Cryptomundo is reporting some encouraging news from the latest hunt for the Orang Pendek, Sumatra's version of Bigfoot.  A researcher on the hunt for the Orang Pendek reports having spotted one briefly in the trees, before it fled the scene.  The researchers were able to retrieve a bit of vine the animal was chewing on, and to take casts of the footprints which it left at the scene.

It seems that almost every continent and country on the planet (except Antarctica, obviously!) has its own ape-like cryptid.  From the Sasquatch and Skunk Ape of North America to the Yeti of the Himalayas, the sheer volume of reported sightings is enough to convince many people that cryptid apes live on in some of the more remote regions of the planet.

(Personally I think a lot of the North American sightings can be attributed to crazy mountain men who give up on society and live in the woods.  Think about it - they would be wearing animal pelts, and thus appear large and hairy.  They would have giant beards and tangled hair obscuring most of their human facial features.  And anyone who's camped for more than a day can attest to the smell!)

The Orang Pendek is, according to hundreds of years of witness descriptions, something like a miniature Sasquatch.  It walks upright with its feet turned outward, is covered with dark hair, has a steeply sloping forehead like a gorilla, and stands at between four and five feet tall.

The Orang Pendek is one of the most reputable cryptid apes, considering that the orangutan was actually native to Sumatra at one point.  Alas, it is thought to have disappeared from all but the northern-most part of the island.  This alone is apparently enough  to convince most people that it isn't an orangutan, although "thought to have disappeared from this bit but not that nearby bit" is hardly the strongest statement of extinction on the books.

At any rate, Sumatra is known to be home to many primates, including gibbons and (in part of it anyway) orangutans.  The footprints and hair evidence found so far has been submitted to experts who assert that the evidence does not match any known primates.  Sumatra is such a remote and forested island that it seems entirely possible that a micro-species could exist there in semi-secrecy.  

National Geographic believes so, anyway, and sent in an expedition in 2006 to set up camera traps on the lookout for the Orang Pendek.  Perhaps most interesting is the theory that the Orang Pendek could be a hominid "missing link" of sorts, a branch off the line of humanity similar to the Neanderthal.  

This theory was given a little more strength recently when scientists discovered the skeletons of a miniature race of people on Flores Island.  The "new" species of human was scientifically named Homo Floresiensis, colloquially "Flores Man," but was dubbed "Hobbits" by the media.  Flores Man stood only about three and a half feet tall, and Flores Island happens to lie not particularly far from Sumatra itself.