Bushbucks are the smallest members of the spiral-horned African antelope group, which also include the kudus, nyalas, sitatunga, elands, and bongo. Traditionally, just a single bushbuck species has been recognized, Tragelaphus scriptus, albeit with numerous subspecies (some of which long ago were briefly deemed by certain 'splitter' mammalogists to be species in their own right before being 'lumped' into T. scriptus), distributed through much of sub-Saharan Africa. More recently however, it has been split taxonomically into two – the northern bushbuck, native to western and northern/central Africa, which retains the binomial name T. scriptus; and the Cape bushbuck T. sylvaticus, native to southern and eastern Africa.
Moreover, in the Cape bushbuck both sexes are generally brown, often with only limited coat patterning on the torso, even in the more showy male (though more strikingly patterned individuals do sometimes occur). Conversely, the northern bushbuck is the more familiar form, patterned as its torso is (most especially in the adult male) with a diverse, eyecatching arrangement of vertical white stripes on its flanks and often also a horizontal lower flank stripe lying beneath them plus a couple of horizontal shoulder stripes, all of them again white, as well as a series of white spots on its haunches. The overall effect is as if this antelope is wearing a harness, which is why a popular longstanding alternative name for the bushbuck as a whole has always been the harnessed antelope, but which is nowadays applied specifically to the northern species.
However, as will now be revealed, there is one northern bushbuck specimen on record whose coat patterning is dramatically different from that of any other bushbuck of any kind – so much so, in fact, that veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans deemed it worthy of being investigated as potentially representing an entirely discrete but currently undescribed species in its own right. In addition, its extraordinary skin is apparently still preserved in a museum. Yet this unique, fascinating individual and its very intriguing history have never been fully documented in any English-language publication – until now, that is, via this worldwide ShukerNature exclusive. So, let's begin at the beginning of this very belated bushbuck revelation.
I first learned of this singular specimen during the mid-1980s, when browsing through Heuvelmans's lengthy but thoroughly engrossing paper 'Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown Animals With Which Cryptozoology is Concerned', a paper that I have since returned to countless times during my own researches. It was published in Vol. 5 of Cryptozoology, the official scientific journal of the now-defunct International Society of Cryptozoology, and in it Heuvelmans briefly documented dozens of cryptids, many of which were very obscure and hitherto-unknown to me, arranged geographically and via habitat, with each cryptid's entry supplemented by one or more source references. Here is Heuvelmans's entry for the mystery bushbuck:
A small, entirely spotted bushbuck antelope, known only from an incomplete skin (preserved in the Zoological Museum of Berlin University) from Liberia (Pathé 1940).
The reference cited by him is: Pathé, Moritz (1940). Die Suche nach dem Fabeltier [The Search For The Mythical Creature]. Deutscher Verlag (Berlin).
Moritz Pathé (1893-1956) was a prolific and very talented German artist and book illustrator, specializing in animal pictures, and the author of several works, documenting his travels in Africa seeking rare creatures to portray, but also to hunt and trap.
Yet despite searching for more information concerning Pathé's enigmatic antelope, I was unable to locate any, and eventually it slipped from my mind. A few weeks ago, however, my interest in it was revived when palaeontologist and fellow cryptozoological writer Dr Darren Naish contacted me to enquire whether I had any information on file regarding it. As I still hadn't, Darren's query inspired me to launch another search, and this time, finally, I achieved success, thanks to two longstanding friends who both share my enthusiasm for all matters of a cryptozoological kind.
The first of these was French crypto-scholar Michel Raynal, who kindly supplied me with a copy of the principal chapter from Pathé's book in which he documented the Liberian spotted bushback (the entire book featured it, as it was the mythical animal referred to in the title, but this particular chapter contained the most significant information concerning it). Although the text was in German, I would normally have experienced no problems with translating it, but as various of you may know, for quite some time now I have been afflicted with a close-up vision problem (happily, my distance vision is unaffected) that makes reading and on-screen research difficult at present (an operation to correct this condition should be taking place soon). Consequently, translating many pages of German into English is presently beyond my capabilities.
