homo floresiensis may not be extinct?

[Doodler]

Didn't find reference to this in the forum using the search button, so maybe it hasn't been discussed. This article posted today concerning some opinions that the hobbit-sized human-like creature homo floresiensis may not be extinct. Claims abound, apparently, with a recent burial reported of a small creature described like a monkey, but not like a monkey... 

 

"In an excerpt from his new book, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, (Pegasus Books, 2022), Forth writes about an interview with a man who says he disposed of the corpse of a creature that could not have been a monkey but that was also not human, with straight light-colored hair on its body, a well-formed nose, and a stub of a tail."

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mysterious-hobbit-human-species-not-26974620

 

While I'm not holding my breath on the discovery / capture of a live creature, I find this interesting for several reasons

1) it's just cool, who wouldn't want to see these things turn out to be alive today? Heck if it's not human, start a breeding program for zoos and put these things on display. I would pay good money for an eyeful of a new hominid. Like visiting Clyde Peeling's Reptileland in PA on route 15, or Tiger King's exotic animal park, both of those places are generally for the health of the species they support because they're careful to produce healthy offspring for sale to other parks and individuals (Generally, not all exotic animal parks are well run.) Imagine driving down I 95 in FL and coming across signs for "Doodler's Homo Floresiensis Park" every 5 miles, closes at 8pm daily.

 

2) just as this creature is a shrunken version of its ancestors, so too did other creatures grow in size over their ancestors, if anything, proving this thing was a real species increases the very possibility that Bigfoot is also real through the transitive property  i.e. the Pleistocene thread from earlier in the month. Was this connection made in that thread? I never finished reading the thread, so not sure. 

 

3) he's not being laughed out of the publishing business

 

Granted, he's selling a book, so best to make outrageous claims for sales, but generally, it existed in the recent past, people claim to have seen it even disposing of a corpse, and if this creature exists, perhaps Bigfoot can gain prominence/acceptance too? 

[norseman]

Google Ebu Gogo. Natives have known about these creatures all along.

[Incorrigible1]

Interesting stuff, to be sure. Most of us would hold a little hope they do, indeed, exist unrecognized today.

 

Maybe you meant it as humorous, but I find your number one point monstrous. "Breeding programs for zoos?" Ugh!

[Doodler]

1 hour ago, Incorrigible1 said:

Interesting stuff, to be sure. Most of us would hold a little hope they do, indeed, exist unrecognized today.

 

Maybe you meant it as humorous, but I find your number one point monstrous. "Breeding programs for zoos?" Ugh!

 

Sarcastic, sorry, wasn't more clear on that. Most exotic animal parks are cesspools. Literal cesspools and genetic cesspools. Considering the plight of the Tiger King and all that, finding out that these zoos/exotic animal parks are as much cult as zoos, I thought the most disturbing thing we can do is, literally, disturb them by putting them in zoos. So while it could be cool if we could get some documentaries out of it, I wouldn't want to see them in zoos.

 

Frankly, if the little homo floresiensis aren't humans, aren't sapiens, I don't know what "science" would do. Certainly screw things up if they were discovered to be a living species?

[CallyCat]

What science would do? Ignore it, let them continue on as they are and die out as a species from multiple environmental factors. 

[Huntster]

6 hours ago, CallyCat said:

What science would do? Ignore it, let them continue on as they are and die out as a species from multiple environmental factors. 

 

The lawyer class beat the science class to our remaining hominids. Science has legal limits on what it can do.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

 

Quote

..........The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights refers to uncontacted peoples as "indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation." These groups are defined by their general rejection of contact with anyone outside of their own people. This definition also includes groups who have previously had sustained contact with the majority non-indigenous society but have chosen to return to isolation and no longer maintain contact...........

 

............Recognizing the myriad problems with contact, the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2009 and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2013 introduced guidelines and recommendations that included a right to choose self-isolation.........

.

 

[Madison5716]

Wouldn't that be fascinating if they were still alive. 

[MegWhite]

I find Homo Floresiensis, and the fact that many of the indigenous people of Flores still claim that this relict hominoid is still alive today fascinating! I plan on purchasing and reading this book! I have read some excerpts but I also agree, that the fact this theory and supporting evidence mostly through eye witness and aboriginal accounts is gaining notoriety and not (that I have seen) just flack and dismissal like Sasquatch:( 

 

For those interested in learning a bit more about the species to try and form opinions on whether you think they may be alive still today, I find this NatGeo article and this North02 youtube video great!! 
 

I personally think the idea that they may still be living there today is very possible! If they are, I think that would be a massive leap forward in hopefully getting the scientific community to take Sasquatch research much more seriously!
 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/hobbit-humans-story-gets-twist-from-thousands-of-rat-bones?rid=3646A9B35B5406F8B78BF38EE05856BF&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=SpecialEdition_Escape_20220601

 

 

[guyzonthropus]

This was something I was gonna mention that you don't often see brought up with H.floresiensis, and that is that Flores is one of the few islands Komodo dragons live on. This would make life a good deal more hazardous for hominids 3-4' tall. Especially if you both are hunting the insular pigmy elephants komodo dragons are thought to evolved  to eat, and you are the smaller of the two predators still around when the pachiderms went extinct! While the video above mentions komodo dragon ancestors that were twice the size or more of the current species, I'm not sure that Megalania prisca made it that far north from Australia, and that's pretty much the only larger species known from that region. 

