De Loys's Ape
A photo of a large ape propped up on a crate became South America's most famous cryptid picture.
What was reported
In 1920 the Swiss geologist François de Loys was leading an oil exploration party near the Tarra River when, he said, two large, tailless apes confronted the group. One was killed, and he photographed it sitting on a crate, held up with a stick under its chin.
Nine years later the anthropologist George Montandon published the photograph and named the animal Ameranthropoides loysi, a new American ape. No ape had ever been found in the Americas.
Explanations offered
Most primatologists think it was a spider monkey with its tail hidden, made to look bigger because nothing in the frame shows scale. Estimates of the crate's size suggest an animal of spider-monkey height. The skin and skull were said to have been lost.
- When
- 1920
- Where
- Tarra River, Zulia, Venezuela
- Witnesses
- François de Loys and his expedition
- Status
- Probably a hoax
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.