The Bili Apes
Hunters in a remote Congo forest told of giant apes that slept on the ground and howled at the moon. Scientists went to find them.
What was reported
In 1996, a Swiss photographer working in the Bili forest of the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo brought back skulls and stories from local hunters of huge apes, bigger than normal chimpanzees, that nested on the ground like gorillas and were said to be unafraid of leopards.
The press called them 'lion killers' or a possible new species of great ape, and their size and behaviour caused excitement among scientists.
Explanations offered
Researchers who later studied them, including primatologist Cleve Hicks, found that they are eastern chimpanzees, genetically ordinary, but unusually large and with distinctive behaviour, including nesting on the ground and their own tool-use traditions. They are a real and special population, not a new species.
- When
- Reported from 1996; studied in the 2000s
- Where
- Bili forest, northern Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Witnesses
- Hunters, photographers and primatologists
- Status
- Confirmed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.