Dingonek

Dingonek The dingonek as depicted in Jordan's Wide World Magazine (1917) article (Public Domain). Category Neodinosaur Proposed scientific names Other names Dingoneck, jungle walrus, ol-maima, ndamathia Country reported Kenya First reported 1910 Prominent investigators • John Alfred Jordan • Charles William Hobley • Bernard Heuvelmans • James Powell

The dingonek was an ultra-mysterious cryptid reported from the rivers of southern Kenya, known to the Okiek people, and made famous by an alleged sighting made by the English adventurer John Alfred Jordan. Jordan described it as a long-fanged aquatic animal covered in plate-like scales. The dingonek has been called one of the hardest cryptids to classify: it was originally regarded as a neodinosaur, and was connected with Lake Victoria's lukwata, but Bernard Heuvelmans, arguing that the armour was an optical illustion, classified it as a water lion. However, Karl Shuker notes that Jordan was insistent regarding the presence of scales, and a similar armour-plated mammal, the kumbway, is reported from the swamps of Liberia.

Contemporaries who made inquiries among local people found that similar animals were known under various names, such as ol-maima (Masai: "cripple") and ndamathia. The former name is now applied to monitor lizards and pangolins, and the dingonek itself has not been reported since the original sightings in 1907.

Attestations

Edgar Beecher Bronson (1856 – 1917) and John Alfred Jordan (1857 – 1933).

The dingonek was allegedly seen by John Alfred Jordan (1857 – 1933), a notorious adventurer and ivory poacher who operated in a rarely-visited region of southern British East Africa, around the border with German East Africa. Despite his illegal activities, Jordan gained the respect of the colonial authorities by pacifying the local warlike tribes. Jordan's story was first published by the American big game hunter Edgar Beecher Bronson (1856 – 1917), who met him during a 1909 safari, and included the account in his book In Closed Territory (1910). Jordan himself later included the story in articles in Wide World Magazine (1917) and the Daily Mail (1919), and the posthumous, possibly ghostwritten books Elephants and Ivory (1956) and The Elephant Stone (1959). According to Jordan, the name dingonek was used by his "Dorobo" or "Lumbwa" followers, one of whom claimed he had seen the animal on two other occasions.

According to Charles William Hobley – founder of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society, who had confiscated poached specimens from Jordan in the past – when the story became known in British East Africa, it was initially regarded as a "traveller's tale, told to entertain a newcomer." However, Hobley later received an account of a similar animal seen in the Mara River, and, when he made inquiries regarding the animal to the Kisii District Commissioner, Dudley Russell Crampton (1882 – 1947), was informed that the local Masai knew it under the name ol-umaina. Hobley also suggested a connection between the dingonek and the ndamathia, a reptilian animal of the Tana River known to the Kikuyu. This animal, which played a role in Kikuyu religion and ceremonies, was described as a reptile, crocodile, serpent, or dragon, but also had a hairy tail. Hobley's conclusion was that stories of the dingonek and lukwata could represent "another zoological prize of a startling character," perhaps "a survival of some extinct race of saurians."

When herpetologist and cryptozoologist James Powell conducted field work in Kenya in 1978, Heuvelmans asked him to investigate the dingonek. Powell, who hoped that the dingonek might turn out to be a dinosaur, received information on the animal from three elderly Siria men from Lolgorien, a village near the Migori, who asserted that the animal was called ol-maima, not ol-umaina. Although they identified the ol-maima with Powell's image of Tyrannosaurus, their description recalled the giant pangolin (Smutsia gigantea). According to more recent sources, the name ol-maima, which means "crippled" in Masai, is usually applied to monitor lizards.

Description

Depiction of the dingonek by Philippe Coudray in Guide des Animaux Cachés (2014).

