Ota Benga (c. 1883 [2] – March 20, 1916) was a Mbuti (Congo pygmy) man, known for being featured in an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo.

In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a population) for populations in which adult men are on average less than 150 cm (4 ft 11 in) tall.

They are divided into three roughly geographic groups: the central and southern Batwa, or Twa (Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Angola and Namibia). The more widely scattered (and more variable in physiology and lifestyle) Southern Twa are also grouped under the term Pygmoid.

Apr 26, 2012 · Now new research suggests unique changes in the Pygmy's genome have both led to adaptations for living in the forest as well as kept them short.

Dec 2, 2008 · In 1904, several Pygmies were brought to live in the anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Two years later, a Congo Pygmy named Ota Benga was housed temporarily at the American...

Dec 12, 2007 · Pygmies, the most well-known group of diminutive humans, whose men on average grow to a maximum of five feet tall and their women about a half foot shorter, were thought to be endowed with their...

Pygmy Peoples from Central Africa: culture and music of the African rainforest hunter-gatherers, commonly called Pygmies, from the fieldwork of the anthropologist and writer Luis Devin.

May 20, 2019 · Ota Benga was a black man, a Pygmy. After being on display at the World’s Fair for a while, Ota was taken to the zoo in Brooklyn, New York and displayed with monkeys in a cage. Ota was mistreated and captured and put in a zoo only because of the belief in evolution.

Sep 8, 2019 · The enlightened wags of America blamed his intellectual shortcomings when an undersized African man named Ota Benga put a pistol to his breast and committed suicide a century ago.

Feb 19, 2015 · It’s hard to believe that almost 109 years ago, a Congolese pygmy man was put on display at the Bronx Zoo in the Monkey House. Ota Benga was brought over to the United States by the an anthropologist of the name Samuel Phillips Verner who had been hired to bring back pygmies for the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis.