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I’ve been too busy for blogging the past three weeks, but I just couldn’t let this one pass by. It’s not quite monkeynews, but that makes it even more fascinating. This one is dynamite!

Archeologists digging on the Indonesian island of Flores have discovered a third species of human, Homo Floresiensis, that could have survived until as recently as 13,000 years ago. In comparison, the last of the Neanderthals are thought to have disappeared from Europe and western Asia around 28,000 years ago.

The skeleton is that of an adult female, only three feet tall with the brain the size of a grapefruit. Despite the small brain size, the archeologists found stone tools in the same cave, and bones of rats, bats and fish that appear to have been cooked from about the same time as the tiny humans appeared to have inhabited the caves.

Flores is thought to have been isolated from the asian continent for over a million years, and species trapped on such islands have a habit of evolving into bizarre shapes and sizes as they adapt to the unique mix of flaura and fauna. Flores itself has in the past been home to giant rats, miniature elephents and huge lizards.

Stone tools discovered from over 800,000 years ago suggest that Homo erectus made it to Flores. The newly discovered hobbit-like species are probably descended from a population that became marooned there. It is suggested that the small stature was a evolutionary adaptation to a low calorie diet and lack of large predators.

Modern humans reached Flores between 35,000 and 55,000 years ago, so would have shared the island with the little people for 20,000 years. Intriguingly, there are detailed stories among the island population of little hairy people called ebu gogo (literally “grandmother who will eat anything”) which have until recently been dismissed as leprechaun tales. Bert Roberts, the archeologist who unearthed the remains, says:

The ebu gogo were short - about a metre tall - long-haired, pot-bellied, with ears that stuck out, walking with a slightly awkward gait, and had longish arms and fingers. They murmured at each other and could repeat words parrot-fashion. They could climb slender trees but were never seen holding stone tools, whereas we have lots of sophisticated artefacts associated with Homo floresiensis. That’s the only inconsistency with the archaeological evidence.

Local villagers say that the last ebu gogo was seen just before Dutch colonists came to the island, in the 19th century, fueling speculation, encouraged by Bert Roberts, that the species could have survived to this day. He plans searches of the remaining rainforest and specific caves associated with the ebu gogo legends.

This story deals another blow to the concept that the human race is somehow unique. When Homo Floresiensis died out 13,000 years ago, assuming that they did, Homo sapiens were left as the only type of human on the planet, a situation probably unprecedented in 7 million years.

I feel I’ve been fairly lax about updating lately, but I’ve got something here that should make up for the lack of posts over the past week or so: probably the most significant piece of monkeynews yet to feature here at underblog. Before I get started though, I should probably mention that underblog appears to have a rival in the monkeynews blog market. Go and check out A Relative Path’s story on China’s recognition of the sacrifices made by monkeys during the Sars virus crisis.

The locals call them “lion-killers”. They are reported to grow up to 2 metres in height and half as heavy again as the largest known chimpanzee. Their skulls are gorilla-like but their bodies more like those of chimps. Footprint casts have been taken that are longer than those of both common chimps and gorrillas. Their hair turns grey early in life, but all over, rather than just on the back like a gorilla.

These are the mysterious and unusual great apes that live in parts of the Congo basin, featured in the New Scientist. The only scientist ever to actually see them, Shelly Williams, an independent primatologist, thinks that they might be a gorrilla-chimp cross or a whole new species of great ape. If not, she says, they deserve to be catagorised as a seperate chimpanzee subspecies (of which there are currently between three and five, depending on who you listen to). If these animals were a new species, it would be a tremendous discovery, but according to the New Scientist:

not quite so outlandish as it first apears, given the ongoing wrangling over great ape classification. The bonobo, Pan paniscus, was only recognised as a seperate species in 1929, and heated debate continues about whether the orang-utans of Borneo and Sumatra are one species or two.

Behaviourally, the Congo apes have big differences from both gorillas and chimps. Unlike gorillas, who will charge down hunters when they encounter them, these beasts seem shy of people and prefer to silently slip away like a chimp would. Chimps tend to nest in trees and gorillas on the ground, although they avoid water and build a new nest every night. Lion-killer nests have been discovered on swampy ground that were obviously being reused night after night. It is thought that the heavier males sleep here, with the females and juveniles preferring nearby trees. The mysterious apes appear to live in very small groups, as opposed to the local chimp subspecies which travel in groups of 35 to 45. Unlike chimps, they peel fruit with their hands as opposed to their canines, and they use bigger tools for termite fishing than other chimps.

No-one would argue that europeans are a different species from the chinese because we eat with a knife and fork instead of chopsticks, so there is an argument that behaviour is not a very useful indicator of taxonomy in chimpanzees, because they are so culturally flexible. DNA analysis is a much more useful tool, and comparisons of the large apes’ mitochondrial DNA (extracted from faeces) with that of the local chimps suggest that they are genetically indistinguishable. This type of DNA, however, is only passed down the maternal line, so it does not rule out the possibility that they are descended from the offspring of male gorillas with female chimpanzees. Such a cross is theoritically possible, since the two species have the same number of chromosomes, but has never been observed.

My personal opinion on this type of thing is that taxonomy is not the same as, nor as important as genetic lineage. The line between species, sub-species and just a genetically dinstinct population is not always a clear one. For example, a common definition is that individuals are unable to produce fertile offspring except by pairings with members of the same species. According to this definition, if these apes are gorilla-chimp hybrids then chimpanzees and gorillas should actually be classed as the same species. Whether just very weird chimps, a completely new species or anything in between, these fantastic apes clearly merit further study.

Reporting on the by-election in Hartlepool, whose result is expected in a few hours (come on Jody!), The Scotsman reminds us that:

In 2002, in a major upset, the mascot of Hartlepool’s football team H’angus the Monkey, alias Stuart Drummond, running on a non-party ticket, defeated Labour to become the town’s elected mayor.

His title recalled a grim incident in the Napoleonic War when Hartlepool citizens hanged a monkey, mistaking him for a Frenchman.

There is even a Hartlepool monkey song. Follow that link also for a more detailed account of the monkey martyr’s capture and trial.