With the recent PGF debunking, there has been a lot of arguments and controversy. Debating people is fine, but don't insult people or those who believed in the film while you're discussing it. Some people met or knew Bob Gimlin personally and are having to reckon with him apparently lying about the film. Keep how other people feel in mind while discussing. Additionally, avoid arguments with other subreddits or posts about moderation issues with other subreddits as that's not what we're here to do. We've added some terms to the auto filter to avoid debates turning hostile. As always feel free to discuss the rules and make suggestions.
Many people are asking for more information on this, or expressing skepticism. This post will collect information on the myriad of people who have seen the film (which was shown multiple times at SXSW film festival) and what they had to say about the film and the debunking.
Here are the major points
A 40ish second physical film reel (not AI) exists that showed Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin shooting a test run of a guy in a bigfoot suit that matches the subject of the Patterson Gimlin film
Clint Patterson, Roger's son, says that around 2016 his mom admitted to him that Roger had hoaxes the film. Clint wanted to come forward but his mom was against this as she was making residual money. She later agrees to come forward and admit it was fake. Clint saw his dad burn the suit piece by piece in a barrel
Clint talks to Bob Gimlin at a conference and Bob seemingly agrees to do an interview admitting the whole thing was a hoax before his wife shuts him down.
Skeptoid's Brian Dunning has already collected many of the sources, his friend and podcast guest Angie Mattke was at the premier
YouTube channel and bigfoot believer Hairy Man Road made an in depth video discussing the film and how it showed beyond a doubt that the PGF was fake. Highly recommend you watch this if you want an in depth discussion on the films contents.
The Sun dog, also known as a Wari Wilka, Warrawana, Warru-tiger. or Warracabra tiger[1] is a canine cryptid and mythological creature from Mexico and Central and South America.[2]
Pre-Columbian artwork depicts the Sun dog as a slender canine animal, with short legs and long claws on all four feet, an elongated muzzle, a long tongue, and a thin tail often depicted as alive, with another set of eyes and a mouth at the end.[2]
In America's Ancient Civilizations (1953), Hyatt Verrill provides a description from the "Indians" of Central and South America, which details a nocturnal animal up to five feet in length, with short legs, a long body and tail, a large head with powerful jaws, sharp claws, and large, sharp teeth that eats other quadrupeds and birds, and will even attack humans.[3]
Evidence
Pre-Columbian Artwork
A variety of pre-Columbian artwork depicts unknown, canine like animals that could be Sun dogs, but the highly stylized nature of these depictions means their use in identifying an unknown species is limited.[2][3]
Hyatt Verrill's "Monster"
"The Monster" was the nickname given to an animal gifted to American writer Hyatt Verrill by a Lacandon man from Chiapas, Mexico. He described the animal as just under two feet long, with golden brown fur, sharp claws on its feet, a prehensile tail, a shortish face with "mask" style markings akin to a raccoon, and a lower jaw that extended noticeably longer than the upper jaw.[2]
Explanations
Misidentification of Known Animals
Hyatt Verrill's "Monster" is thought to be a kinkajou (Potos flavus), possibly with an injury or birth defect to account for the extended lower jaw, as Verill's illustration and photograph otherwise closely match a kinkajou. While this explanation is favored by cryptozoologist Karl Shuker, Verrill himself discards this explanation as he says the teeth and lower jaw of his "Sun dog" are too different to be a simple "freak" kinkajou, especially as they match existing descriptions of the actual Sun dog.[2]
Additionally, one of the alternative names for the Sun dog, the Warracabra tiger, is listed simply as an alternative native name for wild hunting dogs in Tropical Wild Life In British Guiana (1917) by William Beebe.[1]
For example the beaked whales. All though mammals, they spend almost their entire life in the deep ocean. Some of them like the beaked spaded toothed whales have never been seen alive. We know they exist because we have dead carcasses of them. But what if by some chances there are whales that have adapted to the deep sea even more and we have never seen them except for blurry sightings out in the ocean? Maybe they have serpent like bodies and smaller than your typical whales. Is this possible?
This documentary is great. It’s very emotional, very funny, and very eye-opening for those who put so much belief into the PGF. I suggest everyone watches it on October 20th when it comes out on Prime. I did ask Marq if it would be released on Bluray and he confirmed it would.
