GRIFFINS, GRIFFINOSAURS, CYNOGRIFFINS, AND HIPPOGRIFFS – REVISITING SOME CLASSIC MIX 'N' MATCH MONSTERS FROM FABLE, FICTION, AND FACT

A beautiful majolica jardinière from the late 19^th Century in the form of a senmurv or cynogriffin (© Dr Karl Shuker)

My maternal grandmother's family surname was Griffin, in honour of which I have a griffin tattoo, so this famous beast of ancient myth and legend has always been special to me. A fabulous mix 'n' match monster combining the body of a lion with the wings and head of an eagle, and alternatively spelled as 'gryphon', it apparently originated in the Levant region, with accounts of griffins from this area dating back more than 4000 years, but later spreading their mighty pinions westward into Europe.

A ceramic griffin figurine (© Dr Karl Shuker)

These amalgamated animals were well-known for their fondness for gold - Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th Century BC, stated that griffins inhabited the lofty mountain peaks of India, where they dug up gold with which to construct their mighty nests, which in turn were greatly coveted by opportunist gold-hunters.

Griffin engraving from 1663

Also highly sought-after were their long curved talons, allegedly capable of detecting poison, and many were brought back to Europe during the Middle Ages by crusaders. Sadly, however, they invariably proved to be antelope or other ungulate horns, sold to the ingenuous crusaders by African entrepreneurs! As noted by Edward Peacock in the September 1884 issue of The Antiquary, for instance, a supposed griffin claw now preserved in the British Museum is believed to have been one of two contained in 1383 within the shrine of Saint Cuthbert at Durham Cathedral. However, it bears a very close resemblance indeed to the horn of an ibex!

Nubian ibex revealing its magnificent curled horns, once passed off as griffin claws by unscrupulous Middle Eastern vendors to gullible Crusaders (© Nino Barbieri/Wikipedia)

Traditionally, zoologists have sought to identify the griffin with a powerful species of vulturine bird of prey called the lammergeier Gypaetus barbatus, but in 1991 a very novel alternative candidate was proposed by Dr Adrienne Mayor, a classical scholar currently at California's Stanford University.

Lammergeier – a German chromolithograph from 1894

Dr Mayor noted that the Altai Mountains of central Asia, famous for their rich gold deposits and the locality of many ancient griffin legends, also contain the fossilised skeletons and eggs of a lion-sized species of quadrupedal ceratopsian dinosaur called Protoceratops andrewsi, whose most distinctive feature was its strikingly eagle-like beaked head.

Life-sized model of Protoceratops andrewsi (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Dating from the late Cretaceous Period (approximately 70 million years ago), if its remains had been encountered by early gold prospectors many centuries before the correct nature of dinosaurs as prehistoric reptiles was recognised, how would these veritable griffinosaurs have been explained by such people? Quite possibly as the skeletons of four-footed eagle-headed monsters - or, as we call them today, griffins.

Griffin statue spotted in the yard of a statue/figurine seller in Rome, 2001 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Closely allied (if not directly ancestral) to the griffin, and sometimes termed the cynogriffin, is the senmurv ('dog-bird') of early Persian mythology, which combines the body of a lion, and the wings and talons of an eagle, with the head of a dog. Its home was a magical tree, whose seeds, scattered throughout the world whenever the senmurv alighted in its mighty branches, cured diseases and evils of every kind.

Embroidered senmurv, based upon the royal symbol of the Sassanian Empire of 224-651 AD (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Later Persian legends transformed the senmurv into a huge, resplendent bird known as the simurgh, which nested on the highest peak of northern Persia's Alburz Mountains, and was permanently hidden from mortal view behind a shimmering veil of darkness and light. Nevertheless, this supposedly unseen bird was frequently, and lavishly, portrayed in ancient bestiaries and manuscripts - a paradoxical situation that incited one short-tempered scholar long ago to pen the following terse but apt comment in the margin of an exquisite plate depicting the simurgh in a 13th Century bestiary: "Thou fool, if nobody has seen the simurgh, then how dost thou portray it?".

Simurgh depicted upon the portal of Nadir Divan-Beghi Madrasah, in Bukhara, Uzbekistan (© Alaexis/Wikipedia)

Folklorists consider it most likely that the simurgh was based upon one or more of the large vultures and eagles native to Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, and its 'evolution' was probably also influenced by Arabian myths of the enormous roc or rukh - a gargantuan bird of prey that could carry elephants aloft in its huge talons and inhabited an unspecified island in the Indian Ocean. As documented in further detail elsewhere on ShukerNature (click here), fronds from the exceptionally large raffia palm tree Sagus ruffia were once believed to be the feathers of the roc.

Supposed roc feather, in reality a frond from the raffia palm tree (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Yet however improbable dinosaur-inspired griffins and dog-headed griffins (not to mention elephant-abducting giant birds!) might seem, they all pale into insignificance when compared with a certain category of griffin that was so unlikely it was specifically created to personify the concept of impossibility - namely, the hippogriff. According to mythology, the rapacious griffin would readily attack and devour a horse, and in any case these two animal types were entirely dissimilar in form from one another. So how could anyone believe that they might ever mate and yield viable offspring (always assuming, of course, that anyone could actually believe that griffins themselves were real)? Such an unnatural liaison would clearly be impossible, but even if somehow it might indeed take place, no offspring could ever result from it. Thus originated the notion of the hippogriff, as initially coined (though not actually named, merely alluded to) by Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BC) in his Eclogues, as the embodiment of all that could never be - except that like so many other fictitious monsters, the hippogriff ultimately took on a veritable life of its own.

