DALE DRINNON: Bears, Bearmen and Bearmonkeys

Recently I entered this news item at the yahoo group Frontiers-of Zoology:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/odd/2010-07/19/c_13403978.htm

Chinese Sasquatch suspected

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Bears or Bigfoot? That's what villagers in Shennongjia, Hubei Province are wonder-ing ever since one man named Ding Fei, 33, found mysterious thick curly hairs with transparent roots on July 9 at a location called Swallow Hole on a local mountain. After Ding reported his discovery to the neighborhood committee, some professional researchers found additional hairs and a 30-centimeter-long footprint at the same place on July 11.

According to their research, the hair isn't human or livestock, but the possibility of bears could not be ruled out. (Source: Global Times)

--Thirty centimeters is one foot long, there is no need to go about yelling "Sasquatch!" just yet. That would not even be a very impressive bear. However the Yeren reports seem to refer to not only an orangutan-like ape (According to Krantz and Poirier)but also a Neanderthal type (According to Heuvelmans), and other things besides. Unfortunately for the most part the hairs that are being found and reported as belonging to Chinese Wildmen are mostly turning out to be dyed hairs and synthetic fibers pulled out of wigs and toupees (Seriously!).

The following article gives an excellent overview of the history of the yeren in China:

Sightings of the Yeren, or Chinese Wildman, date back more than 2,000 years and are still reported today. Described as being a red haired bipedal animal, rising over six feet tall with a particuliarly fat belly and pronounced buttocks, the Yeren bears a resemblance to many unidentified humanoids reported in other countries including the United States. But as in reports from those other countries, more than one kind of creature seems to be reported under that general cryptid category name.

Most of the sightings are in the counties of Badong, Xingshan and Fangxian, and over much of the rest of China. But the Yeren are thought by most investigators to originate from Shennongjia Nature Reserve in Yichang, and that is where the search for them has been concentrated.

Even with all of the reports (some claim over 400 reports in the last 20 years), scientists haven’t definitively proven what the creature is, or even the concrete existence of the Yeren. When theorizing about what the Yeren could be, many zoologists believe the creature is a surviving Gigantopithecus, a giant bipedal primate believed to have gone extinct roughly 300,000 years ago, and today would share the same habitat. Another popular theory is that the Yeren are in fact a type of evolved orangutans.

The Wildman has been a part of the folklore of southern and central China for centuries, sighted primarily in the heavily forested areas of these regions. Frequently referred to as the Yeren (Wildman), the creature has been described as about six and a half feet tall with a thick coat of brown or red hair. It is said to walk upright, and footprints reportedly belonging to the Wildman have measured sixteen inches.

Although widely considered a superstitious myth in contemporary Chinese society, the Yeren boasts a history of sightings by scientists and dignitaries, rather than just common folk. In 1940, biologist Wang Tselin claimed to examine the corpse of a Wildman that had been killed in the Gansu region. He said it was a female specimen over six feet tall, with striking features that appeared to be a cross between ape and human. Geologist Fan Jingquan in 1950 reported seeing Wildmen live and in the flesh, a pair that he construed as mother and son, in the forests of the Shanxi province.

In 1961, a team of road builders allegedly killed a female Yeren in the forests of Xishuang Banna. By the time officials from the Chinese Academy of Sciences made it to the scene, the body had disappeared. The scientists' investigation concluded that the creature, which was described as only four feet tall, had been an ordinary gibbon. But twenty years later, a journalist who had been involved in the investigation came forward to claim that the creature killed was no gibbon, but an unknown animal of human shape.

In 1976, a car carrying six local government bureaucrats came across an unidentified creature on a rural highway in the Hubei province. The purported Wildman attempted to flee by climbing up an embankment, but slipped and fell onto the road in front of the car, crouching on all fours in the glare of the headlights. One of the frightened passengers threw a rock at the beast and caused it to run away. This incident sparked another intensive Wildman investigation by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but it turned up no conclusive results. The closest thing to concrete prof of the Yeren's existence surfaced in 1980 in the form of the preserved hands and feet of an unknown hominid creature. Supposedly, villagers had killed a Wildman in the Zhejiang province in 1957, and a biology teacher had removed and preserved all four of its extremities Upon examining the hands and feet, researcher Zhou

Guoxing at first announced that they belonged to an unknown species of monkey, but later decided they had come from a large macaque monkey. But Zhou made clear that this discovery did not mean that all Wildmen are macaques.

