Artistic
restoration by Anthony Wallis of the possible appearance in life of Kenya's
mysterious 'giant forest hyaena' – aka the Nandi bear? (© Anthony Wallis)
The hyper-aggressive Nandi bear, named
after western Kenya's Nandi County that contains the once-contiguous Nandi and
Kakamega Forests around where it has been most frequently reported, is
undoubtedly one of Africa's most intriguing albeit infamous cryptids. It also
has a string of native names, of which the most familiar are the chemosit and
kerit. Moreover, a wide range of identities has been offered for this ferocious
mystery mammal down through the years.
These range from erythristic (abnormally
red) spotted hyaenas, extra-large modern-day baboons, sizeable all-black ratels
(honey badgers), and even the odd aardvark, to various putative Pleistocene
survivors – such as a species of chalicothere, giant baboon, African bear, short-faced
hyaena, and sizeable wolverine-like mustelid. In fact, as
noted by veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans and others, the morphological
descriptions recorded for it are so varied that no single species could conceivably
reconcile all of them. In other words, it is evident that there is no single
Nandi bear identity, that in reality this cryptid is instead a composite
created by the erroneous lumping together of reports describing several
different animal species.
Reconstruction of likely appearance in life of the
giant short-faced hyaena Pachycrocuta
brevirostris (public domain)
Tragically, however, so few Nandi bear
reports have emerged during the past 70-odd years that such discussions may nowadays
be of academic interest only. For if a species currently unrecognized by
science had indeed previously featured in any documented sightings, by now this
marauding mystery beast could well have become extinct, having died out before its
reality and taxonomic identity had even been confirmed – except, that is, its reality
and identity WERE apparently confirmed, after the carcase of a shot specimen
was brought to a world-famous scientist for his opinion as to what it was. After
closely examining this extraordinary creature's mortal remains, he offered what
he considered to be a conclusive identification – and, in so doing, provided
zoology with a major shock.
So why hasn’t this dramatic revelation regarding
the Nandi bear's identity become well known, resulting in its formal
recognition by science – and what happened to that uniquely significant examined
specimen? Read on, and except (sadly) for the specimen itself, all will be
revealed – albeit not at all in the way that I'd expected when first electing
to investigate and document this exceedingly convoluted cryptozoological case.
Our tantalizing tale begins with a
mystery within a mystery – namely, claims that the Nandi bear is in reality a
giant forest hyaena. But what exactly IS a giant forest hyaena? After all, no
such animal is formally recognized by science. Some notable cases featuring
this mysterious creature that have been reported from Nandi bear territory were
originally documented in a 2-page article written by Nairobi-based ornithologist
Dr Gurner Robert Cunningham-van Someren (1913-1997) and published in the
September/October 1981 issue of the East
Africa Natural History Society Bulletin. Cunningham-van
Someren, or Chum
as he was popularly referred to (and which for reasons of brevity I shall also
do henceforth), was Curator of Birds at Kenya's National Museum from 1975 to
1985 but famously had a wide knowledge of most African animals and plants, and
was frequently consulted on matters covering the full spectrum of this
continent's wildlife. Here are the relevant details as given by him in his
article:
Around 1957-1958, Douglas Hutton, the
manager of Chemomi Tea Estate in the Nandi district, shot two specimens of a
strange, unidentified species of mammal and sent their carcases to the tea
factory, where several members of staff viewed them. During the early 1980s, Chum
interviewed three of these eyewitnesses independently, and received detailed,
largely consistent descriptions.
Standing almost 3 ft high at the shoulders,
which bore a heavy mane of long hair, the creatures had broad, short heads with
small ears, broad chests, rearward-sloping backs that emphasised their long
heavy forelegs and shorter hind legs, and short tails. Only when enquiries were
made as to the colour of their fur was there any noticeable disagreement
between the trio of eyewitnesses – two claimed that it was grey-brown with
light tips, the third stated that it bore black spots on a lighter background
colour. None had ever seen such animals before.
The creatures' skeletons had been left in
the bush to be cleared by ants, after which Hutton sent them for examination to
what was then Nairobi's Coryndon Museum, but which in 1964 became Kenya's
National Museum within this country's National Museums complex. In the report
that he later received from the museum, their species' identity had been given,
somewhat enigmatically, as a 'giant forest hyaena'. As for these intriguing
specimens: like so many others of potentially profound cryptozoological
significance, they somehow went missing and never resurfaced.
Nandi bear reconstructed as a giant hyaena-like creature
(although this image appears in many online websites, its © holder/artist is currently
unknown to me, despite my having made several detailed internet searches –
reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only – any information concerning its © holder
would be greatly welcomed for correct attribution purposes)
At the end of July 1981, Ken Archer,
General Manager of Eastern Produce Company and a friend of Hutton, was informed
that farmers working on plots of land on the Nandi Escarpment road from
Chemilil to Nandi had sighted a mysterious animal that they were unable to
identify. On 12 August, he and Chum visited the farmers to ascertain the
animal's appearance - and discovered from the vivid description given by one of
the observers that it matched that of the two beasts shot by Hutton back in the
late 1950s. The observer denied emphatically that it had been a baboon or a
pig, and did not think that it was a spotted hyaena either.
And speaking of Ken
Archer: Chum claimed that in 1981 he had received a request from Hutton via
Archer to investigate at Kenya's National Museum (where Chum was of course by
now its Curator of Birds) the mysterious disappearance of Hutton's two
specimens. This he did, but he could find neither any trace nor even any record
of them there. Also of note: Archer had once personally spied what he thought
may be a Nandi bear, some time prior to December 1937 (the month in which his
sighting had been documented, but not dated, by British governmental
administrator Captain William Hichens within an article on African mystery
beasts published by the periodical Discovery).
Archer had been in the company of a Major Braithwaite when they saw in some
long grass what they initially took to be a lioness, until they saw that it
sported a snout. Its head was very large, and it stood about 4.5 ft at the
withers, which were very high, but its back sloped steeply to the hindquarters.
