Orangutan
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Orangutans are the reddish colored great apes currently found in the wild only on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. There is ongoing scientific debate about how they should be classified and how many species and subspecies should be recognized, but most of the scientific community recognizes the difference between the separate populations of these two islands: Pongo pygmaeus on Borneo and Pongo abelii on Sumatra.
There are three major connections to orangutans in the sasquatch lore: Gigantopithecus, the Myakka Ape photos, and bipedalism.
Based on geography and dating, the giant fossil ape Gigantopithecus, who some theorize may be a direct ancestor of sasquatch, is believed to be most closely related to orangutans.
The widely debated figure in the Myakka ape photographs shares a number of characteristics with orangutans as first noted by Loren Coleman-including coloring and facial features [1].
A recent scientific study has suggested that human bipedalism evolved from the rather complex arboreal locomation of orangutans rather than the long-held view that it arose from a quadrupedal terrestrial form of locomotion.
It is generally thought that the cryptid bipedal creature 'orang-pendek' is likely to be closely related to the orangutan.
