Strange and Mysterious Monsters of the Congo

One of the vastest and most sprawling, uncharted remaining wildernesses in the world is the Congo Basin of Africa, also commonly referred to as simply the Congo. Located in Central Africa, in a region known as west equatorial Africa, the Congo encompasses the countries Angola, Gabon, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia, and is home to some of the largest tropical rainforests in the world, second only to the Amazon rainforest in South America in size. This is a land of impenetrable jungle, a vast, uncharted new world for explorers, and home to an incredible diversity of flora and fauna. It is also a region purportedly inhabited by strange creatures and monsters that remain lost to the world and exist only in fantastical accounts from this dark, mysterious domain. 

One of the most mysterious and persistent types of cryptid creatures of the Congo is that of what is called living dinosaurs, said to be relic populations of those enormous lumbering lizards that once thunderously crashed over the face of our planet with ponderous might. While most may assume that these creatures went extinct eons ago, it is surprising how many reports there are of actual dinosaurs still alive and roaming about in the most isolated parts of our planet as they did millions of years ago. One place that has proven to be a veritable Lost World of supposed living dinosaurs is the dark continent of Africa, and here in the remote unexplored jungles dinosaurs still allegedly reign supreme as if they were never gone at all.

By far the most famous of the supposed lost African dinosaurs is none other than the one called the Mokele-mbembe, which literally translates to “one who stops the flow of rivers.” The habitat of this creature is deep within the furthest recesses of the steamy swampland and dark jungles of the Congo River basin, in particular an expanse of sprawling isolated wilderness called the Likouala swamp region. The beast in question truly lives up to its name, supposedly larger than an elephant and with a long neck topped by a smallish reptilian head and stocky short legs, resembling a brontosaurus and which has been a part of the landscape here for the native tribes since time unremembered. Semi-aquatic in nature, it is rarely seen even by the natives, and although allegedly a vegetarian makes for a frightening sight, with a mighty roar that is said to create great fear and dread in all who hear it. A good description of the Mokele-mbembe can be found in a 1980 issue of Science, within an article called Living Dinosaurs, which reads:

“In the swampy jungles of western Africa, reports persist of an elephant-sized creature with smooth, brownish-gray skin, a long, flexible neck, a very long tail as powerful as a crocodile’s, and three-clawed feet the size of frying pans. Over the past three centuries, native Pygmies and Western explorers have told how the animals feed on the nutlike fruit of a riverbank plant and keep to the deep pools and subsurface caves of waters in this largely unexplored region.”

Although the tribes and missionaries of this land of impenetrable swamp had long known of the creature, it was not until the early 1900s that its existence would finally trickle out to the Western world. In 1909, the renowned big-game hunter Carl Hagenbeck wrote of the creature in his autobiographical work Beasts and Men, in which he told of hearing tales from the natives of a hulking, frightening beast that was described as being half elephant and half dragon. Hagenbeck looked into this phenomenon further, speaking with the naturalist Joseph Menges, who told him that indeed the natives had a rich lore of this beast and that he personally believed it to be some kind of dinosaur similar to a brontosaurus. Yet another of Hagenbeck’s sources was the German adventurer, filmmaker, and big game hunter Hans Schomburgk, who told him that the natives of the area blamed the Mokele-mbembe for killing all of the hippos at a place called Lake Bangweulu.

Another well-publicized account was made in another area in 1913, by German adventurer and Captain Ludwig Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz, who at the time was surveying a region of present-day Cameroon for potential spots for colonies. Natives told him many tales of the Mokele-mbembe, which were surprisingly consistent across the board from many independent sources, although Lausnitz remained rather skeptical himself at first. This version of Mokele-mbembe painted it as a vicious force to be reckoned with, an aggressive behemoth that the natives steered well clear of, and he would later write of the mysterious beast:

“The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and applelike fruits. At the Ssombo River I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food. The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby. But since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals it was impossible to make out a particular spoor with any amount of certainty.”

