CryptoZooNews Exclusive for January 13, 2006
Harry Trumbore’s drawing of Africa’s kalanoro, from The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe.
I’ve learned, through a confidential source, that at least one unit of the US Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) has had a remarkable recent encounter with unknown apes in Africa. And a video was taken. We are seeking additional confirmation and other eyewitnesses. Have any hints of this story come your way?
Due to the sensitive nature of this former US Navy SEAL’s intelligence-gathering work, at this time we cannot reveal his identity. Hopefully our posting this initial information will develop other sources and confirmations from current and former SEAL members involved, and from interested researchers with hints of the story.
What the former SEAL relates is that he was involved in covert operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1997 and 2002. According to his account, his team observed a group of thirteen “chimpanzee-like” creatures between 4.5 to 5 feet tall, uniformly gray all over their bodies, with rows of seemingly porcupine-like quills running the length of their backs.
The unidentified apes walked bipedally and were observed by the SEAL team in the act of killing another animal. When the creatures became excited or agitated, the quills or spines stood erect from their bodies.
According to this informant, the US Navy SEAL team took three minutes of video footage of these creatures, but this tape apparently has been classified, due to their mission. This SEAL member still has his mission maps and is able to pinpoint the area of the encounter with this large group of bipedal apes.
The involvement of a US Navy SEAL team would indicate that their activity employed water as a means of transportation, and/or they were working in an area involving a lake, river, or swamp.
What could these strangely-haired unknown apes be? Their description, overtly, sounds like similar hairy short upright creatures (with bizarre spiked hair) known to inhabit areas near certain bodies of water and from specific islands. Various regional names (chupacabras, kappa) hide the fact they all resemble each other in their number of digits, spiked hair, aggressiveness, and aquatic habits. But let’s just look to Africa alone, today.
Weird rumblings have been heard from the Congo for decades. In Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, there is mention of animal collector Charles Cordier finding the small tracks of what the locals called the kakundakari in the Congo in 1961.
I have previously written about an African hominoid that matches the Congolese reports of the Navy SEAL, those of the Madagascar natives’ kalanoro, a short, three-toed, bipedal, water-dwelling, mean, scruffy-hair hominoid.
All the tribes of island of Madagascar, located off the east coast of Africa, know of the Kalanoro, according to folklorist Raymond Decary, who researched the common themes connecting the stories of the Kalanoro back in the 1950s. In 1889, a capture of a Kalanoro was reported to the Royal Geographical Society. In 1924, Chase Salmon Osborn described his sighting of two Kalanoro mating.
The Father of Cryptozoology also took an interest in them. These “legends may be fantastic,” wrote Belgium cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans in 1955, but “they are found all over Madagascar, and it would be odd if they were utterly without foundation,” especially given the fact that “some areas of Madagascar are still almost unexplored, such as the Ambongo reserve and the lonely Isalo mountains, and there are still some 3 or 4 million hectares of virgin forest…”
The aggressive nature of the Kalanoro comes through in a few accounts, and mirrors the behavior in the SEAL’s account. The Kalanoro are also known to abduct children, and search Madagascar’s villages for food.
How recent are the encounters with these hairy, three-toed Kalanoro with their hooked fingers and aggressive habits? Professor Joe Hobbs of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Geography, studied them, while he was with the local tribes in the Ankarana Special Reserve, Madagascar, during the late 1990s. On May 15, 2000, when Hobbs wrote his report, he talked of how the people of the village of Ambalakedi consider Andoboara Cave “sacred because on three separate occasions, most recently just two years ago, grief-stricken parents whose children had wandered into the forest had recovered them alive here” after food was left out for the Kalanoro in exchange for their children’s return.
If the US Navy SEAL report is correct, there may be something quite similar to the Kalanoro living in the Congo area too.
And if the Congo SEAL encounter was so very extraordinary, others may have talked about, it in passing. Since this “unknown hominoid” piece of the mission does not involve national security, but may extend cryptozoological knowledge, it is time to learn more, release the video footage, and analyze what was seen.
