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CNN Sunday Morning

Scientists Hunt for 'Mystery Ape'

Aired February 03, 2002 - 11:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Scientists working in the Congo are tracking a mystery. They've heard about a creature that's like nothing they've ever seen. As CNN's Gary Strieker reports, their hunt for the truth relies on science and legend.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Deep inside the forest, three hours on foot from the nearest path, the territory of the mystery ape.

KARL AMMANN, WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER: It's the beginning of the start of a riverbed and it's pretty soft here, and here we regularly find tracks.

STRIEKER: Tracks, larger than that of any primate known to live here. This is where it sleeps.

AMMANN: Here's an interesting combination. This is a ground next about two days old, and then there's a tree nest of the same age group just next to it. That's a pretty low tree nest.

STRIEKER: Here in North Central Congo, scientists are puzzled by what they find. In a forest populated by chimpanzees that normally build sleeping nests high in the trees, there's evidence of large apes as big as gorillas that sleep on the ground just like gorillas.

They mystery is that gorillas are not supposed to be found here in a region hundreds of miles from the ranges of the eastern and western lowland gorillas. A AMMANN: How often does he see big ones?

STRIEKER: Wildlife photographer Karl Ammann has studied this puzzle for years, collecting reports from local villagers describing huge apes that sleep on the ground, exposed to danger, so powerful they have no fear of predators like lions, hyenas, or leopards.

This hunter says he's seen them but they don't look like gorillas pictured in this book. Early last year, Ammann organized an expedition, bringing leading scientists here to study the evidence but their findings are still inconclusive.

So far, remote triggered cameras have photographed only chimpanzees, and analysis of mitochondrial DNA in hair and fecal samples, indicates the ground sleeping ape is a chimpanzee.

AMMANN: This is a chimp too.

STRIEKER: This skull, found in the area, has teeth as small as a chimpanzee's but it also has a sagital (ph) crest at the top, unlike a chimpanzee but just like a gorilla.

STRIEKER (on camera): These could be nesting sites of a great ape that's not yet been recognized by science, apparently not a small type of gorilla, but probably some kind of chimpanzee that grows extremely large.

STRIEKER (voice over): One theory, the mystery ape could be a hybrid.

AMMANN: So if you had a male gorilla integrating himself with a bunch of chimps and breeding, which I'm told is theoretically possible, then that wouldn't show in the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on from the mother. So all the tests we have done wouldn't tell us if we had a hybrid population of some kind.

STRIEKER: More DNA testing will check the hybrid theory, and more field expeditions will continue the search for the mystery ape. Gary Strieker, CNN, in the Bondal Forest (ph) Congo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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