National Park After Dark - The Short Man of Sumatra: Kerinci Seblat National Park

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Stories that make up the world’s collective rich history of legends and folklore are riddled with mysterious creatures. But what if one of these made-up beings jumped right off the page right into our very real world. And what if we looked into the face of that creature, only to discover it is more like us than we could have ever imagined? Today we venture to the island of Sumatra to discuss the Orang Pendek and its alleged last holdout deep within the forests of Kerinci Seblat National Park.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Athena Club: Use our code NPAD for 20% off your first order. Hello Fresh: Use our link and code npad16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping.Miracle Made: Use our link and code NPAD to save over 40% and get 3 free towels.Apostrophe: Use our link and code NPAD to get your  first visit for only $5.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture, my work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff,

knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Stories that make up the world's collective rich history of legends and folklore are riddled with mysterious creatures. While some slither, creep, and crawl with faces and bodies that are so unlike our own

that we can easily pigeonhole them into a separate category, a complete otherness, some are eerily similar to us. Tales of mermaids, centaurs, and werewolves, for example, may appear in common children's movies today, but they first came onto the scene thousands of years ago in epics, carved into stone, and symbolized in stories. These half-beast, half-human life forms have always fascinated us, towing the line between two worlds. But what if one of those made-up beings jumped right off of the page, leapt from the stories we tell in hushed tones, right into our very real world? And what if we looked into the face of that creature, only to discover it is more like us, more like looking into a mirror than we could have ever imagined. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

This sounds like you're finally bringing us a cryptid episode. It's been kind of a long time coming, huh? It's been a long time. No cryptids, we haven't done ghosts recently either. It's long overdue. I feel like I'm going to get, I have a few plan too that are like right up that alley. Crypted, like legends, ghosts. You know what I mean?

It's like... Aliens. Bring us to millions. Yeah. I know. I really do want it. Betty and Barney Hill, I'm telling you. Please do that one.

I want you to do that one. It's going to be a multi-parter for sure. And it's just like I feel like it's the crown jewel of any story I would ever do just because it's so special to me that story. So I don't know. I'll work on it in the back burner. Maybe it'll come out for like the fall. Who knows? This is a National Park podcast and a New Hampshire podcast.

Yeah, if you couldn't tell. If you couldn't tell. This is all national parks and New Hampshire. Okay, it's technically the national forest. Which is not a national park, but... The word national is in it, and I think that counts. Yeah. I feel like we should just give New Hampshire as a whole a free pass.

It doesn't... We're from there. This is officially a National Park, New Hampshire broadcast. Okay, perfect. I like this. I like the new direction. We're going in. Yeah.

Bring us aliens. And cryptids today. Cryptids today. And we are not going to be in New Hampshire or even in the United States. So we're going to do a story that's abroad. And before we do that, let's see, it's June. We are actually in Yosemite when this comes out. We are having our own little national park adventure. And hopefully it's going well. I think it's going great. We have a nice little trip planned. We're going to Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite. And we're doing a little park

cleanup in Yosemite, which is awesome. In June, beautiful time to be there, maybe a little crowded. But we're stoked. Maybe some of you guys are here listening to this right now. That would be so what? Imagine. Come hang out of us. Come find us. Yeah.

Good luck. We're in Yosemite. Okay. Okay, wait. The day this comes out, we are in Yosemite. Can we just bring this up really quick? What? The fact that Cassie saw and met someone and spoke with someone that listened to the podcast.

This is so embarrassing. Well, now is your time to redeem yourself. say hello. I know. I felt so bad. I'm apparently I'm an extremely awkward person and I'm just, I mean, I knew that in some situations with this one. You know when you have a moment and you have it with someone and it's a conversation that goes on in your head and then after you're like, what in the world? And then you just think about it every single day for the rest of your life. Like, why did you do that? Yes, you replay it over and over. Yeah. So I was hiking and I was wearing one of our National Park After Dark sweatshirts, some of our new merch.

And someone walked by me and they're like, oh, hey, I have the same sweatshirt as you. And I was like, oh, cool. And then just like, have a great hike. See you later. And I didn't realize at the moment that I was wearing the sweatshirt. But as soon as I walked away, I looked down and I was like, oh, my God, I didn't even say anything. So whoever I ran into in Vermont on a trail and you saw me wearing the cryptid campfire Kroonik, I apologize.

