Africa, a continent where myth and reality intertwine in the shadows of forests and the depths of rivers, hides creatures that defy science. While on other continents, "fantastic beasts" are exploited as attractions, here they remain secrets closely guarded by local communities.

This 4-part series on Africa's Fantastic Beasts delves into African cryptids (1) – beings whose existence is witnessed but not yet proven by mainstream science.

From the Congo Basin to the savannas of Kenya, we'll unravel ancient legends and modern research that question the limits of what's known. In Part III, we'll reveal the most enigmatic giants.

Get ready for a journey through surprise and the inexplicable that could only happen in this “Unknown Africa”.

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The Mokele-mbembe, in Lingala: mókɛlɛ ᵐbɛ́ᵐbɛ, “the one that interrupts the flow of rivers” (2) , is an aquatic animal that supposedly lives or lived in the Congo River Basin, around the Ikélemba, Sangha and Ubangui rivers and in Lake Tele, is described as a very large animal, with a long neck, a small head and a long tail (3) (4).

Based on descriptions and drawings made by those who supposedly saw it, it is postulated that it may be an animal related to Sauropodomorpha (5).

During the early 20th century, descriptions of Mokele-mbembe increasingly reflected the public's fascination with dinosaurs, including aspects of certain dinosaur species now known among scientists to be incorrect, and the entity became increasingly described alongside a number of dinosaurs supposedly living in Africa (6).

In recent years, Mokele-mbembe has become one of the world's most famous cryptids, ranking alongside Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Yeti. The first sightings by Westerners date back to 1916, although possible footprints were reported in the mid-1932th century. The most significant sightings occurred in 1935, 1959, and XNUMX.

But the sightings didn't stop there. There have been several expeditions since the 1980s, where, despite no reliable evidence of the Mokele-mbembe's existence, they all brought new data to light.

The oldest account of the Mokele-mbembe dates from the second half of the 1776th century and was recorded by Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart in XNUMX:

“The missionaries observed, as they passed through the forest, the trail of an animal they had not seen, but which must have been monstrous: the marks of its claws were imprinted in the earth and formed a footprint about three feet in circumference (0.9 m). By observing the arrangement of its steps, it was recognized that it was not running and its stride was seven to eight feet (2 to 2,5 m) long (7) (8)”.

In 1932, Ivan T. Sanderson claimed to have sighted the Mokele-mbembe on the Mainyu River, along with his friend Gerald Russell (9) . In 1935 a native named Firman Mosomele claimed to have had a traumatic encounter with the Mokele-mbembe on a river near Epena, in the Likouala region, in the northeast of the Republic of Congo.

He was alone in a small boat when he saw an animal with a long neck about one meter and eighty centimeters long and a small head. Forty-five years later, Roy P. Mackal and James Powell interviewed Mosomele and showed him a series of drawings of various animals to which he promptly pointed to the drawing of a sauropod (10) (11).

But probably the most interesting sighting of the Mokele-mbembe occurred in 1959, when a group of pygmies killed a Mokele-mbembe at Lake Tele. This story is considered quite reliable, as it was reported by Pastor Eugene Thomas who had an apostolic mission among the pygmies, being considered a serious person who had their trust (12).

The story was collected by explorer William Gibbons during his first trip to the Congo. In 1959, the pygmies living in the forest of the Lake Tele region (the Bangombe tribe) fished daily in the lake near the Molibos, or water channels located at the northern end of the lake.

These channels merge with the marshes and were used by the Mokele-mbembe to enter the lake to feed on vegetation. These daily animal excursions disrupted the pygmies' fishing activities. Eventually, the pygmies decided to erect a fence of stakes along the Molibo to prevent the animals from entering the lake.

When two of the animals tried to pass the barrier, the pygmies attacked them with spears, killing one of them. After it was dead, they cut it into pieces, which took several days due to the animal's size. Later, they held a victory feast and cooked parts of the animal. However, all those who ate the animal's meat ended up dying, probably from food poisoning (13).

In 1981, during his first expedition to the Congo, Roy P. Mackal heard the story and sought to confirm whether this narrative had actually happened. When interviewing several pygmies, they stated that it was true, but as the meat was poisonous, several people who ate it died, so from then on, it was never hunted again (14).

Of all these expeditions, the following reports are the most noteworthy. On November 4, 1981, Herman Regusters, during an expedition to Lake Tele in search of the Mokele-mbembe, heard and recorded a strange growl, which to this day has not been identified with any known species (15).

