DENYING A DEINOTHERE - WHEN THE CAMERA DOES LIE!

 

The fake deinothere photograph that inspired this ShukerNature blog article (© owner/photo manipulator unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Thanks to the sophistication of readily-available digital photo-manipulation programs, photographic evidence for the existence of cryptids is of very little worth nowadays, at least in my opinion. This was readily demonstrated in mid-February 2021, following the widespread circulation online of a close-up, excellent-quality b/w photograph seemingly depicting the presence in some unidentified zoological gardens of a living deinothere.

Renowned for their huge body size and especially for their diagnostic downward-curving lower jaw and lower tusks but absence of upper tusks, deinotheres were prehistoric pachyderms distantly related to today's elephants. However, even the most recent fossils of these mega-mammals date back 1 million years.

Clearly, therefore, the existence of a specimen alive and well in any zoo would, if genuine, be a scientific sensation. Yet as the scientific world has made no mention whatsoever of any such prehistoric survivor thriving in captivity, the photo is evidently a fake.

 

Reconstruction of the likely appearance of a deinothere in life (© Concavenator/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

Over the years, I have made a point of exposing many fake photos of the cryptozoological kind, as revealed in many ShukerNature blog articles, in the hope of ensuring that, by doing so, these hoax images can no longer mislead anyone. The most effective means of accomplishing this feat is to uncover the original, genuine photo that the hoaxer has photo-manipulated to yield the fake version, which I have successfully achieved on numerous occasions by conducting detailed image searches online. So when the deinothere picture was brought to my attention, I duly began one such search, but on this particular occasion a fellow cryptozoological researcher beat me to it.

German cryptozoologist and longstanding friend Markus Hemmler had seen the deinothere photo before I had done and had begun an online image search of his own for the original genuine picture straight away. Moreover, he soon met with success, discovering that the original image was a vintage photograph that actually depicted a hippopotamus living in what was then Leningrad Zoo in the USSR.

As he informed me on 14 February, Markus had found it in a Czech article from 4 March 2017, documenting the hardships that the zoo and its animals had suffered during World War 2 (click here to access this article). A reconstruction of what a deinothere may have looked like in life had been deftly superimposed over the hippo by some unknown hoaxer, hiding it completely. Case closed.

 

The vintage photograph of a hippopotamus living at Leningrad Zoo during WW2 that had been digitally manipulated by person(s) unknown to create the fake deinothere photograph (public domain)

 

 

THE BEAST IN THE BOAT - STILL NO FURTHER AHEAD WITH A MONSTROUS MYSTERY FROM ANCIENT EGYPT

The skull of a common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius, revealing just how huge its lower canine and incisor teeth are in proportion to the rest of it (public domain)

During the past three-and-a-half decades, I have investigated countless previously unexplained or unexamined cryptozoological mysteries, and more often than not I have sooner or later succeeded in solving the riddles posed by them. Every now and then, however, I have encountered one that has defied all of my attempts to elucidate it, and the hitherto-obscure case presented below on ShukerNature is a prime example. I've been intermittently seeking information concerning it for well over 20 years now, yet all to no avail – but by duly revealing its sparse details here, I am fervently hoping that these will trigger memories with, and/or elicit information from, my readers that will at last enable its mystery to be conclusively resolved. In the meantime, I shall present my own thoughts regarding this enigmatic entity, and then await, gentle readers, your own.

During the 1990s, Fortean writer/researcher Janet Bord (who has co-authored with her husband Colin numerous classic, bestselling books on mysteries of Britain and also overseas) kindly sent me some photocopied pages of cryptozoological content from a short but exceedingly hard-to-find book written by famous British mysteries author Harold T. Wilkins and published in 1947. For a book of only 30 pages, it had a disproportionately long (albeit comprehensive) title – Monsters and Mysteries of America, the Jungles, the Tropics, and the Arctic Wastes – and contained some fascinating reports of mystery beasts that were previously unknown to me.

Harold T. Wilkins (public domain)

These reports included the following example, whose all-too-brief relevant portion I am quoting here in full:

FIND MADE NEAR PYRAMID IN BURIED EGYPTIAN BOAT

Another reminder of strange and unknown monsters which ancient Africa once possessed…was the discovery in May, 1935, by the Egyptian professor, Selim Hassan, of "day and night boats" used by the ancient Pharaohs in rites connected with the Egyptian underworld of the dead, or solar ceremonialism. Close to the pyramid of Chephren, Professor Selim Hassan found a boat in which was the head of a gigantic animal with huge teeth. Its identity has not been established. The boat was found buried north of the temple of the ancient pyramid.

