Olitiau

Olitiau Sanderson's encounter with the olitiau, as drawn by William Rebsamen. Category Giant bat Proposed scientific names Other names Olitiaou Country reported Cameroon First reported 1937 Prominent investigators • Ivan T. Sanderson • Bernard Heuvelmans • Karl Shuker

The olitiau was a cryptid giant bat reported from the Assumbo Mountains of Cameroon, best known from a sighting made by Ivan T. Sanderson and Gerald Russell. It has sometimes been equated with the kongamato.

Etymology

"Olitiau" is an Ipulo word, and is possibly a transcription of "Ole Ntya" ("cloven" or "forked"), which is the name of a dance mask with horns that is used to represent a demon. Bernard Heuvelmans argues that the name "olitiau" may not be the native term for the bat itself, as the locals could have misinterpreted Sanderson's description as that of a devil, but as it is the only term known, it is the one used in cryptozoological literature. James Powell's mention of the term to people in the area failed to elicit a response, though he admitted that he may have been pronouncing it wrong.

Attestations

Ivan T. Sanderson and Gerald Russell claimed to have seen an olitiau in 1932, when they were leading the Percy Sladen Expedition to West Africa. Their sighting was first published in Sanderson's book Animal Treasure (1937). Jørgen Birket-Smith, a comparative anatomist at the University of Copenhagen who had travelled in Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, told Roy P. Mackal that he had met others in Cameroon who believed in the giant bat, including a schoolteacher who claimed to have seen it.

Description

Sanderson described the olitiau, which he only saw briefly, as entirely black and about the size of an eagle, with a semicircle of pointed white teeth, set "about their own width apart from each other." These teeth were described as chattering. After the sighting, both Sanderson and Gerald Russell agreed that the animal had a wingspan of at least 12'. Sanderson later added that the bat's head was monkey-like rather than dog-like, and was not pointed.

Sightings

1932

Sanderson allegedly saw an olitiau in 1932. It appeared to him and Gerald Russell (whom Sanderson refers to as George), who were wading through a shallow river in the Assumbo Mountains, in the north of Mamfé, after they stopped to retrieve a hammer-headed bat they had shot. Sanderson stepped on something that moved, possibly a tortoise, and lost his balance: when he recovered, Russell shouted "Look out!"

“

And I looked. Then I let out a shout also and instantly bobbed down under the water, because, coming straight at me only a few feet above the water was a black thing the size of an eagle. I had only a glimpse of its face, yet that was quite sufficient, for its lower jaw hung open and bore a semicircle of pointed white teeth set about their own width apart from each other. When I emerged, it was gone. George was facing the other way blazing off his second barrel. I arrived dripping on my rock and we looked at each other. "Will it come back?" we chorused. And just before it became too dark to see, it came again, hurtling back down the river, its teeth chattering, the air "shss-shssing" as it was cleft by the great, black, dracula-like wings. We were both off-guard, my gun was unloaded, and the brute made straight for George. He ducked. The animal soared over him and was at once swallowed up in the night.

”

When they returned to their camp, they encountered several local hunters who had come to sell them animals. Sanderson told these people about his encounter, and they told him he had seen an olitiau, a very feared animal. The hunters then fled from the camp; when they returned the following day, and Sanderson and Russell refused to move on, they became sullen. Both men kept detailed diaries while in Africa, and, when Sanderson consulted Russell on the sighting in 1970, he found that both their accounts matched, in memory and in writing. Sanderson subsequently included another account of the sighting in Investigating the Unexplained (1972):