Its coat was thick and dark brown in colour. They lost sight of this curious
creature when it disappeared into a belt of trees near the river.
In addition to the Hutton and Archer reports
documented by Chum and recorded by me above, I also learned of the following
one. In 1962, the father of Nandi-born white hunter Jamie McLeod shot a
creature whose unresolved species McLeod himself subsequently spied, and which
he too referred to as a giant forest hyaena. According to his description, it
was twice the size of Africa's spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta (the largest hyaena species known to exist today),
with long shaggy brown hair that tended to be very dirty on its belly, a
lion-sized head, large carnivorous teeth, and a sloping back (but not as
pronounced as the spotted hyaena's). I'm not aware of any details concerning
the fate of the specimen shot by McLeod's father.
From such reports as these, it does seem unlikely
at least on first sight that 'giant forest hyaenas' of the type documented here
are spotted hyaenas. Occurring throughout eastern Africa south of the Sahara,
this latter creature is as noted above the largest of the four modern-day
species of hyaena, weighing as much as 120 lb, with a total length of up to 7
ft in exceptional specimens, and a shoulder height sometimes reaching 3 ft. Yet
these still fall short of the dimensions required by any hyaena seeking to
assume the role of the mystery beasts reported here. Nor does the long, shaggy,
drab-coloured fur usually ascribed to the latter cryptids readily recall the typically
short-furred, spotted pelage of Crocuta
crocuta (although it is true that in terms of individual coat colouration
and patterning, this species can be extremely varied – more about which later).
Two specimens of the spotted hyaena revealing the varied nature
of this species' coat colour and patterning (© Markus Bühler)
In 2019, a correspondent whose identity is
known to me but chooses not to reveal it publicly online, preferring to use the
screen name Bradypus Tamias instead (and which, therefore, I shall also do
here), kindly brought to my attention a very extensive and thoroughly
fascinating but hitherto obscure article on the Nandi bear that had appeared in
the October/November 1998 issue of the Nairobi-based SAFARI Magazine (an in-flight magazine that some commercial
airlines carry for their passengers to read).
Written by Gordon Boy, it included many of
the famous published reports of early 20th-Century Nandi bear sightings
(a fair number of which are also documented within my two prehistoric survivor
books' very extensive Nandi bear section), as well as the late 1950s Hutton
episode documented by me above regarding the two slain but subsequently
vanished 'giant forest hyaenas'. Moreover, it also included details of a much
more recent Nandi bear encounter, one that was entirely new to me. It took
place in February 1998, i.e. just 8 months before the publication of Boy's SAFARI article, and here is his
description of that incident:
An expatriate construction
engineer, Dennis Burnett, then based temporarily in Kisumu while working on a
project for the Nairobi road-building firm Issaco, was driving home at night
along the Koru-Kisumu road skirting the base of the Nandi Escarpment with his
wife Marlene. It was pouring with rain when, suddenly, a large animal stepped
out onto the road in front of their car. “In that instant, I could have sworn
it was a bear,” he says.
The Burnetts were lucky enough
to get a second look. “We stopped the car and, after reversing slowly back to
the spot and then directing our brights onto the side for which the beast had
seemed to be heading, we saw it again, for about 15 seconds, passing right in
front of us.” It was then, Burnett says, that he and his wife realised that
their ‘bear’ was really “an enormous, shaggy hyena – like a Striped Hyena, only
very much bigger.”
A painting from 1909 of a striped hyaena with its mane erected (public
domain)
The striped hyaena Hyaena hyaena is smaller than the spotted hyaena, standing up to
2.5 ft at the shoulder, with a head and body length of up to 4.25 ft plus a
tail length of up t0 1.25 ft, and an average weight of around 77 lb, but with
confirmed records of up to 121 lb. It occurs throughout East Africa, North
Africa, and northwestern Africa (plus parts of the Middle East and southern
Asia), and is named after the vertical striping on its flanks. Yet even if an
exceptionally large specimen could explain the Burnetts' sighting documented
above, it does not correspond with those in which the cryptids were referred to
as giant forest hyaenas.
Nor does the only other hyaena species
known to exist in East Africa – the aardwolf Proteles cristatus. For although it bears a superficial resemblance
to the striped hyaena in terms of its striped coat and body outline, this
aberrant species is the smallest, weakest hyaena alive today, and is
exclusively insectivorous. So it is highly unlikely to be a plausible identity
for the above mystery beasts.
Aardwolf (© Dr Karl Shuker)
If only the shot carcase of one of these
mystifying Nandi-originating 'forest hyaenas' had received an unequivocal
taxonomic identification by a relevant scientist and had then been sent to one
of the world's premier collections of natural history specimens for a comprehensive
second opinion (followed by formal documentation and recognition thereafter in
the official zoological literature). In fact, although not previously revealed
within the cryptozoological community, that is precisely what did happen – or
at least most of it. Moreover, this particular specimen is also potentially of
immense zoological significance, because it was identified neither as a spotted
hyaena nor as a striped hyaena nor even as an aardwolf.
So here, as a ShukerNature exclusive, is
the full story of this very unexpected specimen – an unmasked Nandi bear, no
less, but no more either...
In another email to me of 2019, Bradypus
Tamias mentioned that he had been seeking sight of an article written by an
Angus F. Hutton that had appeared in the October/November 2009 issue of Old Africa, a magazine devoted to
recalling East Africa's past and published in Naivasha, northwest of Nairobi,
in Kenya. Happily, I was able to track it down online as a pdf file, and sent
Bradypus a direct link to it.
Moreover, as soon as I began reading this
article myself, it became evident that Angus F. Hutton was actually one and the
same as Douglas Hutton, the manager of Chemomi Tea Estate who, according to Chum,
had shot the two giant forest hyaenas in around 1957-1958 – except that he
hadn't…
Nor, clearly, was Hutton's first name
Douglas – just one of three notable errors made by Chum concerning this incident,
as we shall now see.