Intrigued by this report, and owning several other books authored by Wilkins, I carefully checked through all of them, and found the following, very similar snippet in Secret Cities of Old South America (1952):

Again, in 1935, Professor Selim Hassan, when excavating round the pyramid of Chephren, found some ancient boats in one of which was the head of a gigantic animal with huge teeth, whose identity no one could establish.

Also known as the Pyramid of Khafre or Khafra, the Pyramid of Chephren is the second-tallest pyramid of the famous ancient Egyptian pyramids at Giza, and constitutes the tomb of the Fourth-Dynasty pharaoh Chephren (aka Khafre/Khafra), who ruled c.2558-2532 BC. Prof. Selim Hassan (1886-1961) was a leading Egyptologist, who supervised the excavation of many ancient Egyptian tombs on behalf of Cairo University. He was also the author of the definitive 16-volume Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. And solar boats were boats constructed as representations of the mythical day boat that according to traditional ancient Egyptian lore the sun god Amen-Ra navigated through the sky and also through the underworld, which were buried with deceased kings to enable them to do the same. So far, so good.

The Pyramid of Chephren aka Khafre and the Great Sphinx at Giza (© Hamish2k/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

After deciding to seek out further information concerning the body-bereft head of this mystifying Beast in the Boat (which is what I shall be calling it hereafter for ease of reference purposes), my first action was to check whether there were any source references to it in the respective bibliographies of Wilkins's two above-cited books. Unfortunately, however, the first, short book did not contain a bibliography at all, and although the second, longer book did have one, it did not contain any references that seemed likely to be the source(s) of this case.

With the coming of the internet and its ever-expanding content, however, I was eventually able to conduct online a far more comprehensive search for Wilkins's source material than I'd ever have been able to do in physical libraries, and it was not long before I uncovered a publication that I felt certain would contain the precious information that I'd been looking for. Published in 1946 by the Government Press in Cairo, and written by Prof. Hassan, the 341-page treatise in question was entitled Excavations at Giza: The Solar-Boats of Khafra, Their Origin and Development, together with the Mythology of the Universe which they are supposed to traverse. Vol. VI – Part 1: 1934-1935.

Prof. Selim Hassan (© Mikerin/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Yes indeed, if the information concerning the giant animal head found inside a solar-boat by Hassan in 1935 near the pyramid of Chephren/Khafra was to be contained anywhere, surely it would be contained in this publication. And so I painstakingly scanned through it, read through it, and used likely search words to seek out the required details – but found nothing, not even the barest, briefest of mentions of such a find anywhere within this extensive, immensely comprehensive  document  - a document, moreover, that was concerned specifically with not only the precise location and the precise year but also the precise structures (solar boats) and the precise researcher included in Wilkins's report. In other words, if this treatise didn't contain anything of relevance to the Beast in the Boat (which it didn't), then what publication ever would? And indeed, despite several subsequent online searches spaced out across the 23 years since I first went online way back in 1997, and taking into account the enormous and continuing expansion of information that has been added to the Net during that extremely long time period, I have still not found any data relating to this most mystifying report in Wilkins's books.

In the absence of such material, therefore, all that I can do is speculate on what the bodiless Beast in the Boat may have been, based upon the minimal morphological details of its head as provided by Wilkins – and always assuming, of course, that his report was both genuine and accurate. Four very different identities, but all sharing toothy infamy, come readily to mind – the Nile crocodile Crocodylus niloticus, the common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius, the African bush elephant Loxodonta africana, and any one in a wide taxonomic range of large fossil species with very sizeable teeth.

Artistic representation of Sebek, ancient Egypt's crocodile-headed god of fertility and military might (© Jeff Dahl/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

In ancient Egyptian times, the Nile crocodile was very common in this country, frequenting the River Nile from Upper Egypt and the Delta northward to the Mediterranean coast. It was also venerated - among the extensive pantheon of animal-headed deities worshipped in ancient Egypt was the crocodile-headed god Sebek (=Sobek), associated with fertility, power, and military strength, and invoked to provide protection from the dangers of the Nile itself. Many mummified crocodiles dedicated to Sebek have been unearthed during excavations of ancient Egyptian temples and other sites. Yet in spite of its exalted position in this ancient culture, the Nile crocodile was also extensively hunted, millennium after millennium, until by the 1950s it was virtually extinct in Egypt, nowadays existing in this country only within Lake Nasser and the lands directly to the south of it, having been exterminated in Lower Egypt following the building of the Aswan Dam during the 1960s.