In another expedition, carried out by zoologist Marcellin Agnagna in 1983, an animal with a long neck was filmed swimming in Lake Tele, but the film was of low resolution and proved useless for further evaluation (16).

In September 1992, a Japanese film crew led by Tatsuo Wantanabe recorded a fifteen-second video of what they believe to be a Mokele-mbembe crossing Lake Tele (17).

Their footprints are also completely different from any other animal in Central Africa (18) . They are similar to those of the hippopotamus, but larger than those of elephants, they are at least 30 centimeters in diameter with only three toes, each toe with a claw (19).

Existing photographs of these footprints also show them quite deep in the ground, suggesting that they were made by a very heavy animal. In addition, it is also said that the Mokele-mbembe leaves behind a furrow, like that made by a large snake or a cartwheel, when it comes out of the water, probably caused by a long tail (20).

Although it is essentially an amphibian animal and almost always seen in rivers and lakes, it is said to live in the forest and only enters the water to feed on the fruits of the lianas of the malombo (Landolphia mannii and Landolphia owariensis, on which it feeds exclusively) (21).

It is said to live alone or in pairs and is most often seen in the early morning and late afternoon (22) . Most sightings occur during the dry season, probably because the Mokele-mbembe has to move from its usual territories in search of food (23).

The search for the Mokele-mbembe continues to this day. Several excursions have been made by wildlife TV channels in an attempt to film it, such as the BBC (24) and Discovery Africa, and even by scientists, such as the one that took place in August and September 2018, led by Lensgreve de Knuthenborg and Adam Christoffer Knuth.

These scientists took with them a DR film crew (25) and a DNA investigator (26) who travelled to Lake Tele in Congo, to try to find Mokele-mbembe. Although they did not find it, the expedition was not in vain, they discovered a new species of green algae hitherto unknown to science (27) (28).

The mystery of the “African Lock Ness” persists (29) . More than 50 expeditions have been made and nothing… many skeptics doubt that Mokele-mbembe actually exists, but… while searching in Africa for evidence of its existence, perhaps it would be easier to do it at home.

There is a 15 cm tall wooden artifact from the Congo region that clearly depicts a prehistoric animal, likely resembling an Apatosaurus. This sculpture is believed to be a faithful representation of the Mokele-mbembe, made by a native who saw it.

This curious artifact is currently located at Glencomeragh House, in County Tipperary, Ireland, owned by the Societas a Charitate Nuncupata (30).

The current Brothers do not know when it was acquired, but they guarantee that it was before the 1950s, when the Rosminian Missionary Fathers had a mission in the Congo, which means that the sculpture predates Western interest in Mokele-mebenbe, and as such, the possibility of it having been made to please a specific market is excluded.

It can therefore be concluded that, even though no concrete evidence of its existence has been found in nature, the Mokele-mbembe is not a figure that came out of the imagination of Western explorers, eager to find some modern dinosaur, but rather a real animal that hides in nature, escaping until now its correct identification and classification (31).

Mngwa ("the strange one") is the Swahili name for a ferocious feline predator found in the former territory of Tanganyika in East Africa, now Tanzania. An alternative name for the animal is Nunda ("fierce animal"). In neighboring Uganda, north of Tanzania, it is known as Ndalawo ("shadow leopard").

Whatever the name, they all agree on one thing. It is recognized as a feline that is deadly to humans. Witnesses who saw the Mngwa and survived to tell the tale describe it as a large feline, as big as a donkey, with gray fur with stripes like those of a tabby cat.

In Uganda, they are said to hunt people in groups of three or four. The Swahili have known the Mngwa for centuries. The first known mention of a Mngwa appears in a Swahili war song written in 1150.

The first known mention of a western cat was made by the British author Edward Steere in his book Swahili Tales (1870), stating that it was also known as “Nunda the man-eating cat” and where he tells the story of Sultan Majnún, who was given a cat that, over time, began to have enormous proportions.

Several advisors told him to kill the cat, but he always refused. Until one day, the cat escaped and killed three of his sons, prompting the sultan to declare that the beast was not a cat, but a Nunda, and ordered his youngest son to kill it. He did so, gathering a battalion that searched for the animal and killed it.

This story apparently had a happy ending, but many other accounts have had very different conclusions. Captain William Hichens, a magistrate in the village of Lindi, Tanganyika, published an article in 1922 recounting his experience with the Mngwa during a series of attacks on the village where he was stationed.

