1. A pose estimating apparatus comprising: a basic skeleton estimating section that estimates a position of a distinctive part of a person in an acquired image; a likelihood map generating section that generates a likelihood map indicating the probability of presence of a part of the person other than the distinctive part in the acquired image, based on the position of the distinctive part of the person; and an evaluating section that evaluates, based on the likelihood map, a candidate group including a plurality of 2D skeleton models as candidates, the 2D skeleton models each comprising a group of lines representing the parts and a group of dots representing connections between the parts and each 2D skeleton model corresponding to a pose of the person.