The Nile crocodile typically measures 11-12 ft long in total, but exceptional specimens more than 19 ft long have been documented, and the largest Nile crocodile skulls on record are up to 27 in long, with a mandibular (lower jaw) length of up to 34 in. Yet if just the head of one were discovered, entirely without body, would the size of the entire animal if estimated by extrapolating from just the head really be big enough to warrant being described as gigantic? I'm by no means convinced that it would. Equally, by no stretch of the imagination can a Nile crocodile's teeth, which number 60-64, be described as huge – big, certainly, but huge? Personally, I don't think so.

Nile crocodile's head (© Leigh Bedford/Wikipedia – CC  BY 2.0 licence)

The second identity on offer here is the common hippopotamus. Just like the Nile crocodile, this massively large aquatic mammal was very common in ancient Egypt, was represented in the pantheon of animal-headed deities – this time by Taueret, the ferocious hippo-headed goddess of pregnancy and childbirth – and was also extensively hunted. Apparently, this species could still be found along the Damietta branch (an eastern tributary of the Nile Delta) after the Arab conquest in 639 AD, but eventually it became entirely extinct in Egypt.

Exceeded in overall stature only by the elephants and white rhinoceros among modern-day mammals, the common hippopotamus attains a total length of up to 17 ft, and a head length of 3-4 ft (with an amazing 4-5-ft vertical mouth gape!). Most spectacular of all, however, are its teeth, particularly its greatly enlarged lower canines (tusks) and lower incisors, the former measuring as much as 20 in and the latter as much as 16 in.

A pair of common hippopotamus tusks (lower canines) (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Consequently, in my opinion the preserved head or skull of a sizeable hippopotamus specimen containing such huge teeth as these provides a very plausible identity for the big-toothed mystery beast head found by Hassan in an ancient Egyptian solar boat. And because the hippopotamus was a species venerated in this culture, the presence of such a specimen in such a boat would by no means be inexplicable or even unexpected. Indeed, the only mystifying aspect that is not readily explained by such a solution is why the specimen's identity as the head – or skull – of a creature as zoologically familiar in modern times as the hippopotamus was not swiftly established. But perhaps it was, unbeknownst to Wilkins?

Incidentally, the reason why I have included here the alternative possibility that what Wilkins described as a head was in reality merely a skull is that if it were truly a head, how had it been preserved so as to survive intact for more than four millennia? There is no mention of it being mummified. To my mind, therefore, it makes far more sense for this specimen to have been a skull, which, with no covering of skin, would also fully expose its teeth and therefore make them look even more dramatic, especially if the skull were that of a common hippo.

Artistic representation of Taueret – ancient Egypt's hippo-headed goddess of pregnancy and childbirth (© Jeff Dahl/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

Moving on to the third identity contender, I wonder if the head (or skull) might conceivably be from some exotic, non-Egyptian species, perhaps a gift from a wealthy visiting potentate in ancient times, explaining why it had been preserved and clearly deemed significant enough to have been placed inside one of the solar boats. The skull of an African bush elephant Loxodonta africana with tusks retained, possibly? Having said that, this species did actually exist in ancient Egypt as a native species some 6000 years ago, during pre-dynastic times, before being hunted to extinction there, after which specimens were imported for military purposes and as exotic pets. Such a skull could certainly lend itself to yielding via extrapolation a complete animal fully deserving of being described (accurately) as gigantic, and its tusks described as huge teeth.

Moreover, as publicly revealed in January 2019, skull fragments from a young elephant were found in a rubbish dump within a 2300-year-old Egyptian fortress on the Red Sea coast. This confirms that such creatures were being maintained in Egypt at least two millennia after the time of Chephren. Equally, within the ancient cemetery of Hierakonpolis, dating back over 5000 years and therefore preceding the time of Chephren, excavations made public in 2015 revealed the skeletons of several exotic animal specimens, including two elephants. These twin discoveries in turn lend support to the prospect of elephants being kept in Egypt during Chephren's reign. Once again, however, if the Beast in the Boat head/skull had truly been that of an elephant, in the 1930s such a specimen – most especially one that possessed tusks – would surely have been swiftly identified, more so even than a hippo skull, in fact.