A Life Fellow of the renowned Zoological
Society of London who was very well-acquainted with the local Nandi fauna, Hutton
opened his article by stating that a few years previously (i.e. prior to 2009),
he had been amazed to find online his name linked to:
…a vague report about my
shooting two Nandi Bears and the skins being lost! Actually it was only ONE
Nandi Bear. I shot it with my .38 KPR Revolver half way between the Nandi Bears
Club [a golf club] and Chemomi in the bit of forest at the saddle (where the
Nandi used to hold their circumcision ceremonies). I was accompanied by our
Cattle Assistant, Harry Tunmer, who had his massive Colt 45 Special Revolver. I
had seen the mysterious Nandi Bear several times in that same area…I was
determined to obtain a specimen of the Nandi Bear to end the speculation of
what kind of animal it was.
I was Senior Assistant Manager
and Factory Manager at Chemomi Tea from 1954 to 1962. I had numerous
discussions with Dr Louis Leakey about my encounters with the elusive animal.
Dr Louis Leakey (1903-1972) was of course
the eminent Kenya-based palaeoanthropologist whose pioneering archaeological
work at Olduvai Gorge alongside his wife Mary revealed many highly significant
early human remains, contributing immensely to our knowledge of human evolution
in Africa. Moreover, at the time of Hutton's communications with him, Leakey
was curator of the then Coryndon Museum – his tenure there spanning 1941-1961.
Dr Louis Leakey and his wife Mary (Smithsonian Institution/Wikipedia,
no restrictions)
In his article, Hutton then related how,
one evening in June 1960 (i.e. not in
either 1958 or 1959 as Chum had claimed), while at the Nandi Bears Club, he had
received a telephone call from his wife Gen at their Chemomi home concerning
their newish cook/houseboy who was armed with a panga (long machete-like knife)
and seemed both drunk and half-demented, causing her to fear for her safety and
that of their two children. So Hutton, accompanied by Tunmer, left the club at
once and drove back towards Chemomi. Then:
Suddenly as we rounded a bend
there were TWO Nandi Bears about five yards away on my side of the road dazzled
by the headlights. To me they both looked like smallish bears standing upright
– about four to five feet in height – till I realized their front feet were
still on the ground and the animals, in fact, had all four feet on the ground.
As a famous, longstanding big-game hunter,
Hutton was a crack shot, and dispatched the larger of these two peculiar
creatures straight away with a single bullet that severed the spinal cord in
its neck, so that it dropped dead with its head at right angles to its body.
Knowing the scientific worth of its skull if undamaged, Hutton stopped Tunmer
from shooting it in the head (which he had wanted to do in order to ensure that
it really was dead). As for its smaller companion:
The other animal bolted back
into the bush on my side so Harry was unable to get a shot at it, but he had a
good view. We could see how the shoulders sloped back sharply to the rump as it
disappeared into the forest. He helped me load the corpse into the back of the
wagon. I was amazed to see what I had shot. The animal was quite unlike anything
I had ever read about or seen. It had long shaggy gingery-brown coloured hair.
I was amazed at the height of its shoulders in relation to its very low
hindquarters. It had small rounded ears. Its jaw and teeth were massive and its
tail very short with a small black tuft on the end. The feet were also black.
The sexual organs were huge and absolutely astounding. The animal appeared to
be both male and female at the same time.
Hutton and Tunmer drove on swiftly to
Hutton's house, where the cook, lying in a drunken stupor outside, took one
look at the dead Nandi bear, dropped his panga as he shrieked in terror, then
ran off, not returning for three days. Hutton and Tunmer, meanwhile, brought
the creature's carcase inside the house, and the following day saw Hutton
taking numerous colour photo-slides of it. Then, being an expert taxidermist as
well as a very proficient big-game hunter, he carefully skinned and prepared
its pelt, dissected its skeleton, and afterwards buried it in an ant heap for
the voracious ants to strip every vestige of flesh from its bones. He also
returned to the spot where he had shot it, and took plaster casts of the
pugmarks from both animals that were still present there.
Hutton then telephoned Dr Leakey at the
Coryndon Museum to inform him of what he had obtained, and a very excited
Leakey asked him to ensure that everything was preserved. Hutton posted all of
his slides to Leakey (but had not obtained copies of any of them beforehand
that he could have retained for safekeeping), and some time later the
preserved, well-packaged skeleton was delivered personally to Leakey by one of
Hutton's friends. Hutton also sent to him the preserved skin and the spoor
casts, all of which Leakey safely received, as acknowledged by him in a typewritten
letter to Hutton dated 8 August 1960. Confirming this is a photograph of that
letter, included in Hutton's Old Africa
article. So far, so good – and more was still to come!
Dr Louis Leakey (public domain)
In his letter to Hutton, Leakey made the
following revelatory statement concerning the identity of Hutton's shot Nandi
bear:
There is no doubt it is the Long
Haired Brown Hyaena which is almost unknown and has never been properly
scientifically described. It was first recorded by Colonel Meinertzhagen, who
shot one in 1905 in the Nandi area during the Nandi Wars. He preserved only the
skin and sent this to the British Museum Natural History [now London's Natural
History Museum] in 1906 on his return to England.
There is another record in our
Museum of one, which was found partly eaten by a leopard by a local settler
near Tindaret in 1913. However, the skin had to be discarded as it was badly
preserved. The BMNS [sic – should be BMNH] specimen also appears to have
disappeared which is unfortunate, as I contacted them after receiving your
earlier letter, dated October 12th 1958, when my assistant Miss Jane
Goodall, made a thorough search of our records.
Two short paragraphs, but containing a
wealth of telling yet also sometimes confusing information. So let's start our
analysis of their contents at the beginning.
First and foremost, the Long Haired Brown
Hyaena is obviously what is nowadays known simply as the brown hyaena Hyaena brunnea, the fourth species of
hyaena still living today. It is only marginally larger than the striped, and
therefore rather smaller than the spotted, but both the striped and the brown
hyaena can readily make themselves look much larger than they actually are by
erecting hairs up to 1 ft long on their neck and back, which they do during acts
of aggression or agitation. Moreover, the brown hyaena is instantly
distinguished from all three of the other modern-day hyaena species by virtue
of its very long, shaggy, dark brown coat, its tall brown-and-white striped
limbs, very large pointed ears, and short, bushy, but fairly inconspicuous tail,
which collectively give it a somewhat bear-like appearance.