And it's nice to meet you. I'm Cassie. I'm on the podcast. Cassie immediately texted me. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Like, what in the world? It's like, why am I like this? I promise from here on now I will say hello to every single person who,

ever approaches me. Well, it's just so funny because I went to the Sinisterhood live show in Denver, and I went to the obituary live show in Denver, both at Comedy Works, both the downtown location and the landmark location. And I knew that there were people in the crowd that had at least heard of us or maybe listen to us because we have a lot of like similar audiences. And I was like so nervous that someone was going to recognize me. But no one at. ever did. I was like super undercover. I was like in the bushes like hiding. I'm like, you will never know. I'm sitting right next to you. And it was just like, it's the weird, it is a weird feeling that we're still not used to that we have a podcast and that people listen.

And I would like we do this from our room and our house and we're wearing our PJs. So it's still like foreign to us that you're all real. Right. Yeah, exactly. That you're all real people. But But yeah, we promise to be less awkward. We're working on it. We're working on it. Come say hi to us. And if we're weird, just be like, can you please stop being so fucking weird? Hello?

And we'll snap out of it real quick. And we'll snap out of it and we'll actually be cool. Well, that aside, that was Cassie's formal apology to that person. But now, on to my story, it is a cryptid-ish, kind of. I guess you'll have to make the determination, which is what makes this episode really interesting. So we are going to be going actually somewhere that we will be very close to in real life next year when we go to Borneo. So we are going to the island of Sumatra. Oh, okay.

And we are going to Corinchi Seblat National Park. Definitely have never heard of this one before. Me neither. Not at all. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more.

Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Established in 1999, Carinche Seblot National Park is located on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, and it's the largest national park of the three that the island holds. It currently has five active volcanoes, the highest mountain, which is Mount Carinche, coming in at around 12,400 feet or around 3,800 meters. The forest and tropical rainforest within this park is so thick,

the interior of it is often not frequented at all by humans, which in turn makes it an absolute paradise for other species to flourish. Over 4,000 species of plants have been identified within this park to date, including the world's largest flower, which just I had to look up. And of course, it has the best name. It's called the corpse flower. The corpse flower. I'm looking it up now because I need to know. How big is it? I don't know. It's just real big. It's the world's largest. Wow. It looks like a giant, like a giant, um, like tulip kind of. What? Oh, no, not a tulip. I'm thinking of a different one. I was like, they're 12 feet tall. They can grow up to 12 feet tall. Giant. Wow. And can weigh over

For 300 pounds. What the? I want to see one. Are we going to Sumatra? Is that what you're trying to tell me? Unless they're in. Oh, no, it says that. I think they're endemic. Are they not? It says the plant is native to tropical rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. Yeah. So it does say public viewings of this unique plant have occurred a limited number of times in the United States. Cool. And they have bloomed at the U.S. Botan. garden. I think I actually knew someone when I used to work at the Wolf Center who went there specifically to see it bloom now that I'm thinking about it because it's only once every few years or something like that. I want one of these in my living room. I think they smell really bad.

I think that's why they're called a corpse flower or nicknamed a corpse flower because they smell like a rotting body. Oh, that's lovely. So you don't. It's interesting. It's fairly interesting. I've had a thing with plants recently that I like looking up all the facts about them. I see your lemon tree in the back. I see it already like from here with the little lemons. It's actually, yeah. All of the flowers are going and it's healthy this year after I killed it like seven times and revived it. So we'll see what it'll happen. If I get a lemon this year, I'll be very, very excited. A single lemon. I just want one. I literally just want one. All right, back to the park. This park is also a cat's paradise. The Asian golden cat, clouded leper,

marbled cat and leopard cat make their home within the park alongside the highest population of Sumatran tigers on the entire island and that number hovers around 150 individuals. More tigers are in this park than in all of Nepal and more than in China, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam combined. Maybe I don't want to venture into this park. We can visit, but they're very rare still to even see. Okay. I just know you said that people don't really visit there, so I just imagine myself on foot alone in the middle of this park with tigers around? We wouldn't be alone, that's for sure. Okay.

