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b"Let's learn about another mystery ape, the koolakamba (also spelled kooloo-kamba or other variations)!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nBetween the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee\\n\\nThe Yaounde Zoo mystery ape and the status of the kooloo-kamba\\n\\nMystery of the Koolakamba\\n\\nAntoine the Yaounde Zoo ape, supposedly a koolakamba:\\n\\n\\n\\nMafuka (sometimes spelled Mafuca):\\n\\n\\n\\nA rare photo of the Bili ape:\\n\\n\\n\\nA handsome western gorilla:\\n\\n\\n\\nA handsome western chimpanzee:\\n\\n\\n\\nA western chimpanzee mother and baby:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nThis week we\\u2019re going to round out our bonus mystery animal month with a mystery ape called the koolakamba. Every time I think we\\u2019ve covered every mystery ape out there, I find another one.\\n\\nThe koolakamba first appears in print in the mid-19th century, but let\\u2019s fast-forward to 1996 first and talk about a photograph of a purported koolakamba. The picture was taken at the Yaounde Zoo in Central Cameroon in Africa, and the ape was a male called Antoine. He has very black skin on his face but bright orange eyes, with a pronounced brow ridge. The picture appeared in the November 1996 issue of the Newsletter of the Internal Primate Protection League and some people suggested the ape was a hybrid of a chimpanzee and a gorilla. That\\u2019s what a koolakamba is said to be, a chimp-gorilla hybrid.\\n\\nBut that\\u2019s not what the koolakamba was always said to be. So let\\u2019s go back again to find out what the first European naturalists reported about this animal.\\n\\nThe first European to write about the koolakamba was a man called Paul DuChaillu. He was also the first European to write about several other animals, including the gorilla, and he was always eager to find more and describe them scientifically. He was the one who gave the koolakamba its name, which was supposed to be a local name for the animal, meaning \\u201cone who says \\u2018kooloo.\\u2019\\u201d In other words, the ape\\u2019s typical call was supposed to sound like it was saying kooloo. I\\u2019ve chosen the spelling koolakamba for this episode, as you\\u2019ll see in the show notes, but I\\u2019ve also seen it as kooloo-kamba with various spellings.\\n\\nChimpanzees and gorillas were well known to the local people, of course, but although they weren\\u2019t quote-unquote discovered until much later, early travelers to Africa mentioned them occasionally. The first mention of both dates to about 1600. In 1773 a British merchant wrote about three apes he heard about from locals: the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and a third ape called the itsena.\\n\\nDuChaillu thought the koolakamba was a separate species too, one that looked similar to both the gorilla and the chimpanzee. Other explorers, big game hunters, and zoologists thought it was a chimp-gorilla hybrid, which accounted for its similarity to both apes. A few thought the koolakamba was just a subspecies of chimp, while a few thought it was a subspecies of gorilla.\\n\\nThe argument of what precisely the koolakamba was is still ongoing, but no one ever denied that the koolakamba existed. After all, there were specimens, both dead and alive. In July 1873, a female chimpanzee named Mafuka was shipped to the Dresden Zoo, and she was supposed to be a koolakamba.\\n\\nWe have some beautifully done engravings of her face that are so detailed they might as well be photographs. Mafuka had black skin on her face, pronounced brow ridges, fairly small ears, and a gorilla-like nose. Her hair was black with a reddish tinge. She was also a big ape although she was young, measuring almost four feet high, or 120 cm. She only lived two and a half years in captivity, unfortunately, dying in December of 1875.\\n\\nSome zoologists classified Mafuka as a young gorilla, while others thought she was a chimpanzee. Others thought she was a hybrid of the two apes. In 1899 an anatomist claimed she was a koolakamba and a different species from either ape.\\n\\nOther koolakamba apes have been identified after Mafuka,"