'Roger Délivrant Angélique' ('Roger rescuing Angelica'), painted by Louis-Édouard Rioult in 1824

Uniting the head, plumed wings, and front limbs of an eagle with the body, hind limbs, and tail of a horse, the hippogriff presented such a spectacular image that it became a popular subject for Classical artists to portray, it appeared in heraldry on several notable coats of arms, and in the poem Orlando Furioso ('Mad Orlando') penned by Ludovico Ariosto in 1516 this monumentally mixed 'n' matched monster was formally designated the name 'hippogriff' (also spelled 'hippogryph'). In this latter literary work, the wandering knight Roger rescues the fair Angelica from a voracious sea dragon while riding the airborne hippogriff - a beast of such astounding flying ability that it can soar entirely around the earth without pausing, and even take wing to the moon and back. During the 19th Century, Gustave Doré (1832-1883) produced some striking images of the hippogriff in his celebrated series of engravings illustrating Ariosto's poem.

Roger rescuing Angelica, portrayed by Gustave Doré

Without any doubt, however, the most famous modern-day representation of this fabulous animal is Buckbeak, the prominently-featured hippogriff in the bestselling Harry Potter series of teenage wizard and wizardry novels by J.K. Rowling, which has introduced to millions of readers worldwide what had hitherto been for centuries a somewhat obscure fantasy beast. Not bad at all for a creature originally invented expressly to signify anything that could never exist!

Buckbeak the hippogriff as depicted upon the front cover of The Prisoner of Azkaban, the third Harry Potter novel (© J.K. Rowling/Bloomsbury)

GIANT BLACK UNICORNS, A CHINESE QUASI-RHINO FIGURINE, AND THE ENIGMA OF ELASMOTHERIUM

A magnificent restoration of the giant unicorn – a brow-horned Pleistocene rhinoceros known formally as Elasmotherium (© Zdenek Burian)

As I documented in an extremely comprehensive chapter within my book Dr Shuker's Casebook: In Pursuit of Marvels and Mysteries (2008) and subsequently added to in a ShukerNature blog article (click here), a very considerable number of unicorn varieties have been differentiated in legends and folklore from around the world – everything from shape-shifting were-unicorns, carnivorous rabbit unicorns, polar bear unicorns with glowing horns, web-footed unicorns, swivel-horned unicorns, and man-eating unicorns with musical horns, to unicorn birds, unicorn snakes, unicorn snails, unicorn pigs, artificially-induced unicorns, and  even two-horned unicorns (surely a contradiction in terms!).

One of the least-known members of this diverse array, however, is also among of the most fascinating – the giant black unicorn of Siberia. For this spectacular creature is not only of interest to students of animal mythology but may have significant cryptozoological relevance too.

The traditional lore of Siberia’s Evenk people tells of a huge black bull-like creature bearing a single round, thick, tapering horn of immense size upon the middle of its head. This notoriously belligerent beast would charge at any Evenk rider that it spied, tossing the unfortunate man into the air if it could reach him, and spearing him when he fell back down to earth until he died. Moreover, its horn was so large and heavy that if one of these mega-unicorns were killed, the horn alone needed an entire sledge to transport it. Could this awesome but ostensibly fictitious animal have been inspired at least in part by a living species?

The Lungfish, the Dodo, and the Unicorn

Pursuing a suggestion originally put forward by Alexander Brandt and Norman Lockyer in a Nature paper of 8 August 1878, in his book The Lungfish, the Dodo, and the Unicorn (1948) veteran cryptozoological writer Willy Ley presented a fascinating line of speculation as to the possible origin of the Evenk people's traditional lore concerning giant black unicorns of ferocious demeanour:

"The paleontologists of around the year 1900 began to believe that they had successfully discovered the original unicorn. In Russia and in Siberia bones and skulls of an extinct distant relative of the rhinoceros were discovered. This animal, Elasmotherium sibiricum, seemed to resemble the ancient reports [of unicorns] even more than does the living rhinoceros. It was noticeably larger than the largest Indian rhinoceros, its horn was much longer and was actually situated in the middle of the forehead of the animal. But after the first excitement had subsided, most scientists abandoned the idea that Elasmotherium had anything to do with the unicorn legend. However, as Melchior Neumayr wrote in his History of the Earth: it is possible that in Siberia man and Elasmotherium actually lived together and that Elasmotherium was exterminated by man; at least one may explain in this way the ancient songs of the Tunguses [aka the Evenks], which tell that formerly there lived in their country a kind of terrible black ox of gigantic size and with only one horn in the middle of the forehead, so large that an entire sled was needed for the transportation of this horn alone."