Moreover, because the font employed in the book is a very ornate one that was commonly used in German publications back in the days when Pathé's book was published, blocking and pasting the text in sections into Google Translate and other translation sites also failed, because its ornate font rendered the text unreadable by the online translators.
But then one of my German crypto-friends, Markus Hemmler, came to my rescue, generously providing me with an immensely useful English translation of the relevant chapter (annotated by him with some very informative explanatory notes), plus other excerpts, as well as a copy of a colour plate from it (as did Michel) that contained Pathé's own very detailed illustrations of the skin, showing it dorsally and laterally, and which I've included here, as you'll see below. Markus subsequently also supplied me with an image of the full-colour illustrated dustjacket of Pathé's book (shown above here), the illustration being one of the author's own paintings, plus some of his line-drawings that appeared inside the book. All of these will be revealed later here.
First of all, however, here is a summary of the pertinent information regarding the spotted bushbuck as provided by Pathé in the principal chapter of his book devoted to it plus some references to it that appeared in subsequent chapters:
In 1937, Pathé was spending time in the West African country of Liberia, with the express purpose of hunting, drawing, and painting various of its more exotic animal species, in particular the pygmy hippopotamus and the crowned eagle. But a fortuitous meeting with a youth offering for sale a truly extraordinary albeit incomplete antelope skin changed the course of his plans completely, so that much of his time there was instead spent seeking a living example of this exceptionally elusive, ostensibly mythical, yet (by virtue of the afore-mentioned physical, tangible skin) unequivocally real creature, even inspiring the title of the book that he would write about his adventures.
To quote from one of Markus's annotations to his English translation of the relevant sections from Pathé's book:
At the beginning of the book Pathé already is in Monrovia [Liberia's capital] and until page 92 he describes some adventures like the journey from Monrovia (via Mesurado River, Stockton Creek to St. Paul River, then over land to Royersville at the Po River and beyond this river into the jungle) to Bangatown at the Lofa River [in northwestern Liberia] and his experiences and exploration of the surrounding area.
And so it was that one day during his stay in Bangatown, Pathé received an unexpected visitor in the form of a native youth named Jimmy, about 20 years old and hailing from a small village far upriver in the neighbouring but still quite distant Gola region. Jimmy had been hoping to sell the skin on behalf of his uncle to some people with whom his father and uncle had done business before, but for various reasons he failed to sell it to them. However, being mindful of Pathé's reputation as a hunter, Jimmy had then brought the skin to him, in case he may wish to buy it, and as Pathé had never seen anything like it before, he swiftly did so.
According to Jimmy, who also had never seen one like it before, the antelope had been shot by a native hunter somewhere in Gola. Jimmy stated that he did not know specifically where, but eventually revealed that the hunter had mentioned a distant spot on the Mahé River, a tributary of the afore-mentioned Lofa River..
Pathé decided to hire Jimmy as his hunting boy, offering him both pay and on-the-job training if he accepted, which the youth instantly did, promising to return in a week's time and begin his exciting new career, which again he did.
The book then digresses, pursuing other topics such as the successful search by Pathé and Jimmy for a crowned eagle that Pathé hoped to paint, but on p. 110 he returns to the anomalous antelope skin, which becomes his principal focus thereafter. Yet what was so special about it? Here is the earlier-mentioned colour plate containing three illustrations of it by Pathé:
As seen, the skin lacked its head and limbs, but those were not relevant in relation to what instantly set it apart from all known antelopes, which was its remarkable patterning. Although its species appeared at the very least to be akin to the bushbuck, this skin lacked the latter's characteristic white stripes and posterior white dappling. Instead, and incongruously, its back and much of its flanks were heavily patterned with black spots, which in its dorsal and upper dorso-lateral regions had coalesced and congealed so extensively that a solid mass of black pigmentation had resulted.
