Lake Tele — Mokele-mbembe

OVERVIEW

Mokele-mbembe is a creature of Congo Basin lore, described as an amphibious animal with a long neck and tail, sometimes with a horn or tusk — popularised in the West as a surviving sauropod. Lake Tele, in the Republic of the Congo, is where several expeditions have looked for it.

HISTORY

Captain Ludwig Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz heard stories of an enormous reptile called 'Mokele-mbembe' while surveying German Cameroon in 1913 and included a careful description in his unpublished report, later quoted by Willy Ley. The microbiologist Roy Mackal and the explorer Henry Powell interviewed residents in 1980 and 1981 and found no physical evidence; in 1981 Herman Regusters said he photographed the animal and recorded its sound at Lake Tele, which Mackal doubted. In 2018 Adam Christoffer Knuth's Danish expedition to the lake found no creature but a new species of green alga.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

LEGEND. Most scientists and historians doubt it: no physical evidence, conflicting witnesses, and aerial and satellite surveys that find elephants but no sauropods. Ben Radford traces the modern legend to Carl Hagenbeck's 1909 speculation in Beasts and Men; Loxton and Prothero call it a distillation of stories from widely separated regions. The black rhinoceros is the most agreed-on source.

VISITING

A remote lake reached through swamp forest; travel is by expedition only.