Abasambo

The abasambo was a cryptid felid reported from Ethiopia, sometimes classified as a spotted lion. Its existence was first reported by the Italian explorer Orazio Antinori, who described it in a letter to fellow explorer Georg Schweinfurth shortly before dying in Ethiopia. Antinori wrote of:

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...Abasambo, an extremely ferocious carnivore, which, according to the information given by the natives, is a beast with light, short, erect hair, which is halfway between the Lion and the Leopard. If the information in question is correct, it will come, when it is well known, to extend the list of felines in North Africa. When Captain Cecchi stayed at the camp of Degiac Imer, military governor of Gudru [south of the Blue Nile], he was on the spot when an abasambo, after digging a hole through the wall of a hut during the night, seized a young boy who slept by the door, and sank his fangs into his flesh. Because of the shouting by the people, the animal fled, but the boy, who had had his chest torn, died a few hours later. The natives know and distinguish by particular names, the leopard, the cheetah, and the black leopard, which they call Ghissila. What, then, may be this great species that, by its color, size and power, is set between the Lion and the Leopard?

”

A French engineer who travelled in Abyssinia, Lefebvre, also heard stories of the abasambo, which he believed was a kind of wolf.