Tracking The Florida Skunk Ape

Tracking The Florida Skunk Ape
by Kurt Z
The earliest reported sighting of the Skunk Ape in Florida dates back to 1818, when local newspapers in what is now Apalachicola, Florida, reported a "man-sized monkey" raiding food stores and stalking fishermen along the shore. Appalachicola is 500 miles from Ft Lauderdale.


In 1948, a roadside zoo and research center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, called the Dania Chimpanzee Farm imported animals from across the world. One year, a group of West African vervet monkeys slipped out of their cages and vanished into the mangroves. They established a colony, and by the 1990s, biologists counted about three dozen monkeys near the airport. By 2015, entire families were still roaming neighborhoods and power lines, descendants of the 1948 escapees, stealing food from backyards. Scientists confirmed their species' origin and persistence. The state of Florida has never fully removed them. From one accident at a zoo, Florida gained a permanent feral colony of African monkeys, one of the strangest legacies of the state’s history with exotic animals. 


The oldest reported Skunk Ape sighting in South Florida is less precisely documented, but the earliest accounts often cited in local lore come from the 1950s. Specifically, a series of sightings in the Everglades region, particularly around Ochopee, Florida, began in the late 1950s, with reports of a large, foul-smelling, ape-like creature. One notable early account from 1957 describes a creature spotted near the Turner River in the Everglades, where locals claimed to see a hairy, bipedal figure that left a strong odor. These reports gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s as more sightings emerged in South Florida's swampy regions, particularly in the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park.

Ochopee Florida is only 100 miles from Ft Lauderdale. Skunk Ape is that you?




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