Can you smell that smell?

September 1, 2010 5:51 AM

Skunk-apes are more than just Bigfoot's stinky southern cousins. They have their own Research Headquarters, beach movie, and "investment-quality" commemorative coins. Oh, and Skunktoberfest. (Sadly, Mefi's own Skunkape remains a mysterious mystery.)
posted by JoanArkham (13 comments total)

Sure that skunk-ape ain't Clinton Tyree?
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:09 AM on September 1, 2010

All high-quality research headquarters lead off with a gift shop.

But if we are looking for a large, foul-smelling, hairy, ape-like creature, which ran upright on two legs in the South that where were particularly common in the 1960s and 1970s, are we sure we aren't talking about Klansmen?
posted by DU at 6:13 AM on September 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think I remember this place - didn't they change their mission once the Jackalopes were well documented and safe from total extinction?
posted by Tchad at 6:21 AM on September 1, 2010

Swamp Monkey!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:26 AM on September 1, 2010

When you use ape-like to describe klansmen, well that's just being unnecessarily cruel to apes.
posted by Daddy-O at 6:26 AM on September 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

Whew, 10th Regiment, I thought you were talking about the REAL Swamp Monkey and I was in pain when I saw you linked to taxidermy sights rather than the (lovely) Allen's Swamp Monkey.

While it's not a Swamp Ape, there was a gigantic ape (aptly named Gigantopithecus) that persisted until 300,000 years ago in China and the Himalayas (when there would have been anatomically modern humans wandering around, too) - sounds a lot like an abominable snowman to me... (though apparently cryptozoologists assert that Gigantopithecus is Bigfoot.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:40 AM on September 1, 2010 [2 favorites]

They have also been sighted in and around Fouke, Arkansas.
posted by TedW at 6:44 AM on September 1, 2010

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Encyclopedia Brown solved this mystery more than 35 years ago. It was Bugs Meany and an accomplice, of course.
posted by planetkyoto at 7:27 AM on September 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the gigantopithecus link, ChuraChura; I hadn't seen that, before.

I remain a skeptic on such matters, but it's easy to sympathize with the more reasonable cryptozoologists. I've read multiple times in my short lifetime of species thought to be long extinct which are then spotted, and confirmed, in some obscure niche environment.

It's implausible to think that an ancient, possibly-bipedal, nine-foot ape has survived in tiny numbers. Especially outside its presumed habitat. However, stranger things have happened.

Let the dreamers dream. They may startle us one day, and hell, they're having fun.
posted by gilrain at 7:33 AM on September 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

As a boy scout camping in Florida's Ocala National Forest, tales of skunk-ape scared me half to death. I have no doubt there are still skunk-apes there today, terrorizing campers in exactly the same manner.
posted by Shoggoth at 7:51 AM on September 1, 2010

No less a Sasquatch authority than Henner Fahrenbach has publicly lectured on the sexual proclivities of the Sasquatch, which include Bigfoot orgies.

The randy Southern variety is known as the "Spunk Ape."
posted by Tube at 1:06 PM on September 1, 2010

Are we sure we are not talking about the native North American Kwyjibo?
posted by Xoebe at 1:55 PM on September 1, 2010

Actual Swamp Monkey
posted by DaddyNewt at 6:39 PM on September 1, 2010