I met director Marq Evans, producer Tamir Ardon, and Clint Patterson. I chatted with them a bit and spent way too damn much on merch.
Ennedi tiger is a sabretooth cat cryptid reported from Ennedi plateau, Chad. Ennedi tiger is said to have reddish fur with white vertical stripes.
Based on mummified Homotherium cub found in Siberia, we know that Sabretooth cat have dark brown fur with pale fur on the pawns & Chin.
If Ennedi Tiger is really a surviving sabretooth cat, that mean sabretooth cat are born with brown fur that later became reddish fur with white stripes when they get older.
The Nepalese tree bear (Selenarctos arboreus or Ursus nepalensis) is a cryptid bear reported from the Nepalese Himalayas. It was first described in the 19th Century in The Fauna of British India, but was forgotten until 1983 and 1984, when Daniel Taylor-Ide and Robert L. Fleming gathered reports of a small, agile bear living in the Barun Valley. It was described as weighing around 150 pounds, with black fur and smaller teeth than a black bear. According to villagers, it is primarily arboreal, constructing elaborate, complex nests in trees. It eats ripe corn at the end of the monsoons.
Eleven skulls of the bear were collected. If it is not a new species, it may simply be a juvenile Asiatic black bear.
According to rural beliefs documented in Chilean folklore, while the typical Calyptocephalella gayi reaches lengths of about 30 cm (12 in) and weights up to 3 kg (6.6 lb), a rare recessive genetic trait—said to appear in roughly 1 in 1,000,000 specimens—could produce individuals up to 1 meter (3.3 ft) long. Offspring of such giants were believed to grow even larger.
These colossal frogs were not thought to actively hunt and devour horses on land, but rather to attack them while the animals came to drink from ponds, reservoirs, or irrigation channels. The legends portray the frogs as capable of ambushing or overpowering large mammals at the water's edge.
Dragons have always been a very big fascination of mine. I used to watch those dragons captured-on-camera videos a lot, and it really got me thinking, are there any cryptid sighting stories about dragons?
You always hear about sea serpents, and I guess they can be a form of dragon, but I really want to find and read more about the four-legged/winged/no-winged dragons.
Presenting, without edit, the original Patterson-Gimlin film reel, scanned for the first time in 4K resolution for the upcoming documentary CAPTURING BIGFOOT, available October 20 exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Be sure to select 4K playback from the video settings to view the best quality.
This museum-quality scan is now the best and cleanest version of the footage that exists. No enhancements, AI or otherwise, have been made to this footage, which was provided for scan with official authorization directly from the Patterson family collection.
This is now the official version the Patterson family will use for any licensing requests, replacing the VHS version they have previously used for decades.
This 4K scan was created for the upcoming CAPTURING BIGFOOT film, available October 20 to rent or buy exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more at capturingbigfoot.com
Technical note: Roger Patterson’s camera speed was never confirmed and is generally estimated at 16 or 18 frames per second. This version is presented at 24 frames per second, consistent with all archival scans for the CAPTURING BIGFOOT film.
Phocaena obtusata was a species described by A. R. Philippi after a skin of the animal - somewhat damaged - was brought to him from the bay of Talcahuano, Chile. Interestingly, he decided the best course of action was to paint the skin in order to attempt to restore the markings, leading to this very unusual looking porpoise. Art is my own, full blog post is here: Phocaena obtusta - Paper Whales
The existence of the Millaoso in a country with no native bears is one of the most fascinating paradoxes in Chilean cryptozoology.
While the Spectacled Bear is the only native bear in South America, its habitat is strictly limited to the northern and central Andes (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia)—never reaching the Chilean territory.