These accounts, along with other scattered reports from explorers and missionaries in the region of these brontosaurus-like animals roaming the swamps really captured the public imagination of the outside world, with the thought of lumbering dinosaurs from ages past wallowing through the mists of this lost world proving to be absolutely irresistible. Many expeditions were launched into the forbidding terrain of this mysterious domain in search of the enigmatic Mokele-mbembe over the decades, with some of them funded by such respected institutions as the Smithsonian, and even the famed cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson made an excursion there in 1932. Sanderson would come across large tracks that the natives explained as being from the creature, and he also spotted something very large disappear into the water which he could not explain. In the 1930s the lore was further fueled by a report from the region’s Lake Tele of a tribe of pygmies that had actually managed to kill one of the creatures. According to the tale, two of the Mokele-mbembe tried to smash through a wall of stakes designed to keep the beasts out and were set upon by fierce, spear-wielding tribesmen. After an epic, thrashing battle, they were allegedly able to kill one of them, after which they brought it back to the village and had it cooked and eaten as part of a celebratory feast. The story goes that everyone who ate the meat of this mysterious animal became violently ill and later died.

Perhaps the most famous of these expeditions was that of a University of Chicago biologist named Roy Mackal, who ventured to the Likouala swamp region multiple times in the 1980s in order to investigate the stories. Although he would not find any solid physical evidence or see one of the creatures himself, the team did find things like large swaths of broken branches caused by something very large barreling through, footprints, and they claimed to have heard the creatures as well. Mackal would bring back numerous native reports of the Mokele-mbembe, which he compiled into a book entitled Living Dinosaur. Another rather interesting expedition was carried out in 1981 by Herman Regusters, who brought his team to the remote Lake Tele. This particular expedition would come back with quite a bit of supposed evidence of the creatures, such as droppings, a footprint cast, and even an alleged recording of the Mokele-mbembe’s roar.

Indeed, the 1980s saw several promising expeditions into the region. In 1980 there was one launched by German adventurer and engineer Herman Regusters and his wife. The couple would claim to have seen the beast on several occasions, both in the water and on land, as well as hearing its roars, and they even produced an alleged photograph of it. In 1983 a zoologist by the name of Marcellin Agnagna led an expedition to Lake Tele and claimed to have seen the creature when it raised its long neck and head out of the water, which he described as being thin and reddish, with reptilian oval eyes that stared at him for a time before vanishing beneath the murky depths. Interestingly, the only known video footage of the Mokele-mbembe was taken at Lake Tele in 1987, when a Japanese film crew was flying over the lake to survey the area. The footage is grainy at best but shows what appears to be a very large animal of some sort moving across the water, with what looks like it could be a head and neck but which has been criticized as being merely two natives on a canoe.

Expeditions and reports of the Mokele-mbembe have continued into later years, with some of them proving quite spectacular indeed. One British expedition led by explorer and cryptozoologist William Gibbons in 1992 trekked through a large portion of the region and came back with a photograph of what might be the head of a Mokele-mbembe taken at Lake Tele. In 1999 there was also a rather incredible report printed in the Sunday Times of London, which claimed that members of the Kabonga tribe had killed one of the creatures, but it is unknown how much veracity this report holds as no body was ever presented for scrutiny. Despite all of the expeditions and reports, which continue to this day, there has not been any solid evidence provided for the existence of Mokele-mbembe, but it remains the most talked about and sought-after “living dinosaur” of Africa. Is it out there or not? Considering the lack of many modern-day sightings, is there even the chance that if it did exist, has it finally gone extinct after all?

If the Mokele-mbembe is in fact a real living dinosaur and really exists, then it also has some company, and there are various others said to lurk within the muck and trees here, inhabiting the same area, within the remotest, most impenetrable areas of the Congo’s Likouala swamp region. One is a large, saurian creature said to prowl Lake Bangweulu, and which the natives call the Nsanga. This ferocious beast is described as looking very similar to a crocodile, only much larger, without scales, and with formidable, over-sized claws on its feet. The German adventurer Lt. Paul Gratz claimed in 1911 to have been presented with strips of skin from the creature.

A rather more well-known member of this menagerie is called the Emela-ntouka, which literally translates from the local tribal language to “Elephant Killer.” It is said to be a massive dinosaur-like reptilian beast that is said to be about the size of a full-grown elephant and takes a stout, tank-like form with an armored body, a ponderous thick club-like tail, and a prominent and formidable horn protruding from its head similar to that of a rhinoceros. The creature is supposedly semi-aquatic, spending much of its time lurking hidden within the muddy waters of the swamp and, although a vegetarian stays true to its name, storied by local tribes for its explosive aggressiveness, attacking anything that approaches and indeed killing elephants, as well as buffaloes or hippos on occasion with apparent ease, usually while unleashing a reverberating, distinctive growl.

Although this mysterious creature has long been known to the native tribes of the region, the wilderness itself is so forbidding and closed off from the rest of the world that it wasn’t until the 1930s that stories of the existence of this single-horned killing machine prowling the dim swamps began to come in from outsiders. One of the first mentions of the creature by Western explorers was by the adventurer J.E. Hughes, who wrote of a local tribe along the shores of the Luapula River who had killed one of the beasts, an account buried within an otherwise mundane and non-sensationalist 1933 travel book called Eighteen Years on Lake Bangweulu. Interestingly, there was another of the creatures supposedly killed by tribesmen in the early 1930s near a place called Dongou. In 1954 the creature really rocketed into the public consciousness when a former Likouala game inspector named Lucien Blancou wrote of it in an article for the scientific journal Mammalia, saying:

“The presence of a beast which sometimes disembowels elephants is also known, but it does not seem to be prevalent there now as in the preceding districts. A specimen was supposed to have been killed twenty years ago at Dongou, but on the left of the Ubangi and in the Belgian Congo.”

In the 1980s, when Dr. Roy P. Mackal made his way into the hostile wilderness of the Congo looking for the legendary Mokele-mbembe, he too heard the stories of the Emela-ntouka, which he also included in his famous 1987 book A Living Dinosaur. Mackal himself believed the creature to be perhaps a surviving relic population of the Centrosaurus, an extinct dinosaur that possessed a large single horn, a theory supported by the legendary cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, although this cryptid is not said to have the same prominent head ridge that these dinosaurs displayed. Another idea is that the creature is not a dinosaur or even a reptile at all, but rather something more like a new species of semi-aquatic rhinoceros, but considering the incredibly isolated area and the relatively small number of sightings by outsiders it is likely we will never know for sure, and indeed that like the Mokele-mbembe might even be already extinct once and for all.

The Emela-ntouka seems to somewhat physically resemble in some respects other supposed living dinosaurs within the uncharted wildernesses of Africa, particularly an immense squat, armored beast covered in bony plates and with a thick tail said to inhabit the jungles of Kenya and called the Muhuru. Also, roaming the savanna region of Cameroon is a cryptid called the Ngoubou, which is said to be a buffalo-sized hoofed creature with a thick, muscular body and an imposing array of 6 horns upon its head, which it uses to chase off, and on occasion even kill, elephants. It is uncertain what connection either of these have to the Emela-ntouka but the passing similarities are interesting.

Getting back to the Likouala Region of the Republic of Congo we have yet another apparent living dinosaur to join Mokele Mbembe and the Emela-ntouka, in this instance, one called the Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu, or literally "animal with planks growing out of its back." As its name suggests its main feature is an array of protruding armored ridges running along its back, and is said to be almost completely aquatic in nature, rarely seen out of the water, and villagers of the region in which it is seen say that its back is typically covered with a sheen of green algae.

This is rather similar to yet another Congo-dwelling dino called the Nguma-monene, which allegedly takes the form of a massive lizard, or in some accounts a snake, with intimidating ridges down its back. The Nguma-monene is reported from along a tributary of the Ubangi River called Dongu-Mataba, and one of the most famous sightings by an outsider was made by a pastor Joseph Ellis in 1971, who saw it swimming alongside him as he rode a dugout canoe, and who described it as absolutely gigantic, with a portion of the tail alone measuring the same size as the vessel he was in, and with clearly visible diamond-shaped protrusions all along the top. The truly massive creature apparently created a rush of ripples and waves that were enough to threaten to overturn the canoe as it glided past. This creature is also apparently very aggressive, and supposedly hates hippos, killing them on sight. Hippos seem to just do that to these dinosaurs.