African bush elephant skull (© JimJones1971/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

The fourth – but in my view the least likely – of the four identity contenders proffered here for consideration is a fossil skull from some large to very large prehistoric mammal or reptile that sported sizeable teeth, e.g. some species of mammoth or other long-vanished proboscidean, a mosasaur, a theropod dinosaur. There are some notable precedents for such specimens having attracted significant attention in bygone times, as documented by me in a number of my previous writings. Created in 1590, the famous lindworm-shaped fountain in Klagenfurt, Austria, for instance, was based upon a supposed dragon skull, but when scientifically examined in modern times it proved to be the fossilized skull of an Ice Age woolly rhinoceros. An ancient Corinthian vase depicting the Homeric legend of Greek hero Heracles rescuing Hesione from a giant sea beast dubbed the Monster of Troy seemingly used a skull of the prehistoric giraffid Samotherium as a model for the monster's head. And from an illustration prepared of it in 1673 by Johannes Hain, an alleged dragon skull discovered in a cave in eastern Europe's Carpathian Mountains is readily identifiable as that of the extinct cave bear Ursus spelaeus.

Consequently, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a fossilized skull of some such beast was gifted to Chephren on the assumption that it was from a mighty monster, and was subsequently retained for posterity by being placed in a solar boat. Moreover, as prehistoric animal species are by no means as easy to identify by non-specialists as are modern-day ones, if the head was a skull from a somewhat obscure fossil creature this could even explain why its zoological identity allegedly had not been established following Hassan's discovery of the head in the solar boat during 1935.

Klagenfurt lindworm fountain (© Winfried Weithofer/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

How I wish that I could trace some additional documentation of the Beast in the Boat head, and even, perhaps, its current location, as I naturally assume that it was preserved after having been uncovered by Hassan. Yet if so, why does his definitive account of his excavations in the very same location where (and also in the very same year when) Wilkins stated this tantalizingly elusive specimen was found contain not the merest mention of it?

As I said at the beginning of the present ShukerNature article, perhaps someone reading this has information concerning the specimen that they are willing to share with me, and, in so doing, enable me at last to get ahead (pun intended!) with this mystery. Over to you – or, to put it another way (and speaking figuratively here, not literally, obviously) – bring me the head of the Beast in the Boat!

Alongside a statue of a common hippopotamus at Marwell Zoo in Hampshire, England (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Please feel free to post any thoughts, information, etc concerning this crypto-case in the comments section below this ShukerNature blog article, or email them to me directly. Many thanks indeed!

Meanwhile, and as is true with all cryptozoological cases based solely upon anecdotal evidence, especially when only a single source currently appears to exist concerning it, there is always the sad possibility that this one is a hoax, an invention on Wilkins's part, with little or no substance to it - hence my "always assuming" caveat included earlier. However, as Wilkins specifically named a real, and very notable, person, i.e. the highly-renowned Egyptologist Prof. Selim Hassan, within his report, and included that report in two separate books, at a time when Hassan was still very much alive and working upon precisely the same subjects, Pyramid of Chephren-sited solar boats, in precisely the same year, 1935, as given in that selfsame report, Wilkins would have been taking a great risk of exposing himself to claims of libel by Hassan if his report had been false. If, conversely, Wilkins had not named any real, still-living person in his report, I would have been much more inclined to deem its claims as being false - but he did name a real, still-living person, Hassan! Tragically, however, as both Wilkins and Hassan are now deceased, we may never know the truth - unless there is someone out there reading this article of mine who can prove me wrong!