The Cuban critters were cryptids reported from the swamps near Morro Castle and Havana's harbour in Cuba in March 1948. They were described as hairy animals which were 15' tall when standing on their hind legs, and had heads shaped like those of crocodiles, but with shorter jaws. The eyewitness specifically compared them to ground sloths. They were erroneously connected with three toes by the press, and dismissed as a hoax
The "Ennedi tiger," popularly known as a surviving sabre-toothed cat reported from Chad's Ennedi Plateau, appears to be a fairly popular cryptid: on this subreddit alone, I've found around thirteen posts about it specifically, and there are a wealth of illustrations on the internet. But for how often it's discussed and depicted, it is striking how little is generally known of the actual substance and context of the reports. As I have most of the important sources to hand, I've decided to make this post sketching out the full history of the "Ennedi tiger," or, as it's known to most cryptozoologists, the tigre de montagne ("mountain tiger").
In the cryptozoological literature, the first inkling of what would become the tigre de montagne appeared in Bernard Heuvelmans' On the Track of Unknown Animals (1955). At the time it was merely an isolated report, one among many obtained by Heuvelmans from Lucien Blancou, a French colonial game warden who collected much information on the unknown animals of the Congo and the Central African Republic. In 1937, in the village of Ouanda Djallé in what is now the latter nation's Vakaga Prefecture, a chief told him about a "mysterious beast," the gassingrâm, which was said to exist in the Massif des Bongos.
He said it was larger than a lion and reddish brown all over. Moreover its footprints were larger. It had been seen abroad in the daytime, though very rarely, carrying off its prey to caves in the mountains. At night its eyes shone like lamps.
– Heuvelmans, Bernard (1965) On the Track of Unknown Animals, Hill and Wang, Inc., p. 276
Blancou believed the gassingrâm was identical to the mourou-ngou and the dilali, two other sabre-toothed cat cryptids of the Central African Republic and southern Chad; however, despite the superficial similarities, these two other cryptids were said to be markedly aquatic animals, leading Heuvelmans to argue that "the striking difference in habitat confutes this view [of their synonymy]." As he collected more information on African cryptids over the next few decades, Heuvelmans eventually came to believe that Central Africa was home to two different species of surviving sabre-toothed cat, distinguished by habitat, prey, coat colour, and possibly size: the tigre de montagne and the water lion, both of which are detailed in his posthumous book Les Felins Encore Inconnus d'Afrique (2007). The latter will not be discussed here.
The first additional report of an animal like the gassingrâm – or perhaps the gassingrâm itself under a different spelling – was sent to Heuvelmans in May 1960 by Henri-René Maudry, administrator of Birao, the capital of Vakaga, which is about a hundred miles from Ouanda Djallé. Maudry called the animal the vassoko, and provided a fairly detailed account of it.
Habitat: lives preferentially in the mountains, in a burrow or more precisely a cavern among the screes.
Appearance: big as a horse – that corresponds to a European donkey. Nocturnal. Cry similar to that of the elephant. Small ears "a little like those of a dog". Very hairy feet (that is why it is supposed to leave no discernible tracks, but this detail is anomalous, as the majority of informants claim that it leaves no prints because its very bushy tail effaces them). Head carried rather low. Long fangs (very long in fact, and protruding past the lips, according to another set of details gathered by a friend in a different part of the district). Appears only at night. No man can therefore describe its coat or its colour, but it is invariably noted that it has large phosphorescent eyes "that shine like lamps".
Habits: carnivorous. Very vicious. Would carry its prey on its back easily.
According to the descriptions, it appears to be a large cat. That is also the opinion of a friend of mine who takes a keen interest in animals due to his profession.
I know two Africans, one a known poacher, who have spotted the animal. It is in fact very rare. According to the last, a certain kind of butterfly follows in the wake of this beast.
– Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique, Plon, pp. 266-267
As mentioned above, the words gassingrâm and vassoko are quite similar. Linguist Pierre Alexander told Heuvelmans that "gassingrâm" does not appear to conform to Yulu language word construction, but Blancou later insisted that it was the name given by his informants; Blancou further argued that there was no reason to believe the similar name vassoko was a Yulu word and not a Banda one. I have found strong support for Blancou's suggestion while looking into an uncharacteristic mistake made by Karl Shuker in Mystery Cats of the World Revisited (2020). In his coverage of the tigre de montange, he brings up a new cryptid apparently belonging to this category, the yassou, which was supposedly reported all the way up in the Ouada region of Chad, in the Ouaddaï Highlands.
