The Mokele Mbembe, “the one who hinders the flow of rivers”, is a legendary creature of the Congo, on which stories have been circulating for centuries that describe it as a being similar to a dinosaur.
In the eighteenth century, a French missionary, the Abate Proyar, claimed to have spotted it describing it as a hybrid between a hippopotamus, a lion and an elephant, with a snake tail and a very long neck, free of hair and gray-brownish in color. The Congolese zoologist Marcellin Agnagna, during an expedition in 1983, also said he met him.
Over time, several expeditions were organized to try to trace it, some researchers claimed to have found evidence of its existence, but none of them was convincing enough to confirm it. To date, the existence of the Mokele Mbembe therefore remains an unsolved enigma.
However, the phenomenon of deforestation has contributed to an increase in sightings, probably because the wildlife, previously relegated to the most remote areas of the forest, now comes into more frequent contact with the local population. These meetings, more or less close, may have fueled misunderstandings.
According to those who still believe in the possibility that there is, the Mokele Mbembe would have its home in Lake Tele, located in a natural reserve that hosts about 125,000 Gorilla, also threatened by the loss of habitat due to deforestation.
Will it really be just a legend or could it be a species still unknown? To the researchers (of the present and the future) the arduous sentence.
Sources: idiose/mythology unoleashed/skepdic
