According to people who claim to have seen them, skunk apes are apelike creatures that smell incredibly bad. From eyewitness descriptions, there appear to be two types of skunk apes: One walks on all fours and looks much like a chimpanzee, while the other walks upright like a human and looks like a gorilla, or even somewhat human. The man-ape is roughly 7 to 10 feet (2.1 to 3.m) tall, weighs about 300 pounds (600kgs), and is covered in red, black, or dark brown hair. Both types of skunk ape have been reportedly seen primarily in the Florida Everglades. In 1997 Vince Doerr, the fire chief of Ochopee, Florida, spotted one of the upright skunk apes in a swamp near his home and snapped a photograph of it before it ran off. Later he decided that what he had seen was actually a person in a gorilla costume, pulling a prank on him, but others think that the photograph shows a genuine skunk ape.

SEE ALSO:

• man-beasts

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning