Coje ya menia

Coje ya menia Cat Reptile Category Water lion Proposed scientific names Other names Leão da água, ndumba wa meia, tambwe ya meia Country reported Angola First reported 1939 Prominent investigators • Ingo Krumbiegel • Bernard Heuvelmans

The coje ya menia (Mbundu: "water lion") is a water lion reported from Angola's Upper Cuango and Cuanza Rivers, as well as their tributaries. It was one of the earliest water lions to be studied, and was investigated by Ingo Krumbiegel before the advent of cryptozoology.

Description

There are few physical details regarding the coje ya menia, though it is said to have a large pair of tusks or fangs, and is smaller than a hippopotamus. Its tracks were described as similar to those of an elephant, but with toes overprinted on the impression of the sole, somewhat similar to the tracks of the mourou-ngou or the dingonek. It is said to have a loud, rumbling roar.

It is amphibious, and generally lives in the water of rivers and stagnant waters, but sometimes comes out onto the bank, and, when the main rivers flood during the monsoons, it leaves for smaller rivers and lagoons. Thus, it is most often seen in the rainy season, when it must leave the water to migrate. Based on the 1930s incident and the fact that its roars are most often heard at night, it is also nocturnal. Indeed, local people believe that it only emerges from the water during the night. Like other water lions, it is reputed to hunt and kill, but not eat, hippopotamuses:

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Often there is a wild chase of pursuer and pursued hippopotamus which will be in the water or on land. The coje ya menia will kill it but does not eat it by any means. According to the stories the hippo will be torn apart with claws or teeth with unexplained bloodthirstiness.

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Attestations

Ilse von Nolde, who lived in Angola for ten years and reported the alleged existence of the coje ya menia in 1939, wrote that the locals often drew her attention to distant rumbling sounds which they said were the roars of the coje ya menia. However, while many people living on the tributaries of the Cuango claimed to have heard its roaring, nobody who Nolde spoke to ever claimed to have seen a coje ya menia. On one such tributary, the Lui, Nolde met a man wearing hippopotamus-skin shoes, who claimed the skin came from an animal which had been killed by a coje ya menia.

As of 1999, the water lion, called ndumba wa meia, was still reputed to haunt the waterways of Angola, and was described as butchering hippopotamuses with ease. However, by this time it was also relatively mythologised: it was said to leave a trail of blood in its wake, and to be able to control the flow of the rivers.

Sightings

~1930s

A swampy region of the Cuango River.

In the 1930s, a Portuguese lorry-driver told von Nolde of a near-encounter he'd had with a coje ya menia. He said that one day, on the Cuango at a latitude of about nine degrees south, he heard that a coje ya menia had chased and killed a hippopotamus the night before. He investigated with some native hunters, and was able to find the spoor of both animals, which the men followed across the savannah for several hours. The trail consisted of the tracks of a hippopotamus which seemed to be in a hurry, and those of a smaller animal, somewhat resembling those of an elephant, but with "the mark of toes beneath the sole of the foot". Eventually the men reached an area of broken-down grass and shrubs, in the middle of which was a dead but uneaten hippopotamus, "hacked and ripped as if with a huge bush-knife" and furrowed with long cuts and lacerations.

Theories

According to Ilse von Nolde, a case of mistaken identity is out of the question because of the immense deductive skill of Angolan trackers, who can "follow every stage of a battle with as much interest as we follow an exciting story at the cinema" simply by reading tracks. Von Nolde also rejected the notion of some confusion with the crocodile, which is called gandu or ngandu in all local languages. However, some cryptozoologists note that the coje ya menia, of which there is very little in the way of physical descriptions, sounds rather like a hippopotamus (the local name for which is gufu) itself: as with the other water lions, it is suggested that the hippopotamus killings could be carried out by other hippopotamuses, during the rutting season. Von Nolde also rejected this explanation, noting that the coje ya menia is said to chase down, not simply fight, hippopotamuses.

German mammalogist Ingo Krumbiegel (1903 – 1990), who made a very thorough study of the coje ya menia, suggested that it could be a big reptile, as its reported behaviour is not inconsistent with that of predatory reptiles. He theorised that it could be either a horned giant monitor lizard with a very sharp, cutting beak; or even a neodinosaur. However, he did not find this explanation likely, and Bernard Heuvelmans also argued against this possibility on account of the fact that no known reptile has a pair of long canine teeth.

Reconstruction of the African sabre-toothed cat Megantereon whitei in a tropical riverine habitat, by Mauricio Antón.

Based on its scant physical description and reported behaviour, Krumbiegel thought it quite plausible that the coje ya menia could be a mammalian predator: and, because of its long fangs, the mammal which immediately springs to mind is the sabre-toothed cat. The unusual tracks with the impressions of toes could be explained by the hypothetical water lion having developed webbed and heavily padded feet, to aid it in swimming and prevent its feet from sinking into wet mud. In addition, although the forefeet of an elephant are round, the hindfeet are more oval-shaped: so when the Portuguese eyewitness described the coje ya menia's tracks as like those of an elephant, he may have been referring to an elephant's hindlimb tracks.

Krumbiegel favoured this theory over the giant monitor theory, and thought it possible that a sabre-toothed cat could survive unnoticed by science in the impassable marshlands of Central and West Africa, especially if it were nocturnal. Bernard Heuvelmans also supported the theory, listing the coje ya menia as one of Africa's aquatic sabre-toothed cats. Regarding its habit of killing hippopotamuses, Krumbiegel suggested that the coje ya menia could either become enraged with the animals for some reason—perhaps giving chase on instinct when a hippopotamus flees—or it could lap up blood from the wounds as nourishment, not eating the flesh because of its large teeth and musculature preventing the cat from opening its jaws too wide. Krumbiegel also pointed out that the coje ya menia may also kill other, smaller riverine animals, but only the deaths of the hippopotamuses would be noticed because of the victims' impressive size.

Von Nolde believed that the coje ya menia was a pachyderm, and Heuvelmans originally argued that it could well be a hypothetical Deinotherium-like amphibious proboscidean with downwards-curved tusks. A relatively small pachyderm would naturally compete for food and territory with hippopotamuses, explaining the coje ya menia's famous hatred for them. The elephant would also attack by savagely stabbing its enemy with its downwards-pointing tusks, which would be consistent with the injuries of the dead hippopotamus. Such cryptids are reported from elsewhere in Africa, being especially associated with the Rothschild tusk, but whether or not they are the same things as water lions is unclear.

Further cryptozoological reading

• Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique, Plon, ISBN 978-2259003872
• Heuvelmans, Bernard & Rivera, Jean-Luc & Barloy, Jean-Jacques (2007) Les Félins Encore Inconnus d’Afrique, Les Editions de l'Oeil du Sphinx, ISBN 978-2914405430