Think ‘King Kong’ only existed in the movies. Well, think again.

The first King Kong film was released in 1933. A reworked version of Beauty and the Beast, it became a special effects and animation classic. Nature columnist Richard Collins reminds us, however, that the King Kong of the big screen is very much rooted in a species of giant ape that may have walked the earth as recently as 100,000 years ago.   

The film's giant ape was no doubt based and inspired by the hairy half-hominid bigfoot, who was said to inhabit the forests of the Pacific north-west.

Believers claim that bigfoot's ancestors crossed from Asia to north America, when the continents were joined at the shoulder near what is now the Bering Strait.