Could this extraordinary creature represent a hitherto-undescribed species in its own right, or was it a very distinctive, aberrant specimen of the known northern bushbuck? Pathé personally appeared far from sure, because during the course of his book his opinion oscillated back and forth constantly between these two options.
When I first saw his paintings of it, I immediately thought of two remarkable leopards that had been shot in the vicinity of Grahamstown, South Africa, during the 1880s (click here to see my documentation and pictures of them on ShukerNature; they are also chronicled in my three books on mystery cats). Dubbed melanotic at that time (but a term rarely used today), in each of these aberrant individuals the typical black-pigmented leopard rosettes had broken up on the flanks into tiny but very profuse black spots that in the upper dorso-lateral and dorsal regions had amalgamated into solid or near-solid expanses of black pigmentation, just as was exhibited by Pathé's singular bushbuck specimen.
In the case of the Grahamstown leopards (similar cases are also on record featuring other leopards, tigers, and at least one jaguar individual known to me), this abnormal patterning is nowadays referred to as pseudo-melanism, distinguishing it from true melanism.
For in the latter condition (which is responsible for all-black leopard specimens aka black panthers, and all-black individuals in many other animal species too), the pelage's black rosettes of the individual in question are unaffected but its background colour is abnormally dark, so much so in fact that it often obscures the presence of the rosettes. Conversely, as described above, in pseudo-melanism the background colour of the individual's pelage remains its usual shade but is virtually obscured dorsally and dorso-laterally by abnormal amalgamation and coalescing of the black rosettes into large expanses of solid black pigmentation plus intense black speckling elsewhere on the flanks.
However, the fundamental problem with seeking to identify the spotted bushbuck skin as that of a pseudo-melanistic specimen is that in typical bushbuck specimens their markings are white, not black. So as bushbucks never normally possess any black markings at all, I cannot conceive how pseudo-melanism could create this specimen's unique pattern of black-pigmented spots and coalesced black spotting.
In contrast, it is possible that the skin represents an example of incomplete true melanism, whereby instead of the pelage of the individual in question being black all over, it exhibits melanism only in certain body regions, such as its back and flanks, for instance. In some cases involving very discrete, localized body regions, this is known as mozaicism, with one famous example being that of Ranger, a male lion born during the 1970s at Glasgow Zoo (then called Calder Park Zoo). His parents were of normal colouration, but he exhibited a large black region on his chest plus another one on his right foreleg (click here to see my documentation of Ranger on ShukerNature).
Whatever the precise explanation for this bushbuck skin's aberrant appearance, however, it is hardly surprising that Pathé was so interested it – but he was not the only one.
Not long after purchasing the skin from Jimmy, Pathé received a visit from a renowned big game hunter/explorer of English-African-Indian heritage named Charles Sandiputt. He made a living from shooting rare specimens for rich Western clients and then charging them steeply for the privilege of acquiring these greatly-desired trophies, but he was currently running low both on funds and on gun cartridges, and hoped to purchase some of the latter from Pathé. While conversing, Pathé naively showed Sandiputt the spotted bushbuck skin, and although the hunter tried to disguise his excitement, it was clear to Pathé how very interested he was in it.
Sure enough, after examining the skin in detail, Sandiputt offered Pathé a sizeable sum of money for it (despite having pleaded poverty earlier), and also offered to go hunting with him in search of additional specimens. This last-mentioned offer in particular was an abrupt about-face to say the least, after just moments earlier having turned down Pathé's own suggestion for them to go hunting together, but that of course was before he'd seen the spotted bushbuck skin!