It was customary for native traders to leave their belongings in the village market each night, ready for the morning's trade; and to prevent robberies and also to prevent lost natives from sleeping in the market, an askari (a native policeman) took turns with two others to guard the market in four-hour shifts.

As I was about to replace the midnight shift, one of these officers approached the spot where his colleague was supposed to be and noticed he had disappeared. After searching, he found him horribly mutilated under a tent. The man ran in a panic to wake me and report what had happened.

The magistrate said he promptly went to the market to see what had happened and discovered what was obvious: the askari had been attacked and killed by some kind of large feline – a lion, it seemed.

In the victim's hand was a tangled mass of greyish hair, as if it had come from the mane of a lion after a violent fight. But according to the magistrate, what surprised him was that in all those years he served in Linde, he had never heard of any lion having entered the city (32).

Hichens found it strange, not only because he wasn't aware of any lion attacks in the area, but also because he didn't recognize any with that coat, so he decided to investigate the situation further. After several inquiries, he found witnesses who claimed to have seen a cat the size of a donkey prowling the village.

He also noticed that one of the Swahili war songs mentioned the existence of three different types of felines: the Lion (Simba), the Leopard (Nsui) and the Mngwa, which proves that they knew perfectly how to distinguish the differences between them (33).

In 1954, the Romantic naturalist Frank W. Lane wrote in Nature Parade about an interview he had conducted with hunter Patrick Bowen, who claimed to have once chased a Mngwa specimen.

Bowen noted that the Mngwa's tracks were like those of a leopard, but much larger, and that it had brindle, gray fur, visibly different from a leopard.

There have been no recent reports of sightings or attacks by the Mngwa, which may mean one of two things, either the animal has since become extinct or it may be due to the fact that there is little interest in studying it, as the vast majority of naturalists believe that reports of the animal refer to strange mutations of already known species (34).

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Ninki Nanka is a legendary creature that recurs in West African folklore. Descriptions of the creature vary, but most state that the animal is reptilian and possibly dragon-like. The animal is considered extremely large and very dangerous. The various sightings of Ninki Nanka have occurred in swampy river regions of Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Senegal (35).

One of the first descriptions made of Ninki Nanka appeared in 1934, describing it as a huge reptilian monster “that comes out at night from the mud and slime of the mangroves and devours everything it finds” (36).

In 1935, it was described to Dr. Thomas Hardie Dalrymple as an animal that lived mainly submerged in the mud of the mangroves, only emerging on moonlit nights. It had "a horse's snout, a giraffe's neck, a crocodile's body, and was about 10 m long."

Dalrymple wrote that when some inhabitants of Gambia saw a photograph of a dinosaur statue, they enthusiastically claimed that “a white man had photographed Ninki Nanka” (37).

According to research from the 1940s, adults live in the water, while babies live in baobab trees, and sightings occurred mainly at the beginning of the rainy season. It was widely considered dangerous (38) and was always described as having three unusual horns, including one on its forehead.

In the year 2000, a Gambian interviewed by Matthew Hall described Ninki Nanka as “a kind of dragon”, an animal with a long neck, small legs and a large body. And he stated that it is known for controlling water and causing floods (39).

When Chris Moiser investigated Ninki Nanka in 2000, he found different attitudes towards the monster in the urban area of ​​Gambia. The receptionist at the Mandinka hotel, where he stayed, considered it a myth and local jewelers sold trinkets related to Ninki Nanka, however, a Wolof taxi driver (40) and a high school teacher considered it a real animal, very frightening and clearly taboo (41).

Shortly afterwards, Matthew Hall was informed by a man from Gambia that the Ninki Nanka had existed for a long time, but was now extinct. Another person disputed this information, claiming that the Ninki Nanka still existed, but was seen very rarely (42).

According to several secondhand descriptions compiled by the Center for Fortean Zoology in 2006 (43) (44) , the Ninki Nanka is “huge and terrifying”, has four legs and a horrible head, being a crocodile-like animal, with a different head and teeth and large eyes.

Either it is a huge python-like animal with legs, bat-like wings, and the ability to breathe fire, “unimaginably huge,” with a body covered in shiny scales and a fiery crest on its head, or a snake-like animal with a kangaroo-like head.

One man claimed that he could grow to the size of a 18-foot palm tree and that as he grows he moves out to sea.

