Chinese villagers mistake atrophied ape for alien

This ape made a monkey of Chinese villagers who feared it was a visitor from another world.

Locals panicked when Mao Xiping, a housewife from the village of Gezhai, in Henan province, central China, found the scraggy simian stealing cucumbers from her flat.

She thought it was a harmless rabbit, until she noticed it had an 'alien face' and her neighbours agreed it was like nothing they had ever seen before.

She took it in caged in a washing basket and demanded that officers place it under arrest.

Source