The Kongamato of Africa
A pterosaur-like flying creature is reported from Zambian swamps. The first written account is Frank Melland's 1923 book; no physical evidence has been found.
The Kongamato is a flying creature said to live in the Jiundu swamps of western Zambia and nearby parts of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The name is usually translated as “overwhelmer of boats” (some writers say “breaker of boats”). It is described as having a wingspan of about four to seven feet, reddish featherless skin and a long beak with teeth. Cryptozoologists say it looks like a pterosaur. No body, bone or clear photograph exists. The earliest written source is a book from 1923, not 1932.
Melland, 1923
Frank H. Melland was a British colonial magistrate in what was then Northern Rhodesia. In 1923 he published In Witchbound Africa, an account of the Kaonde people (Seeley, Service & Co., London). It is the earliest Western record of the Kongamato that we can trace. As the story is usually retold, the Kaonde described a dangerous creature in the Jiundu swamps. When shown a picture of a pterosaur, they said it looked like the Kongamato. We could not open the book’s text, so we cannot check his wording. Note that this “picture test” involved showing informants a drawing, which can lead the answer.
Later Reports
About 1925 the journalist G. Ward Price wrote that he heard a first-hand account in Southern Rhodesia. In 1928 the palaeontologist Carl Winman suggested the stories might have spread from workers who had found pterosaur fossils in Tanzania. In 1932 Gerald Russell and Ivan T. Sanderson claimed to have seen a huge flying animal in Cameroon. That is a different animal from the Kongamato, though writers often link them. Sanderson later suggested a giant bat. In 1956 an engineer, J. P. F. Brown, reported two large flying reptile-like animals over the Bangweulu swamps.
The “1957 hospital case” is a retold story rather than a documented record. The usual version says a man with chest wounds came to a hospital near Fort Rosebery (now Mansa) in Zambia after being attacked by a large bird in the Bangweulu swamps, and that he drew a pterosaur-like animal. We found no hospital record, doctor’s name or contemporary report. Some websites name the patient or add that he fled when shown a picture. We could not confirm any of that, so it is not repeated here. The reviewer’s doubt about “Jo Wills-Lloyd” is justified, as we found no source for the name.
Explanations
Sceptics point to storks and the shoebill. Reay Smithers, director of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia, suggested shoebills behind Brown’s sighting. Rick Emmer has suggested that saddle-billed or marabou storks defending nests may be behind the boat-attack stories. A photograph by Ian Colvin of the Daily Telegraph in the late 1950s was analysed and judged most likely to show a shoebill or saddle-billed stork. Pterosaurs also died out about 66 million years ago, and their wing structure makes the diving attacks described unlikely.
Sources
- Kongamato (Wikipedia) - timeline of the reports and the skeptical explanations
- Melland, In Witchbound Africa (Glottolog bibliography record) - confirms the 1923 publication by Seeley, Service & Co., London