DKC Atlas Forum

[FunkyKong]

Hello everyone i wanted to know what all your thoughts were about Gorillas & Monkeys in the wild. To me, they are the best creatures alive. They are located in many African countries such as: Congo (DRC) and Congo ( republic of ) and as well as cameroon, and tanzania. The Gorillas face many dangers today from all the poaching and stuff going on. Has anyone here been to any of these countries?

[DK4Ever]

I hold great, great respect for our primate brethren. (Meaning, they are the rest of our one, big primate family well, the gorillas, the humans, the chimps and the orangutans, to be more specific)

I myself have never been to an African country, however, I weep for the gorillas that are being hunted by idiots with guns, who hold no respect for other creatures than their own species.

I was reading an article in July's National Geographic, about the murder of 6 of a family of 12 Silverback Gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was really heart-breaking, the idiots killed the adults, save one or two, and left the young gorillas to starve. Shameful.

Although I was glad to see how much respect the local villagers had for the family, one image of course showing them carrying the patriarch, Senkekwe's body on a bamboo stretcher, and then cremating him and paying their respects.

At least someone who lives there cares, eh?

Edit: 101st post! Game Complete!

[BlueTronic]

People should just stick to deer if they want meat and stop killing less plentiful animals.

As for insects, they can all just shrivel up and die!

[Gnawzooka]

Do you have any idea how important insects are to the ecosystem?

[Qyzbud]

There's a special place in my heart for apes and monkeys. Gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, siamangs and spider monkeys, especially. Stories like DK4Ever's one above make me feel so upset about the incredibly heartless things humans are capable of. I'm personally planning to travel to Borneo once I've saved up enough money, so that I can help with a conservation effort in support of orangutans. Sure, they make life difficult for DK at times, but they are truly beautiful creatures when you catch them on a good day.

I would be happy to dedicate my life to these conservation efforts.

...once DKC Atlas is complete, of course.

[Jomingo]

Kongfu, I doubt anybody is trying to eat the gorillas. They are probably pretty valuable skins when traded.

Also, Qyzbud, Borneo is one of the 10 places I want to see before I die, to see the Orangutans of course. They are the coolest animals in the wild, and they are so scarce.

[Qyzbud]

You'll have to look me up whenever you make it to Borneo, Jomingo; I'll probably end up living amongst the 'tans after experiencing their way of life, and finding out how much cooler it is to be an ape than a human.

[Jomingo]

I will do that, I just hope that by then you're still wearing regular clothes and speaking english.

I can't deal with meeting another Tarzan.... never again....

(ominous flashback).


Strangly enough I was just reading the Wiki article about the "Giganthropithicus". It's a now extinct ape that died out 100,000 years ago. It's remains are usually not intact enough to tell much, but it's likely that it looked very similar to the Orangutan and walked on two legs. Oh, and it's 10 feet tall and ways 600 pounds!

Man, I wish we could clone extinct animals if only just to see them for ourselves one last time.... That would be a truly amazing site to see such a large peaceful plant eating ape living a forest of bamboo....

[Qyzbud]

I just hope that by then you're still wearing regular clothes

Clothes? You expect too much.

Any talk of extinct animals piques my curiosity, but also fills me with sadness. Especially when humans are responsible. That's why I plan to dedicate my life to helping conserve such a beautiful species. I'll save your great-great-great-grandbabyapes, Giganthropithicus!

[Kowbrainz]

Heh... I was just watching a video the other day in Biol. about apes and their similarities or differences to humans. Host was David Attenborough, of course; except he was a couple dozen years younger in this video than he is now.

Was amazing to see how close up he got to some Gorillas. When I say close up, I mean, he was a couple of metres away from them, and ended up having one of the troop lying down on him, lol.

Oh, and fun fact for Qyz: Orang-utan is actually a shortening of two indonesian words, Orang and Hutan. So the name quite literally means 'People (Orang) of the Jungle (Hutan). Mm, they weren't going for any awards in creativity, that's for sure.

[Gnawzooka]

Yeah, I learned that when I used to do Indonesian at school. My dad still seems to be convinced that the 'orang' is to do with teh colour orange.

[Jomingo]

Qyz, the Giganthropithicus' extinction wasn't because of humans. In fact, when they were full grown they actually had no predators. The younger/weaker/sick ones were sometimes suspect to attacks by tigers or a tribe of humans, but other than that they were left alone.

The reason they went extinct could possibly have something to do with them being herbivores. Humans were carnivores, which gave them an advantage on the evolutionary scale. Planteaters just weren't aggressive enough to stay alive.

