The Skunk Ape

Florida's Bigfoot?

The skunk ape, also known as the swamp ape, is reportedly around seven feet tall with a reddy-brown hair. It gained its name as a result of its appalling smell. This has been described as being a bit like a skunk or like rotting eggs.

The heyday of the skunk ape was the 1970s when there were numerous sightings of the creature, possibly stimulated by the then recent Patterson Bigfoot film. After that, interest in the skunk ape seemed to die down.

One unusual legend regarding the skunk ape is that in the 1970s one was captured by the military. The rumour goes that they studied it secretly for some while before it managed to escape back into the wild. Needless to say there's no evidence to back this up, but it's still a good story.

The rumours of the creature have started to surface again recently. In 1997 a group of tourists in Ochopee witnessed a shambling apelike creature in the swamp outskirts. Soon afterwards the local fire chief Vince Doerr took a photograph of an unusual "creature". Doerr himself believes that what he photographed was a man in a gorilla suit.

The Florida National Parks Service believes the skunk ape to be a hoax.