7. De Loys Ape
In 1917, Swiss geologist Francois De Loys shot and killed a strange, human-like ape on the Venezuela/Columbia border. The story that De Loys told was that these two bizarre apes began screaming and throwing faeces at the explorers and so the party shot at them out of fear (although his later accounts became more and more descriptive as well as less and less plausible - with each subsequent retelling). Allegedly, a female was killed while a male vanished into the overgrowth. The team photographed the body of the female, with a stick holding up her head. For decades, De Loys Ape as it was known, was bandied about in Bigfoot-related discussions as a possible missing link between man and ape, or else some sort of undiscovered primate. Subsequently, the photograph appeared in a large number of zoology and cryptozoology-based books and occasionally, along with the (also faked) surgeons photograph of the Loch Ness Monster, would even make the cover. In recent years, however, the true nature of the photograph has been revealed. What began as a trickle and ended up as a stream of damning evidence against both De Loys claims and his photograph has most cryptozoologists now renouncing the once-prized image as a fake. Here is a brief summary of some of the evidence against the photo. There is almost nothing in the photo to indicate the size of the creature, leaving us to simply take De Loys account at face value regarding the height of the ape (reportedly 1.5 metres). Surely, if one were to find such a fantastic creature, one would ensure that every effort was taken to demonstrate the size of the beast? At least two men who knew or had worked with De Loys later revealed that the whole thing was a practical joke. The stump of a banana tree can be seen in the shot. These do not grow in the South American jungle, indicating that the picture was taken elsewhere than reported. The area where the ape was supposedly shot has no local (or even anecdotal) stories of large primates. They do, however, have a lot of (considerably smaller) spider monkeys that look an awful lot like the specimen in the photograph. So, it seems that Francois De Loys pulled the wool over everyones eyes. The real victim in all of this, however, was the poor old spider monkey, who had to die for no reason other than an elaborate practical joke (although some investigations suggest that the creature was given to De Loys as a gift and then died of natural causes - either way, it would suck to be that particular monkey.