Or maybe it's the thought of two 600 pound 10 foot tall orangutans making love. That probably didn't happen too often, because it would shake the entire jungle.....


Anybody here ever hear of Orang Pendek? It's an urban legend in the jungles of Africa. It's supposed to be a small ape that walks bipedally, and has a strikingly human like face. It's sorta like the bigfoot of Africa.
And if nobody objects I'm going to use this thread to discuss bigfoot, as he is an ape, and is very real....

[Qyzbud]

I wasn't meaning that Gigatan was driven to extinction by humans; since they were wiped out some hundred thousand years ago, I figured humans as we know them wouldn't have played a part... but of course it's the stupidity and selfishness of modern day humans that I hope to offset with my efforts.

The reason they went extinct could possibly have something to do with them being herbivores. [...] Planteaters just weren't aggressive enough to stay alive.

If they had no predators, and didn't require meat for nutrition... why would lack of aggression be a problem? Forgive me if the answer's obvious; I've never studied evolution outside of a few fanciful computer generated 'documentaries', so I'm not exactly an authority on the subject.

Anybody here ever hear of Orang Pendek?

Nope, can't say I have... but I'm keen to ask Kowz what Pendek means, now.


I think I'll collect a bunch of primate documentaries soon; to learn more about them and their behaviours, and just to tune out from 'civilised' life every now and then. That ought to tide me over until I make my way over to Borneo.

[Tiptup Jr.]

Anybody here ever hear of Orang Pendek?

YES. I am actually quite knowledgeable in the fields of Cryptozoology.

And primates are cool, seeing as Donkey Kong and all his friends happen to be one. I don't know if I could live amongst them without... well, internet, but it would be cool to see them in action outside the zoo.

[Jomingo]

The reason they went extinct could possibly have something to do with them being herbivores. [...] Planteaters just weren't aggressive enough to stay alive.

If they had no predators, and didn't require meat for nutrition... why would lack of aggression be a problem? Forgive me if the answer's obvious; I've never studied evolution outside of a few fanciful computer generated 'documentaries', so I'm not exactly an authority on the subject.

Well, you raise good points for someone not too familiar with evolution. I wouldn't say that the answer is obvious. Look at it like this:
Humans had lots of predators. It would seem that would drive them to extinction, but it didn't. The thing is, when you have lots of predators, it just increases your need to evolve, thus Humans adapted and grew more intelligent.
If you have no predators, you don't need to evolve. So humans and other species evolved, and the Giganthropithicus was left behind. Only aggressive animals evolve and sustain there foothold in the circle of life. The smart and well evolved species stick around, the others just die out, it's part of nature.

Oh, and Tiptup: I love cryptozoology. We should start a thread.

[Qyzbud]

This talk of evolution borders on 'new topic' territory, too... but as there's quite a bit of conversation about it here, and it's referring to the current topic's title strongly (being about a prehistoric primate), I'll just continue here. We *can* split off later if needed.

Jomingo, you state that the Giganthropithicus died out because they had no need to evolve... Surely that means they are already to a highly satisfactory evolutionary level, and should be fit to deal with life's challenges. What did wipe it out, anyhow? What's your info source?

[DK4Ever]

Interestingly enough, Giganthropithicus may NOT be extinct.

I mean, a 10 foot, 600 pound simian resembles very highly the common mythical creature known as "Bigfoot" Say, perchance, that the rumors of bigfoot are true, wouldn't all of the sightings be wandering Giganthropithici, possibly seperated by tribes as Pangaea seperated, like the Sabertooth. (A differently evolved Sabertooth was recently discovered in tar pits in south america, where they had never been seen before.

There are parts of the world yet untouched, high mountaintops, or treacherous cave bottoms. Giganthropithici may yet exist, but because people are so quick to either disregard myths and legends, or believe them to a point of madness as to completely blow them out of proportion, we may never know.

I myself am a firm believer in the Loch Ness monster, but that's a story for another time, as the subject of the thread right now is the Giganthropithicus

[Kowbrainz]

@above: Lol... Orang Pendek literally means 'Short Person'. Would you have guessed that one?

I don't think evolution is really to do with predators; it's a mixture of environmental factors. It's generally to do with natural selection, in that a population will evolve over time as those with bodies more adapted to their lifestyle survive and those who are born without such features die out. The creatures with better suited features then reproduce and have offspring which undergo the same process of natural selection. Every now and then you get some animals which won't have the ideal features for the environment they're in, and while these animals will generally die out, they are essential to the body of a certain race just incase the environmental factors change. Think of a group of penguins in a very cold area. Most penguins develop thick layers of fat to survive, but every now and then a penguin is born with a thinner layer of fat. These penguins are in the minority, but if the climate changes then they will be the ones to survive.