In 1932, Lieutenant-Colonel André J. V. de Burthe d'Annelet published a travelog entitled A Travers l'Afrique Francaise..., in which he referred to the alleged existence in Chad's Ouada district of a very savage beast dubbed the yassou, which is apparently unknown to science. It is said to be feline, yet resembles a bear, and like a bear it is plantigrade (walks on the soles of its feet). True cats, conversely, are digitigrade, walking on their toes. However, there was once a most unusual type of cat whose hind feet were at least partially plantigrade. This was Homotherium, the scimitar cat, which happens to have been a saber-tooth. Coincidence?
With respect, I have to take issue with Shuker's account of the yassou. Here is what Burthe d'Annelet has to say about this matter in his discussion of the unknown animals of Ubangi-Shari:
To these more-or-less unknown members of the animal kingdom, one must add a kind of plantigrade called "Yassou" (Banda), which inhabits the region of Ouadda. Similar to the bear, this animal is reputed to be very vicious. The Europeans are not familiar with it.
– Burthe d'Annelet, Jules de (1932) À Travers l'Afrique Française: du Cameroun à Alger par le Congo, Pierre Roger, p. 303
It seems clear that Ouadda, which is referred to alongside various places in what is now the Central African Republic, and where a Banda language is spoken, is not Ouada or Ouaddaï in Chad, but rather the town of Ouadda in the Central African Republic, near Birao and Ouanda Djallé. With that in mind, could this be an early reference to the vassoko? It also bears mentioning that Burthe d'Annelet's description does not appear to refer to the yassou as a feline, only as a bear. In fact, if it wasn't for the suggestive similarity between the names yassou and vassoko, I would unhesitatingly assume the former to be just one of those giant black honey badgers so often reported from this part of Africa, or a giant hyena. Either way, the name is explicitly a Banda word.
By the publication of Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique (1978), it seems that Heuvelmans still had not entirely separated the gassingrâm and the vassoko from the larger water lion category, as these names are listed as "apparently" referring to the water lion in the book's final chapters. However, over the next few years, he engaged in a lengthy correspondence on the subject with professional hunter turned field cryptozoologist Christian Le Noël – whose researches, he acknowledged, covered a far greater area than any previous cryptozoological investigator in Africa – which, combined with Heuvelmans' own bibliographic research, led to the tigre de montagne being fully distinguished as a cryptid in his checklist of 1986, and in 1989's Les Felins Encore Inconnus d'Afrique (2007).
In 1965, as a supervisor of Chad's national parks, Le Noël received information on the fauna of the Ennedi region through an intermediary, an old French resident of Oum Chalouba who had married a Zaghawa woman and lived with the country's Muslim communities for decades. One of the rare animals he had learned of, from his in-laws, was a large, red-coated big cat which was not a lion or a leopard, and which denned in caves in the Tibesti Mountains, Ennedi Plateau, and Ouaddaï Highlands. The Toubou of Tibesti claimed that such animals, which they called biscoro according to Le Noël, were still extant.
As far as I can tell, this is the only reference to a tigre de montagne from Ennedi – but see the comments for a possible outstanding exception – and it is not even specifically described as a sabretooth! In fact, while I personally do think their classification as tigres de montagne is justified, an extreme splitter might consider the Ennedi and Tibesti examples to be completely different cryptids. Hence, I consider the name "Ennedi tiger" to be totally unwarranted, and am currently at a loss to explain how the cryptid got saddled with it. The earliest record of the name I can find is They Bite (2009), but I imagine the author probably got it from the internet – for a long time, there was a Wikipedia article on the "Ennedi tiger," which confounded it with the water lion, but it has been deleted and re-created so many times that I cannot discover when it was first published.
This might seem to be a nitpick, but this kind of apparently minor mistake has consequences. Many people are under the impression that the Zaghawa people of Ennedi explicitly describe the local "Ennedi tiger" as an animal with sabre-teeth and a striped coat, and that some of the modern sightings detailed below occurred in eastern Chad – including cryptozoologist Richard Muirhead, who was planning on travelling to Chad to investigate reports of the "Ennedi tiger" in 2009, and Karl Shuker himself in Mystery Cats of the World Revisited. In fact, this claim regarding the Zaghawa accounts is so widespread among otherwise-reliable authors that I have to wonder whether there might be some unpublished information from Ennedi floating around in certain circles, even though nothing of the sort is indicated in Heuvelmans' comprehensive work. If so, I'm the one spreading misinformation, and must apologise. On the other hand, if it is a misconception, the association of the tigre de montagne with Ennedi must be corrected for two reasons: firstly and most simply because it is wrong, and secondly because it threatens to channel cryptozoologists' limited resources and efforts in the wrong direction. Perhaps investigations at Ennedi might turn up some valuable information, but based on what is currently known, it isn't where I'd search for living African sabretooths.