The tigers would be there. That's right. And the amount of tigers here in this park is thanks to efforts made by various conservation organizations, park authorities, and local communities through different means like forest patrols, human wildlife conflict mitigation. They have undercover investigations and law enforcement operations to help combat illegal trafficking of tigers and tiger parks, and they have a lot of efforts protecting the important tiger habitat itself. And of course, there's more than just cats here. The park also has Malayan sunbears,

tapirs, Sumatran elephants, muntjacks, and ground cuckoos. The park covers about 5,400 square miles of land that contains thick jungle, hot springs, volcanic peaks, cave systems, scenic waterfalls, and the highest caldera lake in all of southeast Asia. Most visitors coming to the park come with their site set on hiking Corinchi, climbing Lake Gunung Tujo, and then canoeing the Caldera Lake up there, bird watching, tiger spotting, or cave exploring. And it is from within this park that the highest concentration of reports of a species of ape, the Orang Pendeck, unknown to science, emerges. So that is what we're talking about today, and that is the Oring Pendek. An ape. Big foot. Although the Orang Pendek is considered to be on the cryptozoology spectrum, it's not alone.

Indonesian history is full of what can be considered folklore or cryptids, such as the Saigu, which is a type of prehistoric tiger, so not just a regular tiger. That's Roman these jungles. Is it a giant one? Yeah, like a giant prehistoric. Everything prehistoric is always way bigger. Yep. Along with the Orang Godang, which is kind of like their version of our Bigfoot. So Orain Pendack is not, I know I said eight, but not what you're thinking as far as like Sasquatch or Bigfoot because they have a separate creature for that.

Or the Monte, which is an ancient pygmy tribe, thought to be extinct and also at the same time widely considered a myth. There's alleged video footage taken by a man in 2017 while he was trail riding on the island of Sumatra that allegedly captures evidence of Amante. The video appears to be like a GoPro, something on his helmet, and it shows a group of these trail motorbikers weaving through the forest when they startled a small, humanoid-looking creature,

which the motorist attempted to chase, but it quickly disappeared into the thick forest. And there's just like any YouTube video footage of literally anything, there's varied speculation on whether this is real, made up, altered, doctored, or if it's genuine, but anthropologist Ferkwin-Zuska of the University of North Sumatra responded to this video because it did garner a ton of attention when it was first posted, saying that there is no scientific research that has ever proven the existence of this Monte tribe. And some viewers of the video even argued that it isn't a Monte at all.

It's actually an Orang Pendeck. And one of, if not the best written descriptions of the Orang Pendek or short man, comes from a Dutch explorer named Van Hurwarden. This encounter and the following report that he gave of it were the first time the Western world got a glimpse into the forests of Sumatra to learn of the existence, or supposed existence, of this creature. Van Hurwarden was visiting the island for a wild boar hunt back in 1923. While he was out in the forest with a group of men,

he describes coming across these creatures and describes his encounter in detail. He says that he first encountered one. at about 15 meters away. It was large, low on its feet, and ran like a man. It was very hairy and was not an orangutan. And this following paragraph is a direct quote from his description. He says, quote, it was also hairy on the front of its body. The color there was a little lighter than on the back.

The very dark hair on its head fell to just below the shoulder blades or even almost to the waist. It was fairly thick and very shaggy. The lower part of its face seemed to end in more of a little. a point than a man's. This brown face was almost hairless, whilst its forehead seemed to be high rather than low. Its eyebrows were frankly moving. They were of the darkest color, very lively, and very human-like eyes. The nose was broad with fairly large nostrils, but it was in no way clumsy. Its lips were quite ordinary, but the width of its mouth was strikingly wide when open. Its canines showed clearly from time to time as its mouth twitched nervously. They seemed fairly

large to me. At all events, they were more developed than a man's. The incisors were regular, the color of their teeth were yellowish white, its chin was somewhat receding, and for a moment, during a quick movement, I was able to see its right ear, which was exactly like that of a human ear. Its hands were slightly hairy on the back. Had it been standing, its arms would have reached to a little above its knees. They were there for long, but its legs seemed to me rather short. I did not see its feet, but I did see some toes which were shaped in a very normal manner. The specimen was of the female sex and about five feet high. There was nothing repulsive or ugly about its face, nor was it ape-like at all. After observing the creatures for a short amount of

time, he put down his gun and began climbing a tree that they were in. So he was like chasing them, kind of. And this scared them and sent them running out, scattered onto nearby branches. And then they leapt down from the tree, which was about nine feet to the ground, which he described as an elegant, like there was nothing clumsy about it. It was like they did that with ease. He followed suit, so he climbed back down the tree to follow them and picked up his gun to shoot one, but as he raised his weapon, he stopped. He found himself unable to pull the trigger. He said of the incident, it would have felt like murder to kill such a human-like creature. As a result of this, when he returned to Europe and told his story with no proof to back it up, he was widely criticized and from both sides.