The only eyewitness who could be found described the Ninki Nanka firsthand as a 20m long animal that had neither legs nor wings, was covered in reflective scales, had a feather-like crest hanging over its horse's snout, and had emerged from a hole in the ground.

Two second-hand accounts described it as having something resembling a crest, and mirror-like scales were frequently mentioned (98).

In 2008, in episode 13 of series 2 of Destination Truth (45) , in which they tried to find evidence of the supposed “dragon” Ninki Nanka and the mysterious Kikiyaon, they concluded that there was no evidence whatsoever of the existence of Ninki Nanka.

The only “supposed evidence”, some scales given to them by a hunter, claiming they were scales of the “mysterious dragon”, after being analyzed by a DNA specialist, proved to be just normal fish scales, so they concluded that if the animal did in fact exist, it would be extinct at the moment (46).

Richard Freeman, the director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, theorized that the Ninki Nanka was the memory of “some form of enormous snake that may have existed in times past but is now extinct in The Gambia,” but may exist elsewhere in Africa.

Over the years, this extinct snake would have become a kind of bogeyman creature, possibly demonized by the appearance of Islam (47).

On the other hand, Dale A. Drinnon theorizes that Ninki Nanka may be a species of Sivatherium (48) , such as the Okapi, that has survived to the present day, especially due to the description of its head resembling that of a horse or giraffe with unusual horns.

Although it is thought that the Niki Nanka may be extinct, this does not mean that it actually is, especially because the great difficulty, without there being concrete proof of it, will be understanding what type of animal it actually is.

If the various investigations surrounding Niki Nanka had reached some kind of consensus, we could clearly exclude fantasy from reality and discover what kind of animal he was or will be.

However, despite all the investigations so far failing to conclusively decipher the mystery of Niki Nanka, one thing is certain: in the collective memory of the various tribes in the region, he is very much alive.

Nandi Bear

Modern science denies the existence of any kind of wild bear in Africa. The only known species on the continent, the Atlas bear, was a subspecies of the common brown bear that inhabited the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, extending through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. This bear was hunted to exhaustion, with Moroccan hunters killing the last known wild specimen in 1870 (49).

However, despite there being no known bear species in the Kenya region, frightening stories of a predator called the Nandi Bear (50) also known as Chemisit or Kalenjin (demon) (51) (52) are constantly reported.

Although descriptions of the creature vary, with some witnesses depicting a ferocious hyena while others describe a giant baboon, all who know the Nandi Bear agree that it is a ruthless hunter that attacks both animals and humans.

The first Western report of a Nandi bear came from the Uasin Gishu region of Kenya's Rift Valley Province. British explorer Geoffrey Williams saw the creature in 1905 but did not publish his report until more sightings emerged in 1912. He wrote in the Journal of the East African and Uganda Natural History Society:

“In size, it was, I must say, larger than the bears that live in the “Zoo” and had a heavy build. The forequarters were covered with very thick fur, as were all four paws, but the hindquarters were comparatively smooth or bare. The head was long and pointed, exactly like that of a bear, as was the rest of the animal. I do not clearly remember the ears, apart from the fact that they were very small, and the tail, if it had one, was very small and practically imperceptible. The color was dark, giving the impression of being more or less brindle, like a wildebeest, but that may have been an effect of the light” (53).

When Williams showed a book of animal illustrations to the Nandi villagers, asking them to choose a picture of the creature, they all selected pictures of grizzly bears.

British anthropologist CW Hobley collected, in 1912, several reports of the Nandi Bear in the Uasin Gishu district, describing a black creature 4,5 m long that moved with “a sort of dragging gait” like a bear (54).

In March 1913, workers and engineers on Magadi Rail, Kenya's first private railway, filed more reports of Nandi bear sightings. The most detailed description came from an engineer named Hiekes.

“It looked as tall as a lion. It was brown in color, like a lion with a black mane and very shaggy, long fur. Its body was slender and thick, with a high withers [shoulders], a short neck and a stocky nose” (55).

Meanwhile, C.W. Hobley published a description of a Koddoelo (the Pokomo name for the Nandi Bear) killed near Ngao in the Tana River district after terrorizing the villagers.

Witnesses at the scene said the creature was "the size of a man, sometimes with four legs, sometimes with two, generally like a huge and very ferocious baboon." Strangely, a very different description emerged from the same district.