Humans probably won't evolve much at all over the next few thousand years, due to our ability to adapt ourselves to the environment we live in without changing our body features. The only thing that has really changed lately is our height and weight, which are generally attributed to our change in diet, I believe.

(sorry to get so off topic though, lol)

[Gnawzooka]

Hey Jomingo, from what I understand about evolution, evolution isn't driven by anything. It's not something where a species has a need to evolve, and thereofre evolves. Evolution is pure luck really; One particular animal is born with a slight difference or deformity that by chance allows them to survive the changing environment in a way they wouldn't normally be able to. Humans didn't adapt because they needed to, at one point some of the humans would have started to adapt differently to the others. Then something, like some sort of predator, would come along. By chance, the ones that had adapted differently had developed skills or attributes that allowed them toi survive it, whereas the others weren't so lucky.
...
Did that make sense?

[Jomingo]

It is not all up to luck. Animals are driven by a number of things to evolve. The fact that Humans adapted into the intelligent lifeforms that we are was pure luck; but not lucky evolution, just a lucky environment. The world as the time had the perfect conditions for an advanced species to evolve, the circumstances were lucky, but the evolution was very predictable(and is a lot of the time).

[DK4Ever]

I think humans being intelligent is relative to who you're talking about of course, certain American presidents, every single person at my school, just about, and a few other people I dont feel like naming fall out of this category... for shame.

Anyway, interesting how quickly the conversation drifted away from Giganthropithici, but that's the way of forums I suppose.

[Jomingo]

Jomingo, you state that the Giganthropithicus died out because they had no need to evolve... Surely that means they are already to a highly satisfactory evolutionary level, and should be fit to deal with life's challenges. What did wipe it out, anyhow? What's your info source?

Yes, they were fit to deal with life's challenges, for a time. They lived a good amount of time, but only the aggressive and highly evolved creatures force themselves a foothold in life. Those creatures stay around for a long time, nature slowly gets rid of the rest. Also, the giganthropithicus had been around a while before humans showed up. It's like there evolutionary life was coming to a close just as the humans were just beginning.

What's my source? Well most of it is based on memory(as I've studies this stuff before), and a good deal of it is theory and speculation based on past experience.

And DK4Ever, I know that the Giganthropithicus' name is very well known to those who study the yeti, but I doubt the two are connected. Bigfoot is described as being like a gorilla that walks like a human(and is taller), while the Giganthropithicus is more likely very Orangutan like. Also, I believe that the Giganthropithicus probably was very...uh..fat, and being a plant eater, he likely sat down in one spot all day eating leaves and rarely moved.

Also, Bigfoot has been seen allegedly eating fish from a river, thus he may not be a vegetarian.


Here's a bit of random food for thought: The "yeti" has been seen in 2 places in the world, Upper North America and Eastern Asia. And guess what? These two were both connected at one time in our history, by a bridge of ice called Berengea (or something like that). Tons of species came accross this bridge to make there habitation in North America, including Mammoths, the earliest humans, and perhaps the fabled Yeti. See, I think that the Yeti is a close relative of the Mountain Gorilla, which can also be seen in the Himalayas. There have never been any large Apes found in North America, so that's why the Yeti must have come from Asia. The Indians have stories and legends and paintings of the Yeti dating back to as long as Indians have existed. So it would make sense that the Native Americans showed up at the same time as the Yeti.

[Qyzbud]

only the aggressive and highly evolved creatures force themselves a foothold in life.
Those creatures stay around for a long time, nature slowly gets rid of the rest.

So... how? What special moves does this 'nature' chick have, anyway?

[Jomingo]

Jomingo uses Nature! Nature, use Extinction! Giganthropithicus is confused. It hurt itself in it's confusion!

I don't know, I'm no expert. I'm just saying the Giganthropithicus had been around a while already, and it not being an aggressive, dominating creature it just went extinct. It happens all the time, it's even happening right now.

[Qyzbud]

...it just went extinct. It happens all the time, it's even happening right now.

Hahaha, so very scientific. On that note, I'll start counting Zingers and try to get some sleep...

[Kowbrainz]

Natural selection maybe? (in my post above...)

Jomingo simplifies it a little bit I guess. It's not the aggressive and 'more evolved' creatures that survive. Each species ideally has a wide range of animals making up its population with different varying characteristics. Depending on the changes in the environment a species lives in, certain parts of this population will 'die out' as they are not able to survive as well as the rest of the group. Over time, the features of those who live are passed down to the young, and over hundreds of years small changes will become noticable in the species.