Vintage photograph and modern-day photograph of brown hyaenas
(public domain/© Markus Bühler)
Needless to say, therefore, if the brown
hyaena inhabited East Africa, it would make at least on morphological grounds a
very plausible Nandi bear of the 'giant forest hyaena' variety, especially if
an unexpected encounter with humans caused it to feel threatened and thus to
erect its neck and back hairs, thereby greatly increasing its perceived
stature. However, this species, the rarest hyaena alive today, is officially
confined entirely to southern Africa, but note my usage here of the word
'officially'…
In 1930, the skull of a supposed baby Nandi
bear, which had been trapped on a farm near Koru (now Muhoroni), was presented
to Colonel Charles T. Stoneham (a major collector of natural history specimens
that later formed the basis of the Museum of Western Kenya). This was because
Stoneham was known for his interest in the Nandi bear, having earlier claimed
an encounter with a living specimen. However, as has been documented by
Heuvelmans and others, Stoneham's detailed description of what he saw gave
little room for doubt that it was actually an aardvark – he even likened it to
an "anteater".
Exquisite 19th-Century engraving of aardvarks (public
domain)
Anxious, therefore, to avoid any confusion
or ridicule this second time, instead of passing any opinion himself Stoneham
forwarded the skull to none other than Leakey at the Coryndon Museum. After
examining it closely, Leakey had startled everyone by confirming that although
a hyaena skull, it was from neither a spotted nor a striped hyaena, but was
instead that of an old, full-grown brown hyaena!
Speaking of Leakey: in his letter to Hutton,
what did he mean when he claimed that the brown hyaena "is almost unknown
and has never been properly scientifically described [and] was first recorded
by Colonel Meinertzhagen, who shot one in 1905 in the Nandi area during the
Nandi Wars"? In reality, the brown hyaena was formally described and named
as long ago as 1820, by Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg, who dubbed it Parahyena brunnea (but it was later
rehoused in the genus Hyaena,
alongside the striped hyaena). It is also depicted via engravings and its
occurrence in southern Africa documented within several 19th-Century
natural history tomes that I own. Consequently, what Leakey was evidently
referring to was its presence in East
Africa, something that even today is not officially recognized.
A colour engraving of the brown hyaena by Felix de Azara, which
in 1839 appeared in Charles Hamilton Smith's tome The Natural History of Dogs…Including Also the Genera Hyaena and
Proteles (public domain)
Moving on to Meinertzhagen: although
British soldier and ornithologist Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen (1878-1967) is
famous in cryptozoological circles by virtue of his discovering in 1904
Africa's spectacular giant forest hog Hylochoerus
meinertzhageni, which is the world's largest species of wild pig, his name
is also infamously associated with a number of zoological hoaxes. Among the
most notorious of these are ones featuring bird specimens that he claimed to
have personally obtained in certain named localities in the wild, only for
researchers to discover later that he had in fact purloined them from various
collections and had entirely invented their alleged provenances. Unfortunately
but unsurprisingly, therefore, doubt has been expressed over whether his 1905
brown hyaena specimen really did originate from East Africa.
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen in 1922 (public domain/Wikipedia)
As for Hutton's earlier letter of 12 August
1958, sent to Leakey's assistant, Miss Jane Goodall: yes indeed, this really is
THE Jane Goodall, who went on to become one of the world's foremost field anthropologists
due to her pioneering, seminal, and still-ongoing studies of chimpanzee
behaviour in the wild. Sadly, Hutton did not include in his Old Africa article a photograph or any
details regarding the content of his letter to Miss (now Dr) Goodall, but he
did include a transcript of her short letter replying to it, which was dated 20
October 1958. Only one paragraph of her reply mentions the Nandi bear (but as
seen below, it very succinctly reveals what he had written about it in his
letter to her), which reads as follows:
Your record that the Nandi Bear
has been seen by numerous people in your district during the last six months
intrigues me. Your description sounds to me like the long-haired brown hyaena
which is, unfortunately, little known in this country [Kenya]. Most people are
only conversant with the Spotted Hyaena and the Striped Hyaena. The Brown
Hyaena, however, does not walk on its hind legs!
As personally experienced by Hutton during
his encounter with the two Nandi bear specimens on that fateful June 1960
evening, however, the marked difference in height between their shoulders and
their much lower hindquarters can create the illusion that it is standing
upright. This in turn could explain Nandi bear eyewitnesses claiming that they
have seen such beasts walking upright, especially if these eyewitnesses were
sufficiently startled by spying them in the first place or only had an
indistinct view of them.
Dr Jane Goodall (public domain)
Returning to Hutton's shot Nandi bear specimen:
what happened to it after Leakey had identified it as a brown hyaena? Due to
its great significance as having been shot not in southern Africa but instead
in East Africa, where this species was not supposed to exist, Leakey rightly
deemed it to be "a very rare and valuable specimen". Consequently, and
albeit reluctantly (because as he noted in his letter to Hutton he would have
dearly liked to have retained it at the Coryndon Museum), Leakey decided to
send it to London's British Museum Natural History for a full scientific
description of it to be prepared there and officially published in the
zoological literature. Due to its weight, however, he elected to send it
(together with the colour photo-slides and spoor casts) not by air but instead
by sea freight, from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. This he did – but apparently
this zoologically-priceless package never reached the BMNH!
Instead, to quote Hutton's wry comment in
his Old Africa article:
Sadly, probably the world's
rarest natural history specimen and the colour slides disappeared between
Mombasa and England without trace. Who knows? It might still be sailing the
seven seas in a ship's bilge!
But how do we know for certain that it
never reached the BMNH? Leakey never received any acknowledgement of its
arrival there, so he naturally assumed that it was lost, but there is a lot
more than just that to take into account here.
