It has a man's face and a gorilla's torso. Officially, it doesn't exist, but
try telling that to the people who've met it. Debbie Martyr reports.
Video: Debbie Martyr
Debbie Martyr describes encountering an Orang Pendek
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High on a mountainside in West Sumatra are a number of remarkably deep
holes in the rich, dark volcanic earth. Disguised with leaves the 2m-deep pits
are surrounded by bait of fruit and vegetables. They are traps for an animal
the scientific establishment does not yet accept exists — a small, hairy,
ape-like biped known, in the mountainous jungles of the Kerinci Seblat, as
orang pendek or short man.
Rustam, the headman of Selempaung, the village in the valley below, does
not want to catch an orang pendek for science. He has a more personal motive.
It is called 'making a point'. He is, he says, fed up with being told by
visitors to the 13,000 sq. km Kerinci Seblat National Park that there is no
such thing as orang pendek.
Sketch of Orang Pendek
Have you seen this hominid? 'Identikit' picture — drawn by a WWF artist
from several independent, but very consistent descriptions of the Sumatran
orang pendek — show an ape that many of the forest villagers consider an
ordinary part of their local natural history. They seem genuinely puzzled when
other people fail to believe them.
Now Rustam is out to prove that the orang pendek does exist. For Rustam is
not the only native of the Kerinci highlands to claim to have seen the small,
ape-like biped or to be confused because nobody appears to believe him. A
four-week visit to Kerinci earlier this year uncovered, in villages miles
apart, literally dozens of witnesses who describe seeing a small, hairy,
ape-like creature both in the forest and in fields on the edges of the jungle.
From the foothills of the 3,800m active volcano which gives the Kerinci Seblat
National Park its name to Curup, 50Okm south, the descriptions of the animal
are virtually identical.
The orang pendek, say villagers, averages just under one metre high, is
immensely strong with broad shoulders and short legs and is covered in short,
dark grey hair. It is, witnesses insist, quite unlike any of the eight species
of primate known to exist in the Kerinci jungles. It is not, they will add, a
man. It is simply orang pendek, and it's no mysterious flash in the zoological
pan. It has been repeatedly seen by both local people and by Europeans for at
least a century.
In the wake of a series of highly publicised 'sightings' by Dutch settlers
in the 1920s and accounts in Bernard Heuvelmans' cryptozoological classic On
the Track of Unknown Animals, repeated expeditions were mounted by young
bloods armed with shotguns and a thirst for making their scientific
reputations.
None was successful in trapping an orang pendek. They did succeed, however,
in shooting innumerable honeybears and sunbears which had the misfortune to be
misidentified in the dim jungle light. And when, in 1924, the national museum
in Bogor obtained the cast of an 'orang pendek track', it was rapidly
identified as that of a Malay sunbear — an animal which often stands on its
hind legs.
The scientists, already sceptical, prepared to write the orang pendek's
obituary. Their chance came eight years later when, in response to a posted
reward, the body of an animal alleged to be a juvenile orang pendek was
dispatched to the national zoology museum in Bogor, Java.
The discovery made headline news — for about 48 hours, the time it took for
the mysterious corpse to be identified as an adult langur monkey whose body
had been carefully altered by a group of enterprising locals hoping to claim
the reward.
The hoax dealt a death blow to any serious scientific interest in the orang
pendek, which was pronounced a myth, no more. Unfortunately, nobody told the
orang pendek — or the villagers and hunters of Kerinci who have continued,
unashamedly, to report sightings of the animal.
And not just in south-western Sumatra. In the mid-eighties, some 2,500km
north, in the Malay state of Sabah in northern Borneo, John MacKinnon, who had
recently discovered a new species of ox in Vietnam, came across tracks of the
animal known, locally, as 'Batutut'. He reports that the prints were "so like
man's, yet so definitely not a man's that my skin crept. . . the prints were
roughly triangular in shape, about 15cm long by 1Ocm across. The toes looked
quite human, as did the shapely heel but the sole was both too short and too
broad to be that of a man and the big toe was on the opposite side to what
seemed to be the arch of the foot."
