Gigantopithecus: a Jungle VIPIf you’ve seen the new live-action/CGI Jungle Book film which cam

Gigantopithecus: a Jungle VIPIf you’ve seen the new live-action/CGI Jungle Book film which came out this year, and if your nostalgia for the Disney original runs deep, you may have noticed a lyrics update in one of the movie’s iconic songs. In “I Wanna Be Like You,” Christopher Walken as King Louie sings about wanting to be human, with lines about “Oh, how magnificus it would be,/A gigantopithecus like me/Could learn to do like you humans do.” That’s because he’s had a species upgrade from the animated version; instead of an orangutan, King Louie is now a Gigantipithecus, an extinct ape that lived in Asia several million years ago. Filmmakers made the change both to make the character as imposing as possible compared to little Mowgli, and to fix a mistake from the original animated film. While all of the other animals are natives of the Seoni Jungle in India, orangs like King Louie are not found in India at all. The character was created by Disney when they adapted the Kipling classic. Animators searched for a more realistic substitute, and found Gigantopithecus. The ancient creature lived in India, China and Southeast Asia, ranging from 6.5 million years ago until several hundred thousand years ago, overlapping with the presence of human ancestor Homo erectus. The accuracy of the movie version is questionable, as much as one can ask for accuracy in a movie about talking animals; the ancient ape is only known from fossil jawbones and teeth. No full skeleton has ever been found, but researchers are able to estimate skull size from the jawbones, and from skull size, overall body weight, which scales with the skull in primates. Gigantopithecus was thought to be 800 to 900 pounds, and about 9 feet tall. The new King Louie towers over not just Mowgli but the full grown bear Baloo as well; he is at least 12 feet tall, with reddish fur and flaring cheeks similar to an orangutan, Gigantopithecus’ closest living relative. The details may be from the imagination of the animators, but Louie’s royal gravitas dominates the screen; we can only be glad he never gets the secret of the red flower, or the Jungle Book sequel may have to be called “Planet of the Apes.”-CELSource: http://bit.ly/1UiKRsoImage: http://bit.ly/1WXrUMh -- source link

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