Tibetan Macacques

Another monkey spcies that has been suggested as a candidate for Wildman sightings is the rare and endangered golden monkey, whose unusual appearance could seem like a man-monster to some observers. Other researchers propose the more unlikely hypothesis that the Yeren is a surviving Gigantopithecus, a giant extinct primate believed to have lived in China three hundred thousand years ago.
© The Missing Link, Parascope.com

Artists Concept of a Yeren

In 1979 Zhou Guoxing wrote an article for China Reconstructs #28 which was later reprinted in Pursuit the following year:

"A formal investigation by the Chinese Academy of Sciences aftyer the 1976 event sent 110 investigators into the forests of Fang county and the Shennongjia area. No sightings were reported but local witnesses were interviewed and alleged Yeren footprints, hair, and feces were collected"

Zhou Guoxing, one of the expedition leaders, believed there seemed to be two types of Yeren: “a larger one of about two meters in height, and a smaller one, about one meter in height.” He also reported two types of footprints: “One is large, 30-50 cm [12 to 18 inches], remarkably similar to that of man, with the four small toes held together and the largest one pointing slightly outwards. The other type is smaller, about 20 cm [8 inches], and more similar to the footprint of an ape or monkey, with the largest toe evidently pointing outwards.”
Zhou, believes that both living and dead specimens of the smaller Yeren are already in scientists’ hands.

“One was killed on May 23, 1957, near the village of Zhuanxian in Zhejiang province. A biology teacher had the presence of mind to preserve the hands and feet." When Zhou learned of this in 1981, he went to the site and collected the specimens. After some considerable study he concluded that they “belonged to a kind of large stump-tailed monkey unknown to science.” Subsequently he identified the animal as an unusually large stumptailed macaque. Not long afterwards just such an animal was captured in the Huang Mountain region and taken to the Hefei Zoo. Zhou wrote that this species is mainly ground-dwelling…. "The body is large, about 70-90 cm in standing height. A tall individual could reach one meter. Its extremities are strongly built. It weighs more than 20 kilograms. A large male could weigh over 33 kilograms, while females would be smaller. The back hair is brown in color. The adult male has whiskers, and has a reddish color on the face.”





This is evidently intended to be the description of a Stump-tailed macaque or bear-monkey, common throughout Southeast Asia, although larger than the usual records. There is more than one canditate macaque in the area: the stumptailed macaques are in the southern parts of the range but the Tibetan macaque is found in Central China and is even larger.

The Wikipedia information on the stump-tailed macaque is as follows:

The Stump-tailed Macaque has long, thick, dark brown fur covering its body, but its face and its short tail, which measures between 32 and 69mm, are hairless. Infants are born white and darken as they mature. As they age, their bright pink or red faces darken to brown or nearly black and lose a lot of their hair. Males are much larger than females, measuring between 51.7-65cm long and weighing between 9.7-10.2kg, while females measure between 48.5-58.5cm and weigh between 7.5-9.1kg Male Stump-tailed Macaques' canine teeth, which are important for establishing dominance within social groups, are more elongated than those of the females. Like all macaques, this species has cheek pouches to store food for short periods of time.

Cawthon Lang KA (2005-10-04). "Primate Factsheets: Stump-tailed macaque (Macaca arctoides) Taxonomy, Morphology, & Ecology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump-tailed_Macaque

--As far as the large Stump-tailed monkeys go, they have a direct bearing on something Ivan Sanderson had said in Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life (1961). He had said that certain reports from South and Central China, Tibet and Northern Indochina, represent a large macaque monkey, referring to it under the nonstandard genus name of Lyssodes. He does discuss how he thinks there is a kind of giant macaque in that area related to the Tibetan and Stump-tailed macaques, partially going on information of native animal collectors that told him a really big male of the species could stand up and look Sanderson in the eye at six feet tall. [p.274] Sanderson then takes pains to say "I do not for one monemt suggest that ABSMs [the Abominable Snowmen of the reports] are Giant Rhesus monkeys" and then "What I am trying to say is that, in addition to the two very distinct forms of ABSMs in this, the Himalayan South Tibet province...there could be...areally giant form of Lyssodes or Stump-tailed Macaque which might be the origin of some of the Tibetan (and notably the Tibetan) reports. The really giant Dzu-Teh, Tok, or Gin-Sung...[Sanderson does not think occurs in the area of Mount Everest]"

Sanderson is specifically meaning the reports of tailed hairy men of Tibet, the ones that had to make a hole in the ground to sit down according to the early legends. Eberhart in Mysterious Creatures refers to the creature under the name of 'Qa" and says that records referring to it go back to the ninth century. Eberhart also refers to the smaller "Yeren" of Zhou Guoxing under the entry of 'Ren-Xiong' and equates it to the Gin-Sung of Sanderson: on the other hand, he indicates that the Yeren has been confused with other creatures such as the Mao-Ren or standard Wildman (Almas) further to the West, the Xing-Xing (possibly an orangutan) and with the Giant mountain creature called the Shan-Gui (or just Shan). The last would be the larger Yeren or the Gin-Sung of Sanderson.

The situation in China is actually only a continuation of the situation represented in Tibet, and the same "Yeti" types continue Eastward and down to the lower elevations. And after reaching this point, I shall have to break the blog here and go on to the next part, Krantz's orangutan-like Yeren, the Xing-Xing, and Sanderson's Kra-Dhan and Mahalangur (Big Monkey). The giant forms are going to come in another blog following after that.

Of the illustrations, I consider the one shown in the Cryptids colouring book to be a fairly decent representation of the orangutan-like one and it is also a fair match for the Japanese netsuke that I take to be a Hibagon.