Was Elasmotherium (above) the Evenks' giant black unicorn? (© Philip72/Wikipedia)

Up to 15 ft long and standing over 6.5 ft at the shoulder, E. sibiricum was comparable to a woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius in size, and (at least for a rhinoceros) had proportionately long legs. The last member of its genus, it is believed to have survived in Siberia until at least 350,000 years ago but quite possibly as late as 50,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene epoch (and definitely as recently as 26,000 years ago in Kazakhstan, thanks to the discovery there of Elasmotherium skull fragments, made public in March 2016).

Consequently, this makes the hypothesis of survival for a time by this species alongside modern man in Siberia as outlined above by Ley neither impossible nor even overly implausible. An earlier species, E. caucasicum, had flourished in the Black Sea region of Europe during the early Pleistocene and was even bigger, up to 16 ft long and weighing an estimated 4-5 tons.

Reconstruction of a pair of Siberian giant unicorns Elasmotherium sibiricum (© Apokryltaros/Wikipedia)

Certainly, a huge gracile rhinoceros bearing a gargantuan horn not upon its snout's nasal bones like all known living rhino species today but upon its brow's frontal bones instead might well make a very convincing giant unicorn. And indeed, Elasmotherium is commonly referred to informally by this exact name - the giant unicorn.

Nor is the huge black unicorn of Evenk lore the only evidence that has been put forward in support of the postulated if currently-unproven late survival of Elasmotherium and its contemporaneous, pre-extermination existence alongside humanity in Asia. In 1958, two additional Elasmotherium species were formally named – E. inexpectatum and E. peii, both of which had lived in northern China during the early Pleistocene, becoming extinct around 1.6 million years ago. However, they were subsequently reclassified as Chinese representatives of E. caucasicum rather than separate species in their own respective right (meanwhile, fossil remains of a still-valid third species, E. chaprovicum, have been obtained from Europe and Asia, and date from 2.6 million to 2.2 million years ago).

An enraged Elasmotherium versus a couple of pesky prehistoric felids (© Hodari Nundu/Deviantart.com)

Nevertheless, the onetime occurrence of any species of Elasmotherium in China is particularly intriguing, due to the existence of a certain very unusual and greatly perplexing example of Chinese iconography.

While browsing online on 8 August 2012, I came upon a photograph of a small but very distinctive and highly unusual animal figurine, made of bronze. On first sight, it somewhat resembled a rhinoceros, with a short pointed horn upon its snout – but a closer look revealed that this horn curved forwards, whereas those of rhinos normally curve backwards. Moreover, its body did not bear any 'armour pleats' like those exhibited to varying degrees by all five rhino species alive today (unless the vertical lines that continue up onto its body the lines of its limbs are meant to represent the pleats present on the body of the great Indian rhinoceros Rhinoceros unicornis, a species present in ancient China before being hunted into extinctuion there; but if so, they are not portrayed at all accurately and entirely lack the transverse creases running across the limbs' proximal region). Even more striking, however, was something that it did bear – a second, larger horn…but not upon its nasal bones. Instead, projecting slightly forwards, it arose directly from the centre of the creature's brow – just like the horn of a unicorn!

The photograph depicting this intriguing figurine (reproduced below) appeared on the s8int.com website, which offers a biblical perspective on science (including cryptozoology), and is written by Chris Parker. Accompanying the photograph were details of its origin and recent history, followed by Parker's thoughts as to what type of creature it may represent.

The mystifying Chinese quasi-rhino figurine (copyright owner unknown to me/image source online = http://s8int.com/WordPress/)

Those details revealed that the figurine was in excellent condition and dated from China's Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), an extremely formidable combination as far as its value as a collectible objet d'art was concerned, because in 2007 it was sold at auction by Christies in London for the staggering sum of US$ 216,000 !!

The Lot description for it that was provided by Christies read as follows:

"A RARE AND SMALL BRONZE FIGURE OF A RHINOCEROS
TANG DYNASTY (618-907 AD)

"Shown standing four-square with tail flicked to the left, the head well cast with two horns of different length, ears pricked back, small eyes and downward curved, overlapping muzzle sensitively cast along the upper edges of the mouth with folds in the skin, which can also be seen in the skin of the neck and chest, the thick hide indicated by overlapping wave pattern diminishing in size on the head and legs, with a rectangular aperture in the belly, the dark brownish surface with some patches of dark red patina and green encrustation.

"Lot Notes

"The depiction of the rhinoceros in bronze is very rare, especially during the Tang period. Earlier depictions do exist, however, as evidenced by the late Shang rhinoceros zun [i.e. an ancient Chinese wine vessel made of bronze or ceramic] in the Avery Brundage Collection, illustrated by d’Argencè, The Ancient Chinese Bronzes, San Francisco, 1966, pl. XIX and another large zun (22 7/8in. long), ornately decorated, but quite realistic in its depiction of a rhinoceros, of late Eastern Zhou/Western Han dynasty date, found in Xingping Xian, Shaanxi province, included in the exhibition, The Great Bronze Age of China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980, New York, Catalogue, no. 93"

So, in spite of the fundamental differences in morphology exhibited by this figurine, it was nonetheless deemed to be a rhinoceros by whoever had prepared its Lot description at Christies - even though they had actually included references within that very same Lot description to much more accurate yet even earlier Chinese depictions of rhinoceroses. One can only assume, therefore, that the writer in question was determined to identify it, however tenuously, with some known animal type, and/or was not a zoologist!

