Kaiju Taxonomy: Legendary Pictures King Kong · 2:30pm Apr 20th, 2018
In this blog post I'll be discussing the basic biological attributes of a kaiju and in trying to determine what kind of animal they are. Kaiju tend to come in two flavors. Either they always looked the way they do during the duration of the film and that is a natural form of their species, or, they are a mutated variety of a normal species. In this case we will be looking presumably at a case of the former, however this little retrospective is still applicable as we will be looking into what sort of taxonomic family the kaiju in question belongs to. Today, it's the Legendary Pictures incarnation of King Kong, who starred in "Kong: Skull Island" and is also the incarnation present in the Amalgam'verse.
Now in the Legendary Picture's continuity, Kong would be classified as a 'MUTO' or Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism. Now MONARCH has never clarified if MUTO are animals in their own taxonomic clade that happened to resemble normal animals or if they are aberrations within normal groups of animals. For this I'm going to presume the latter and thus assume Kong has an ancestor that was not kaiju size and said ancestor either has a modern counterpart or is represented in the fossil record. So to get a grasp on Kong, let's list off his traits to descend down the taxonomic families
-Obviously a mammal, more specifically a primate given his five digits, ear flaps, pectoral mammaries if he were female, opposable thumbs, and binocular vision.
-He's not a Prosimian like a lemur on account of lacking a muzzle and having a more mobile shoulder joint.
-More specifically a Simian of the Old World Catarrhine clade given he lacks a prehensile tail and sideways facing nostrils New World Platyrrhini have.
-Lacking a tail, having a very articular wrist and shoulder with the ability to swing about as he moves shows he's definitely an Ape.
-We can tell that because he lacks long palms and two toes fused by skin he is not a Hylobatidae, or "Lesser Ape" like a gibbon, meaning he must be a Hominidae, or "Great Ape" with his larger body size and terrestrial lifestyle.
So by now you are probably wondering, "Tarb, he's obviously an ape. Why are you bothering to say this?"
To which I reply,
1. Completion
2. Because I have a plot twist
So far, this is Kong's family tree.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Infraorder: Simiiformes (Simians)
Parvorder: Catarrhini (Old World Simians)
Superfamily: Hominoidea (Apes)
Family: Hominidae (Great Apes)
But here's the first divide. Unlike the Peter Jackson version of Kong from 2005 or the Joe DiVito continuity of books from the 1933 film, the Legendary King Kong is neither a giant species of gorilla or selectively bred derivative of Gigantopithecus. For starters he lacks the facial hair, large cheek flaps, and arboreal lifestyle or fist-walking locomotion that would designate him as a member of Ponginae (Asiatic Great Apes) like Gigantopithecus or its modern relative the orangutan. Despite Skull Island's location, Kong has far more in common with Homininae or African Great Apes. Except, as I stated earlier, he's not a gorilla either at least not according to my research. His is a less thought of lineage. And that lineage has its first milestone by the name of Ardipithecus.
Species: Ardipithecus kadabba
Name Meaning: Progenitor Patriarch of the Ground Apes
Height: 3'11 (females), 4'04 (males)
Weight: 50kg (females), 60kg (males)
Location: Eastern Africa (Ethiopia)
Habitat: Forests to loose scrubwood
Time: 5.77-5.54 million years old
Look familiar?
Ardipithecus is a genus with two species separated by a time span, with the more complete and well known Ar. ramidus being latter temporally and is almost certainly a descendant of the earlier Ar. kadabba. While a vast majority of Ardi finds are teeth, likely due to their habitat not being very conducive to creating fossils and tooth enamel being hardy enough to not decompose, a few fairly complete skeletons have been found and over 100 specimens have been acquired so the picture is reasonably complete.
The cranial capacity of Ardipithecus was more like a chimpanzees' or bonobos' and it probably ate similar foods to those two by being a generalist omnivore. However it does bear more than one very distinct feature that matches up perfectly to the King of Skull Island.
One of the most crucial changes in Ardipithecus from the general African Ape body plan is what we can infer about their social changes and behaviors based off the fossils. Namely they weren’t solitary like orangutans, but they very likely didn’t live in harems like gorillas or in alpha-male/female lead troops such as chimpanzees and bonobos respectively. Instead studies show the Ardipithecus had far less sexual dimorphing than modern African apes. In for instance, modern African apes; the males are far more robust, have larger canine fangs, and are larger in stature by as much as 80% more than the females of comparable maturity. This is because it’s the males’ job to guard their troops, tend to the females, and ward off rival groups. Instead, Ardipithecus males and females were not significantly different in size or build and any difference they had was mostly just due to being watered down leftovers from an ancestor. Both the males and females of the older species, Ardipithecus kadabba, had reasonably sized canine fangs and the later species, Ardipithecus ramidus, both sexes experienced reduced canines.
