Giant orangutan

Giant orangutan Depictions of the mias rambi (right) and mias pappan, both names applied to giant orangutans, from Die Vollständigste Naturgeschichte der Affen: Les Singes (1863). Category Proposed scientific names Other names Mias pappan, mias rambai Country reported Indonesia First reported Prominent investigators • Sir Henry Keppel • Chad Arment

The giant orangutan is a cryptid primate reported mainly from the Indonesian island of Borneo. Local ethnoknowledge concerning giant orangutans is the subject of confusion and contradiction, but the largest orangutans are often described as black or blackish in colour, and may be called mias pappan or mias rambai.

A single report of a giant orangutan in Sumatra exists, but this specimen was probably exaggerated, and provided the holotype for the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelli), which had previously been considered the same species as the Bornean orangutan.

Attestations

An alternate rendering of the mias rambi (right) and mias pappan (Public Domain).

Most information on giant orangutans is based on descriptions of alleged specimens. Local ethnoknowledge concerning such animals is confused, and there are few, if any, definite sightings.

Bornean peoples and early European naturalists distinguished at least three different varieties, morphs, or taxa of Bornean orangutan – the mias pappan, mias rambi, and mias kassu – but Chad Arment notes that the diagnostic characteristics of each type, including size, were frequently confounded or exchanged. Naval officer Henry Keppel described the mias pappan as significantly larger and rarer than the ordinary Bornean orangutan, standing at least as tall as a man. Its hair was "reddish, but sometimes approaching to black." However, Keppel's companion James Brooke regarded the mias rambi as the largest kind of Bornean orangutan.

Keppel wrote that he acquired a very large orangutan hand in Borneo, supposedly belonging to a mias pappan, but the fate and current whereabouts of this specimen are unknown.

“

From the man who brought Betsy I procured ... the mutilated hand of an ourang-outang of ENORMOUS size. This hand far exceeds in length, breadth, and power, the hand of any man in the ship; and though smoked and shrunk, the circumference of the fingers is half as big again as an ordinary human finger.

”

During a March 2013 expedition to Malaysian Borneo, cryptozoologist Carl Marshall received reports of giant black orangutans in the larger Indonesian portion of the island. Other modern and historical accounts of very large orangutans are sometimes noted in primatological literature: in Borneo, John MacKinnon once encountered an exceptionally large male orangutan, "black as a gorilla" but with an almost hairless back, which he nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible". He estimated Ivan's weight as around 300 lbs (136 kg).

Physical evidence

Specimens

A pair of very large preserved orangutan feet once existed at the Hull Trinity House, to which they were presented in June 1822 by Captain John Anderson. Anderson had been giften them by Sultan Syarif Osman Alkadrie of Pontianak, in Borneo, who claimed that they had been kept by his family as "a great curiosity" for 154 years. Naturalist John Harwood, who examined these specimens in 1827, was "surprised by [their] extraordinary size," as, although "very materially shrunk in bulk," they measured 15 in (39 cm) in length. Harwood assigned them to "Simia satyrus," the Bornean orangutan.

Theories

Orangutans rarely exceed 5 ft (1 m 50 cm) in height and 300 lbs (136 kg) in weight, the estimated weight of this Bornean orangutan (Public Domain).

Larger orangutans and orangutan relatives existed during the Pleistocene, including the very large Gigantopithecus (CC BY-SA 4.0).

One account of an alleged giant orangutan in Sumatra is known to have been based on an ordinary Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). British naturalist Clarke Abel received an account of a 7-8 ft (2 m) tall, preferentially bipedal orangutan killed by a Captain Cornfoot near Trumon in Aceh Province, in 1822, the skin of which he examined and measured. Although the body was collected as a specimen, its current status and whereabouts are unknown. It was donated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1822, shortly after collection; the skin survived until at least 1861, but by 1865 only the mandible remained. The specimen's right hand and foot may have been separately preserved at the Linnean Society of London until 1863. Although this individual has been considered a cryptozoological giant orangutan, in 1827, French naturalist René Lesson used Abel's description of it to designate the Sumatran orangutan as a distinct species, P. abelii. The Trumon orangutan is therefore regarded as the holotype of P. abelii.

Edward Blyth of Calcutta, who examined the preserved skin, estimated that the orangutan's torso, which Abel had measured as a little under 5 ft 10 in (1 m 77 cm), could not have exceeded 2 ft 6 in (76 cm). John Harwood had previously disputed Abel's measurement due to the disproportinately small armspan. Blyth also noted that its hair was darker than average, and that it had unusually "well-developed" nails or claws, unique in the Asiatic Society's orangutan collection. Although Blyth originally maintained that it was not even a mature specimen, he later wrote that "the teeth and appearance of the jaw prove it to be fully grown". However, John Thomas Pearson, an earlier curator of the museum, had previously written that only the mandible of the Trumon orangutan existed in the Calcutta collection, and that a skin and skeleton acquired by him came from a captive female which he believed represented the same species.

Chad Arment and Dale Drinnon suggest that some giant orangutans, if not merely oversized individuals, may be survivals of large Pleistocene species, examples of which include P. pygmaeus palaeosumatrensis and P. duboisi. Ulrich Magin similarly asks whether the Trumon orangutan might have been a surviving Gigantopithecus.

See also

• Javan orangutan
• Mainland orangutan
• Orang-mawas
• Beruang rambai