Nevertheless, komodo dragons have little reluctance going after regular sized people, in line with their ambush style of hunting, and I can't see much reason why they wouldn't go after smaller versions, especially once the elephants were hunted out. And just as described in Jurassic park, you're still alive when they start to eat you....

As someone who keeps smaller species of monitor lizards(5-6') I can attest to the fact that I wouldn't be too keen to live on an island with a species that gets three times as long as I am tall, as they take the whole "ahyup, I'm a ruthless predator" thing altogether seriously, and are well equipped to carry out such deeds.

Edited June 18, 2022 by guyzonthropus

[Wolfjewel]

Interesting post, Guy. Lots of “food” for thought. We’ll see what archeology comes up with in Floriensis v. the lizard giant. Maybe confirming what you mention. Eek! Is your monitor docile? Or at least not bitey?

[CallyCat]

On 5/29/2022 at 7:47 AM, Huntster said:

 

The lawyer class beat the science class to our remaining hominids. Science has legal limits on what it can do.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

 

.

 

What do we do with the feral people?

[Huntster]

5 hours ago, CallyCat said:

What do we do with the feral people?

 

They get taken care of by caring people or government. It's very expensive, especially if the person became feral before the age of 5 and was feral for 5 or more years. They often never fully learn to be human. This is another reason why government would prefer them to remain feral.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/14/genie-feral-child-los-angeles-researchers

 

Quote

........By the late 1970s, Genie had vanished back into obscurity. As she was a ward of California, authorities housed her in state-run institutions, her location secret. Four decades later, she apparently remains in state care.

“I’m pretty sure she’s still alive because I’ve asked each time I called and they told me she’s well,” said Susan Curtiss, a UCLA linguistics professor who studied and befriended Genie. “They never let me have any contact with her. I’ve become powerless in my attempts to visit her or write to her. I think my last contact was in the early 1980s.”.........

 

 

[guyzonthropus]

Wolfjewel...no, my group of them pretty much all hate me. They re roughneck monitors from Indonesia and the Malay peninsula. This species is very intelligent, even for monitors(who are considered amongst the most cognitive of reptile families)and also very secretive, they're forest ninjas, pretty much.

 

For at least the last 50 years they ve had a reputation in the pet trade for being naturally tame and never biting. Well, in the course of effectively acclimating the first few of my current group I saw a very consistent pattern amongst them as they went through the 4-6 month process, ending with an equally consistent outcome...what went in as a seemingly mild mannered if not docile lizard came out as a shy, secretive, flighty, crafty, fast as all heck lizard with little tolerance for humans. Far from the naturally tame pet store lizards.

 

  Over time I figured out that this species is a poor choice to withstand the rigors of the Indonesian export system, where over the months long journey from the point of capture to the exporters facility, they're kept in bare holding pens which offer no hiding or security, which for a secretive and highly intelligent creature is months of 24/7 torture via complete exposure, which eventually drives them into a stress based shut down/insanity where they just no longer react to things like a normal monitor would. It's so pervasive that every imported specimen shows the signs of this stress response, and by what I figure, 50+ years ago, in that they all behaved in this manner, the importers back then could easily have thought this must be their natural state of being, which was reinforced by the fact that no one on this side of the process had ever seen a sane one to go by. Not to mention the thought of lizard cognition was largely laughable back then. Of course the pet trade ran with it, never questioning if there might be an alternate explination.

I figured this out back in in 2018, and have been trying to spread the awareness of this with limited success. Most folks don't like the idea that they've kept their pet in a virtual zombie state just so the can have a tame big lizard(5-6') 

While not as overtly bitey as some other species, these guys will give you a couple "keep it up monkey, and you'll have an instructional/corrective bite coming" style warning if you know what to look for, and they will indeed follow through with it. This species puts on a quite impressive threat display when confronted with something they find offensive, and they start their drama classes at an early age. With a baritone "Die, monkey, die" hiss and an uncannily accurate whip of the tail, they let you know where you stand in their eyes. . I have some I acclimated back in 2018 that still hiss at me when I walk by their cages. Come feeding time they transform into bold month-starved velociraptors, leaping half way across the enclosure, mouth wide open. Some will actually leap out after the food I'm holding if I take a couple seconds too long in giving it to them. 

Moral of the story? Don't ask guy about this species of monitor unless you have a good while to get through his unfailingly long replies! Sorry about the ramble! 

Edited July 9, 2022 by guyzonthropus

[entropy]

Makes me wonder if H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, and the orang pendek are all either the same species of pygmy hominin, or variants of a common ancestor species that once spanned the SE Asian archipelago, and whose descendants can still be found in very small populations on certain of the islands.  Given that DNA degrades more quickly in warm, wet environments, I wonder if we'll ever know.

 

Here's an interesting article about protein sequencing and how that could help bridge some of the gaps in our understanding when full DNA sequencing isn't possible.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01986-x

[guyzonthropus]

They very well may have dispersed during periods of lowered sea levels, then when those rose again, each of the now isolated groups took on individual paths of biological and cultural evolution of develpment, resulting unique forms. 

Then again it's also possible that each resulted from the dispersal of a larger hominid which then later was impacted by insular pygmiatism to varying degrees, though the Orange pendek might then be viewed a some form of regressive development, in that I've not heard of extensive cultural developments or artifacts found associated with them....