Mom and I in Giza, 2006, with the Great Sphinx and (partly visible behind it) the Pyramid of Chephren aka Khafre (© Dr Karl Shuker)

TIME TO MEET AND GREET MY HIPPO-CAT! ANOTHER MYSTIFYING CRYPTO-CARVING(?) FROM AFRICA

Side views of my African 'hippo-cat' wooden carving – please click to enlarge (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Hot on the heels of the scaly mokele-mbembe-reminiscent mystery statuette documented by me in my previous ShukerNature post (click here) just a few days ago, here is a second incongruous iconographical object of the putatively cryptozoological kind. Yet whereas the only way for me to examine the former example directly would be to visit the Rosminian Missionary Fathers at Glencomeragh House, Clonmel, in County Tipperary, Ireland, where it is held, I don't have to travel anywhere near as far from my home in the West Midlands, England, in order to examine this latest item. In fact, I don’t even have to leave my home at all in order to do so, because it is right here in front of me, ensconced in my study. But to begin at the beginning…

Roughly 5-6 years ago, when my mother Mary Shuker was alive and still in good health, we would travel frequently and widely across England and Wales together visiting antique shops, collectors fairs, bric-a-brac markets, car boot sales, etc, where I would always be keeping a sharp lookout for anything unusual and potentially cryptozoological or zoomythological in nature. And it was at one such event (but, sadly, I can't remember where or when it was now, as we visited so many, so often, back then) where I saw the very distinctive, eyecatching wooden statuette that is the subject of this present ShukerNature blog article (and is depicted here in a series of photographs showing it from various sides and angles). What I do remember, however, is that when I asked its vendor about its origin, all that he knew was that it was African and had "probably" come from somewhere in West Africa.

More photos of my ambiguous animal statuette – please click to enlarge (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Approximately 9 in long and surprisingly heavy for its size, this enigmatic object was carved out of wood, had been stained a deep cherry-red shade, was very smooth to the touch and quite shiny (especially on the upper right flank, which was a little worn with the colour of its spotting there almost worn off), and was liberally patterned all over its body (including its underparts), limbs, tail, neck, and face with small, simple black spots (like those of a cheetah, as opposed to being arranged in rosettes like a leopard's). There was some slight damage to the right shoulder, and a superficial crack line lower down across that same limb.

The gaping mouth of the creature represented by this statuette possessed a pair of upper and lower canine teeth seemingly made from the cut-off ends of porcupine quills or some such other spiny items, but instead of being inserted vertically, they had been angled so as to project forward. Coupled with the beast's very large mouth (but most especially its extremely big, broad lower jaw), this made these teeth look rather like those of a hippopotamus.

Close-up, front views of my mystifying hipp0-cat – please click to enlarge (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Conversely, everything else about the creature was decidedly feline – its face (particularly its whiskers and triangular nose), the overall shape, proportions, pose, and poise of its body and limbs, its long tail with a very leonine tuft of black hair at its tip, its large clawed paws. Indeed, when I first saw it, I initially assumed that it was simply either an imaginative/stylised or else a rather crude/inaccurate portrayal of a leopard. But the more closely I examined it, the more I realised that both of these options were gross simplifications. In reality, it was a very skilfully made statuette, exhibiting all manner of nuances, from the discrete nature of every claw on its paws, and the vertical lines on its neck that in a living animal of this shape and size would indeed arise (constituting skin/muscle creases) when its head reared forward with mouth open wide in a roar or snarl of rage (the pose in which this statuette's creature had been carved), to the unexpected lateral striping rising up on each side of its body from its ventral surface (not what one would expect to see if the creature were meant to be a leopard), and the well-shaped, naturally-proportioned, powerful musculature of its body.

But what creature was it meant to be? It was much too burly and sturdy to be a leopard, and its lateral striping also argued against this identity, as did its leonine tail tuft. Yet its lack of a mane (the flat vertical neck lines offered no suggestion that they represented a mane), and its polka-dot, cheetah-like spotting that profusely patterned its entire form argued against its being a lion either (and even in rare cases of lionesses that have retained into adulthood a degree of spotting, the spotting in question takes the appearance of rosettes, like leopards, not dots as in cheetahs). Moreover, apart from its single shared feature of simple spotting, it bore no resemblance whatsoever to a cheetah.

Spotted hyaena (© AindriúH/Wikipedia CC BY 2.0 licence)

Could it conceivably be a spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta? Again, it showed scant – if, indeed, any – similarity to this long-legged, slope-backed, superficially canine creature, other than its spotted coat. And how can we explain its oddly hippo-like lower jaw and teeth orientation? Also, did its staining with red dye have any zoological significance with regard to its creature's morphology and taxonomic identity?

Not surprisingly, faced with such a fascinating array of anomalies and questions associated with them, I was very keen to purchase this statuette, and after a little haggling I succeeded in doing so for £8 – definitely a bargain as far as I was concerned!