Other areas of the Congo are not without their own stories of roving dinosaurian monsters. Cameroon, which is also thought to be a haunt of the Mokele-mbembe and others, also has a monster of supposedly truly epic proportions known locally as the M'kuoo M’bemboo. This creature is said to be truly gargantuan, with its head alone described as being the size of a full-grown hippo. The M'kuoo M’bemboo is described as being jet black and has a flattened head that is reminiscent of that of a seal. The creature is known for its rumbling, gurgling roar, and it is said to kill hippos but not eat them. Hippos just can't catch a break here. Cameroon is also purportedly home to what are called the Jago-Nini, and the Amali, which are said to be immense aquatic dinosaurs that glide through the rivers here, oddly not killing hippos. The adventurer and ivory trader Alfred Aloysius Smith wrote of these mysterious creatures thus:

“Aye, and behind the Cameroon there's things living we know nothing about. I could 'a' made books about many things. The Jago-Nini they say is still in the swamps and rivers. Giant diver it means. Comes out of the water and devours people. Old men'll tell you what their grandfathers saw but they still believe its there. Same as the Amali I've always taken it to be. I've seen the Amali's footprint. About the size of a good frying pan in circumference and three claws instead of five.”

Perhaps one of the strangest “living dinosaurs” of all is one supposedly native to the wilds of Sudan, in the wetlands of Bhar el Zeraf, as well as in Sudan’s Lake No, and Lake Victoria. The creature is called the Lau, which is said to look like “a donkey with flippers,” possesses bizarre tentacles on its face, and measures up to 100 feet in length. It is said to emit a truly terrifying roar that sounds like “the thundering of elephants.” There have been many reports of the creature since the 1800s, and in 1914 there was a Lau allegedly killed in the swamps of Addar, but the body was never recovered. In 1924, a supposed vertebrae from one of the beasts was received by a British officer from a native tribesman, but where it went is anyone’s guess and we are left with no physical evidence at all.

From the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an apparent dinosaur more in appearance like the terrible Tyrannosaurus Rex, reported from the remote rainforests of a place called the Kasai Valley. The creature in question is most spectacularly known from a report made in 1932, by a Swedish plantation owner named John Johanson, who at the time was traveling through the region with a local guide. At one point during their trek through the mosquito-choked interior jungles they allegedly came across two elephants, which they thought was odd because there was no herd, just those two. They then noticed something in the underbrush that seemed to be stalking the elephants, finally pouncing out of the brush to attack. It was described as a bipedal dinosaur-like monster, estimated at around 43 feet long. Johnson aimed at the monster and fired three times, one of which hit it and caused it to back away into the jungle.

On their way back through the swamp toward their camp, they came across a rhinoceros going about its business. As they stood looking at the creature, they claimed that the same enormous monster came erupting forth from the trees to pounce upon the rhino and kill it, after which it actually began to eat the carcass, apparently unaware that the two startled men were standing there watching it go about its hunt. Johanson would think better of shooting at it this time, and describe it by saying, “It was reddish, with blackish-colored stripes. It had a long snout and numerous teeth. The legs were thick; it reminded me of a lion, built for speed.”

There was another rather intriguing report from that very same year from the same area of what may or may not have been the same creature, which was published in the Rhodesia Herald. In this account, an unnamed hunter made his way to the Kasai Valley along with his gunbearer. As they made their way through the jungle, they supposedly came across two large elephants standing there in the mist. As the two witnesses surveyed the area their gaze fell upon what they described as “a monster, about 16 yards in length, with a lizard's head and tail.” The hunter would say what happened next:

“I was shaken by the hunting-fever. My teeth rattled with fear. Three times I snapped; only one attempt came out well. Suddenly the monster vanished, with a remarkably rapid movement. It took me some time to recover. Alongside me the boy prayed and cried. I lifted him up, pushed him along and made him follow me home. On the way we had to transverse a big swamp. Progress was slow, for my limbs were still half-paralyzed with fear. There in the swamp, the huge lizard appeared once more, tearing lumps from a dead rhino. It was covered in ooze. I was only about 25 yards away. It was simply terrifying. The boy had taken French leave, carrying the rifle with him.
 
