Mokele Mbembe

The Mokele-Mbembe is a cryptid native to the African nation of Cameroon, where its name translates to "he who stops the flow of rivers."  Much like the Loch Ness Monster and other lake dwelling monsters in the West, the Mokele-Mbembe is thought by many to be a remnant dinosaur, a holdover from the prehistoric days, which manages to survive in the remote tropical forests of one of the most developing of the world's "developing nations."

The Mokele-Mbembe is often described as being "like an elephant with a long neck," which raises some questions in and of itself.  What's the difference between an elephant with its trunk held up in the air, and an elephant with a long neck?  Particularly if it's dark out, and you may be either drunk or looking for a good story to tell your neighbors, or both?

However, many of the descriptions match what we know of sauropods, a category of herbivorous dinosaurs which roamed Africa from the late Triassic through the Jurassic, up until the Late Cretaceous.  Some of the biggest animals to roam the planet were sauropods, including the Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus.

A smaller sauropod, Diplodocus, is often tapped as being the most likely identity of Mokele-Mbembe.  The Diplodocus was herbivorous and preferred swampy wetlands and lakes, and about the size of an elephant and had a long neck, much as Mokele-Mbembe has been described.

Intriguingly, in 2001 a BBC documentary crew showed a photograph of a rhinoceros to tribe members, who identified it as Mokele-Mbembe.  The rhinoceros is not known to wander into the Congo River Basin, although they do exist on the content, so it is possible that Mokele-Mbembe could simply be a passing rhino.

The Congo River is the Mokele-Mbembe's stomping ground, particularly around Lake Tele.  Most of the reports of Mokele-Mbembe are taken from local tribes people, and although we tend to think that tribal people are living "closer to the land" and therefore able to offer more reliable accounts of native fauna, it's important to remember that non-Western civilizations often have a different understanding of what does and does not constitute "truth."  

Many non-Western cultures do not really distinguish between a "real animal" and a mythical creature, god, or spirit being.  Others do not draw a distinct line between the waking world and the dream world, or completely discount the validity of the dream world the way that we do in the West.  Further clouding the issue is that tribes people are, being human, just as likely to get drunk or want to spin a good yarn, or even to lie for effect, as the rest of us.

Of course, this hasn't stopped any number of expeditions from going in after the Mokele-Mbembe - more expeditions than possibly any other cryptid except perhaps Nessie.  Many years ago I read Drums Along the Congo, author and amateur naturalist Rory Nugent's account of traveling to the Congo in pursuit of the Mokele-Mbembe.  Nugent didn't find his quarry, although he does claim to have gotten very close to it.  But isn't that always the way with these cryptids, tantalizingly just out of reach?