Jordan estimated the dinognek's length variably at anywhere between 14–18 ft (4.2–5.4 m), whereas the second witness described it cautiously as around 16 ft (4.8 m). Its back was broad and covered in "beautifully overlapping scales" like those of an armadillo, which appeared to be patterned like a leopard, an effect attributed by Jordan to the dappled sunlight. However, the second witness also described it as spotted like a leopard. Jordan initially compared the "massive head," "flat-skulled and round" and featuring feline ears, to that of a leopard; however, after the second witness described it as otter-like, so did Jordan. Jordan consistently described the animal as having large yellow tusks projecting from its upper jaw, like those of a walrus, a significant characteristic not mentioned by the second witness. Its tail was broad and "finned," and apparently used like a rudder.

Sightings

~1907

Jordan claimed he had encountered the dingonek around the year 1907, while marching towards the Migori River. Some of his men who had gone on ahead to the river came back, terrified, to alert him that they had seen a "frightful strange beast" on the riverbank, which had plunged into the water upon their appearance. Jordan disbelieved the men, who described the animal as "some sort of cross between a sea serpent, a leopard, and a whale," but went down to the river to see it half an hour later. The earliest first-hand account of the sighting was published in Wide World Magazine (1917), and thence in several other magazines and newspapers.

“

When I had taken up my position with great care, I glanced towards the animal, and saw a huge monster lying lengthwise in the centre of the stream, about thirty feet from where I was standing. I made careful observations for some minutes, and will endeavor to state what it appeared like. The beast measured from fifteen to eighteen feet in length. The massive head was shaped something like that of an otter; two large fangs descended from the upper jaw, resembling those of a walrus. The back of this strange beast was as broad as a hippo's, but scaled like an armadillo, and the light deflected on the scales gave it the appearance of being colored like a leopard. It had a broad tail, with which it lazily switched the water, this section apparently assisting it to remain stationary, heading up-stream in the extremely rapid current. My sensations are difficult to describe. I felt a kind of awed pleasure. Before me lay a totally unknown monster which I should be the first to record; the thrill of possession was upon me. Taking careful aim, I fired at the head with a solid .303 cartridge. Then an extraordinary thing occurred. The beast turned and, facing the bank, leapt straight upwards into the air, standing, as it appeared to me, ten or twelve feet on end. What happened after that I do not know, for losing my nerve, I scrambled up the bank.

”

When Jordan returned to the river, the animal had disappeared, but its tracks remained in the soft mud. They were as wide as hippopotamus tracks, but bore the marks of large claws. When Bronson expressed scepticism regarding the story, Jordan asked him to interview his hunting party about the incident; according to Bronson, through an interpreter, they all gave more-or-less identical accounts.

Before his safari, Bronson had met Charles William Hobley, who had described the lukwata of Lake Victoria to him; according to Hobley, the Baganda, Wasoga, and Kavirondo people living on the northern shore of the lake believed that the lukwata had recently been shot and killed by a white man, causing a sleeping sickness epidemic. The Maltese adventurer and animal collector James Martin (1857 – 1924) also later mentioned the lukwata to Bronson. Knowing that the Migori River flows into Lake Victoria, Bronson assumed that the dingonek was the lukwata which had supposedly been shot, a view which Jordan himself came to accept.

Before 1913

Charles William Hobley received a second account of an unidentified animal, which he connected with the dingonek, from an unidentified witness who had allegedly seen it in the Mara River, near the border with German East Africa. Hobley printed this account in the Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society (1913).

“

He was at the time where the Mara River crosses the frontier, and the river was in high flood. The beast came floating down the river on a big log, and he estimated its length at about sixteen feet, but could not certain of its length as its tail was in the water. He describes it as spotted like a leopard, covered with scales, and having a head like an otter; he did not see the long fangs described by Mr. Jordan. He fired at it and hit it; it slid off the log into the water and was not seen again.

”

Current status

Although no sightings have been recorded since 1907, Jordan claimed that, among local tribes, it was considered taboo to kill a dingonek, which Karl Shuker notes is a good omen for its possible continued existence. On the other hand, Heuvelmans regarded it as probably extinct, though he was more optimistic about the status of the water lions which he regarded as its cousins.