I noted earlier in this present
ShukerNature blog article that according to Chum, Hutton's friend Ken Archer
had asked him on Hutton's behalf in 1981 to check whether there were any
records at Kenya's National Museum of the two Nandi bears shot by Hutton, but
that he had found no trace nor even any record there of those specimens. Of
course, we now know from Hutton's own article in Old Africa that although he had encountered
two specimens, he had only shot one
of them, the other specimen escaping unharmed. So Chum was incorrect in relation
to this key aspect of that incident – and that was not his only misapprehension
concerning it either. I have already mentioned his misremembering Hutton's
first name, but he also made a third mistake, which in my opinion was the most
profound and far-reaching one.
For of crucial importance here, so please
keep this fact firmly in mind, is that whereas Chum had claimed that the two
Nandi bears (in reality only one) had been shot by Douglas (in reality Angus) Hutton
around 1957-1958, Hutton confirmed in his Old
Africa article that he had shot the single Nandi bear in June 1960. So Chum
had been wrong not only about Hutton's name and about how many Nandi bears had been shot by him but also about when the shooting had taken place. Yet,
paradoxically, this last-mentioned mistake by him actually provides a sliver of
hope that Hutton's ostensibly lost specimen might not actually be lost after
all!
This is because in addition to searching
the records of Kenya's National Museum, Chum had also contacted the BMNH's then
mammal curator Daphne Hills, to double-check whether Hutton's specimen had
indeed arrived there. We know that significant detail, because Hutton
exclusively revealed this in his article by including in it the full typescript
of Hills's letter of reply to Chum, which was dated 27 November 1981. In her
letter, Hills made the following pertinent statements:
I have recently been curating
our hyaena material and can say with some certainty we do not possess a
specimen of the Chemoni Tea Estate sent from the Coryndon.
I have also looked at the
correspondence from 1956 to 1959. There are a great many letters from Dr.
Leakey, but no mention of a hyaena or "Nandi Bears." The
"Long-haired Brown Forest Hyaena" sounds a most unlikely name, as the
brown hyaena Hyaena brunnea is
restricted to S. Africa and Namibia, but it could perhaps refer to an oddly
coloured spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta
like the one mentioned in the enclosed article by R.I. Pocock. [Hills had
enclosed with her reply to Chum a couple of articles, and I suspect that the
Pocock article was one entitled 'The Story of the Nandi Bear', published by Natural History Magazine in 1930, which
contains details concerning a number of aberrant spotted hyaenas deemed by some
to have been Nandi bears.]
British zoologist Reginald I. Pocock (1863-1947) (Wikipedia –
reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
Let's dissect those two paragraphs from
Hills's letter and annotate them with some relevant information.
Firstly, the BMNH has a number of very
sizeable warehouses containing specimens that have been received by it but not
presently studied or assimilated into its main collections. Consequently, it is
possible that Hutton's specimen did arrive but was passed to one of these
warehouses and may still be there today, unregistered and uncatalogued. This
could explain why Hills did not encounter it when curating the museum's hyaena
material.
Secondly: Hills was obviously at a great
disadvantage when attempting to offer an identification of Hutton's specimen,
because she had neither the specimen itself nor any photos of it nor even a
verbal description to examine, nothing more in fact than the "long-haired
brown hyaena" appellation given to it by Leakey. And as the brown hyaena
is not supposed to exist in East Africa, it is hardly surprising that she
discounted this species as an identity for Hutton's missing mammal.
Thirdly: we now come to by far the most
perplexing content of Hills's reply, at least on first sight. She stated that
she had looked at the correspondence (on file at the BMNH) from 1956 to 1959,
but had not found any letter from Leakey mentioning a hyaena or Nandi bears.
When I read this statement, I immediately thought to myself: "Why was she
looking through correspondence from 1956 to 1959, when Hutton hadn't even shot
the creature until June 1960? Why hadn't she looked through correspondence from
1960 to 1961, instead?" After all, it's hardly surprising that she didn't
find any letter dated 1956-1959 from Leakey containing a mention of a hyaena or
Nandi bears when the earliest that he would have written such a letter would
have been the second half of 1960.
Nor was I alone in being mystified by this
chronological conundrum. At the very end of Hutton's article in Old Africa, the magazine's editor had
added a single-paragraph conclusion, which included the following line:
And the letter from the British
Museum [i.e. Hills] says they checked the letters received from Dr Leakey
between 1956 to 1959, but the Nandi Bear specimen was not sent to them until
some time after August 1960.
Precisely so. And then I had a thought. As
already noted here by me, Chum had been under the misapprehension that Hutton
had shot the Nandi bear (or two Nandi bears, as he was also wrong about) around
1958-1959, not 1960. Consequently, it seems very plausible to me that when Chum
wrote to Hills, those were the dates that he included in his letter, not 1960
(no mention of that letter's contents were given by Hutton in his article, but this is perfectly understandable, because there is no reason why Hutton would have
ever seen it prior to Chum sending it to Hills). If I am correct, this would therefore
explain the otherwise incongruous action of Hills looking through
correspondence for entirely the wrong years.
However, it also means that in the BMNH's
1960-1961 correspondence there just might be a letter from Leakey concerning
Hutton's specimen. If so, and if, furthermore, this letter had not been sent in
advance but had actually been included by Leakey inside the package containing
that specimen (which after all is a reasonable assumption, as it would
instantly explain the package's contents to whoever opened the package upon its
arrival at the BMNH), the letter's presence in the BMNH's correspondence would
mean that his specimen did reach the museum after all! Consequently, you will
not be surprised to know that I have contacted the relevant researchers at the
BMNH explaining all of this, and asking if it would be possible for a perusal
of communications received in 1960-1961 to be scrutinized in search of such a
letter from Leakey. If I receive a response, I shall of course include a
relevant update here.