This sort of similarity is only seen in two apes, modern humans and gibbons; both of which are chiefly though not exclusively, monogamous. Gibbons are very dutiful mates, with the male and female resting, foraging, and very closely caring for each other for years, if not for life. Now add that in with Ardipithecus being social, and it seems evolution was influenced by behaviors. Rather than the larger, more robust males who sought out multiple mates to care for and maximize the number of offspring, it’s been suggested female selection in Ardipithecus favored the males that were more better able to attain food, committed to just one mate at a time, and less likely to seek multiple partners so they could spend more time ensuring the health of their singular mate and offspring. While almost all apes are excellent fathers, Ardipithecus might be the genesis for what we as humans considered fatherhood with the male actively taking a role in raising his child.
Why is all this important? Because we see the echoes of Ardipithecus in the Legendary Pictures’ version of King Kong. In the prequel comic book we actually get to see Kong’s parents, even a large number of his species.
While it is a bit hard to tell with posing, scaling in the comic clearly shows us that Kong’s mother and father, while sporting different fur lengths and types, are roughly the same size. If anything Papa Kong has maybe 10% on Mama Kong. Additionally, both the males and females have almost identically sized fangs and muscular robustness. If Kong were a type of gorilla, we’d expect far more differences and for the males to be far more distinct. Now yes, different traits could have evolved separately in different lineages to explain this, however my rule with this series will be the less amount of changes one needs to make to an animal to make it fit the kaiju; the more likely it is they are related.
In fact a living descendant of Kong's probable ancestor is well known across the world. It's what's reading this article. Legendary King Kong's ancestor, Ardipitheucs is probably also an ancestor of Homo sapiens. Ardipithecus kadabba is actually one of the earliest bipedal apes known. There is even a hypothesis that goes that one suggestion for a motivation behind bipedalism was so the male could better carry food back to his mate or carry the offspring. The detail that Ardi is very likely an early human ancestor it offers great insight to the origins of the distinct line of apes that lead up to modern humans and what made them different from other apes.
And when it comes to bipedal locomotion Ardipithecus is the trailblazer for that too and while the exact human family line’s origins are still vague with several possible candidates, Ardipithecus is an extremely strong one and at least was the first to really get the hang of walking upright.
Now to briefly clarify, there is a common misconception that humans couldn't evolve from apes because there are still apes. Evolution very rarely works in complete replacement of a parent species by the offspring species that spring from it and often occurs in a branching affect. One species has two populations that become isolated from one another and experience different environments or challenges, thus having to evolve different traits to accommodate. Eventually the adaptations and genetic drift effects pile up to the point that even if the two populations do reunite, they are no longer the same species and can’t interbreed.
The ancestor of humans 7 million years back was also the ancestor of chimpanzees and bonobos, however two populations of that ancestor genus (likely either Sahelanthropus or a close relative) became separated from one another and adapted to different environments. The population more towards the center of the continent in the jungles and dense forests evolved into chimpanzees and bonobos, species adapted to that climate and foodstuffs. By comparison the ancestors of humans were largely in southern and eastern Africa, where the climate became drier and more akin to scrubwood and loose forest, before eventually turning into savanna. Ardipithecus kadabba lived during that transitional phase of the latter group. It was still adapted to forest and could climb quite well, as indicated by its wrist bones and long arms, however it was living in a different type of forest than it ancestors did and its cousins chimpanzees and bonobos did. Thus it adapted different types of behaviors and physical attributes in response to both its environment, the species in that environment, and the social changes in how it interacted with its own kind.
Namely, Ardipithecus is one of the earliest apes we can very reliably state was chiefly walking with bipedal locomotion and not quadrupedal hand, fist, or knuckle-walking like other primates. We can determine this both from calculating where its center of gravity was, the position and shape of the hips, and the length of the legs.