Triceratops, the most famous genus of ceratopsian dinosaur (© Nobu Tamura/Wikipedia)

Swiftly dismissing the rhinoceros from serious consideration as the figurine's basis, Parker offered up a very thought-provoking if dramatic alternative – a ceratopsian dinosaur. Known colloquially as the horned dinosaurs, this group included such prehistoric stalwarts as Triceratops, Styracosaurus, and Monoclonius (aka Centrosaurus). Officially, of course, like all dinosaurs, the last ceratopsians became extinct around 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. But could a ceratopsian lineage have somehow survived beyond the Cretaceous and persisted right up and into the present day, undiscovered by science but represented iconographically by this perplexing work of ancient Chinese art?

Sadly for such an exciting prospect, the figurine lacks the bony neck frill characterizing quadrupedal ceratopsians, and its snout horn curves forward instead of backwards like that of ceratopsians. Also, its tail does not appear to be as long and hefty as that of the latter dinosaurs (this characteristic is deduced from the fact that in the photograph it is hidden on the creature's left side, whereas if it were of ceratopsian dimensions it would have been too big to have been concealed in this manner). Conversely, the figurine does possess what Parker interpreted as a beak, which if so would certainly help to ally it morphologically with the ceratopsians, because these reptiles famously sported large beaks. However, it simply looks to me like a large pointed upper lip, very similar in shape, in fact, to that of Africa's black rhinoceros Diceros bicornis and also, albeit to a lesser degree, that of the great Indian rhino.

Head of Chinese quasi-rhino figurine (top) and head of black rhinoceros (bottom), showing that the former apparently shares the latter's well-defined pointed upper lip

Of particular interest is that Parker then compared the figurine with a certain cryptid that has already been popularly linked to the idea of a putative modern-day ceratopsian – tropical Africa's emela-ntouka ('killer of elephants'). This is an aquatic snout-horned mystery beast that is said by native observers to disembowel with its long pointed horn any elephants recklessly trespassing within its swamp or lake domain (click here for more information regarding it). Unlike the Chinese figurine, however, the emela-ntouka does possess a very long, heavy ceratopsian-like tail, though it too is frill-less, and it also sports a pair of small but elephant-like ears – an incongruous feature indeed for any reptile to exhibit, thus indicating that it is mammalian rather than reptilian in identity.

Artistic impression of the emela-ntouka (© Jean Claude Thibault)

Parker concluded his account by briefly considering the mythological Chinese unicorn, noting that one Chinese researcher has proposed that depictions of this supposedly non-existent beast may in reality have been based upon sightings of a surviving species of Elasmotherium. Could the same identity thus explain the Chinese figurine too, he wondered?

Personally, I don't think so. To begin with, the figurine's snout-horn would be an anomaly for any Elasmotherium species currently known from the fossil record. In addition, even its brow horn, though correctly located, seems far too short and slender to be comparable to that of Elasmotherium. Conversely, its legs are indeed relatively long, like those of Elasmotherium, but its body is proportionately much too short and squat to be compatible with the huge 15-ft-plus length attributed by palaeontologists to the proportionately very long body of Elasmotherium. So I am certainly not persuaded personally by such an identity for it.

As far as I am concerned, unless it constitutes an inordinately stylised (or just simply inaccurate!) representation of the great Indian rhinoceros the identity of this Chinese quasi-rhino figurine remains unresolved.

Chinese quasi-rhino figurine (top) compared with Elasmotherium (bottom)

In any case, there is an issue of especial relevance concerning any attempt to link horned cryptids to Elasmotherium that has not been mentioned here so far, but which definitely needs to be – so here it is. All of the varied lines of speculation discussed above in this present ShukerNature blog article stem directly from one single, fundamental assumption – namely, that Elasmotherium really did possess a horn, and a monstrously large one at that. Consequently, it will undoubtedly come as something of a surprise to discover now that despite many fossil remains of Elasmotherium having been found, and from many different sites too, not a single Elasmotherium horn, of any size, has ever been uncovered. So why do palaeontologists assume not only that it was horned but also that its presumed horn was so enormous?

The answer to this pertinent question is the presence of a very large hemispherical protuberance, 3 ft in circumference and 5 in deep, with a furrowed (and therefore vascularised?) surface, upon the frontal bones, which is traditionally interpreted as the base for a horn. Moreover, coupled with the occurrence of irregular bony deposition normally indicating that an exceptionally firm attachment to something was required there, plus the extraordinarily large hump of muscle present to manage the head, the overriding conclusion is that an extremely large and heavy horn was indeed borne upon the frontal bones of Elasmotherium.

Reconstruction of an Elasmotherium skull bearing its immense horn – always assuming that it did possess one! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Moreover, there is a Palaeolithic cave painting in Rouffignac, France, of a mighty rhinoceros bearing an enormous horn, which is believed by some to represent Elasmotherium (although the horn of this cave painting rhinoceros looks to me more like a typical rhino snout-horn than a brow-borne horn).

