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Water Elephants

RyoHazuki

Ephemeral Spectre
Joined
Sep 24, 2013
Messages
392
Shamelessly stolen from Reddit.... Apologies if it's already a 'thing' here - I did try searching but nothing came up.

I strongly recommend looking at the original /r post, as there are several useful links there.

Water Elephants are supposed to be semi-aquatic relatives of the Elephant and Mammoth, possibly resembling archaic species such as the Moetherium and Deinotherium, though any links should be regarded with caution.

a professional hunter called R.J. Cunninghame, a hunter famous for saving US President Theodore Roosevelt from an attacking Hippopotamus during a Safari in Kenya in 1909, is credited with first bringing the Congolese Water Elephant to the attention of the wider world.

A French explorer known as Le Petit supposedly told Cunninghame about Water Elephants he observed in 1907 during his five-year stay in the Congo. Le Petit first laid eyes on the elusive animals whilst traveling through the river in the wetlands between Lake Leopold II (now Lake Mai-Ndombe) and Lake Tumba.

A segment from the blog Bushsnob in Africa:

The first time he saw just a head and a neck that appeared on the water surface. His companions, natives of the place, told him that what he had just seen was a Water Elephant. Later he saw the animals again. This time they were five and he allegedly watched them for about a minute. He described them as between 180-240cm tall with relatively short legs and curved backs, elephant-like.

Their heads were ovoid and elongated with a short trunk of about 60cm in length (tapir-like), but no tusks were seen. Their skin reminded him of hippo skin but it was darker. They walked with an “elephantine” gait that left footprints in the sand with four separate toes. This was the last time they were seen as they quickly disappeared into deep water. His fellow local companions reaffirmed Le Petit that the animals were common in that area and that they spent much time in the water, like hippos.​

Aside from claims of sightings from locals, there was no further news of a Water Elephant until in 2005, when aviators flying over Lake Tumba claimed to have seen a herd of odd looking elephants, giving a description of the animals that matched Le Pettit's.

Lake Tumba has a maximum depth of 6 meters and a mean average depth of 3 meters, with a surface area of anywhere between 500 Km2 and 765 Km2 <source>, quite shallow compared to it's adjoining Congo River's status of World's Deepest River with depths of more than 220 m (720 ft).

A shallow but vast lake surrounded by wetland marsh and dense swamp along with other similar vast but shallow lakes, the perfect environment for an elusive ~2-meter-tall aquatic elephant.

Here's a diagram of the Congo basin with labels highlighting the Congo River, the Congolian swampland forests and Lake Tumba itself. (Lake Leopold II/Mai-Ndombe is the large lake directly south of Lake Tumba)

Map of Lake Tumba with measurement scale

A basic search-up of Lake Tumba shows that it is rarely visited by non-locals even today. It is deep inside the DR Congo, an extremely unsafe and rarely visited country to begin with, up until 5 months ago the only Google review of the Lake was of a supposed local tour guide who didn't get enough tourists wanting to visit.

In any case, it doesn't appear to garner much attention, least of all for the Cryptozoological animal which is claimed to inhabit it. And it's been 13 years now since a pilot flew a plane over the lake claimed to have sighted the Congolese Water Elephant. Is it just a myth or hoax or could Le Petit's Water Elephant be another case of the Okapi, scarce and strange but absolutely real?
 
The Congo almost certainly holds many species unknown to science. Sadly the era is so dangerous that we will not get to investigate them util things change. The Cameroons may be a better bet at the moment.
 
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