom

25 years ago, Darwinist nerds would sperge on and on about humans *not* being descended from apes, but from "other primates" (whatever that means). This apparently intended as some kind of polemic against creationism.

And, of course, the nerds were full of shit. In reality, humans *are* apes (well, on one definition anyway), they are certainly descended from apes, and "cladistically" both apes and humans are, ahem, monkeys?! This according to all-knowing Wikipedia. 

Therefore God. Or at least Monkey-God! In the unlikely case anybody is interested:

Ape