Modern apes have narrow, tall hips to keep their center of gravity in their stomach as they walk around on all fours to keep stable. When they stand up on their hind legs, their center of gravity is shifted forward in front of their hips, which makes them front-heavy and more awkward on short legs. Another problem is the foramen magnum, the connection port for the spinal cord and backbones to link to the skull, in apes is set towards the back of the head. This allows them to keep their heads level and eyes forward when walking. But when they rear up, they're forced to shift their neck and swing their heads down to look straight, throwing them even more off balance.
Humans however have short but wide hips to support our torso, which with our long legs keeps our center of gravity just above the hips and thus we stay balanced when walking upright. This change in locomotion was one of the first fundamental changes in the human line that separated it from the Chimpanzee/Bonobo line, and Ardipithecus was one of its trailblazers as while it still had a divergent big-toe which could act like a thumb for grasping, it still had a more human-like hip and leg structure; which was used both by walking across long branches of the forest it inhabited as well as jaunts across the forest floor to get from tree to tree without burning as much energy as one would walking on all fours.
Now the reason I state Ardipithecus is a likely ancestor for Kong and not later bipedal apes like Paranthropus or Australopithecus? The teeth. Apes, and in fact many primates, have what is called a honing complex. Formed by a gap to fit the lower canines behind the upper incisors and another gap on the lower jaw to fit the upper canines between the lower canines and lower premolars, called a diastema, this arrangement causes the tips of the canines to be constantly sharpened against the other teeth.
This is because in primates, while they are primarily herbivores, the canine teeth serve an important function in nonverbal communication, threat displays against predators and rivals, and weapons if all else fails. This is why gorillas, the most herbivorous of all the apes, still have a big set of fangs. And Ardipithecus kadabba, just so happened to be the last human ancestor to have honing canines.
In later species, this honing complex would be lost entirely.
King Kong is bipedal despite still having a divergent big toe for grasping. He does not walk on all fours unless crouching.
https://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Kong-Skull-Island-Visual-Effects-7.jpg
So does Ardipithecus. The genus does not walk on all fours unless crouching. Like Kong, it also has very long forelimbs.
King Kong has a forward facing head and therefore, a spinal cord connecting at the bottom of his skull.
So does Ardipithecus.
Kong is an omnivore just like Ardipithecus (and entirely unlike Gigantopithecus). And Kong makes heavy use of wooden clubs and stone bludgeons, two types of tools almost exclusively known to African apes and not Asiatic ones (again, Giganto). So in an ironic twist, it’s likely not the biggest of all normal apes that was the progenitor of the biggest ape in that world. In my view, Kong’s species is a derivative of Ardipithecus kadabba who branched off and went a seperate way than the more well known Ardipithecus ramidus (who in turn likely became Australopithecus). Instead this lineage went on a very different path.
So how did Ardipithecus kadabba get to the southern Pacific? Well first they’d need to migrate out of Africa and this is actually much easier to do than one might think. Before Homo sapiens were doing it, there were at least two, possibly as many as four, migrations of human ancestors or derivatives out of Africa. Many of them hugged the southwest Asian coast due to a favorable climate and resources. Record of these migrations is scarce because many of these sites and locales these ancients would have inhabited have either been eroded away due to acidic jungle soils or are now kilometers out to sea and underwater due to shifting coastlines.
As these Ardipiths traveled through Asia, the need for protection against predators caused them to gradually grow bigger as time went on. To avoid competition with the now similarly sized Gigantopithecus, the Ardipith/Proto-Kongs started to lean a bit more on carnivorism diets; first scavenging but then some degree of hunting. This omnivorous diet is another factor that separates an Ardi-Derived Proto-Kong from, say, the 2005 incarnation which was pretty much an accurately built oversized gorilla. The lack of need to subsist solely on tough plants means these Proto-Kongs never would need to develop the huge gut that gives gorillas (and very likely Gigantopithecus) their ‘pot-belly’ look. Meat is easier to digest so their body shape wouldn’t need to change all that much in terms of girth from an increased digestive track.
This hunting however necessitated better tools for killing and disabling prey, causing muscle mass to increase and canine teeth to lengthen. They effectively became the bipedal primate equivalent to a brown bear, with perhaps 30% of the diets being animal proteins. Much of this protein they would get from the shore and shallow rivers to seize fish and mollusks. This in turn lead to gradually increasing brain size to figure out more ways to get more food, a path ironically convergent with Homo habilis who’d develop in Africa a million or so years later, though these Proto-Kongs largely achieved the same means without complex tool use. Hand, tooth, jaw, and the occasional rock or tree-trunk club was enough and bamboo made for a handy utilitarian stick. The need for a stronger jaw to crush shells and tough plants also gave them a small sagittal crest, making the head look ‘pointy’, though it never developed to the same degree it does in gorillas and Gigantopithecus.