While some people disbelieved his account right off the bat, just totally dismissed it, pointing to his complete lack of evidence, others, such as a local museum curator, said his account was, quote, too exact. So like his story, he had too many details for his story. Right. Like on one half, it's like, okay, well, you don't have anything to prove it. And the other half is like, well, your description is too exact. It can't be true. It's rehearsed. Right. Yeah. Several years earlier in 1917, a man named

Mr. Oosting, a local coffee plantation owner, claimed to have seen something very similar. He reported seeing a figure, following him in a forest near what is now the park, saying, quote, his body was as large as a medium size natives, and he had thick

square shoulders, not sloping at all. The color was not brown, but looked like black earth, a sort of dusty black. more gray than black. He clearly noticed my presence. He did not so much as turn his head, but stood up on his feet. He seemed quite as tall as I, around 1.75 meters. Then I saw that it was not a man, and I started back, for I was not armed. The creature took several paces without the least haste, and then, with his ludicrously long arm, grasped a sapling, which threatened to break under his weight and quietly sprang into a tree, swinging in great leaps alternately to right and to left.

So what he seems to be describing is a very human-like, ape-like creature that looked human-ish, but obviously wasn't, grabbed a tree branch and whisked himself away with ease. And this is someone a local, he lives there, and he's never seen anything like this. So he's seen actual orangutans before, so he knows that it's different. And it's interesting you say that because orangutans come up a lot, especially in the early sightings of people trying to explain away like maybe you saw this and so, you know, you're mistaken. But orangutans are not found in this area of Sumatra, which is very interesting. Oh, okay. Sightings continued to pile up.

In 1927, a Dutch plantation owner reported seeing an orangutan deck from only 30 feet away, describing the beast as having long hair and black. black skin and leaving small, human-like footprints when it ran away. As more sightings were compiled and compared to descriptions from local communities, the following description was kind of compiled, and now when you look up O'Rang Pendek, this is the description you're going to get for this creature. Allegedly, they range in height from roughly two and a half feet to five feet tall and are covered in short, reddish, dark brown hair on the body, but they have a bald or significantly less hair on their face. The hair along their back appears to be a bit longer, thicker, and of a slightly different color, giving them a mane-like appearance. The head appears to be slightly pointed, which can

possibly be from a sagittal crest. So the sagittal crest is found in a lot of different mammal species and some reptile species as well, and the presence of that crest indicates exceptionally strong jaw muscles. So the larger the crest, kind of correlating the stronger the jaw pressure, or pound force per square inch power. And bite force is not mutually exclusive with carnivores. Some of the animals that possess the strongest bite forces aren't strictly carnivores and some aren't even predators at all. And I kind of, this is like a little bit of a side note because I think it's really interesting.

There was a recent, like 2023 recent study released from Brown University that compiled a top 10 list of the strongest PSI, essentially in the animal kingdom. And we're not going to go through obviously the whole. top 10, but I picked a couple out just to give some kind of frame of reference. And the grizzly comes in at number nine. And they come in at, yes, 1,160 PSI. And the gorilla comes in at 1,300 PSI. So a gorilla has a stronger bite force than a grizzly bear. That actually doesn't surprise me, because gorillas are scary. Gorillas are crazy, scary. They're very scary. I would much rather come across a grisly than a gorilla.

I just think it's interesting to point out because, yeah, while they're like visually frightening sometimes, they're dead. Like, you think of like pounds per square inch and bite force and like carnivores and having a rip through bone and tissue and you know what I mean? Like predatory animals, but crillans don't do that. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I wanted to point that out.

And do you have any sort of guess that what number one is the animal? Is it a common animal? Not here. Not here. I would guess maybe a tiger. No, it's a Nile Crocodile. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, and they come in at 5,000 PSI.

Oof. Which is so gnarly. Do you want to guess? And that makes sense. The average person. It's like pitiful. The average person? The number?

Oh my God, so many numbers. Okay, so crocodile is a thousand. No. What's a gris? Or 5,000, I mean. And what's the grizzly? 1,160. 1,160. 100. 162.