Some additional views of my hippo-cat carving – please click to enlarge (© Dr Karl Shuker)

When I arrived back home with it, I spent quite some time that evening online, browsing countless images of African carvings depicting lions, leopards, hyaenas, and hippos, produced by many different cultures and peoples, but I was unable to find any that even remotely resembled my statuette. On the contrary, whereas the latter seemed to be an embodiment of features drawn from all of these creatures, all of the online carvings that I saw were readily recognisable as lions (all with well-defined, furry manes), or leopards, or hippos, etc, with no confusion or overlapping of features between them. I have further browsed online for such carvings on several occasions since then (most recently while writing this present ShukerNature article today), but I have never found one that matches or is even reminiscent of mine.

So, could it be that my mystery statuette was not meant to be a real animal, but is instead merely a composite, uniting the tail and body of a lion with the simple dot-spotting of a cheetah and perhaps the face of a leopard, together with the mouth and teeth of a hippo, for instance, plus some attractive if wholly invented side striping and red body dye added by the sculptor just for good measure? This seems the most parsimonious, conservative explanation. Or might it actually be a representation of some mythical beast from the local folklore of wherever it was made? Needless to say, my quest for answers to this animal's identity has not been assisted by the lack of any precise provenance for this object – after all, West Africa (and only "probably" at that!) is a huge area containing numerous native peoples, and limitless versions and variations of traditional native lore.

Possible appearance of the vassoko or mountain tiger (© Tim Morris)

Or is it just conceivable that what I purchased on that long-bygone day is a portrayal of a bona fide cryptid? Well worth recalling here is that one of central-western Africa's most notable mystery beasts is the so-called mountain tiger or vassoko – an extremely large, ferocious crypto-felid said to be red in colour but also striped, and possessing a huge mouth containing very large, protruding teeth said to resemble the fangs of the officially extinct sabre-toothed cats or machairodontids. True, it is also said variously to be tailless or to possess only the shortest of tails, as opposed to a long, conspicuous, tufted tail of the kind sported by the creature represented by my carving. But this discrepancy might simply be a mistake on the part of the sculptor, who may not have based the creature's appearance on any firsthand sighting but only upon anecdotal reports that had potentially been confused, or were contradictory, or had been elaborated upon by their tellers.

When I posted some photos of this perplexing carving on Facebook earlier today, some viewers commented that it combined not only feline and hippopotamine (did I just invent a new word there??) similarities but also ursine ones. Might it therefore even be a representation of that most classic of all African cryptozoological composites, the legendary Nandi bear itself? True, although the latter has been likened to a wide range of different animals, including hyaenas, baboons, bears, honey badgers, even aardvarks and the supposedly extinct chalicotheres, it has not usually been compared with a felid form. Then again, in his seminal book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), Dr Bernard Heuvelmans did liken the Nandi bear to Proteus – an early marine deity in Greek mythology able to transform himself into a wide range of different creatures – on account of the inordinate diversity of morphological descriptions filed for this cryptid by eyewitnesses. So perhaps there is a feline component to the Nandi bear composite too. Who can say?

An African chalicothere (also featuring a cameo from one of my favourite birds, the hoopoe) (© Hodari Nundu)

Or, returning full circle in my analysing of this bewildering beast's possible  identity, could it simply be that its sculptor was in a playful, light-hearted mood when he was creating it, and so decided not to produce just another standard carving of some very familiar animal but rather a very striking, wholly original entity spawned by the fruitful union of his imagination and crafting skills – ultimately yielding a cherry-coloured conundrum, a veritable hippo-cat in fact, with which to baffle and delight in equal measure whoever saw it and subsequently purchased it?

After all, it's not as if cherry-coloured mystery cats are unprecedented in the annals of chicanery. Quoting from the North America-themed chapter in my very first book, Mystery Cats of the World (1989):

No chapter on North American feline mysteries and marvels would be complete without a mention of the celebrated cherry-coloured cat exhibited by that famed American showman Phineas Barnum. After having paid their money to see this wonderful animal, a few of its visitors later protested to Barnum that they had been both surprised and disappointed to discover that it was nothing more than an ordinary black cat. Barnum was quite unmoved by their remonstrance, for, as he reminded them, he had promised them a cherry-coloured cat and, after all, some cherries are black!

There's a lesson for cryptozoology in there somewhere.

