oldrover said:
The Atlas bears went extinct very recently, not the Romans fault, though didn't they kill off the Caucus's tigers.
So the Romans, reckonably, exterminated the tiger in the Caucasus? Though one would figure that had they not done so, later inhabitants of the area would by now, have finished the job. I seem to recall reading that "next door", in the mountains of eastern Turkey and north-western Iran, there are recent reports which suggest that the Caspian race of the tiger may still just survive there, in very small numbers.
oldrover said:
There's mention on the link of a supposedly related creature, the Khodumodumo. African tradition seems not to see it like this though.
http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/mlb16.htm
Agreed -- in the link given, the Khodumodumo is plainly in the "myths and legends" realm, not in the sphere of allegedly factual encounter reports.
oldrover said:
That said Hitchens has plenty to say about it
http://www.strangeark.com/reprints/beasts.html
Reading this Hichens "African Mystery Beasts" link -- it is striking how much of this material by Hichens, appears in the Africa chapters of Heuvelmans's book -- often quoted directly, sometimes paraphrased. Including (putting in "by hand" here, your quote from the second of your two recent posts -- if "multi-post multi-quoting" is possible on this site, I don't know how to do it !): "Kitapmetit Kipet...headman of a Nandi village...: 'The chimiset is a devil which prowls... on the darkest nights,seeking people, especially children, to devour; it is half like a man and half like a huge, ape-faced bird, and you may know it at once from its fearful howling roar, and because in the dark of night its mouth glows red like the embers of a log...' "
Heuvelmans also cites a 1909 scholarly work on the Nandi tribe by one A.C. Hollis, with a (having some similarities) Nandi description of the man-eating "devil called Chemosit": "said to be "half man, half bird, to have only one leg but nine buttocks [!], and his mouth, which is red, is supposed to shine at night like a lamp."
I'm perhaps a little surprised that Hichens's work here, did not attract more attention at the time -- one might wonder how come Hichens has not been acclaimed as "the father of cryptozoology", rather than Heuvelmans. Timing, perhaps: Hichens's material published late in 1937, when people had more urgent and worrying matters on their minds; and Hichens was not a credentialed scientist...