The putative Elasmotherium cave painting in Rouffignac

But who knows - perhaps one day a fossil Elasmotherium skeleton will be unearthed that comes complete with its ostensibly real but currently invisible mega-horn. And if that happens, this huge enigmatic rhinoceros's link to the Siberian giant black unicorn will suddenly take a tantalising step closer to veracity.

A couple of black unicorn figurines exhibiting a more typical, familiar unicorn form (© Dr Karl Shuker)

And finally: a snippet of Elasmotherium trivia. One of my favourite television series, a delightful mix of Primeval-style special effects/sci-fi and factual but entertaining Walking With Dinosaurs-style documentary (in what is nowadays popularly termed the 'docu-fiction' genre), was Prehistoric Park. This six-episode UK series, produced by Impossible Pictures (who also produced Walking With Dinosaurs) and originally broadcast in 2006 (first by ITV, then shortly afterwards by Animal Planet), was fronted on-screen by British wildlife presenter Nigel Marven. Its premise was that Nigel would journey back into a wide range of different geological time periods via a space-time portal, encounter various spectacular but long-extinct species, and bring living specimens of them back with him through the portal into the present day, where they would then be exhibited in Prehistoric Park - a vast wildlife park containing a host of different environments and habitats (presumably a nod towards Jurassic Park). One of the most thrilling episodes (#2) saw Nigel saving himself from a highly belligerent male Elasmotherium in Siberia before successfully bringing it back with him through the portal into Prehistoric Park. Indeed, the CGI Elasmotherium was so stunning that it even made the front cover of the series' UK DVD, charging after its suitably-alarmed co-star Nigel!

 Prehistoric Park, the UK DVD (© Impossible Pictures)


POST-SCRIPT - A TORTOISE-SHELLED, CLAW-FOOTED RHINO-UNICORN WITH FORWARD-CURVED HORNS!

Today, 9 July 2014, German cryptozoological correspondent Markus Bühler reminded me of an extremely bizarre Chinese illustration that had appeared in a wonderful book by Herbert Wendt entitled Out of Noah's Ark, published in 1956, in which he chronicled the history of discovery by mankind of our planet's major animal species. In his documentation of the rhinoceros's discovery, Wendt included two remarkable illustrations, both of them by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The first was of a bizarre Asian unicorn, very different from the traditional Chinese deer-like ki-lin, that sported a tortoise-shell upon its back and a single forward-curving horn upon the back of its head. And the second was of a later version of this same mythical creature, but now as portrayed after the Chinese had carried out their large-scale transportations of southern Asian rhinoceroses. It still retained its tortoise-shell but had now gained no less than three horns. According to Wendt, the two additional ones were derived from the rhinoceros. Yet whereas these were small, but were indeed nasal in location (like rhino horns are), the third (originally the only horn present and sited on the back of its head) was much longer and was now brow-borne (unlike any modern-day rhino horn). Moreover, all three were forward-pointing (just like those of the Chinese quasi-rhino figurine documented by me earlier here), not rearward-pointing as is true of rhino horns.

Consequently, if Wendt is correct in his attribution of the tortoise-shelled unicorn's subsequently-gained trio of horns to the influence of Asian rhinoceros transportation by the Chinese, here is a precedent for rhinos being depicted inaccurately in Oriental art with forward-pointing and brow-borne horns directly comparable to the figurine's. Having said that, however, the tortoise-shelled, triple-horned unicorn had also acquired a second, equally bizarre feature that again  is not typical of rhinoceroses if accurately depicted. As can be seen from the two Hokusai illustrations reproduced below in this present ShukerNature blog article, in its original form the tortoise-shelled unicorn had possessed ungulate hoofs, whereas in its later, triple-horned incarnation these have been replaced by three black claws on each foot. True, rhinos are indeed triple-toed, but they possess clearly-formed hooves, not claws. In contrast, even the Chinese quasi-rhino figurine was hoofed, not claw-footed.

So although intriguing, the tortoise-shelled unicorn's pertinence to the Chinese quasi-rhino figurine's identification as a rhinoceros is far from evident, and it is probably safest merely to say that it can be looked upon as yet another example of just how extremely stylised (or just plain inaccurate) artistic depictions of animals can be.

The earlier depiction of the tortoise-shelled Asian unicorn (top); and the later triple-horned, claw-footed version, believed by Wendt to be the result of having been assigned certain morphological attributes from the rhinoceros (bottom) (Katsushika Hokusai)

THE CROWING CRESTED COBRA – A CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL COCKATRICE?

Artistic impression of the crowing crested cobra's coxcombed head and facial wattles, based upon eyewitness descriptions (© Dr Karl Shuker)

The legendary basilisk was originally described in Western folklore as resembling a relatively small, unspectacular serpent in basic form. Down through subsequent ages, however, reports of it changed during the endless retellings of myths until it eventually became much larger, and acquired a cockerel's coxcomb and wattles, as well as the ability to crow like a cockerel too. This marked the beginning of the basilisk's gradual transformation into a much more dramatic-looking yet equally fictitious monster – the cockatrice.