162. Okay. My number isn't that far off. Yeah, this is pitiful. So pitiful. Okay. Back from our sidetrack here. Back to Orang Pendek Worlds. And they tend to be solitary, elusive, and shy as well as intelligent and very observant. Typical defensive behavior includes them raising their arms to make themselves appear bigger, along with stick or rock banging or throwing, which is all very classic ape-like behavior

that we have observed in known species of primates. They are often seen walking bipedally on the ground, but appear to be equally as comfortable swinging within the trees. Walking bipedally, so on two feet, they seem to run with their arms out in front of them, and their tracks they leave behind range from five to six inches in length with a very similar shape to that of a huge. footprint with broad, short toes featuring a prominent toe that appears to be somewhat of an

opposable thumb. Their vocalizations consist of whistling and deep groans, and while there have been rare sightings of them in groups, they are often most seen alone. Their preferred diet consists of plant shoots, sugar cane, and fruit, although they have been witnessed digging through rotting logs to access bugs and larva. And as this image of them of the supposed species started emerging, and supposed sightings started hitting headlines around the world, several expeditions were launched, but ultimately none were successful. In 1924, the Indonesia National Museum of Natural History obtained a cast of a supposed O'Rang Pendek footprint,

which raised a lot of hope, but it was later identified as coming from a Malayan sun bear. And then the next big thing that really raised attention and caught everyone's eye came a few years after that, when in response to a posted reward for an orang Pendek, the body of a supposed creature was sent to the National Zoology Museum in Indonesia. And this body turned out to be the body of a Langar Monkey, which was altered by a group of locals in hopes of collecting the reward money.

Oh, that's sad. It's really sad. And it also reminds me of this time I was, I vividly, vividly remember it. And I feel like I may have told this story at some point on the podcast. or I just remember it really clearly. But I was in high school and I was at the beach, Hampton Beach, with a group of my high school friends. And I got a call on my first cell phone.

It was a Virgin Mobile flip phone cell phone prepaid. The little silver ones? It's the little silver one. Yeah. And my dad called me and I picked up my phone and he was like, you are never going to, like he didn't even say hi. He's like, you are never going to believe this. We did it.

We made it. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, a body of a Bigfoot has been confirmed. Like, we have it. It's secured. Like, finally, the truth is out. And I'm like, losing my mind. Like, same thing.

Like, on Hampton Beach, I'm like telling everyone. I'm like, oh, my God, you'll never guess. Bigfoot is real. Like, suckers. Like, I told you, we were right. But it ended up being something very, very similar. It was a group of people that, like, it was like a Frankenstein type. of it wasn't even a single animal like they stitched together a bunch of different body parts of animals and like

yeah like clearly it was never taken seriously scientifically but like it was a very catchy headline click baity and it got my dad and it got me yeah you just saw and you're like it's finally here and yeah oh yeah the lengths people got that's horrific too to go through that kind of lengths and mutilate an animal yeah or multiple so that hoax was kind of the final straw and squashed any fizzling, at least scientific interest in the O'ringpendack at that time. It's kind of like, all right, well, there's all this talk. There's nothing happening, so we're not putting a lot of effort into this anymore. The leading thought at the time was that these sightings were just cases of mistaken identity, kind of like I touched on before.

And there were three main suspects for that. The orangutan, which we already kind of went over, the Gibbon and the Sunbear. And of course, the orangutan and Gibbon seem a lot. little more understandable because they're primates. But believe it or not, a lot of people had mistaken the sun bear for a primate-looking animal because they've been observed walking on their hind legs for long lengths of time. And just in the jungle, especially with the lighting and, you know, you never know. Yeah. Actually, one of the earliest O'Ring Pendek expeditions back in the 20s, this group of men killed dozens and dozens of sun and honey bears that were unfortunately

misidentified. It's like, okay, after the first, let's maybe wait before you pull the trigger. Also, why is the first? I get, like, I get the whole, you're trying to find evidence and stuff, but why can't you just, like, tranquilize them? I don't know. Killing all of these animals. One, if you catch it, you have no way to research it at all.

as like a living creature. Yeah, there's no study of it in its living form. Yeah, I understand that. It's just here's a corpse of this may or may not be what we're looking for. Right. And this is also the 20s that everyone just shot everything. Yeah. Willy-nilly.