At first I was careful not to stir, then I thought of my camera. I could hear the crunching of rhino bones in the lizard's mouth. Just as I clicked, it jumped into deep water. The experience was too much for my nervous system. Completely exhausted, I sank down behind the bush that had given me shelter. Blackness reigned before my eyes. The animal's phenomenally rapid motion was the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen.”

Another account possibly of the same creature was given by the great hunter Robert Henderson in 1951. At the time, he was in the Kasai region on an expedition to find exotic and never discovered species, and at some point he and his group of five natives seemed to have disappeared, not making it back to camp for days on end after the allotted time. When a week went by with no sign of the group, a posse of 10 people from the village and 5 people from the military regiment were sent to find them, the next day finding traces of a camp, seeming to be the initial base of Robert and his group. According to the report, the camp had been completely ransacked and torn apart by something very large and powerful, and making it even worse were all of the mangled limbs and other body parts scattered through the gore-covered camp, some of which seemed to have been gnawed on and spat out by something with huge, sharp teeth. Of Henderson there was only found a mauled forearm and hand, the rest of him gone forever. Theories ranged from hostile natives to drug traffickers or even crocodiles, but the culprit was never determined. Could it have been the mysterious Kasai Rex? Who knows?

Stories of similar creatures have been told in the region, but the credibility of the so-called Kasai Rex has been the subject of some skepticism. One of the main things that has detracted greatly from its veracity are two photographs of the alleged creature, both of which were found to be doctored hoaxes. There is also the inconvenient fact that the natives of the region don’t seem to have any knowledge of this particular creature, and it has mostly only been sighted by outsiders, making the reports all the more questionable. Whether it is real or not, they are interesting accounts nonetheless. Other miscellaneous giant dinosaur-like beasts alleged to be inhabiting the Congo are the Nguma-monene, which is a huge, serpentine lizard 30–50 feet in length that also likes to kill hippos, and the Mahamba, a humongous crocodilian creature said to reach lengths of up to 50 feet.

Besides on the ground, there are also flying dinosaurs reported from the air in the Congo region as well. Chief among these is an enormous flying, pterosaur-like beast known locally as the Kongamoto, which means 'breaker of boats' or 'overturner of boats', as the creatures are said to capsize the canoes of natives and attack people who venture too close to the nearby rivers. Although known by the natives of the area for centuries, one of the earliest mentions of the Kongamoto by European explorers was made in 1746 by John Barbot, Agent-General of the Royal Company of Africa, in his description of the coasts of South Guinea, called Collection of Voyages, in which he writes:

“Some blacks assuring me that…there are winged serpents or dragons having a forked tail and a prodigious wide mouth, full of sharp teeth, extremely mischievous to mankind, and more particularly to small children.”

He describes it as a winged monstrosity, having two feet armed with claws, and two ears, with five prominent and conspicuous tubes or spines on the back and covered with green and dusky scales. Dr. J.L.B. Smith, who is famous for his investigation into the living fossil, the coelacanth, wrote in his 1956 book Old Fourlegs of “flying dragons” in Tanzania and notes one report made by a game warden by the name of A. Blaney Percival, who would say:

“One man had actually seen such a creature in flight close by at night. I did not and do not dispute at least the possibility that some such creature may still exist. The Kitui Wakamba tell of a huge flying beast which comes down from Mount Kenya by night; they only see it against the sky, but they have seen its tracks; more, they have shown these to a white man, saying, he could make nothing of the spoor, which betrayed two feet,and an apparently, heavy tail.”