However, Pathé refused both of the hunter's offers, having realized by now that he'd made a mistake in revealing the skin's existence to Sandiputt, who departed not long afterwards without having secured from Pathé not only the skin but also any specific details regarding who had shot the animal itself and where. Some days later, however, Sandiputt surreptitiously reappeared, and was caught by Pathé questioning his native helpers on this very same subject, but having already been prompted by Pathé not to divulge any details about it to anyone, they remained tight-lipped.
To cut a lengthy story short: After Sandiputt had exited empty-handed a second time, Pathé soon sent Jimmy back to his Gola homeland to find the hunter from there who had shot the freak bushbuck, and secure his services in a search for living specimens, which Jimmy did. Pathé dubbed the hunter Bill, who then led Pathé and his hunting party to the mountainous regions upstream of the Little Mahé River in Gola. Here, with Jimmy serving as translator, Bill claimed to have not merely shot the specimen whose skin was now a closely-guarded possession of Pathé (he even took it with him on their Gola hunt, in order to ensure that it was not stolen in their absence if left unguarded back at Bangatown) but also to have seen several additional living specimens.
However, the hunt for these elusive antelopes proved unsuccessful, due in no small way to Pathé's alarming discovery that Sandiputt was also seeking these creatures in this very same vicinity and at the very same time as them, and that – in an example of devious intrigue worthy of high politics or industrial espionage – Bill was a veritable double agent. For he had already been contacted and cunningly hired in secret by Sandiputt to tire out Pathé's party so that they would quit the search and return to Bangatown, leaving behind Bill who would then lead Sandiputt in his own search, assisted by the local villages' inhabitants to whom Sandiputt had promised a big reward for a skin or information concerning where such antelopes could be found alive. Furthermore, Bill was to steal Pathé's boat too for travelling up the Mahé River, as Sandiputt didn't have access to one himself!
Ultimately, however, Sandiputt's dastardly ploy was all in vain, with none of his unscrupulous plans coming to fruition, because the ever-loyal Jimmy had made sure that Bill did not steal Pathé's boat, and neither party encountered any spotted bushbucks anyway (though Pathé did make a somewhat paradoxical claim that he and Bill briefly spied two such creatures together, only to directly contradict himself a little later in his book by saying that he had failed to find any – very strange). Ultimately, however, everyone returned home in apparent defeat, certainly with their respective quests for actual skins unfulfilled. But even then, the story was not quite over.
For not long after Pathé had arrived back in Bangatown with his party, his hut suffered an unexplained break-in, with no fewer than four of his locked iron cases and trunks having been forced open, yet nothing inside them had been taken. Bearing in mind that Pathé had been keeping the precious bushbuck skin locked in just such a case (he had several of them in his hut), he naturally suspected that whoever had broken in was seeking the skin but had chosen the wrong cases. Presumably, moreover, as Pathé's remaining cases (including the one that did contain the skin) had not been tampered with, the would-be burglar(s) must have come close to being disturbed, causing them to flee before having chance to force open any of the others.
Despite a thorough investigation taking place, no culprit was ever identified or apprehended, but Pathé reflected extensively upon the indisputable fact that when Sandiputt had first visited him, the hunter had witnessed him taking the skin out of one of these cases, so Sandiputt had been aware thereafter that this is where it was being kept. Moreover, Sandiputt had reappeared at Bangatown just a short time before the burglary had taken place (his excuse for doing so being that he wished to return Pathé's loaned cartridges to him), so he was known to have been in this precise location at that precise time. Coincidence?
After describing a feverish dream in which he had shot a spotted bushbuck, only to wake up and find that it had all been nothing more than a hallucination, and that it was now Christmas Day, Pathé made plans to travel back to Liberia's capital Monrovia and thence to Germany, duly arriving home in early 1938. Pathé had always planned to make his zoologically-valuable, unique spotted bushbuck skin freely available to science, so although it took him several months after returning to Germany before he actually did so, Pathé finally fulfilled his vow by donating it to the Zoological Museum at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In response, he received the following written communication from the then head of its mammal department, the eminent German zoologist Prof. Hermann Pohle (and which is translated here by Markus):
Dear Mr Pathé!