Do you have further information on this US Navy report? Please send what you’ve heard our way, via the comments’ section or let us know you want further contact through back channels.
The publishing of this story (which I learned about earlier this week) is a pure coincidence on this date, with regard to the number of cryptids seen.
I have written before about the fact that there is a primate named the potto, which is a central African loris, that does have spikes that comes through it’s neck and upper back skin/fur, from its spine. The spikes stand up when the potto is threatened by a predator, so the attacker cannot bite the potto on the neck.
So much for there not being any primates with spikes.
I appreciate all the comments, even the skeptical one, the ones that disagree with my post, or challenge me. That’s great, and I enjoy the thinking that is going on here.
A couple points…
As I mentioned in my original posting, there is an overt similarity to several cryptids around the world that “appear” to have spikes on their backs, even if it is only in outward appearance. Hair can appear in many rigid and funny ways.
The use of the term “porcupine-like quills” was via my informant. I have not used the phrase “porcupine” to describe these, personally.
The example of the potto was merely to demonstrate that “spike”-like structures have been seen on primates. Nature’s designs are rather amazing.
As was quoted above, it is in the zoological literature that the potto’s little spikes from the vertebra came through the skins. This observation was reinforced in comments by zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson who also saw them coming through the skin on the ones he handled and examined on his animal collecting expeditions to Afric.
The experience of knowing one person who may have created a hoax and who said they were a SEAL is hardly proof this story is a hoax.
This account is shared to further the investigation of this possible encounter. If we shut the door to exploring it too early, we may not allow a valuable report to tell us more about what is going on in the world of unknown apes in the Congo.
Needless to say, some intriguing things have been happening there with reports of the Bili or Bondo cryptid ape. This may be related to those sightings. Or it might be an encounter with some new apes having a bad hair day? Let’s keep any open mind about these.
As to the primary informant, he is very nervous because he just left the service. He happened to overhear someone who was mentioning cryptozoology work in the Congo, and mentioned his experience. That’s how this all came to my attention, through backchannels. This former Navy SEAL requires and requests no publicity be drawn to himself, regarding this case. He is not involved in cryptozoology and doesn’t really seem to care about the field at all. I don’t like this secrecy part of this investigation, but I understand it. That’s why, of course, I am looking for secondary confirmations. And like most of you, remain skeptical but interested to see where this is going to lead.
Just a few points…
I’ve posted dozens and dozens of entries here, written over 500 articles, and as opposed to “government coverup” being the theme of most of those cases, this one story is the exception to the rule.
For anyone to say “I find it odd that the U.S. would even have anything to do with the Congo,” only shows a lack of realistic understanding of what intelligence and black operations are occurring around the globe by several branches of the military.
Same goes for this part of the comments that “he alone and none of his compatriots that undertook this mission and supposedly witnessed these creatures is willing to speak.”
As for thinking that others in this man’s unit are “holding back” or not stepping forward, frankly, most people don’t care about their interactions with strange animals. We do. That’s why we are talking about them. The majority of the population ignores and ridicules this material, so why would they even feel that anyone would want to listen?
Most soldiers are soldiers, not naturalists. It is only by chance that we heard about any of this encounter.
F215, sorry, but the Navy-SEAL sighting is only vaguely like the Bili Ape accounts and their reported video (which has also not been shared with the public). The only common factors are the Congo and hairy creatures. The Bili Ape is more gorilla-like, whereas these cryptids are bipedal, small, aggressive, spiked, and match the cryptid in the drawing above. There is no copycat here, especially as the Navy encounters also happened with the acknowledgement from this eyewitness of the concurrent sightings elsewhere of more anthropoid unknown apes. The Bili Ape is nothing like these, and the eyewitness did not even attempt to make it sound like a Bili one.
Two different types of cams, two different types of animals (pongids vs hominiods), two different types of encounters, and two very different stories.