The beast first was further widely publicized in the outside world with the publication of explorer Frank Welland’s 1932 book “In Witchbound Africa,” where it is described as a large, reddish creature with leathery wings, devoid of feathers, and highly reminiscent of a pterodactyl. Indeed, Welland would claim that the natives would excitedly identify illustrations of pterodactyls in books as Kongamotos. Welland would write of these creatures:

“The evidence for the pterodactyl is that the natives can describe it so accurately, unprompted, and that they all agree about it. There is negative support also in the fact that they said they could not identify any other of the prehistoric monsters which I showed them…The natives do not consider it to be an unnatural thing like a mulombe [demon] only a very awful thing, like a man-eating lion or a rogue elephant, but infinitely worse… I have mentioned the Jiundu swamp [northwestern Zambia] as one of the reputed haunts of the kongamato, and I must say that the place itself is the very kind of place in which such a reptile might exist, if it is possible anywhere. The Kaonde people of the North-Western Province [of Zambia] used to carry charms called ‘muchi wa Kongamato’ to protect them at certain river crossings from the Kongamato.”

In 1956 there was the account of an engineer known as J.P.F. Brown, who was near Lake Bangweulu, Zambia when he saw two creatures flying slowly and silently directly overhead. He would describe them as looking “prehistoric,” with large leathery wings and mouths full of imposing dagger-like teeth. The following year, in 1957, a patient at a hospital at Fort Rosemary, along the Zambezi River, came in with a grievous wound to the chest, claiming that a giant “bird” had attacked him in the swamp. This patient would sketch the creature that had mauled him, and it looked very much like the common depiction of a pterosaur. The Kongamoto’s reputation was further propelled in 1958 when the science journalist Maurice Burton wrote in the Illustrated London News that there had been several reports from Africa of a pterodactyl-like creature. One of these reports was apparently made by a Portuguese explorer by the name of Mr. E. Lopes, who wrote:

“There are also certain other creatures which, being as big as rams, have wings like dragons, with long tails, and long chaps, and divers rows of teeth, and feed upon raw flesh. Their colour is blue and green, their skin painted like scales, and they have two feet but no more. The Pagan negroes used to worship them as gods, and to this day you may see divers of them that are kept for a marvel. And because they are very rare, the chief lords there curiously preserve them, and suffer the people to worship them, which tendeth greatly to their profits by reason of the gifts and oblations which the people offer unto them.”

What are we to make of such reports? If the idea of living dinosaurs lurking in the Congo isn’t weird enough for you, then how about gigantic spiders the size of dogs? Lurking within the thick, nearly impenetrable jungles of the most remote parts of primarily the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also Cameroon, Uganda and the Central African Republic, are said to be enormous ground-dwelling spiders which the natives of the region refer to as J'ba Fofi (pronounced ch-bah foo fee), which literally translates to “giant spider.” The J'ba Fofi is said to be reminiscent of a tarantula in both form and color, with adults exhibiting a dark brown coloration, but the real difference is in the size, as the Congolese Giant Spiders are said to attain leg spans of anywhere between an unsettling 4 to 6 feet. This shockingly immense size allows them to allegedly prey on a variety of small animals including birds, small jungle antelopes known as duiker, monkeys, and various reptiles, which they trap in an elaborate pattern of webs strung out between trees and devour after pouncing forth from a shallow depression camouflaged by leaves in a manner very similar to trap door spiders. Reports from missionaries in the region and natives have suggested that the spiders are even known to kill humans on occasion and that their venom is extremely potent, which is illustrated by old reports from the jungle-choked African interior of porters or tribesmen succumbing to giant spider bites in short order.

Although explorers, missionaries, and natives had long told of seeing these massive spiders in the depths of the African jungle, perhaps the report that most thrust the J'ba Fofi into the spotlight was a sighting made by Reginald and Margurite Lloyd in 1938 and chronicled by cryptozoologist George Eberhart. According to the account, the Lloyds were exploring in a remote region of what was then known as the Belgian Congo when they spied a dark-shaped skitter out from the underbrush and across the road in front of them. At first, the couple thought that it was merely some sort of cat, monkey, or some other common jungle animal, and stopped their truck to avoid hitting it and to let it pass. It was then that it became apparent to the horrified explorers that the creature was a gigantic spider with a purported leg span of at least 4 or 5 feet. Before either of the startled eyewitnesses could get a camera or even really overcome their shock at seeing such a nightmarish site, the spider had already scampered into the thick brush on the other side of the track and was gone. Mrs. Lloyd was reportedly so upset by the incident that she demanded that they return to their home in Rhodesia at once.