Finally, in May this year, I returned to Sumatra to collect and collate
reported orang pendek sightings. The first shock came within hours of my
arrival in the small market town of Sungeipenuh, which acts as a central point
for the administration of the Kerinci Seblat National Park. In 1989, questions
about the orang pendek and any suggestion that the animal might be based on
fact were greeted with reactions ranging from polite disbelief to open
hilarity. Times have changed in Sumatra. The officials of the Kerinci Seblat
have become, if not converts to the orang pendek cause, then at least openly
curious about the animal.
Pak Mega Harianto, director of the park, admitted, "We now have too many
sightings, from all over the national park. It is always the same animal..
Always the same description. I think there is a strong possibility that we
have an unknown animal here." What had been planned as a gentle working
holiday turned into a marathon session of interviews in a dozen villages up to
100 miles apart. The interviews were disturbing: the reports were so prosaic,
so relatively detailed — and so similar.
And slowly, over a period of five weeks, a picture began to emerge of an
animal that appears zoologically possible. The orang pendek of the nineties is
small, usually no more than 85 or 90cm in height — although occasionally as
large as 1m 20cm. The body is covered in a coat of dark grey or black flecked
with grey hair.
But it is the sheer physical power of the orang pendek that most impresses
the Kerinci villagers. They speak in awe, of its broad shoulders, huge chest
and upper abdomen and powerful aims. The animal is so strong, the villagers
would whisper that it can uproot small trees and even break rattan vines.
The legs, in comparison, are short and slim, the feet neat and small,
usually turned out at an angle of up to 45 degrees. The head slopes back to a
distinct crest — similar to the gorilla — and there appears to be a bony ridge
above the eyes. But the mouth is small and neat, the eyes are set wide apart
and the nose is distinctly humanoid. When frightened, the animal exposes its
teeth — revealing oddly broad incisors and prominent, long canine teeth.
There were no tales of a 'gibbering ape' such as those related, with
relish, to British writer Benedict Allen in his book Hunting the Gugu. The
only sound reported was a low growling or coughing. Pak Sukianto Lusli, co-ordinator
of the WWF Field Office in Kerinci, reports that the animal also makes a
chirruping sound.
And always, whether seen in villagers' ladang fields at the edge of the
jungle or in the jungle itself, the animal is seen walking upright. Even when
frightened and fleeing human contact, the animal does not revert to four legs
— nor does it climb into trees to make its escape.
Every time witnesses were interviewed, they were also asked to choose
possible candidates from a selection of photographs and illustrations of known
Asian — and African — primates. It did not help a lot. The villagers ignored
pictures of siamang gibbons or orang-utans, which seem the obvious candidates
— though orang-utans are not known in the Kerinci Seblat. Only when they came
across photographs of a sitting gorilla was there a positive reaction.
The cranium was pronounced all but identical but the face was, they said
quite wrong. "Orang pendek," I was told, "is more handsome than this animal.
Orang pendek's face is more like people." The upper arms, at least, were
considered accurate, as were the chest and shoulders. The legs also met with
some approval but the feet were "wrong."
Orang Pendek sketch
Villagers repeatedly commented that the gorilla was, quite clearly a
monkey, Orang pendek, they explained, was not a monkey — even though not a
man. A silhouette of a gorilla met, however, with universal approval and cries
of "That's it, that's more like it." It was the national parks office that
made the final proposal: that we should invite a few of the most credible
witnesses into town and ask them to describe the animal to a WWF wildlife
artist.
They started to arrive in mid-morning from their outlying villages,
glancing around themselves for reassurance in their urban surroundings. As the
day continued, more and more national parks officers gathered around as the
'identikits' took shape. Repeatedly, even though each witness had been
carefully separated, the artist found himself drawing what was quite clearly,
the same animal.
A week later, I found myself chatting to a policeman who mentioned he had
seen a pair of orang pendeks in the jungle some months earlier. I presented
him with a the file of possible candidates.
He flicked through, paused when he came across the gorilla, and commented
on the skull, shoulders and abdomen. Nodded sagely at the silhouette.
Continued to flick through the photographs and illustrations. Then stopped
when he reached the WWF artist's composite drawn from the individual
interviews. "That's orang pendek," he said casually, "although it looks a
pretty thin one to me. The one I saw had bigger shoulders and a fatter chest. |