Thank you very much for sending me the fur from Monrovia. At first glance, I could see that no wild animal from which it could have come is known. A careful comparison then revealed that no domestic animal of this coloration is known either. Therefore, it is an unknown species or breed. Unfortunately, the fur is very incomplete; it is missing the head and legs. Therefore, it is unsuitable for a new description. It would therefore be of great value if you were able to travel to Liberia again and capture a complete animal, at least the fur and skull of one specimen.
Needless to say, however, Pathé did not do so, as WW2 would soon be changing the face of the world forever. Incidentally, Pohle's contemplation as to whether a domestic animal identity was tenable for the supposed spotted bushbuck pelt is intriguing, especially as there are speckled domestic goats, for example, whose torso pelts do recall that of the spotted bushbuck. Taking this line of thought further, one might even wonder if its head and limbs had been deliberately removed by its originator (Bill?) in order to disguise the fact that this is indeed all that it really was, just a domestic creature, not a wild animal at all. This certainly wouldn't be the first time that such subterfuge has happened with mysterious mammal specimens. However, Pohle seemed adamant that this was not the case here. and he was an extremely knowledgeable, experienced mammalogist, so I see no reason to disbelieve him - but recently ia much more serious issue has arisen regarding Pathé's specimen.
As is so depressingly frequent in sagas of physical, tangible cryptozoological specimens, Markus made a worrying discovery when he recently contacted the museum for information concerning the skin. Can you guess what he discovered? Yes indeed, there was no entry either for the skin itself or for the name Pathé on the museum collection's database! However, as he did learn, the collection isn't fully digitized as yet, so the skin may still turn up there, lurking meanwhile in anonymity somewhere within the museum's capacious basement, perhaps? Also, the database isn't accessible online at present anyway, after having gone offline in 2024 due to a cyber-attack, but hopefully at some stage in the future it will reappear online, enabling external researchers like Markus and myself to peruse it directly ourselves.
Also of note is that Markus succeeded in obtaining from the archives of Berlin's Natural History Museum seven pages of written correspondence between Pathé and Pohle, but there was only a single very brief reference in them to the spotted bushbuck. Namely, in a letter to Pathé dated 25 October 1946, Pohle expressed optimism that Pathé would soon resume travel back to Liberia (now that WW2 was over), and stated: "It seems to me that you must now finally find the mythical creature and bring it back, even if it is only a domestic animal", but as already noted here, that never happened, and given the unverified nature of its continuing presence in the Humboldt University Zoological Museum's collection, Pathé's spotted bushbuck skin is an even bigger enigma now than it was before!
And on that unsatisfactory, unresolved note, with its very existence, let alone its taxonomic or genetic identiy, an ongoing mystery, we must bid adieu at least for the time being to the anomalous antelope constituting the subject of this present ShukerNature article – the most comprehensive coverage of it ever published in the English language. Markus plans to prepare a German-language counterpart, which will be posted in due course in his own blog, and when it appears there I shall add a clickable link to it here.
Lastly, one of the most unexpected aspects of this entire saga is that Pathé does not appear to have actually stated anywhere in his book the precise year when his search for the spotted bushbuck took place, but due to some masterfully Sherlockian detective work by Markus, it seems safe to say that it was in 1937. This is because Markus uncovered a short newspaper report published on 28 April 1938 by the Bergische Post, in which it mentions that Pathé "has just returned from Liberia". Recalling that Pathé had specifically referred in his book to spending Christmas there, just before leaving Liberia to return home to Germany, this clearly identifies the year that he spent in Liberia as 1937.
If any additional news regarding the spotted bushbuck skin emerges, I'll include it here as an update. Meanwhile, my sincerest thanks go to Markus Hemmler and Michel Raynal for very kindly making so much relevant information available to me, thereby making my preparation of this article possible.
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