Cotter, if you don't mind my sticking my head in here, I'd like to respond to a few of your questions and guesses, and correct some errors of fact.
.... One interesting tidbit is that each of these people had spent time in the PNW and this is where the experience occurred. (Power of suggestion? Duped by hoaxers? - hard telling really).
Allow me to suggest a few more to jog your imagination:
- The Red Panda effect (according to which phenomenon, people report seeing a reported intruder species which is not actually present).
- Regional expectation (related to Red Panda, but the obverse, by which local animals actual or legendary are thought to be present even when they are not).
- Accidental misidentification (bigfoot "seen" where bears, badgers, wolverines, humans or even trees or clumps of vegetation are present).
- Hallucination (either drug-induced, or during a waking dream -- both of which are documented human phenomena).
- Willful fraud (either by the "witness", or by some third party unknown to the witness).
All the above are known, recorded and studied events, effects and phenomena. Bigfoot, to date, is not.
The Bili Ape was brought up to illustrate how long a large undiscoverd primate (sub-species, gigantism, what-have-you) can go undiscovered in areas where there is a population density and known large ape species.
Meaning, this creature was under their noses for decades, lore, reports, encounters were all described by the locals, but no bones or bodies had been found and studied, then suddenly (over 7 years of searching) a group was found.
You're mistaken on a number of points here. First, as Parcher notes upthread, once the animal was known to exist "as soon as somebody went looking for this 'Bili Ape' they got proper evidence".
In fact, Karl Ammann, the Swiss photographer who first found evidence of them, discovered a skull he suspected was distinct from chimps or gorillas. In quick succession in the late 90s, he found motion-cam pics of the animals, a huge heap of un-chimp-like dung, and ground nests similar to that of gorillas (there are no gorillas in the Bili Mts.).
Then, in the early 2000s, Shelly Williams, one of the scientists Ammann recruited to help find the apes, witnessed a group of "Bili" apes which rushed toward her probably intending to kill, then backed down and fled when they saw her face. Her expert, fact-based account of the episode has the ring of zoological veracity -- which bigfoot reports invariably lack.
Next a year-long hunt in 2006 led by Cleve Hicks culminated in a 20-hour observation session and DNA samples which confirmed their classification as Eastern chimpanzees (though some behaviors may be unique or "gorilla-like", and they are likely more inbred than other chimps).
Hicks later approached a group of the apes:
This was the first group of Bili apes to be encountered where the adult males did not flee immediately upon seeing the humans). The apes, including adult males, would surround their human visitors and show curiosity towards them, but would not attack or become threatening.
Every point along this progression of events has been categorically, thoroughly dissimilar from the history of bigfoot. No skull, no bone, no hair, no dung, no photographs, no nests, no observations, studies or reports of encounters by any person with scientific, zoological credentials.
The Bili Ape is evidence
against the existence of bigfoot -- not for it.
Source, with footnotes and references.