Another report of giant spiders comes from Uganda during the 1890s when an English missionary named Arthur Simes was exploring along the shores of Lake Nyasa. As Simes and company were trekking along, several of his porters allegedly became hopelessly entangled in a network of webbing that hugged the ground and was too strong to break with any means they possessed. It was not long before at least two giant spiders with leg spans of around 4 feet across pounced upon the ensnared men and bit them before Simes was able to drive them off with his pistol. Moments after being bitten, the porters were reported to have become feverish and delirious, their extremities swelled up considerably, and death followed shortly after.

There are also accounts of giant spider sightings from several expeditions into the region in search of yet another cryptid, the saurian, dinosaur-like Mokele-mbembe I've already discussed. Such expeditions often heard stories from the natives about the J'ba Fofi, or even saw the spiders themselves. In fact, one naturalist and cryptozoologist, William J. Gibbons, was able to glean more detailed information on the J'ba Fofi during one of his many expeditions to the Congo in search of the Mokele-mbembe. Through various conversations with local tribes, it soon became apparent that not only did the natives know of them and see the giant spiders on a fairly regular basis, but they had a good deal of knowledge about their behavior and life cycle. For instance, the eggs of the spider were said to be white or a pale yellow-white and around the size of a peanut, which were laid in clusters wrapped in webs in the underbrush and which were widely avoided by those who came across them. The newly hatched young spiders were said to be a bright yellow color with a purple abdomen and gradually became a dark brown as they matured. Their preferred method of hunting was said to be laying an ambush for prey by weaving a series of webs between trees on either side of a game trail and lying in wait within a ditch covered with a pile of leaves woven together with webbing and said to be reminiscent of a pygmy hut.

The natives claimed that the venom of the spiders was powerful enough to drop a full-grown man in seconds. Interestingly, Gibbons was able to learn that the J'ba Fofi had once been common and had had the unfortunate habit of sometimes building their nests near human settlements, but that they had become rarer over the years, suggesting that their numbers were perhaps dwindling or they were being driven by habitat encroachment further into the depths of the jungle. Gibbons was able to track down accounts of giant spider activity in the steamy jungles of Africa as recently as 2000 when he heard from a chief of the Baka tribe that a J'ba Fofi had built a nest near his village in the wilds of Cameroon.

Gibbons’ information is very intriguing to me not only for its detail but also because it demonstrates that the tribes of the area saw the J'ba Fofi as a very real flesh and blood creature and a real part of their world. The detailed description of the J'ba Fofi’s life cycle, with mention of the eggs and the changing color as the juveniles attained adulthood, suggest that to the natives the giant spiders were not merely some sacred spirit or revered creature of myth, but rather a regular, albeit dangerous, jungle creature like any other. The description of the spiders is very matter-of-fact, and there seems to be no attempt on the natives’ part to play up the attributes of the spiders or make them seem like anything other than just another of the many denizens of the jungle, with a normal life cycle like any other real organism. Besides the fact that no such spider has been documented by science, there seems to be no reason to assume they would be lying about such things and this has all of the hallmarks of an ethnoknown animal, or one that is known by natives or locals but is not typically yet formally recognized by outsiders or science. Bear in mind that a great many new species that were discovered, including ones that at one time were even considered fantastical or absurd, such as the gorilla, okapi, and panda, were at some point ethnoknown animals, and native accounts of the creatures that they take as a fact of life but for which we have no strong evidence yet are not always to be brushed off or dismissed so lightly.

The problem with the tales of such colossal spiders prowling through African jungles to me is not that sightings are few and far between or that we know of them mostly from native accounts, nor even that we have no real physical evidence for them. The major problem with the J'ba Fofi, or indeed any reports of giant spiders around the world, has always been more one of physiology. There are two main hurdles for a spider to get to the sizes reported here. The first is respiration. Spiders have either book lungs, which are respiratory organs consisting of stacked alternating air pockets and tissue, or a tracheal respiratory system consisting of a network of small tubes that branch out into the body, which is present in many insects as well. Many species of spiders have both. Yet the problem with these methods of respiration is that neither one of them is particularly efficient for exchanging atmospheric gas when dialed up to large sizes and this limits the sizes attainable by terrestrial insects and arachnids.