"It is a light-colored animal, with long fur on its neck and back, smaller than a lion, a tail about 50 cm long and 10 cm wide, and very thick front paws . "

This creature is said to have attacked men on sight and supposedly killed a rhinoceros near Makere, although Hobley did not believe the story (56).

In 1933, British hunter Charles Stoneham published an account of Nandi bear attacks in the Mau forest in Kenya's Maasai region, in the Nakuru and Narok districts. According to Stoneham, the bears reported that the bear descended into villages at night and killed the inhabitants in their huts. It entered through the roof, killed the occupants, and ate their brains.

This was one of the beast's peculiarities: it ate only the brains of its victims. Women gathering firewood in the forest would disappear, and later, their bodies would be discovered, always missing the tops of their skulls.

This habit gave the animal another name – Geteit, “brain eater” – among members of the Lumbwa tribe in the Rift Valley, Kenya (57) . Settler Cara Buxton reported a case from 1919 in which one of the predators killed 67 goats and sheep on local farms. “In none of the cases were the bodies touched,” she wrote, “but in all of them, the brains were eaten” (58).

The Chemisit, as another species of Nandi bear was known in the region, was also dangerous and didn't limit itself to eating brains. Forest ranger Blayne Percival described a reign of terror carried out by one in the Marakwet district shortly before the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The devil's attacks were so strong that great preparations were made to kill him, and finally he was killed by a group of men who placed a dummy at the door of a hut and stayed inside waiting for the animal to arrive and try to take the dummy; he was then shot with arrows.

In 1925, another village suffered so many losses that its chief appealed to the Kenyan government for help. The last victim was a 6-year-old girl, snatched away after the monster forced its way through some eight feet of thicket.

Captain William Hichens investigated the case and was present when the beast returned to the village a few nights later and described the case in the Chambers Journal in 1927 (59).

“I heard my dog ​​Desi (60) whine only once, heard a sound of branches being trampled in the undergrowth and then a thud, thud, thud, of some enormous beast fleeing. But that howl! I have heard half a dozen lions roar in chorus twenty meters away; I have heard female elephants bellow madly; I have heard leopards in chains turn the silent nights into deafening agonies of piercing roars. But I have never heard, nor do I wish to hear again, a howl like that of the Chimiset. A trail of red spots in the sand showed where my dog ​​Desi had fled. Beside this trail were enormous footprints, four times larger than those of a man, where one could clearly see the mark of three enormous toes with claws, like the trefoil marks of a lion's paw pad, where the sole of the paw presses. But I have never seen a lion display a paw like that of the monster that had made that terrifying trail.” (61).

Hichens led a hunting party after the beast at dawn, but lost the tracks and never found his dog or the predator that had kidnapped it (62).

Several official sources also recorded information about the Nandi Bear. In the 1932-34 Kenya Colony and Protectorate Game Department, Captain F.D. Hislop, district commissioner of Kapsabet, described the sighting of a large bear-like creature that was "neither a hyena nor a baboon."

The same report included Gunnar Anderssen’s account of an animal roaring as it killed a boar near Kaimosi, described as “very large, with long black hair and a tail like that of a dog” (63) (64).

Charles Stoneham reported the Nandi Bear's taste for brains and also saw one of the beasts near the Kipsanot River. He wrote:

“It was the size of a lion, but its movements were different from Simba’s long strides. The grass brushed against its belly and it kept its head lower than its body, it seemed to have an enormous tail, it had a huge square head and the snout of a pig; its eyes were two black spots and they fixed on me with an observant look. The creature’s body was covered in brown fur and its tail was the size of a tree branch” (65).

The last report of direct contact with the Nandi Bear dates back to 1960, when engineer Angus McDonald was awakened from his sleep in Kipkabus, Kenya, by a creature that broke into his cabin through a window and chased him for fifty minutes.

McDonald said it was 2,10 m tall, had the face of a monkey and walked just as well on four or two legs. Its footprints were round, the villagers identified the creature as a Chemisit (66).

The last known sighting of the Nandi Bear occurred in February 1998, when engineer Dennis Burnett and his wife Marlene, driving along the Koru-Kisumu road at the base of the Nandi Escarpment in heavy rain, saw a large animal cross the road.

After reversing the car, the couple observed the animal for about fifteen seconds. Although they initially mistook it for a bear, they quickly concluded that it was “a huge, hairy hyena – like a spotted hyena, only much larger” (67).

Illustrations: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – © 2021 Xesko