Cannibal in the Jungle, a mockumentary that premiered on Animal Planet in the early summer of 2015, is not real. Timothy Darrow and his tale of going to Indonesia to study birds and instead finding cannibalistic hobbit men is completely fake.
However, those hobbit men? They’re actually scientific fact. A fascinating fact. A little fact (cuz they’re hobbits).
Those hobbit men are actually Homo Floresiensis.
Homo Floresiensis is a now extinct branch on the human family tree (genus homo). You’ll already know about Neanderthals (homo neaderthalensis) and that we are Homo Sapiens (homo sapiens sapiens), well these little guys fit into the same family (supposedly).
Homo Floresiensis stood approximately three and a half feet tall (3.5 feet, about 1 meter)! They were hobbit men indeed! These hobbit men were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 (where the fictional Timothy Darrow was). However, the hobbit men went extinct long before Timothy Darrow ever visited! It’s thought they last lived 12,000 years ago! So you see, unless Timothy Darrow was a time traveler he wouldn’t have ever met the little things 🙁
Not much is actually know about the hobbit men, homo floresiensis, and the debate about virtually everything about them is still raging in the scientific community. I have yet to hear a single scientist suggest that homo floresiensis was cannibalistic. I believe that was a total invention on the part of Animal Planet.
Ultimately we have a lot to learn about these hobbit men and considering how long it takes for these scientist to even process a single specimen of one of our ancestors I may very well be dead before we get to hear more about them.
So to recap! Timothy Darrow is fake, there are no cannibal hobbit men in Indonesia, Homo Floresiensis went extinct long before the fake Timothy Darrow went there, but homo floresiensis did in fact exist!!!
Update – 06/08/2016
New information and further controversy over Homo Floresiensis…
The diminutive “hobbit” species, Homo floresiensis, was recently in the news because of a new analysis that suggested the species predated the arrival of modern humans to the region. But the discovery left a big unanswered question: how did the hobbit fit into the human family tree? A discovery described in today’s issue of Nature helps piece together more about the species’ history, shedding light on its ancestry and suggesting that it was present in Indonesia as early as 700,000 years ago.
Read the whole article here: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/the-hobbit-was-tiny-already-by-700000-years-ago/
Read More on the Fake Documentary Cannibal in the Jungle and Timothy Darrow Here:
So Timothyy Darrow isnt real but hobbit men are? Animal planet is getting real confusing
What a pity Animal Planet has to resort to horror and sensationalism to produce a story!
You’d think more people would be upset animal planet resorted to cannibalism to make money!!!
I’d like to see more investigations into existing mysteries, the recent disclosures on the investigation into Bigfoot. (Although a bunch of armed ‘red-neck’ woodsmen running around the forest pretending to capture them doesn’t help.) There are supposed to be other cystoids, The recent disclosures on Mermaids is a good example.as are South America’s Mapanguary, the Congo’s Mkolome-benbe and the Almus – Yeti..
There are many mysteries out there without that could be investigated. In my opinion, using sensationalist shock, horror stories to ‘grab’ viewers cheapens and reduces the Animal Planets validity as a broadcaster.
If hobbits were alive today, do you think we’d be on their dinner list?
You’re pre-supposing that the Flores Hobbits were the cannibalistic ‘monsters’ you portrayed them as being. As far as we know Hobbits are extinct and there is nothing to show they were cannibalistic, that was an invention of the programme makers. I know nothing of the local folklore on Hobbits and it was touched on in the programme, If it were investigated it might help to find out more about them. I would love to find surviving Hobbits but the atmosphere the programme created would make things difficult for them.
So Tolkiens hobbits were real. But Tolkien never got to know that. Now that is sad.
Animal planet suck.. :v
100% true
but and the images seem to be very real for a camera of you guys do not think epoca