I just have never understood why the first reaction is to shoot something that you don't understand. Yeah, well, preach it, sister. As time went on, although the scientific community hit the pause button on investigating the Orang Pendek, sightings continued. During World War II, workmen working on the Trans-Sumatran Highway, described encountering an entire group of them, throwing sticks at their party, and in 1970, helicopter pilot Larry Wilson witnessed one in a tree. At first, he thought it was an enemy soldier and he was prepared to shoot at it, but on approach, he saw that it was shaking the tree it was in, and then retreated into the thick canopy as soon as he maneuvered his helicopter to get a

closer look. And for the record, he didn't say for sure that's what he thought it was. He wasn't like, I saw an oring pendek. It was after his descriptions that people kind of assumed that's what he probably saw. He just said of his brief encounter with a creature that it was absolutely not a human and it was unlike anything he had ever seen before. And people said that that sounded like the description. Yes, yep. Locals in Western Sumatra claim to see the Arang Pendack into modern day and it has landed segments or its own documentaries or appeared in shows like Beast Hunter, Destination Truth, Monster Quest, Is It Real?

And X-Creatures, among many more. But it's not just gimmicky television programs that are interested in its possible existence. The longest running investigation into the O'Ring Pendock lasted 15 years and was led by travel writer Debbie Martyr and photographer Jeremy Holden. Debbie first became enthralled

with this supposed creature in 1989, when she was in Corinchi National Park for another work assignment, and her guide had told her sightings of the Orang Pendack were not uncommon. And at first, when she heard this, she was super skeptical and almost dismissive of his accounts. But as he continued and obviously learning more and being there longer and hearing more stories from locals. And then when the guide was like, yeah, I've seen it twice in my lifetime,

she was way more interested. He also did note that the sightings were becoming rarer due to farming encroachment, like habitat encroachment into... Yep. So she's like, all right, there seems to be something here. Gaining a huge financial backing from the Fauna and Flora International Institute the following year, the pair returned to Sumatra to document local eyewitness accounts along with attempts at collecting photographic evidence. So they set camera traps, they did a lot of tracking, they talked to a lot of local. local communities, and while the pair reported catching a handful of glimpses of the creature between

the two of them during that 15-year period, they failed to capture any solid photo evidence. Debbie did describe one of her encounters in 1990 as follows. Quote, I saw it in the middle of September. I had been out here for four months. At that time, I was 90% certain that there was something here, that it was not just traditional stories. When I saw it, I saw an animal that didn't look like anything and any of the books I have ever read, films I had ever seen, or zoos I had seen. It did indeed

walk rather like a person, and that was a shock. It was a relatively small, immensely strong, non-human primate. But it was very grassle. That was the odd thing. So if you looked at the animal, you might say that it resembled a simong or an agile gibbon on steroids. It doesn't look like an orangutan. Their proportions are very different. It is built like a boxer with immense upper body strength. It was a gorgeous color, moving bipedally and trying to avoid being seen. The Orang Pendek project in Sumatra, an international collaborative effort between researchers ran from 2012 to 2016. There was also another expedition led by Adam Davies from the center of Fortian zoology in 2011, and both of these produced footprint casts. And while both of these expeditions admit that some

are likely hoaxes, and of course others were identified from, scientifically recognized primate species. Some remained a little puzzling. Primate biologist David Chivers of the University of Cambridge compared one of these casts with one from a known primate, or several known primates, I should say. And he concluded after his study, quote, it was definitely an ape with a unique blend of features from a gibbon, orangutan,

chimpanzee, and human. From further examination, the print did not match any known primate species. and I can conclude that this points towards there being a large unknown primate in the forests of Sumatra. It is also important to note that this could be either a foot or a handprint, so they're not sure what. Which is which. Expeditions have also produced some hair samples, which were also analyzed. Dr. Hans Bruner, an expert on mammal hair, compared the hands, again, with those of other known primates and local animals, and concluded that they originated from a previously undocumented species of primates.

So both of these samples and both of these scientists are saying, yes, it's likely from a primate origin, but none that we are aware of. Hey, if the science backs it up, then you're going from just people seeing things and reporting it to actual scientific evidence that shows that there is something out there that we don't know about yet. It's very compelling. It is. And if it seems like a really wild prospect, a previously undocumented species of primate being found, now, you'd be surprised. I could go on, of course, for a really long time about the discovery of unknown species. It happens all of the time. But I do have two examples that are primate focus that I found really interesting. Cool. And the first example isn't exactly of a unknown

species per se. They were hidden. According to National Geographic, in 2008, so relatively recently, a Wildlife Conservation Society two-year census study found an astounding 125,000 western lowland gorillas that were previously unknown. And that number is more than double the number of the critically endangered subspecies than scientists previously thought existed on earth. So this is twice the amount of this subspecies of animal that they even thought previously existed and they found them. This reminds me of when we did the interview with Dr. Ray,

in Grant and she told us about how she found, or she was part of the expedition that found a whole other group. Group, yeah. A whole not, thank you population. I'm like words. A whole other population of lemurs in a part of Madagascar that no one had known before, all because the locals were like, hey, there's definitely rainforest over there. And everyone's like, no, there's not.

