Two Undiscovered Primates

I have just spent the weekend at the Fortean Times Unconvention, leaving straight from work on Friday and going straight to work on Monday morning on arriving back in Edinburgh on the sleeper.

The Uncon is a great opportunity to meet up with friends, see some great talks and buy books and other cool things.

Highlights for me were Jon Ronson on the Psychopath test, David Clark on being Scared to Death and cases of this actually happening, Uncon and Fortean legend Jan Bondeson and some talking dogs plus Sarah Angliss and her old recordings and spooky theremin. I also grabbed the opportunity to buy a couple of books by the cartoonist Hunt Emerson as he was making a rare appearance there.

Illustrated above, (being herded by my husband as he was struggling to operate the slide show) is Richard Freeman talking on his latest expedition to Sumatra looking for an animal known as the Orang-pendek and other creatures. This is an ape like creature that Richard believes is an as-yet undiscovered species of Orang Utan. Interestingly there have also been sightings of a different type of ape-creature, sounding rather like the recently discovered fossils of Homo floresiensis. Maybe these creatures still exist?

Sumatra is rich in animal legends and is also apparently home to a scimitar toothed cat known as the cigau and a horned snake.

All this sounds rather fantastical but the Orang-pendek is widely considered in Fortean circles to be the cryptid* most likely to exist.

*a cryptid is an animal which has not yet been discovered. It may not even exist. But if you don't look for it then you will never know.. Cryptids also include animals which are thought to be extinct but which still keep being seen such as the Tasmanian Tiger. There is an other category known as zooform phenomena which are entirely paranormal and I hope to go into this some day.