Indeed there is!

Scale of my bemusing feline figurine – please click to enlarge (© Dr Karl Shuker)

For the most comprehensive modern-day documentation of the Nandi bear controversy, and also various reports of the vassoko or mountain tiger, please check out my new mega-book, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

SURF HIPPOS, HERE THEY COME!

Surfing hippopotamus (picture source unknown)

Hippopotamuses surfing in the sea may seem as improbable as polar bears gambolling across the desert, but as the remarkable photograph above readily demonstrates, in the world of nature few things are even impossible, let alone merely improbable. For although the common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius is traditionally associated with freshwater habitats, such as rivers and lakes, it does also frequent saltwater in certain localities. These include the southern Orango group of islands, part of the Bijagos Archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Guinea Bissau (formerly Portugese Guinea) in western Africa, which are now a national park. Saltwater hippos occur off the Kenyan island of Manada Toto too, and - the location of the stunning photo here - in the Petit-Loango Reserve in southwestern Gabon. Here, the hippos spend much of the day taking their ease in swamps and lagoons close by, but emerge at dusk to graze upon grass along the beach and indulge in boisterous surfing safaris out to sea.

Photos of surfing hippos in South Africa (sources unknown) 

What makes such scenes even more extraordinary than their mere setting is the fact that despite being intimately associated with water, hippos are far from being the animal world's most competent swimmers.

Only when seen in its entirety on land, can the hippo's immense size be fully comprehended (Dr Karl Shuker) 

Indeed, even though their massive bulk (they are beaten in the heavyweight stakes among terrestrial mammals only by the elephants and some rhinoceroses) is effectively buoyed by their aqueous surroundings, these gargantuan cousins of pigs and peccaries (but actually most closely allied to whales, dolphins, and other cetaceans) often do not venture into expanses of lake or river deeper than their own bodies.

Common hippopotamus (Dr Karl Shuker)

Even hippos seen with just their heads above water are, in reality, usually standing on the riverbed or lake bottom, stretching their necks to keep their heads above water, ably assisted by the evolutionary relocation of their eyes, ears, and nostrils close to the top of their heads. If, moreover, a hippo does decide to dive or swim underwater, a reflex action closes its ears and nostrils entirely, and it will commonly stay wholly submerged for 3-5 minutes - but may, if required, continue to do so for up to 30 minutes! And as the surfing hippos ably prove, if necessary it can indeed swim unaided by terra firma beneath its feet.

Note the hippo's upward-opening nostrils (Dr Karl Shuker) 
 
Equally interesting is that despite their far-from-streamlined form, hippos are able to attain some nifty turns of running speed - even underwater. One hippo was timed charging along the bed of a river at a highly respectable 5 miles per hour, in spite of the appreciable drag effect of its watery surroundings acting upon it. And on land, hippos can readily outpace human runners, having been timed at up to 30 miles per hour - so beware!

Hippopotamus figurine carved out of blue sodalite

Certainly, hippos, in spite of being predominantly peaceful creatures, have acquired a formidable reputation as arguably the most dangerous animal to humans in Africa - adult females are notoriously ferocious if challenged or disturbed when they have calves. Their weapons are of course their colossal mouths, armed with huge curving tusks. Including their gum-embedded roots, the lower canine teeth of a hippo can sometimes grow up to 3 ft long - the length of an average human arm! And when a male hippo opens its stupendous jaws to yawn - not an indication of boredom, incidentally, but a sign of aggression toward another male seeking to invade its territory, or of courtship intent toward a female - the resulting gape can be up to 150°. Only whales among mammals can outgape a yawning hippo!

Hippo gape (Aqwis/Wikipedia)

Indeed, it has been claimed that a hippo can open its jaws wide enough to accommodate a 4-ft-tall child inside! And this beast's mighty maws are so powerful that an adult specimen can bite a 12-ft-long crocodile in half! But even when not chomping a croc, male hippos fighting for territory can inflict terrible wounds upon each other, and even kill one another, with their huge curved tusks.

Skull of common hippopotamus
 

So tough, in fact, are these awesome teeth that little more than a century ago hippo ivory was popular among dentists for use in manufacturing human artificial teeth - once they had succeeded in dissolving with acid the yellow enamel covering the ivory, because this enamel is as hard as glass and accounts for a third of each tusk's total weight! Much further back in time, the ancient Egyptians carved amulets for babies out of hippo ivory, believing that this substance had the power to ward away demons. Furthermore, the Egyptian goddess of childbirth, Taueret, was popularly portrayed as a bipedal hippopotamus. 