Cockatrice engraving, from Friedrich Justin Bertuch's 12-volume Bilderbuch für Kinder (1790-1830)

In Africa, however, there are many modern-day reports of a supposedly real yet still-unidentified species of snake that allegedly bears a very striking resemblance to this serpentine pre-cockatrice. It is called the crowing crested cobra.

INKHOMI – 'THE KILLER'

Judging from native and Western testimony, the crowing crested cobra has quite a sizeable distribution range, stretching northwards from Natal in South Africa to Lake Victoria and westwards to Zambia and Lake Tanganyika, but is common nowhere, is greatly feared everywhere, and is known by a rich variety of local names. Perhaps the most telling of these, however, is inkhomi – 'the killer' – on account of its infamous ferocity and deadly venom. Said to measure up to 20 ft long (thereby exceeding even the formidable king cobra Ophiophagus hannah), the crowing crested cobra ranges from buff-brown to greyish-black in body colouration, but its face is bright scarlet, and, despite its cobra appellation, it has no hood. Instead, this exceptional serpent reportedly bears a prominent bright-red crest resembling a forward-pointing coxcomb, and the male is also said to sport a pair of red facial wattles. Most astonishing of all, however, in further parallel to a cockerel this bizarre snake can reputedly give voice to a loud crowing cry.

Artistic impression of the crowing crested cobra depicted in its entirety (© Tim Morris)

Despite its great size, the crowing crested cobra is often claimed to be primarily arboreal, concealing itself on sturdy overhead branches in wait for an unsuspecting human or some other prey victim to pass underneath, whereupon the snake lunges downward at their head or face, injecting its lethal venom with a single devastating bite. According to veterinarian Dr Dennis A. Walker, however, specimens sighted in Zimbabwe lurk among kopjes (rocky hillocks) where they prey upon hyraxes.

Of course, such a bizarre, surreal serpent could be readily dismissed as imaginative native folklore – were it not for the disquieting fact that some evidence for its reality goes beyond local legend. In 1944, Dr J. Shircore of Karonga, Nyasaland (now Malawi), published a detailed description of what he claimed were the preserved bony skeleton of the fleshy coxcomb (to which scraps of red skin were still attached) and a portion of the neck (containing several vertebrae) from a crowing crested cobra, which he owned. In a second publication, he stated that some additional vertebrae, as well as two ribs, a piece of skin, and the tip of a coxcomb from two further specimens had also come to light, but the current whereabouts of these potentially significant remains is unknown. Having said that, any remains believed to be from a crowing crested cobra are highly prized by native snake worshippers and witch-doctors, so it is likely that this is where they would have eventually gone.

An alternative artistic representation of the crowing crested cobra's head, this restoration being influenced by typical hooded cobras (© Maureen Ashfield/Carl Marshall)

No less intriguing is a very noteworthy incident that took place in late May 1959 and which was subsequently documented by the eyewitness in question, a Mr John Knott of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Driving home from Binga in the Kariba area, he accidentally ran over a jet-black snake measuring roughly 6 ft long, mortally wounding it. Knott got out of his Land Rover to take a closer look, and was very surprised to discover that this snake bore a distinct crest upon its head that not only was perfectly symmetrical but also could be erected by way of five internal prop-like structures. Needless to say, no known species of snake possesses such a crest, so it was a great tragedy that Knott didn't collect the dying snake and submit it for scientific examination. In terms of basic structure, this mystery snake's crest is reminiscent of the expandable frill so famously sported by Australia's frilled lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii.

Black mamba (public domain)

Scientists have been very sceptical of reports appertaining to the crowing crested cobra, and the most popular mainstream explanation offered is that sightings actually feature large black mambas Dendroaspis polylepis that have incompletely shed the skin on their head, leaving a tuft of unsloughed skin still attached. Yet although it is true that some supposedly crested snakes have indeed been proven to be mambas exhibiting unorthodox accoutrements of this type, such a solution singularly fails to explain the remains documented by Shircore, or the well-delineated, erectile, prop-supported crest borne by the snake that Knott injured.

CARIBBEAN COUNTERPARTS

As if Africa's crowing crested cobra were not extraordinary enough already, what makes it even more so is that it is not even unique. Remarkably, an extremely similar albeit much smaller counterpart has been reported from at least two major islands in the Caribbean too. While visiting Jamaica during the mid-1840s, Victorian naturalist Philip H. Gosse (1810-1888) documented several eyewitness encounters with crowing coxcomb-crested mystery snakes there and also on Hispaniola.

In 1829, for instance, a well-respected physician on Jamaica had observed the dead, slightly decomposed body of a 4-ft-long, thick-bodied snake, ochre in hue with black spots, that bore upon its head a pyramid-shaped helmet-like crest, lobed distally, and pale red in colour. According to the locals, this deceased specimen belonged to a species famed for its ability to crow like a cockerel and also fond of preying upon chickens.

