MYSTERIOUS "Bigfoot" creatures said to be roaming Malaysia's jungles are probably descended from humankind's ancient African ancestor, homo erectus, an environmentalist says.
"The species probably evolved from homo erectus. It has evolved over time and is a distinct species specific to Malaysia," said Vincent Chow of the Malaysian Nature Society.
Homo erectus is a species of hominid believed to be an ancestor of modern humans that existed about two million to 400,000 years ago.
Mr Chow has ventured into the jungles of southern Johor state to look for the creatures. He said "Bigfoots", whose existence had never been proven, could shed new light on human evolution.
"It could have evolved into a new species over thousands of years," Mr Chow said. "It will revolutionise the way how we look at our origin."
That's the whole thing. I seem to recall a Nat. Geo. program on the various sasquatches around the world, and some scientists (real ones) went to southeast Asia or thereabouts and hung some cameras equipped with motion detectors on trees (mostly on existing game trails) to see if they could capture in image of one. They didn't, obviously, but it seemed to be a good way of censusing the various other critters that lived around there. The exposures had to be hand-retrieved, but it would be great if these could be downloaded remotely, only venturing back to the cameras once in a while to swap out the batteries.
Of course, once the locations of said cameras were known we'd have a run on gorilla suits and tickets to Malaysia by bored crop circlers. . . .