Over time, climate shifts drove the proto-kongs along the length of Asia until they reached what is now the Vietnamese coasts. From there any number of factors could have resulted in them ending up on Skull Island. Sea level shifts making the journey less lengthy, using subterranean tunnels to reach the island on a chance discovery, maybe even a few getting washed out to sea in a flash flood and ending up on the island while clinging to natural rafts. Their body might have also changed enough they, like modern humans, could swim decently well and might have island hopped the same way some large animals like elephants do. From there, soon as they got onto Skull Island, they carved out their own niche. While the mainland populations of these Ardipithecus descendants died away due to environmental changes, the Skull Island population followed suit to what most of the fauna on that island did.
Get big.
By the time of a half million years ago, the descendants of a creature under one and a quarter meters tall who ran through trees now stood tall and towered over them. In thousands more years time, other descendants of Ardipithecus would end up on the island, humans and the ancestors of the Iwi people. Perhaps due to recognizing the similarity in a fellow intelligent, bipedal primate, the Kongs left them be and even later grew protective of them. And the rest is history.
So there you have it. Tooth size between sexes, bipedal stance, particular foot shape, and possible relation to humans influencing behavior, the Legendary Pictures King Kong is actually a not-so distant cousin to humanity.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Infraorder: Simiiformes (Simians)
Parvorder: Catarrhini (Old World Simians)
Superfamily: Hominoidea (Apes)
Family: Hominidae (Great Apes)
Alliance: Hominina (Human lineage)
Genus: Titanoardipithecus (Titanic Ground Ape)
Species: T. randa
Got an idea for a future taxonomy? Leave a comment below! Special thanks to Faith-Wolff for proofing this for me!
Very impressive! This offers some nice food for thought. XD
So basically what you are saying is the Kong is, is basically an ape with humanity, am I correct?
That is pretty well thought out.
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First film did say Kong was neither all man or all beast. Ardipithecus would fit that description.
Very well though out, really gives your mind something to chew on!
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That is true and I agree on the genus of Kong as well.
National Geographic: Bruh you wanna work for us?
Next Taxonomy blog could cover Gorosaurus, 2014!Godzilla, or Zilla?
Very epic! I like it!
And I enjoy this kinda stuff, it especially works for the Legendary verse.
And once again, you give me reason to envy you.
T. Randa? I'm no expert in Latin; what does it mean?
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Oh don't worry about not recognizing the name. Randa is from William "Bill" Randa, John Goodman's character from Skull Island and the MONARCH expedition team leader. So in essence, as its discoverer or in honor of him, Kong's species name is Titanoardipithecus randa or "Randa's Titanic Ground Ape".
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My pleasure to entertain. I always like to bring up some facts abut prehistory, especially when they might end up being surprises and how some big implications can be drawn up from little while still being very factually based.
So does the 2005 King Kong exist on Skull Island?
Well written and informative as always. I do hope to see future Kaiju Taxonomies.
As for requests.... This one will have to wait a bit, I think, but I would like to see your take on which known prehistoric ancestor gave rise to Rodan once we can get a good look at him. Obviously, the next Legendary Godzilla movie needs to come out first, but perhaps after that....
This is incredibly cool and would love to see this for other kaiju. The obvious choice for the next one would be Big G himself but something unexpected could be Mothra's species (assuming they didn't simply spawned out of the Earth somehow).
This was a very enjoyable read. The amalgamverse explanation as to why Kong's kind took the role of Gurdians to the humans who came to dwell on Skull island was an interesting one. I'd like to see your takes on Zedus and Gorosaurus's evolutionary family tree.
I will be honest, I skipped over most of the explanation to find the final taxonomic tree. Though knowing you, I am 100% sure you have properly stated your evidence. Loved that little nod to Randa at the end. Caught it immediately, actually. I suppose Godzilla himself should have his taxonomic tree now that his mentor has his. Though I can guess his would come out to "big ol' nuke lizard," I would nonetheless find your explanation enjoyable.
I also like how you made sure to have all the different levels in taxonomy there. (This opens up so much doors for the "your mom gay" joke.)
Try Legendary Pictures Godzilla next. I think he'll be a challenge to pin down since what little we know is he originated in the Permian period (maybe earlier) and he seems to be a hodgepodge of different species.