Theories

Hoax

Jordan had a reputation as a raconteur, and his story of the dingonek was regarded as a "traveller's tale" when it became widely known in British East Africa. Heuvelmans rejected the possibility of a hoax because Jordan's several accounts were generally consistent regarding major facts, but inconsistent regarding minor detals such as the animal's size and the date of the sighting: Heuvelmans felt that this shows that he was neither spinning a story, nor sticking to a "script". However, Karl Shuker notes a number of more significant discrepancies between Jordan's various accounts, casting doubt on the reliability of his sighting.

Mistaken identity

The description of the ol-maima received by James Powell in 1978 most probably applied to the giant pangolin (Smutsia gigantea; CC BY-SA 3.0).

A description of the ol-maima received by James Powell in 1978 seems to refer to the giant pangolin (Smutsia gigantea): the ol-maima was described to him as an aquatic animal, some 6 ft (1.8 m) long, with hair-based scales, a long snout, and a long tail. According to Heuvelmans, it is not surprising that the Kikuyu would confuse the giant pangolin with the dingonek, given that both are rare and therefore little-known animals. Alternatively, he suggested that the name ol-maima could originally have referred to a genuine unknown animal which had since gone extinct, leaving the Masai to apply the name to the most similar animal left: the giant pangolin.

Neodinosaur

The dingonek was originally regarded as a reptile. Jordan could not be certain whether it was "a descendant of one of the huge prehistoric saurians" or "an unclassified reptile or amphibian," but he was certain it was a reptile or amphibian of some kind, as was Hobley. Bernard Heuvelmans, however, believed that the dingonek was more likely to be a mammal. Although Jordan identified it as a reptile, all of the comparisons he used in his accounts related to mammals: even when he described its scaled, he compared them to those of an armadillo, rather than a lizard, snake, or crocodile. Furthermore, prominent fangs or tusks are not a common reptilian feature: although they are famously present in some snakes, such teeth are more common among the mammals. There is also little evidence that the lukwata, widely identified with the dingonek by contemporaries, was a reptile: it is more likely to have been a giant catfish or a serpentine mammal.

Water lion

See also: Water lion§Theories

Heuvelmans classified the dingonek as a water lion, which he believed to be aquatic sabre-toothed cats, depicted by Philippe Coudray in Guide des Animaux Cachés (2009).

A variety of tusked aquatic cryptids, termed water lions, have been reported from Africa, and Heuvelmans, who classified the dingonek as a water lion, theorised that these cryptids are sabre-toothed cats (subfamily Machairodontinae) adapted to a mostly aquatic lifestyle. Irrespective of its alleged scales, Heuvelmans noted that the dingonek bore some resemblance to a sabre-toothed cat: the head was originally compared to a leopard's, the body plan was plausibly feline, and the walrus-like tusks were very like the enlarged canines of a sabre-toothed cat. Although the second witness saw no tusks, Heuvelmans suggested that the sabre teeth could be smaller or even absent in some circumstances. However, the broad tail of the dingonek is inconsistent with both other descriptions of water lions, and a sabre-toothed cat identity, as both the cryptids and the fossil animals are generally represented with short tails.

The alleged scale armour of the dingonek is the largest problem with this theory. Heuvelmans theorised that, if the dingonek was a feline, its "scales" could be explained as a trick of the light caused by the sun casting shadows on its shiny, wet fur, which could have been clumped up by the water. Jordan believed that the leopard-like spots of the dingonek were an optical illusion caused by the dappled sunlight on its scales, but there is no reason the opposite scenario could not be true.

Other theories

Karl Shuker has noted that Jordan "seemed very emphatic that this creature was genuinely scaled" in his first-hand account. Heuvelmans had initially suggested that the dingonek, alongside the mourou-ngou and lipata, might have been a giant crocodile related to the dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis), which has a round, relatively short snout. A cryptid very similar to the dingonek has been reported from the rainforest swamps of Liberia's Lofa County: the kumbway. According to American aid worker and missionary John-Mark Shephard, the kumbway is a 15–20 ft (4–6 m) quadrupedal mammal covered in brown and black armour plating, with prominent teeth. Like the dingonek, it is capable of rearing up bipedally.

In popular culture

• In modern portrayals, the dingonek is often depicted with a scorpion-like sting on its tail. The origin of this addition, which is not described in sightings or folklore, is unknown.

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