A virtual Nandi bear? (created by me using Magic Studio)
Meanwhile: yet another major aspect of this
complex case needs to be considered here. Namely, did Hutton's two sighted
Nandi bears constitute representatives of some still-cryptic indigenous East
African population of the brown hyaena, or might they instead have been a pair
of stragglers that had somehow made their way across thousands of intervening
miles from their species' confirmed homeland in southern Africa?
In 1962, Hutton left Kenya permanently
(resettling in Australia), but back in his time there and earlier, the Nandi
Forest was a dark, forbidding locality, covering a very considerable area and
contiguous with the equally dreaded Kakamega Forest. These very dense, wooded
expanses were rarely penetrated by their superstitious human neighbours for
fear of what horrors they may encounter there. Consequently, it would not be
beyond the realms of possibility that this rainforest jungle domain did once
house a native population of that mysterious hyaena, which in view of its
secretive, nocturnal lifestyle and dark coat would only rarely be spied, but
which on account of its unfamiliar nature would be blamed for whatever
predatory attacks by whatever forms of creature occurred in its vicinity, i.e.
regardless of whether the brown hyaena was the actual culprit. So, more of a
scape-hyaena or bogey bear than a Nandi bear?
Having said that: if there are (or were)
indigenous brown hyaenas in East Africa, genetic isolation from their southern
African compatriots may have engendered via evolution a larger body size for them,
further heightening the terror that encounters with such creatures would have
elicited among the Nandi locals.
Moreover, there is a very notable precedent
for exhibiting a discontinuous geographical distribution – and from within the
hyaenas' very own taxonomic family. Famously, the aardwolf is known to exist in
East Africa and southern Africa but nowhere in between. So why not the brown
hyaena too, especially as this latter species is extremely reclusive? (In 2008,
I was extremely lucky to spy a brown hyaena while taking part in a dawn safari
at the Shamwari private game reserve in South Africa.)
Sadly, however, by the 1980s great swathes
of the original Nandi and Kakamega rainforests had been depleted, replaced by
cultivated farm land, no doubt leading in turn to a corresponding depletion of
the fauna that once inhabited this area. This in turn could explain why
modern-day Nandi bear reports are virtually non-existent – any indigenous brown
hyaena population that may have formerly existed there is now almost certainly gone,
wiped out. To quote Chum in his afore-mentioned East Africa Natural History Society Bulletin article from 1981:
Hyaenas used to be numerous [in
the Nandi/Kakamega Forest area] in the past but with the development of tea
gardens much of the forest has disappeared and below the escarpment there is a
vast sea of sugar cane. A good hyaena environment no longer exists while
additionally today there is little food to sustain a population of this animal.
The local people and many club members of the Nandi Hills Club [aka the Nandi
Bears Golf Club] say they have not seen hyaena for many years though they used
to be fairly common.
Alternatively, might any encounters with
brown hyaenas in East Africa feature wanderers from southern Africa instead (or
even additionally)? This is by no means impossible either. Referring to the
Leakey-identified brown hyaena skull obtained in 1930 near Koru, Boy notably revealed
in his afore-mentioned SAFARI article:
This was a
significant discovery in itself, in that Brown Hyenas, while not uncommon then
in some parts of southern Africa, had never before been recorded so far north
of the Zambezi. …
When, in the
decades that followed, occasional reports emerged, of sightings of Brown Hyenas
along the shorelines of the Rift Valley lakes of Manyara, Eyasi, and Natron, in
northern Tanzania, the strange case of the Nandi bear appeared, to many, to be
as good as closed.
From time to
time, it seemed, possibly in drought years, nomadic Brown Hyenas from southern
Africa, usually solitary males, would wander northward, following the course of
the Rift Valley, where they would sometimes be found scavenging at night around
the lakes. Sightings, though, of such beasts were accounted so sporadic, as to
persuade many that the Brown Hyena – rarely ever seen, and wholly unfamiliar to
people in East Africa – must, indeed, be the basis for the legend of the Nandi
bear.
Looking along this lonely, deserted path cutting through the
Kakamega rainforest, one could readily imagine a Nandi bear suddenly stepping
out onto it from the dense cover of the thick foliage and trees on either side!
(© Nao Lizuka/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)
Thanks to Stoneham, Hutton, and Leakey,
physical, tangible evidence had ostensibly been procured for the erstwhile
existence of at least three brown hyaena specimens in East Africa, and specifically
Kenya, although whether these were from an undiscovered indigenous population
or were simply rare wanderers that had made their way northeastward from
southern Africa remains undetermined.
In conclusion: after reading the articles
of Boy and Hutton, I should now
favour the brown hyaena as a leading player within Kenya's long-running Nandi
bear stage show – but note my usage and emphasis of the word 'should'.
Yes indeed: just when you thought that Hutton's
sighted/shot Nandi bears had been conclusively identified as brown hyaenas,
albeit on zoogeographical grounds a most surprising identity for them and
thence for the Nandi bear as a whole, it's time for me to totally turn this
entire ShukerNature blog article upon its metaphorical head, by stating that in
my humble opinion, Dr Leakey may in fact have been wrong when identifying Hutton's shot specimen (and thence by
association its escaped mate too) as Hyaena
brunnea – and here's why.
Throughout my researching and writing this
present article, two short lines in Hutton's account of his shot Nandi bear
have nagged away remorselessly at the back of my mind when attempting to
reconcile Leakey's identification of it as a brown hyaena – and here are those
two lines, which appeared in his description of the specimen:
The sexual organs were huge and
absolutely astounding. The animal appeared to be both male and female at the
same time.
These lines confirm beyond any shadow of
doubt that Hutton's shot Nandi bear was a hyaena. For in zoological circles it
is well known that adult female hyaenas possess an extremely sizeable
penis-like clitoris that is almost as large as an adult male's bona fide penis (and
is thus referred to as a pseudo-penis), as well as fused labiae that look
surprisingly like testicles (i.e. a false or pseudo-scrotum) – highly unexpected
attributes that have often resulted in observers wrongly claiming that hyaenas
are hermaphrodites (i.e. both male and female at the same time, especially as
adult females also possess teats). Or, to be precise – and which is absolutely
crucial here – wrongly claiming that one
species of hyaena is hermaphrodite. For there is indeed only one single species
of hyaena whose adult females exhibit this extreme sexual condition, and it is
NOT the brown hyaena!
