GENERAL DETAILS OF EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS

Thirty-two accounts by people who claimed to have seen ape-men were recorded. Dates of the sightings fell between the early 1970s and 2017-18.

Of these, I interpreted seven as reflecting encounters with monkeys or other familiar local animals.

The remaining 25 accounts all described a small bipedal and somewhat hairy-bodied hominoid, some more detailed than others but generally corresponding to popular representations of the creature collected from non-eyewitnesses.

Of the remaining accounts, six concerned incidents that involved two or more eyewitnesses and in all except two, two or more eyewitnesses were available to describe what they saw. Though individual accounts differed, they did not significantly contradict one another.

Estimated bipedal heights varied between 60-70cm (24-28in) and 1.03m (41in).

All except four eyewitness reports described the head hair as short and not significantly longer than the short body hair. All further described straight head hair, not curly or frizzy (like the hair of many Lio people).

Hair colour ranged between ‘dark’ or ‘black’ (the Lio language does not distinguish), reddish-brown, and grey (as in the hair of elderly humans and other primates).

Among the most compelling cases, two encounters described by three or possibly four eyewitnesses involved dead specimens. In one encounter the specimen was observed moving bipedally across a mountain road before it was struck and killed by a motor vehicle.

Of six encounters, all involving more than one observer, all took place in highland locations in or near forest; so did most other sightings.

While popular accounts generally described ape-men as hairier and more monkeylike, eyewitnesses reporting an erect, bipedal hominoid on the whole described something more humanlike (though still different from a modern human).