| ||||||||||||||
The auli or ia-bahr-tedcha (Amharic: "water calf" or "sea calf") was a cryptid sirenian reported from Ethiopian and Eritrean lakes, rivers, and marshes, including Lake Tana and the Mareb River.[2] It is speculated to be a species of freshwater manatee, only one of which (Trichechus senegalensis) is currently known from Africa.[3][4]
Attestations[]
Explorer Theodore von Heuglin (1824 – 1876), who travelled to Ethiopia through 1861 and 1862 in search of the missing explorer Eduard Vogel, received the first accounts of the auli, which he published in 1868. He simply wrote that Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, was home to a species of manatee called ia-baher-tedcha, auli, or ouila. He thought it could be identical to another animal he had heard of, the ourha-bieh, a large aquatic animal found in tributaries of the Mareb, such as the Sibda. He later reiterated that it was "undoubtedly a manatee".[3][1] Heuglin thought the reports reliable, whereas the zoologist Leopold Fitzinger (1802 – 1884), who catalogued the mammals collected by Heuglin, felt that they were based on a fable.[5]
Theories[]
Two kinds of sirenian are known from African waters: the freshwater West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis), which inhabits rivers and coasts no further east than the Lower Congo, including numerous lakes far from the sea: its presence in Lake Chad and the Chari River has long been suspected by explorers, including, but was not then confirmed; and the dugong (Dugong dugon), a marine species found along the eastern coasts: the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and the Swahili Coast. The dugong's range is closest to that of the alleged auli, but, as a marine species, it could not survive in freshwater. Bernard Heuvelmans doubted that a West African manatee could make it from the Chad Basin to the Nile Basin,[3] a sentiment echoed by George Eberhart,[4] leading him to theorise that the auli could be a unique type of sirenian descended from Eocene species known from Egypt, such as Eotheroides or Eosiren, both of which still retained their hind limbs.[3]
Heuvelmans believed that several other African lake monsters could be explained by unknown species of sirenians, including freshwater octopuses in Africa and animals reported from wetlands and lakes in Chad, which were sometimes alleged to have small hind limbs.[3] Manatees were also believed to exist in Lake Chad by the explorer Heinrich Barth (1821 – 1865), and, during the 19th Century, were often described as inhabiting Lakes Tana and Chad, as well as Lake Shirwa in Mozambique, this latter belief being based on a report by John Kirk (1832 – 1922) of a lake-dwelling animal the size of a hippopotamus.[5][6]
Lake map[]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Heuglin, Theodore von (1868) Reise nach Abessinien, den Gala-Ländern, Ost-Sudàn und Chartum in den Jahren 1861 u. 1862
- ↑ Heuvelmans, Bernard "Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown Animals With Which Cryptozoology Is Concerned", Cryptozoology, No. 5 (1986)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique, Plon, ISBN 978-2259003872
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Eberhart, George M. (2002) Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology, ABC-CLIO, Inc., ISBN 1576072835
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Murray, Andrew "Heuglin's 'Reise Nach Abessinien," Journal of Travel and Natural History, Vol. 1 (1868)
- ↑ Larrabee, W. H. "The Sirens of the Sea," Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 20 (March 1882)