The truth behind the mysterious ape that can hunt and eat lions in Africa

Deep in the Congo rainforest of Africa, it is said that a population of apes with enormous body size and extremely barbaric habits dominates there.

Known as the Bondo gibbon or Bili gibbon , many locals have reported seeing the mysterious creature, which typically walks on two legs, is about the size of a grown man, and nests on the ground like gorillas.

They are believed to be a very ferocious animal, known to have killed lions. Some believe they are a completely new species of great ape, while others believe they are a cross between a gorilla and a chimpanzee.

Shocking reports of Bondo apes have been circulating for decades. While it is clear that something interesting is happening to the great apes in the Congo rainforest, many of these reports seem to exaggerate the facts and add sensationalism. Like many stories of this kind, the story of the Bili ape may be a mixture of fact and fiction.

One of the first scientific attempts to track down this mysterious ape was made in 1996 by Karl Ammann , a Swiss photographer and conservationist in Kenya. Ammann reportedly came across several skulls kept at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium. These skulls were collected by Belgian colonialists in the past, at a site near the town of Bili in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo, about 200km east of the Ebola River.

These skulls have a prominent ridge down the middle that resembles a gorilla's skull. But strangely, other aspects of the skull's shape and size resemble chimpanzees, plus there are no known populations of gorillas living in the area where they were collected.

They are very large animals, their faces are flat, their eyebrows are straight.

Ammann therefore suspected that this might be an entirely new species and ventured to the northern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate. There, Ammann spoke to local hunters, who told him of seeing giant apes killing lions, and that they also seemed immune to poison darts.

Even more terrifying, these strange beasts are also said to howl at full moon. Ammann also procured photos from locals, showing the hunters looking utterly bewildered by the enormous size of the ape they had hunted.

Although Ammann's trip yielded some information, such as some extremely large chimpanzee droppings and footprints larger than those of gorillas, Ammann did not actually collect any convincing evidence of the Bili ape.

Another attempt to identify this mysterious ape took place in the summer of 2002 and 2003. One of the researchers on the expedition was Dr. Shelly Williams , who was reportedly returning from a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo and said:

"They are very large animals, their faces are flat, their eyebrows are straighter than those of gorillas. They will gather in groups of two or three to nest on the ground, while the rest of the group will nest in low branches nearby. They make a distinct howl-like sound that gets louder as the moon rises and sets ." She argues that the ape could be a new species unknown to science, a new subspecies of chimpanzee, or a hybrid between a gorilla and a chimpanzee.

However, in the years that followed, these bold claims were widely suspected to be fabrications. A few years later, primatologist Dr. Cleve Hicks and his team actually observed what was believed to be a bili ape for at least 20 hours in the wild.

As New Scientist reported in 2006, Hicks argued that they were almost certainly not a new species of ape or even a new subspecies, but simply an interesting population of chimpanzees. DNA taken from fecal samples confirmed this, suggesting that the animals were probably eastern chimpanzees (scientifically known as Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii , a common chimpanzee native to the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania).

"Genetically, they're not even a subspecies. But behaviorally, we may be seeing the beginnings of a divergence from chimpanzee norms. We can actually capture the evolution of behavior in this species ," Hicks explains.

Researchers determined that the animals called Bondo apes were actually Eastern chimpanzees. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons).

Hicks and other researchers have documented unique behaviors in chimpanzees, noting that a large proportion of them have grown to much larger sizes than normal chimpanzees. Like gorillas, they have a ridge on their skulls, and have been seen smashing termite mounds and using rocks to crack turtle shells. Contradicting Williams's claims, female bili monkeys do indeed exhibit genital swellings similar to those of other chimpanzees.

They also often choose to nest on the ground rather than in trees, despite the threat of predators such as lions and leopards. The team has even been seen eating leopard carcasses. But they are still chimpanzees, after all. Although local legends suggest that Bondo apes can walk on two legs or kill lions, neither claim has ever been proven.

'I don't like to describe them as aggressive,' Hicks told The Guardian. 'The nests on the ground are huge and there's clearly something very unusual going on there.'

However, Hicks' research shows that the chimpanzee population in Bili is quite unusual . They actually have a ridge on their skull like a gorilla and nest on the ground. They have also been reported to smash termite nests and use a rock as an anvil to crack open a turtle shell, which is not typical chimpanzee behavior.

As for the claims of lion-eating and bipedalism, those have never been verified. On the other hand, chimpanzee behavior in the Bili-Uéré region is still not fully understood, especially since the area has been the target of several wars in recent decades that have disrupted conservation efforts.

Ultimately, the true story of the Bondo ape is not the discovery of a new ape species but a novel look at a unique group of isolated chimpanzees creating a society of their own.