Many readers may be thinking already of the numerous giant insects that once roamed the earth many millions of years ago, but there was far more oxygen in the atmosphere of those days which could compensate for this inefficiency, and even then there were no spiders as large as is claimed with the J'ba Fofi. This limitation of the respiratory system of arachnids puts a cap on how big they can get, and the largest known spiders today are the Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi), which can have a leg span of up to 11 inches (28 cm) and can weigh over 170 g (6.0 oz.), and the giant huntsman spider (Heteropoda maxima), which is not as heavy but has a longer leg span at 12 inches (30 centimeters) and incidentally was discovered in Laos only recently in 2001, despite being so frighteningly large. These are both disturbingly large spiders to be sure, but quite possibly the maximum size attainable for a spider and still nowhere near the incredible sizes reported for the J'ba Fofi.

Ok, so let’s say that the giant spiders of Africa have somehow evolved a radically new type of respiratory system and have transcended the size limitation imposed on other arachnids. Even if that were the case, there is still another, perhaps even more insurmountable obstacle to face and that is their exoskeleton. The problem with an exoskeleton is that it is heavy, which at smaller sizes is not really a problem. However, muscular strength is largely a function of the width of the muscle at its widest point, so as an arachnid gets larger the factor that determines its muscular strength, the width, grows in two dimensions as the exoskeleton grows in three dimensions. To put it simply, the weight of the exoskeleton is growing faster than the strength of the muscles that support and move it. What this means for the spider is that its exoskeleton will at some point become too heavy for it to carry or for it to even move. It is a formidable challenge for any arthropod (a creature with an exoskeleton) to overcome if it is to become very large. To be sure there are quite huge arthropods out there that we know of, such as the Japanese spider crab, which can reach 3.8 meters (12 ft.) from claw to claw, but these creatures have the benefit of having the surrounding water to help support all of that weight. There are indeed also enormous terrestrial arthropods in the form of the coconut crab, which can grow to up to 1 m (3 ft. 3 in) in length and weigh 4.1 kg (9.0 lb), but this is quite possibly the largest size physically possible for a land-based creature with an exoskeleton, and anyone who has observed a coconut crab in action will notice how incredibly slowly they move. Considering all of this, it is really hard to imagine a spider with a 4 to 6-foot leg span explosively darting out to capture prey or swiftly scurrying about through the jungle.

While the inhospitable and little-explored jungles of the African interior certainly seem like they could harbor a large undiscovered animal, these physical restrictions tend to make the reports of the J'ba Fofi sound a little far-fetched and leave me wondering how much stock we should put into them, yet the stories of African giant spiders and indeed reports of giant spiders in many places around the world persist. Is it possible the reports are of some very large spider, but perhaps the sizes have been exaggerated somehow? Are these misidentifications of some other creature? The natives seem to take it for granted that such giant spiders exist, so what do we make of these accounts? The answers to these questions are likely to elude us until we find more evidence of the existence of the J'ba Fofi, or even some proof that its existence is physiologically feasible. Until then, it might be best to keep an eye on the ground while exploring the jungles of Africa and be wary of any tangles of webs that may cross the path, just in case.

In the end, it is rather frustrating because we are left with all of these cases with a lack of any clear evidence and only these mystifying stories and native accounts to go by. It is certainly not an indication that these creatures cannot exist, and the terrain itself makes it a given that these places should be unexplored. After all, we are dealing with some of the most unexplored places on the planet, walls of nearly impassable jungles filled with diseases, and dangerous wildlife, and often in wartorn areas patrolled by nefarious bands of cutthroats, all conspiring with the extremely vast areas involved, meaning that it is very difficult to mount thorough expeditions and investigations into the matter. The reliance on reports from natives is also not a damning thing, as many known animals such as the gorilla and the okapi got their start in tribal reports that at the time seemed every bit as outlandish. In the end, we are left with the question of whether any of these creatures are real, and if so, are they indeed living dinosaurs and enormous spiders? It is impossible to say, but if there are such monsters still roaming the earth, then these dark uncharted jungles are pretty much exactly where one would expect them to be.