And the locals just said, hey, we live here. We know we've seen it. And then people came in to explore it. And documented it officially. Yeah. And these 125,000 gorillas were so deep within the remote jungles of the Republic of Congo that they had remained hidden for all of this time. Because that area repeatedly just proved to be so difficult to access just because of how remote it is. And this begs the question, given the density of the Sumatran forests in this national park we're talking about, could Orang Pendek be a similar?

lost species. Definitely. For sure. Is that a question for me? Yeah, it was. I think yes. Okay, great. The other example is that, and this is my favorite one, and I tried just really, for everyone involved here, I tried really hard to keep it condensed because you could do a whole episode just on this one subject. It's so fascinating. But the other example is that of homo Floriansis, aka the Hobbit. Oh. Yeah, it's so exciting. Okay, in 2003, a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists were working on this small island of Flores. One of the many islands in Indonesia, it's located about 500 kilometers east of Java. And they had this goal of uncovering evidence that Homo sapiens at one point passed through this area. That was their goal. And what they found was much more interesting and startling. They found remains. of what appeared to be miniature humans. The team found more than 100 fossils from at least 14 individuals

in a large cave called Liang Bua. At first, archaeologists thought that the skeletons must have been those of modern-day children because they were so small. But they quickly noted that the small skulls had defined brow bones, which are uncharacteristic of modern humans, as well as fully developed teeth,

including wisdom teeth, indicated that these remains were those belonging to adults. They had a small stature coming in at around three and a half feet. They weighed roughly 50 pounds with very small skulls, about the third of the size of hours, so about the size of a large grapefruit. They had short legs, flat feet, and they walked bipedally. And while there are many similarities to our closest known ancestor,

there are differences as well, such as some of their bone structures are actually closer evolutionarily-wise, to that of our closest evolutionary cousins, the chimp, versus to our human ancestors. And without going too far down this rabbit hole, while scientists don't have all the answers as to where the species came from, how they developed to be so sure, why are they just found here on this island, this isolated place, it's official that homo Floriansis is officially a distinct human species. Oh, there's another species of human. Yes. That's very interesting.

And while most of the world was completely stunned by this exciting anthropological find, like, so there's a different distinct human species that's three and a half feet tall, it's basically a miniature per- like what? Like people were just astounded. It's small. Very small. The more details that emerged describing this quote-unquote new species, there were so many people in Sumatra saying, yeah, we know you're describing the around

Pendek. Like this is what we have been seeing. Oh, then it all circles back. Right. I was going to say they are small like how you've been saying. And it's all within the same geographical region. And there's like a there's like I said, there's so much when it comes to how did this species of, you know, human, distant human relative evolved to be so small. Why are they just here? Like how did they get there? you know, et cetera. And a lot of people think that they took boats, like they got to these islands and more than just the island of Flores, multiple islands in that region, and then they just slowly died off, were killed off by Homo sapiens, etc., like larger versions of the human race. You know what I mean? But for some reason, we just happened to have found them in this cave. And this is all the

archaeological evidence we have of them so far. But other people are arguing that the Orang Pendek are just a small population of Homo Florianus that just has not been identified yet. And it's just kind of holding out in the remote interior of this national park. And it's likely one of the last holdouts for the species. Like they're not mythical creatures at all. They're just a small, isolated, critically endangered pocket population of Homo Floriances. Very interesting. I guess that makes them kind of mythical.

Right? I mean, well, and it's just like it is really far-fetched. to think that there's this small humanoid creature running around and undetected. Well, not entirely if there's so many sightings of them. And they've been in Malayan folklore and stories for so many years and hundreds of years. Yeah, with all these sightings and some scientific evidence, like you said, with the hair and the casting, it's just, I mean, who knows? Who knows?