On the contrary, adult females of the brown
hyaena, and also of the striped hyaena and the aardwolf, all possess normal
sexual organs. The only hyaena species whose females possess this bizarre
peniform clitoris and labiae-created pseudo-scrotum is the spotted hyaena! (NB
– in a May 2007 paper published by the scientific journal Hormones
and Behavior, a team of researchers reported transient genital anomalies characterized
by a convergence in genital appearance among young male and female striped
hyaenas, but not among adult males
and females of this species.)
Diagrammatic
representation of the external genitalia of an adult female spotted hyena,
showing the peniform clitoris and false scrotum. From: Matthews, L. Harrison,
'Reproduction in the Spotted Hyaena Crocula
crocuta (Erxleben)', Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, vol. 230 (1939) (public
domain)
Here
is a pertinent quote from the chapter on hyaenas in Volume 6 of the second
edition of Encyclopaedia of Reproduction
(2018), providing a succinct description of the spotted hyaena's extraordinary
anatomical condition:
Whereas the first three species [aardwolf, striped hyaena, and
brown hyaena] show the typical mammalian pattern of sexual dimorphism [i.e. the sexes are
morphologically distinct], the fourth – the spotted hyena – shows the most extreme form of
sexual monomorphism [the sexes look similar] evidenced by any mammal. The
female spotted hyena is behaviorally and morphologically “masculinized,” being
larger than the male, socially dominant over the male, and possessing external
reproductive anatomy that bears striking resemblance to that of the male.
Notably, the female has no "external" vagina; instead, the urogenital canal passes
through a peniform clitoris, providing the female spotted hyena with a singular opening
through which she urinates, copulates, and gives birth.
Moreover, in each of the other three hyaena
species the sexes are roughly the same size, but in the spotted hyaena, as noted
above, the female is larger than the male.
Time, therefore, to recall that Hutton had stated
in his account that it had been the larger of the two specimens encountered together
by him and Tunmer that he had shot. This simple statement allows two notable
deductions to be made. Firstly, they had to have been a pair of spotted
hyaenas, not brown hyaenas (or any other modern-day hyaena species), because of
the size difference between the two specimens (both were clearly adults because
if one of them had been a juvenile and hence was smaller than the other for
that specific reason, I feel sure that Hutton would have remarked upon this, as
he was an experienced wildlife observer). Secondly, if they had indeed been a
pair of adult spotted hyaenas, then the specimen that Hutton shot must have
been the female, because it was the larger of the two. And sure enough,
Hutton's statement about its astonishing sexual organs giving it the appearance
of being both male and female indicate that it had indeed been an adult female
spotted hyaena.
Also relevant here is that if this had been
the identity of Hutton's shot Nandi bear, it would have borne teats, which of
course would have only added to his confusion as to whether this bemusing beast
was both male and female!
Further problems when attempting to
reconcile Hutton's specimen with a brown hyaena identity also exist. Note that
in his description of it, Hutton had stated that the creature's ears were small
and rounded, the specific shade of its brown coat was gingery, and its tail had
a tuft at its tip. Yet the brown hyaena's ears are conspicuously large and characteristically
pointed, its coat is very dark brown, never gingery, and its entire tail is
bushy, not just tufted at the tip. Conversely, the spotted hyaena's ears are
indeed small and rounded, its coat is indeed gingery-brown in some individuals,
and its tail is indeed only tufted at its tip.
Brown hyaena in Gemsbok National Park, South Africa, readily
revealing its very large pointed ears, dark brown coat, and bushy tail (©
Bernard Dupont/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)
In fact, as noted earlier here and
represented visually by a colour photograph depicting a grey-coated specimen
and a ginger-coated specimen standing together, the spotted hyaena is extremely
variable in terms of coat colour and patterning. Moreover, the same also
applies regarding its coat length, especially when its neck/back mane is taken
into account. Game warden Captain Charles R.S. Pitman's fascinating book A Game Warden Among His Charges (1931)
contains plenty of information on African mystery beasts, some of which he had
personally investigated, including the Nandi bear. In his book, Pitman
documented some truly remarkable examples of aberrant spotted hyaenas, and included
a photograph of an extraordinarily shaggy spotted hyaena pelt whose colour was
referred to by him in the photo's caption as being "like a 'blue
kerry'". This bizarre pelt had been obtained from Kenya's Mount Elgon, and
had been claimed by locals to be from a Nandi bear. Here is Pitman's verbal
description of it:
The feet were missing and the tail
was damaged. In general appearance it was that of a long-haired sheep-dog,
blackish or blackish-brown dappled with whitish…The face is whitish and there
is a long, coarse, pale mane – many of the white hairs are tipped with black.
The shoulders are blackish, the back being of the same colour dappled whitish
and freely interspersed with long white hairs. There is a secondary coat close
to the skin of thick, brownish, woolly hairs. The hindquarters on which there
are distinct traces of spotting are blackish with a rufous tinge. The tail, as
far as could be seen, is generally whitish, but black near the root, and at the
tip there is a big, black, bushy tuft. In spite of its peculiarities, even a
cursory glance suggested the pelt of a spotted hyena, a creature with whose
bewildering colour variations I am familiar.
The above description certainly recalls the
shaggy dark brown 'giant forest hyaenas' and thence Nandi bears that have been
documented earlier in this present ShukerNature blog article. And readily
recalling Hutton's shot Nandi bear is the following hairy, gingery-brown-furred,
only very faintly-patterned specimen of spotted hyaena photographed in Kenya alongside
her pair of spotted cubs, one of which is reddish, the other grey, but both
much more typical of their species in overall appearance:
Adult female spotted hyaena with only faintly-patterned, shaggy, gingery-brown
pelage alongside her much more typical cubs (© flightlog/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)
There can be no doubt, therefore, that
spotted hyaena specimens that superficially recall brown hyaenas but are much
bigger, being of typical spotted hyaena size, do exist after all, and
parsimoniously would make much more likely giant forest hyaenas aka Nandi bears
than actual brown hyaenas would, especially as the latter beasts would be also exceedingly
out of place in East Africa.