Philip H. Gosse, photographed in 1855

Several years prior to Gosse's visit, Jamaican resident Jasper Cargill had personally observed just such a snake emerging from some fragments of limestone rock along a mountain road. And in March 1850, Cargill's son actually shot one while rambling with some other youths. Instead of taking it home straight away, however, he placed it for safekeeping inside a hollow tree while they continued rambling, but this took them so far away from the tree that they didn't return for the snake that day. And when one of the youths did go back to fetch it the following day, this zoologically priceless specimen had gone, presumably taken by rats during the night.

Gosse also learned via a friend on Hispaniola that a comparably predatory snake had lately been spied in Haiti. Possessing a coxcomb and bright red wattles, it would use its superficially rooster-like facial appearance and crowing ability to gain entrance into chicken coops without alarming their unsuspecting inmates.

SNAKES THAT ROAR, SHRIEK, AND MIAOW!

Quite apart from their coxcomb and wattles, the crowing crested cobra and its West Indian equivalents have received very short shrift from mainstream zoologists on account of their decidedly unsnake-like ability to crow. This is because snakes are famous for their apparently restricted vocal abilities, generally being deemed incapable of uttering more than a sibilant hiss due to their larynx lacking vocal cords. In reality, however, this widely-held assumption has been soundly disproved by a number of different species.

American bull snake (public domain)

The most famous of these is the North American bull snake Pituophis melanoleucus. This sturdy species expels air from its lungs through its glottis and against its epiglottis with such force that it emits a loud bovine grunt (earning it its name) audible up to 100 ft away.

Equally, the king cobra emits deep growl-like hisses produced via pocket-like tracheal diverticula projecting out from its windpipe and acting as low-frequency resonance chambers. Moreover, contrary to another fondly-held tenet, that snakes are totally deaf and unable to hear airborne sounds, research has confirmed that snakes are actually more sensitive to airborne than groundborne sounds, and that the king cobra can definitely hear its own growls and those produced by others of its species.

King cobra (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Most remarkable of all, however, was the discovery made in 1980 by Philip Chapman from Bristol's City Museum while participating in a scientific exploration of Borneo's enormous Melinau limestone cave system, in Sarawak's Gunung Mulu National Park. While penetrating one particularly dark, deep cave, he suddenly heard an eerie yowling sound up ahead, like the miaowing of a large cat, but when he fearfully shone his torch in its direction, Philip and fellow team members were astonished to discover that the creature giving voice to these loud cries was not a cat at all – instead, it was a snake!

Coiled up on the cave floor, this miaowing serpent proved to be a Bornean cave racer Orthriophis taeniurus grabowskyi - a slender, blue-scaled, non-venomous elapid whose vocal prowess had never previously been witnessed or even suspected by scientists. But what purpose did it serve? Inside this lightless cave, these snakes prey upon fast-flying cave swiftlets, and possess an unerring ability to snatch them while they are actually in flight, but as they cannot see them, how do the snakes detect these small birds with such accuracy? The swiftlets navigate like bats, by listening to the echoes of their own shrill cries bouncing off the cave walls, so it is possible that the snakes emit their own cries either to mimic and thence lure the swiftlets within reach, or to disrupt their vital echo-location and thus disorient them.

Cave racer (© Tristan Savatier/www.loupiote.com)

Over the years, many reports of other snakes giving voice to shrieks, screams, and an assortment of bleats, chirps, and even bell-like chiming have also been documented, though these have yet to be scientifically confirmed. Nevertheless, there are already sufficient precedents that have been verified to render the alleged crowing abilities of the crowing crested cobra and kin far less implausible zoologically speaking than one might otherwise suppose. So could such an extravagantly-adorned, vocally-adept snake truly exist in Africa, with a more diminutive relative (once) native to the West Indies? Sadly, we may never know. Several opportunities to present tangible, physical remains from such creatures have been lost, and no fresh material appears to have been procured for some considerable time.

An alternative artistic representation of the crowing crested cobra's head (© Marcus Bühler)

Consequently, if the very curious case of the crowing crested cobra is ever to be solved, perhaps science's best hope is for an intrepid herpetologist to pay a respectful visit to the domicile of the shaman from one of the many African tribes for whom such a snake remains a fully-fledged reality, and tactfully take note of whether his collection of ritualistic fetishes and other magical paraphernalia include the preserved remains of an ophidian coxcomb and some dried facial wattles. A veritable cockatrice might yet be revived amid the shadows of superstition and folklore – though whether that is such a good thing may be another matter entirely!

Engraving by Bohemian etcher Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) depicting a cockatrice being attacked by a weasel wrapped in rue - its only mortal enemies, according to traditional folklore

For the most extensive documentation of the crowing crested cobra and other unexpectedly vocal snakes ever published, be sure to check out my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007). And for more information concerning basilisks and cockatrices as well as the crowing crested cobra, be equally sure to check out my latest book, Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013).

 

BIRD-HEADED FISH-MEN AND PIG-RIDING MAN-BEASTS - MORE PERPLEXING PORTRAYALS FROM THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

A red river hog (aka bush pig), a species of wild pig habitually ridden through the Central African Republic's forests by dwarf hairy man-beasts…allegedly! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

In my previous ShukerNature blog article (click here), I documented a remarkable drawing by the late artist Jean Claude Thibault, a Frenchman resident for many years in the Central African Republic (CAR). It depicts what appears to be the mysterious emela-ntouka or 'killer of elephants' – a horned aquatic cryptid also reported elsewhere in Africa under such names as the chipekwe and irizima.