So in conclusion, as it stands today, to sum, the old. Oring Pendek is nothing more than a joke, a hoax, mythical creature, pure fantasy, but to others it's a living, breathing, perhaps critically endangered, unknown species of primate, yet to be classified by science, one who has evaded capture and study for hundreds of years. One of many species that exist in a world dominated by humans, yet remains apart from us, existing within one of the last untouched holdouts of land on the planet. Possibly in time, we will close in on them and put to rest the controversy. once and for all, scientifically proving their existence.

Or maybe they will remain concealed and undetected within the forests of the park. They may even die out without us even knowing for sure they actually ever really lived. Perhaps we were never meant to know and we never will. Dun, dun, dun, dun. And that's it. What an interesting, I like it. It feels like a cryptid, but it's also not because maybe it's an actual real species. And I think that it would be very ignorant for us all to believe that we've discovered every single thing that exists on this planet, you know? So to find this, or I should say fine, but we've established this National Park in a very remote area that is very difficult to navigate.

And to be surprised that there's something in there that would be like being surprised to find a new species in the ocean. Right. Like we haven't explored it. We haven't seen it. It probably exists. And that's why I find crypto zoology so intriguing because, yeah, there are some creatures within or some cryptids that are like, even I am like, okay, well, we all know that that just came and stemmed from complete human imagination. But there are others that, like, have some real legitimacy to them. And there's a reason that cryptozoology is an actual field of study because there is some legitimacy to a lot of these creatures.

and there's a lot of people out there that just want to prove to the scientific community that they're real, or they were once living, breathing creatures and not just completely made up stories. And I think the orang Pendek just really straddles that line because there is some real tangible evidence with an examples that makes it not so hard to believe. Yeah. I mean, I don't think anything is that hard to believe for me because if you look at the world as a whole, There are so many things that are just so wild that if I was to sit here and create a creature, I couldn't come up with it. You know, you go to the ocean, you have whales and sharks, and you come on land and you have striped giant cats.

You have horses with necks that are giraffes that are feet high. You know, like there's just so many weird animals that exist that why not add another one, you know? there's just, I believe that there's totally things that we don't understand. And I don't know why this episode reminds me of this, but have you ever read the book, the last of the really great wangdoodles? No, but you put that on our newsletter once as our recommended book or your recommended book of the month. Oh my God. It was a book that I read as a kid. And it's by, what is her name? Julie Andrews. She's like, isn't that an actress? Yeah. Yeah, Julie Andrews. Yeah, Julie Andrews. Anyway, the book is a mythical story about a wangdoodle, which is an almost extinct species.

There's only one left. And throughout the entire book, there are different species of these mythical creatures that she basically makes up and they all have weird, interesting things about them. And same with the plant life that's there. And she makes up this entire creative world in the story. And it was my favorite book as a kid. And the story just reminds me of that. There's so many creatures and things around that we don't understand and are very weird to us, but they're real. And I don't know. It's just like it gives me the mythical fun last of the really great wing doodles vibe. Well, I will have to read it. I'll add it to my list.

I think it's a kid's book. You think? You think. Have you just heard the title that came out of your mouth? It's for sure a kid's book. I loved it. Like, look at the cover of it. I know. I put the cover on our newsletter. I'm like, this is a children's book. Yeah.

It's cool, though. I don't, I don't shame children's book. I have a lorax tattoo. Like, Dr. Seuss, you know, like... The Lorax is a classic. The stories have... A lot of children's books are, like, so impactful because they're really profound life lessons. And, like, they hit you in the field. Yeah. And you're like, what? You're reading it, like, to your kid. And you're like, oh, my God. I'm like, really impactful. acted by this right now. But anyways, okay, well, that's it on the O'Ring Pendek. And if you were taking a shot

every time I said that, you're probably hammered by now. I have said Oring Pendek. So many times. A million times. But I hope you guys enjoyed it. And I know that there's some really like very real anthropology and archaeology terms and discoveries in there. So I hope I did them justice. But yeah, I thought it was really intriguing and it was about time to do a cryptid story. So there it was. Well, thanks for taking us to a brand new park. And a coincidence that it's near an area that we're going to anyway, I'm not really sure. But we will be there in 2024. See, a year and a half from when this comes out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll plan our trip. Well, maybe in a year and a half. We'll have some updates. Yeah, we'll have updates. We can go on an expedition to find the Orang Pindek.

Who's going to fund us? Who is going to fund us, guys? That's the question. Hello? All right, we'll see you guys next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. And give us some funds to find a cryptid.

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