Obviously I cannot offer the following
opinion as a statement of fact in the absence of having first seen Hutton's
specimen personally or at least some photo-slides of it. Nevertheless, based
upon Hutton's very informative description of this specimen, plus what I have
presented here regarding unexpected yet fully-confirmed brown-coated, shaggy Crocuta specimens, the likelihood is
that his shot Nandi bear was not a brown hyaena at all, but was instead an
adult female spotted hyaena, and that, against all expectations, Leakey's
taxonomic identification of it was incorrect.
This particular case provides a perfect
example of open-mindedly allowing the facts to guide you to your conclusions,
rather than adopting the reverse course of action, i.e. close-mindedly twisting
the facts to support a pre-conceived notion. For when I began investigating and
researching this ShukerNature article, I freely confess that I naturally assumed
Leakey to have been correct in his identification of Hutton's Nandi bear as a
brown hyaena, and I anticipated on documenting the history of this remarkable but
hitherto little-known specimen accordingly. However, during the preparation of
my article, I became increasingly uncertain, with Hutton's telling lines
describing the creature's sexual organs refusing to be ignored and, in turn,
leading me to notice other morphological inconsistencies in this identification
too. Consequently, by the end of my article's preparation these facts had
guided me into concluding that, notwithstanding Leakey's pronouncement to the
contrary, an adult female spotted hyaena, and not a brown hyaena, was the more
likely explanation after all.
Nevertheless, after reviewing all of the
cases and opinions documented here, not just the Hutton/Leakey episode, it
wouldn't surprise me if at least a few brown hyaena specimens had indeed been
sighted in and around the Nandi/Kakamega Forest area down through the decades,
especially in earlier times when there was much more cover there in which they
could remain concealed when not seeking prey. Some of the descriptions of
Nandi-spied mystery animals presented above irresistibly recall this very
distinctive species. So even though the Hutton individuals must surely have
been a pair of adult spotted hyaenas based at least upon Hutton's description
of them, perhaps a few brown hyaena specimens have occasionally wandered
northward from their southern African homeland, thereby explaining the Nandi
people's terror when seeing one, because as noted above they would have no traditional
knowledge of this formidable-looking but zoogeographically out-of-place beast.
If someone with no prior knowledge of a brown hyaena suddenly
came face to face with one in the depths of the Nandi Forest, it would be
hardly surprising if they were shocked and terrified by their close encounter
with such a formidable-looking beast (© Myska0091/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)
One final mystery: in a short letter of 12
March 1982 to Ken Archer in which he enclosed a copy of Daphne Hills's letter
containing her comments, Chum added a most intriguing comment of his own:
I have looked at the photographs
but really cannot come to a definite conclusion though they are hyaena-like,
and this is the finding of others who have studied them.
But which photos was Chum referring to in
his letter to Archer? All of the photo-slides snapped by Hutton of his shot
Nandi bear specimen and sent by him to Leakey in 1960 had supposedly been
packaged by Leakey with the specimen itself and sent by him to the BMNH later
that same year. Yet could it be that in reality Leakey had kept a few of them
back, retaining them at the Coryndon Museum as a safety precaution, perhaps,
just in case the package did indeed go astray in transit? If so, and these precious
few images of Hutton's specimen are what Chum had looked at, they were clearly
still there during the early 1980s, and may still be there today. Another
avenue of enquiry that I am therefore currently pursuing.
Speaking of Chum: in view of his prominent
place within this very chequered history of the cryptozoological kind, it
seemed only fair and proper that the last word here should go to him. Yes
indeed, after writing to him on the subject of African mystery beasts in
general but African mystery cats in particular, I received a very detailed
handwritten letter from Dr Gurner Robert Cunningham-van Someren, dated 24
September 1987, which I still have on file. Although he was interested in the
notion of unexpected animals being discovered in the Dark Continent and elsewhere,
and discussed various African examples, he seemed less than impressed in the
possibility of the Nandi bear ever becoming one of them, confining his entire
coverage of this particular cryptid to a single short but memorable paragraph
at the very end of his letter. Here is that paragraph:
Sorry I am unable to be more
helpful – the Nandi Bear business was really a PR job as the tea planter [Archer,
presumably] was so insistent.
In other words, Chum evidently did not
consider the matter a serious one, but had searched on Archer's behalf for
Hutton's specimen at the Kenya National Museum and had written his letter concerning
it to Daphne Hills at London's BMNH simply to stay on good terms with him. Moreover,
Chum's apparent disinterest in the Hutton incident may well explain why he had
made three separate mistakes when recalling details regarding it, which in view
of his renowned reputation as an extremely knowledgeable authority on African
wildlife was highly uncharacteristic of him.
All in all, this has been a cryptozoological
case that initially promised so much but ultimately delivered so little.
Beware, beware, the Nandi bear! (© Markus Bühler)
Certainly, and regardless of the taxonomic
identity of the creature at its core, it remains exceedingly tragic that a
specimen unequivocally identified as a bona fide Nandi bear by the person who procured
it and who was very familiar with the local fauna has managed to slip through
our grasp and consign this mysterious mammal to continuing official obscurity.
Then again, it may not have done. Perhaps
there is indeed a letter from Leakey on file at London's Natural History Museum
still awaiting disclosure, and perhaps somewhere in one of this leading
scientific establishment's vast warehouses of stored but presently-unscrutinized
specimens there are indeed a preserved pelt and skeleton, plus a series of
accompanying photo-slides and pugmark casts, testifying to the reality of
Africa's most daunting, redoubtable creature of cryptozoology. As noted above,
if I do receive word back from the NHM, I'll be sure to let you know.
To be continued…?
For the most comprehensive modern-day
coverage of the Nandi bear in published form, be sure to check out my book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.
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