Salvator water monitors - could
the afa be an unknown giant relative?
One of the
world's most obscure cryptozoological reptiles is the afa - a Middle Eastern
mystery lizard briefly reported by explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger in his book The
Marsh Arabs (1964).
Also known as
the Madan, the Marsh Arabs inhabited the marshlands of the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers in the south and east of Iraq, and along the Iranian border – formerly a
vast area of wetland covering more than 5.8 square miles. According to Thesiger,
who had lived among them intermittently for eight years during the 1950s prior
to the Iraqi revolution of 1958, the canoe-borne Madan claimed that the marshes
at the mouth of the Tigris in Iraq was home to a monstrous lizard, which they
termed the afa.
Marsh
Arabs in southern Iraq's
marshlands - the abode of the afa
Little else
appears to have been documented concerning it. As various species of varanid or
monitor lizard are native to this region of Asia Minor, however, it is
plausible that the afa may be one too, albeit bigger than those formally
recognised by science here - and hence either an unknown giant species, or
based upon sightings of extra-large specimens of some known species.
Sadly, however,
the question of the afa's taxonomic identity may be nothing more than academic
nowadays. This is because following the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi government
initiated a major programme to divert the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers away from the
marshes in retaliation for a failed Shia uprising among the Arabs living there.
This not only eliminated the Madan's food sources, forcing them to move
elsewhere, but also turned the marshes themselves into a desert.
Consequently, the afa may well have been exterminated, especially if it were primarily aquatic, as I am not aware of any post-1991 reports alluding to it. If any ShukerNature reader is aware of any such reports, however, I'd be very interested to receive details.
Consequently, the afa may well have been exterminated, especially if it were primarily aquatic, as I am not aware of any post-1991 reports alluding to it. If any ShukerNature reader is aware of any such reports, however, I'd be very interested to receive details.
The
desert monitor lizard Varanus griseus, a common Iraqi varanid (Knockout
Mouse/Wikipedia)
Posts
"Afa" means venomous snake in Arabic. Unless the term was relexicalized by the Madan, it's possible that Thesiger didn't quite understand what he was told by his informants.
ReplyDeleteOr it may be that the Madan mistakenly believed the afa to be venomous - there are many instances on record of harmless lizards and other reptiles being wrongly considered venomous by their layman neighbours (elsewhere on ShukerNature I discuss this in relation to the Indian bis-cobra.
DeleteSeen one in 2004 or 5 in Babylon.
ReplyDelete