Possible ropen off Indonesian coast
In June of 2008, H. (anonymous) was flying a small twin-engined plane with his
co-pilot, B.; both are former navy
pilots. They were mostly finished with the 700-mile flight
from Broome, Australia, to Bali,
Indonesia, when H. saw
what he at first assumed was another airplane flying in a
head-on collision course.
H. put the plane
into a dive but the creature also dived. H.
then avoided a collision by banking away from what he and
his co-pilot thought
was something like a "pterodactyl."
The pilot noticed, just before the near-collision, about two
very slow wing flaps, indicating
that it was no plane.
The incident was 150 miles southeast of Bali, Indonesia.
It was reported, in August of 2008, by
the pilot, to the investigator Jonathan Whitcomb.
The Ahool of Java, Indonesia
According to the second edition of
the book Searching
for Ropens (by Whitcomb), the bat-like flying creature
that has a monkey face is called "ahool." Apparently
it
eats fresh-water fish. One eyewitness described a head
crest and an upright posture on tree trunks; a ropen of
Umboi Island has
also been seen to hold itself upright
on a tree trunk. Still, there is not enough eyewitness
evidence to convince many researchers that
the ropen
and the ahool must be the same species.
About Indonesia
The largest archipelagic state in the world,
Indonesia has
a population nearly as large as the United States. The
name comes from two Latin words meaning "India-island."
The
nation consists of over 17,000 islands, but only about
a third of them are inhabited. The largest islands are Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan
(part of the island of Borneo), New Guinea (western side, bordering Papua New Guinea), and Sulawesi. Because of its location on the
Pacific "ring of
fire," Indonesia has more seismic and volcanic activity
than almost any other nation.
Indonesia has a high level
of biodiversity, second only to
Brazil. With forests covering most of the country, fauna
include the elephant, tiger, leopard, rhinoceros,
and the orangutan. There are hundreds of bird species, many of
which are endemic.