Statuette of Taueret carved out of faience (Jon Bodsworth) 
 

Undoubtedly, the hippo attracted great interest from early humans, and not just on account of its huge size and formidable jaws, but also due to the longstanding belief that it could sweat blood. The explanation for this curious but totally inaccurate notion is that in order to ensure that its thick, almost-hairless skin remains supple and moist when out of the water, and also to avoid it becoming sunburnt, the hippo secretes a sticky, oily, pink-hued substance from glands beneath the surface of its skin, which on first glance can appear a little like seeping blood but is in reality an efficient, ready-made sun-block! It may also act as an antibiotic, helping to promote germ-free healing of wounds inflicted upon each other by bellicose male hippos. 

 
Having said that, a rare bona fide pink hippopotamus was photographed in Kenya's Masai Mara Game park during late September 2010 by British tourist brothers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas (and others have previously been reported in Uganda). Apparently a leucistic individual, exhibiting reduced body pigmentation, photos and a full news report of this extraordinary creature can be found here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315917/Rare-pink-hippo-images-captured-Masai-Mara-Kenya.html 

Another of the hippo's secrets, conversely, has only been revealed quite recently. Not surprisingly, for a creature that spends so much of its time partly or fully submerged, the hippo is able to vocalise not merely on land but underwater too - thanks to a stentorian voice and powers of vocal projection that would put even the most skilled of human opera singers to shame. Hippos can communicate with one another directly through the medium of water via ear-splitting bellows of such potent force that they can be both heard and physically felt by anything positioned up to 50 ft away! But that is not all - scientists have lately discovered a hitherto unsuspected infrasonic component to this bellow, an amazing rumble beneath the threshold of human hearing but which can be detected underwater by other hippos as far away as 18.7 miles!

Hippo swimming (Dr Karl Shuker)
 
No less amazing than its voice, however, are the eyes of the hippo - due to the bizarre shape of their pupils, each resembling an inverted, smooth-cornered capital 'T'! Yet again, this is an evolutionary adaptation to assist the hippo in its amphibious lifestyle, for it uniquely (among mammals) enables the hippo to see above and below the water surface with the same intensity of light, thus yielding a complete view, unimpeded by the water. 
 
Pygmy hippopotamuses 

Less familiar, smaller, and much daintier than the well known, common hippopotamus is the much more terrestrial, forest-dwelling pygmy hippo Choeropsis (=Hexaprotodon) liberiensis, which looks more like an over-sized shiny-black pig than a hippo. For many years, the very existence of this reclusive animal was discounted by science, in spite of longstanding native testimony and reports brought back to Europe by western travellers. Some even attempted to dismiss it as nothing more than a freak, stunted version of the common, larger species. As noted in my book The New Zoo: New and Rediscovered Animals of the Twentieth Century (2002; new, greatly-expanded edition due out later this year!!!), not until five living specimens were brought back alive by German explorer Hans Schomburgk in 1913 was the pygmy hippo scientifically accepted as a second, valid species of hippopotamus in its own right. 
 
Pygmy hippos

Most remarkable of all, however, is that there could even be a third, supposedly long-extinct species of hippo still awaiting scientific detection - on the island of Madagascar. Several millennia ago, at least three different species of undersized, dwarf hippo existed here, but these are officially deemed to have died out long ago. However, even today locals in southwestern Madagascar occasionally claim to encounter a shy, unidentified mystery beast that they refer to as the kilopilopitsofy or tsomgomby, which, when described by them, sounds irresistibly similar in both appearance and habits to a small form of hippo. Even the alleged vocalisations of the kilopilopitsofy seem remarkably reminiscent of the bellows of a hippo. 

Is the kilopilopitsofy a surviving species of Madagascan dwarf hippo? (Dr Karl Shuker)
 
Clearly, the fascinating realm of the river horse - the literal translation of 'hippopotamus' - may still have some hefty surprises in store! 

My late grandmother Gertrude Timmins's blue hippopotamus ornament - a fond memory from my childhood (Dr Karl Shuker) 
 
NB - Unless stated otherwise, all images included in this post are, to the best of my knowledge, in the public domain.