“

Whipping around toward [Russell], I was confronted by an apparition, such as I had never imagined existed, about fifteen feet away and just above the level of my eyes. It was coming straight at me awfully fast, so I ducked down into the water. I got a very good and close look at its face and, to put it facetiously, "That weren't no boid." Its lower jaw hung down and, as the light of the sun was directly shining onto its face, I could have counted the huge white teeth if I had had the time. They were a good two inches long, all about the same length, and all equally separated by spaces of the same width. This animal that flew at me had a muzzle more like that of a monkey than of a dog or of any kind of reptile, in that it was not drawn out to a point. The whole animal was coal black in color, including the wings, which were quite opaque. It did not appear to be hairy, but then neither do most bats until you examine them in your hand. Recovering my gun, I swung around and called to Gerald to watch out for it to come back, and a short time later it did so; but in those few minutes the last rays of the sun had moved up, and there was deep shadow over the river. We both blazed away with both barrels, but the great creature just sailed right over us, uninterrupted and making a "ssssh-sssshing" sound, so fast was it going. In fact, its speed of flight was much greater than we had estimated, and this speed may have been the reason we missed it, though Gerald is deadly at snap shots, and it was almost on top of us. I have often wondered if we did hit it, but that our shot, which was for collecting small animals, just failed to penetrate its hide. Alternatively, we may simply have blasted holes through its vast wing-membranes. We made haste back to our camp about a mile upstream.

”

Theories

The largest African bat is the hammer-headed bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus), which inhabited the area the olitiau was seen, but this bat has a distinctive head shape and is not aggressive.

Microbats such as the yellow-winged bat (Lavia frons) conform to the olitiau's morphology, but not its size.

Sanderson believed the animal he saw was a bat, and the most immediately obvious identity would be a bat of the order Megachiroptera, which are the largest bats. They possess the very widely-spaced teeth noted by Sanderson, and do have a habit of dipping into the water for unknown reasons. As described by Sanderson, the olitiau was far larger than any known African bat of either order, but Bernard Heuvelmans strongly questions Sanderson's estimate of its size.

The hammer-headed bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus), which Sanderson and Russell had just shot, is the largest African bat of the Megachiroptera, with a wingspan of up to 3'. Hammer-headed bats are usually regarded as gentle and harmless, but, as Sanderson had just shot one, Heuvelmans and Roy P. Mackal suggest that the olitiau may have been a grieving parent or mate attacking in anger. Hammer-headed bats have also been observed habitually preying on captive chickens, and scavenging the carcasses of other birds, and are demonised as blood-suckers in parts of Africa. However, Heuvelmans also noted that all the African flying foxes are brown or yellowish in colour, while the olitiau was reported to be all-black. While it could have been melanistic, an oversized and melanistic individual being seen would be an extreme coincidence, and Heuvelmans questions why naturalists like Sanderson and Russell would fail to identify even a melanistic individual immediately after shooting a normal specimen. More seriously, the horse-like head of the hammer-headed bat is at odds with Sanderson's description of the olitiau as monkey-faced.

The only carnivorous bats are those in the order Microchiroptera, which are often smaller than megabats. While this is not always the case, in Africa itself, large bats are gentle, and only smaller bats are actively carnivorous. Some of these small carnivorous bats are also bold and aggressive, attacking birds and other bats, and could feasibly attack a human. The yellow-winged bat (Lavia frons) is the largest bat of this group in Africa. It is fond of aquatic insects and hunts during the day, but it does not achieve a wingspan of more than 16'', and has coppery-coloured wings. In light of its appearance and behaviour, Karl Shuker and Sanderson himself suggested the olitiau could have been an undiscovered giant bat of the Microchiroptera suborder; Heuvelmans observed its similarity to bats in the family Molossidae, which have monkey-like faces and, in some cases, little hair, and concluded that it may be an unknown giant species in that family: it would be the largest bat in Africa.

Although Sanderson insisted the animal was a bat, Frank Lane described it as a pterosaur in print, a move resented by Sanderson. Although initially critical, Sanderson eventually became more sympathetic to the idea that the olitiau may have been a pterosaur, writing to Bernard Heuvelmans in 1959 to remark that he "didn't see anything unreasonable in it". Sanderson believed that pterosaurs were cliff and cave dwellers—and there were plenty of cliffs in the area—which "aeroplaned over water to dip for fish". However, Sanderson's final word on the subject was that the animal had definitely been a giant bat, which was also Russell's opinion.

The olitiau has been equated with the kongamato by several authors. Heuvelmans writes that "the general appearance, the size, the long jaws bristling with teeth, the habitat by the water's edge, and the panic it causes among the natives all agree". Additionally, the olitiau's habit of diving at people intruding on its territory could explain the kongamato's reputation for capsizing canoes. Karl Shuker also notes that one rarely-reported bat-like version of the kongamato is reminiscent of the olitiau.