Thibault's emela-ntouka drawing (© Jean Claude Thibault)

Moreover, this was just one of four pictures depicting intriguing CAR entities that had been drawn by Thibault (sometime during the early 1990s or late 1980s), and which were shown to me in August 2012 by Anette Stichnoth. She was working at that time for the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas (APDS) – a region of especial conservation significance in the CAR (check out its website here). The drawings had lately been displayed in an art exhibition held by the APDS, not long after Thibault had died (about three years ago), and Anette was enquiring about the entities illustrated in them. A year later, she received some illuminating information concerning these entities from a CAR local who was very knowledgeable about his country's traditional lore and legends.

So now, with Anette's kind permission, this present ShukerNature blog article exclusively unveils Thibault's three other drawings online, accompanied by the information that she received concerning them, together with my own thoughts.

The mondjoli-mbembe - a bird-headed fish-man from the folklore of the Central African Republic (© Jean Claude Thibault)

Above is the first of these drawings. It depicts a truly bizarre entity known as the mondjoli-mbembe or, more simply, the fish-man. According to Anette's CAR informant, this bird-headed humanoid is a paranormal being that lives in marshes and swamps, feeding upon fishes, from which he obtains his mystical powers that enable him to vanish from one place and appear instantly somewhere else. Sometimes, moreover, he makes fishermen disappear who want to fish in the watery terrain that he inhabits. When he kills fishes, he leaves them in a heap, and if a fisherman should find that heap the mondjoli-mbembe has no objection to the man taking half of the fishes away. But he must not take all of them – otherwise the angry mondjoli-mbembe will follow him to his village and take his revenge, which is not a pleasant sight to behold!

Red river hogs, with one of them ridden by a pig genie (© Jean-Claude Thibault)

This second drawing by Thibault depicts a hairy bipedal humanoid entity of diminutive stature riding a species of central and western African wild pig known as the red river hog or bush pig Potamochoerus porcus (not to be confused with the closely-related and similarly-named but less visually-colourful bushpig P. larvatus of eastern and southern Africa). According to Anette's CAR informant, such entities as this individual are supernatural dwarf beings known as pig genii or pig ghosts, which act as pig-herds to the red river hogs, walking in front of them in the forest, and even riding on their backs. Moreover, should a hog refuse to allow one of these beings to ride it, the pig genie will punish it, and chase it away from the other hogs towards the traps set by human hunters.

The third Thibault drawing presented here also depicts pig genii, but this time they are about to take part alongside some humans in a ritual known as boyebe. Before human hunters set out on a foray, they supposedly perform boyebe, which consists of dancing around a fire with the pig genii, because the men believe that this will ensure that they achieve success in their hunting.

Human hunters and pig genii about to take part together in the pre-hunting ritual of boyebe (© Jean Claude Thibault)

There seems little doubt that the mondjoli-mbembe is entirely mythical, a grotesque, composite bird-man equipped with magical powers and confined exclusively to the CAR's corpus of traditional folklore. Conversely, the pig genii are very similar indeed in basic form to a number of dwarf hairy bipedal man-beasts of possible hominoid identity reported widely across tropical Africa. These include such cryptozoologically familiar forms as the agogwe of Tanzania and Mozambique, the fating 'ho of Senegal, the Congolese kakundakari, and the séhité of the Ivory Coast.

Les Bêtes Humaines d'Afrique (front cover illustration © Alika Lindbergh/Plon Publishing)

According to veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, who devoted a major section to them in his book Les Bêtes Humaines d'Afrique (1980), these primate cryptids could variously be surviving gracile australopithecines (early bipedal African hominids known to have existed from 3.9 million to 1.7 million years ago), proto-pygmies, and/or proto-bushmen. Other suggestions include chimpanzees Pan troglodytes that have become more bipedal than is typical for their species, or bonobos P. paniscus – which walk upright quite commonly anyway. Some of these entities are deemed by their superstitious human neighbours to be preternatural, but descriptions of them given by Western eyewitnesses suggest otherwise – that they are corporeal yet highly elusive, currently-unclassified hominoids, exactly as proposed by Heuvelmans.

The CAR pig genii may well fall into this category too, with their pig-riding, pig-herding proclivities and their fire-dancing, pre-hunting rituals alongside humans owing rather more to native imagination than to ethnological interaction. Interestingly, according to traditional lore in Brazil a short hairy man-beast inhabiting its jungles and called the curupira (click here to see a painting depicting it) is said to ride those wild pig-like ungulates known as peccaries and even small deer called brockets or mazamas. So such folklore motifs are clearly not confined to Africa.

If any ShukerNature reader has additional information concerning the CAR entities depicted in Thibault's drawings, I'd welcome any details that you could send me or post here – thanks very much!

Restoration of Australopithecus africanus, a species of gracile australopithecine that existed from around 3.03 million to 2.04 million years ago (© Nachosan/Wikipedia)