The skunk ape is a creature reported to live in the Southeastern United States, also known as the Florida bigfoot, the swamp ape, and so on. Reports describe a nonhuman hominid (great ape) with thick, shaggy fur and a distinctly foul odor.
Most reported sightings of the skunk ape have occurred in Florida, particularly in the Everglades region in the southern part of the state, but there have been similar reports from Georgia, Arkansas, and North Carolina. In Alabama, stories of a hominid known as the Alabama Booger may refer to the same creature. Those who believe in the animal’s existence speculate that its smell is a result of frequenting alligator burrows filled with decaying carcasses. However, despite numerous reported sightings, the skunk ape is regarded as a cryptid—that is, an animal unrecognized by science—and as such falls into the same category as Bigfoot and the Sasquatch as mythic creatures.
Native American peoples such as the Seminole are said to have known of something resembling the skunk ape that they called Esti Capcaki (tall man), and a settler named Henry Washington Tanner spoke of finding graves containing “skeletons as big as giants” on the banks of eastern Florida’s Saint Johns River around the turn of the twentieth century (Carlson 2005, 80). However, other early reports cited by skunk ape researchers involve smaller animals. According to an 1818 story, residents of the port of Apalachicola in the Florida Panhandle followed a five-foot-tall “baboon” to a hiding place among piles of cotton bales. Although the beast managed to escape its pursuers, an accumulation of bones was found nearby (Newton 2007, 76). A report from 1900 from the San Pedro Bay area of North Florida involved a red-skinned, long-armed animal covered with shaggy black hair that “walked on its feet in a crouching attitude.” The creature was four feet tall and left six-inch footprints showing the imprints of sharp claws (Newton 2007, 76–77).
The most frequently cited early report of the skunk ape dates from 1942, when a man claimed that one had jumped onto the running board of his vehicle in the North Florida county of Suwanee. In 1957 three hunters in what would later become Big Cypress National Preserve (BCNP) in the southern part of the state reported that a skunk ape had approached their camp. More sightings from Central and South Florida followed in the 1960s and 1970s—decades in which development began encroaching on the Everglades and other sparsely inhabited areas. In 1971, for instance, a rabies control officer investigating sightings of what one witness called orangutans (great apes native to southeast Asia) in the Everglades found large, widely spaced tracks alternating with knuckle prints—a pattern that primatologists recognize as typical of apes.
Several regional variations of the Bigfoot phenomenon have been documented, including the skunk ape of the American southeast. A famous alleged sighting of a skunk ape in 1997 inspired local businesses to capitalize, as in the case of the Skunk-Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee, Florida, which doubles as a campground and souvenir stand. (Jeff Greenberg/Alamy Stock Photo)
By 1977 there had been enough sightings of the unidentified creature to attract the attention of Florida’s politicians. That year state representative Paul Nuckolls introduced a bill that would have made “taking, possessing, harming, or molesting any anthropoid or humanoid animal which is native to Florida, popularly known as the Skunk Ape” a misdemeanor (Carlson 2005, 80). The measure failed, but sightings continued.
In 1997 a number of foreign tourists traveling by bus through the BCNP reported seeing a skunk ape beside the road near the town of Ochopee. That same year real estate agent Jack Brock spotted the creature crossing the road in the same area, as did Ochopee Fire Control District officer Vince Doerr a few minutes later. Brock described what he saw as “shaggy-looking, and very tall, maybe six-and-a-half or seven feet tall,” and Doerr was able to take an indistinct photograph of the animal at the edge of a swamp (Stromberg 2014).
In late 2000 an unidentified individual mailed two photographs, taken at night with a flash, to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department in southwestern Florida. The photographs showed a hulking, shaggily furred animal with fangs in its lower jaw and eyes shining from the flash, but other details were largely hidden by palmetto fronds. Because the sighting apparently took place near the Myakka River, the images have become known the Myakka photographs. An enclosed letter described the creature as being nearly seven feet tall and leaving an unpleasant smell in the air. The writer explained that the animal had been raiding an apple tree and suggested, as in the 1971 case, that it was an orangutan. However, critics point out that the creature in the photographs does not exhibit the musculature that one would expect of an ape, leading them to believe that the photographs are part of a hoax.
In recent years Ochopee resident Dave Shealy, who manages a Skunk-Ape Research Headquarters on his property, has become a prominent figure in efforts to confirm the existence of the creature. He claims to have seen the animal for the first time in what is now the BCNP in 1974, when he was ten years old, and recalls that it “looked like a man, but completely covered with hair” (Stromberg 2014). Shealy encountered the skunk ape again in September 1998, snapping several photographs and taking a plaster cast of a large, four-toed footprint. Two years later he videotaped what appears to be a hairy hominid striding through tall grass and swinging its arms and has reported at least one more sighting since. However, as Shealy’s involvement in the skunk ape controversy has grown, many researchers have come to regard his activities as self-serving and have expressed doubts about the authenticity of his stories and photographic material (Krulos 2015, 208–210).
Zoologists point out that there is no physical evidence that great apes other than human beings have ever existed in the wild in North America. However, skunk ape sightings continue to generate reports. In March 2013, for instance, Mike Falconer, a pest-control officer based in Myakka City, shot footage and still photographs from his vehicle of two unidentified animals walking upright through tall grass. A number of other motorists also saw the figures and pulled over to the side of the road to watch.
Wildlife experts speculate that, aside from hoaxes and cases of misidentification of animals such as bears, many reports of skunk apes may involve apes or monkeys that have escaped from private owners or research facilities. In fact, there are several breeding facilities for monkeys in southern Florida, and troops of escaped rhesus, macaque, and velvet monkeys have established themselves in the southern and central parts of the state.
Grove Koger
See also Bear Man of the Cherokee; Bigfoot or Sasquatch; Mogollon Monster; Pope Lick Monster; Pukwudgie; Wild Man of the Navidad
Further Reading
Carlson, Charlie. 2005. Weird Florida: Your Travel Guide to Florida’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Coleman, Loren. 1984. “The Occurrence of Wild Apes in North America.” In The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominoids, edited by Vladimir Markotic and Grover Krantz. Calgary: Western.
Coleman, Loren. 2001. “The Myakka ‘Skunk Ape’ Photographs.” The Cryptozoologist. August 25. http://www.lorencoleman.com/myakka.html. Accessed May 25, 2015.
Krulos, Tea. 2015. “Somethin’ Skunky.” Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Newton, Michael. 2007. Florida’s Unexpected Wildlife: Exotic Species, Living Fossils, and Mythical Beasts in the Sunshine State. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Robison, Jim. 2000. “Lurking Here May Be Eerie Skunk Ape.” Orlando Sentinel, October 29. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2000-10-29/news/0010290067_1_skunk-ape-bigfoot-creature. Accessed May 24, 2015.
Stromberg, Joseph. 2014. “On the Trail of Florida’s Bigfoot—the Skunk Ape.” Smithsonian.com. March 6. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/trail-floridas-bigfoot-skunk-ape-180949981/?all&no-ist. Accessed April 2, 2016.