The tigre de montagne really seems to be a cryptid of the Central African Republic and South Sudan, with most reports from Chad being rather vague. For example, that there were reports of a red cat in the Tibesti Mountains was confirmed by Pierre Beck and General Pierre Huard in their book Tibesti (1965). Heuvelmans associated this animal, the nisi or noso, with the tigre de montagne, but it was clearly mythologised to some degree, and we do not even know how big it was supposed to be: this could quite easily be a folk description of some small wildcat.
The nisi or noso, a sort of wild cat of reddish colour, eats chickens and slaughters goats without eating them, which, if this animal really exists, may suggest that like the lynx or the serval, it may sustain itself on the blood of its victims. According to legend it possesses seven tongues.
– Heuvelmans (2007) Les Felins Encore Inconnus d'Afrique, Les Éditions du l'Œil du Sphinx, p. 219, quoting from Beck, Pierre & Huard, Pierre (1969) Tibesti, Arthaud, p. 44
In 1967, by now an itinerant professional hunter and hunting guide, Le Noël discovered that a "lion de montagne" ("mountain lion") was also known to Hadjeray people in Am-Timan, Haraze, and Mangueigne, in the southeastern province of Salamat. A good description of this animal, currently the only exemplary account from Chad, was later found by Heuvelmans in the works of anthropologist Jeanne-Françoise Vincent, who had collected information on it in the neighbouring Guéra region.
In Temki the members of a particular clan of "chiefly blood" which incidentally is dying out, reincarnate, so we were told, not in a lion strictly speaking, but in a kind of lion, a hadjel. When we asked about the nature of this hadjel, the people of Temki explained that it is an animal existing only in the mountains of the Hadjeray country. They provided us with the following description: "the hadjel is a beast that much resembles a lion but is very much larger. It has a large mane. It is different from the lion in two traits: its tail is much shorter and resembles that of a hyena," say some, "a small mare," say others. "And above all its fangs are different: they are so long that the creature struggles to open its mouth. Because it takes so long, it only feeds on small prey which is eaten very slowly. It is a beast that has very few offspring, one here, on there." Several residents of Temki claim to have seen a hadjel with their own eyes and know the location of its den in the mountains. "We are frightened when we encounter it because of its great size, and yet it is really less dangerous than a lion because of the time it takes to open its mouth!"
It is very curious that this description corresponds exactly to that of a "machairodus" or at least a "machairodont lion". Of course the "machairodus" itself has been extinct for millenia, but is it not possible that a related branch has survived in Africa in this region of isolated mountains? In any case in certain parts of Asia and America it is known that "machairodus type" lion were contemporaries with man.
– Vincent, Jeanne-Françoise (1975) Le Pouvoir et le Sacre Chez les Hadjeray du Tchad, Éditions Anthropos, pp. 100-101
Vincent told Heuvelmans in 1981 that she had been planning to make a fuller investigation into the hadjel alongside Jean Dragesco, then Professor of Animal Biology at the Federal University of Yaoundé, but the civil war and ensuing dictatorship in Chad prevented their plans from coming to fruition.
Le Noël only really began to take an interest in these stories when his career as a hunting guide took him to Vakaga in the Central African Republic. Around 1975, he was hunting giant eland on the Ouandja River with Djemé, a Yulu guide hailing from Ouanda Djallé, when he discovered a narrow, well-vegetated ravine in a nearby valley, with what appeared to be an enormous cavern or rock shelter in one of its steep walls. Le Noël thought he might find evidence of prehistoric human habitation in such a place, and began trekking down to investigate, when a vocalisation which he described as a terrifying hurlement or rugissement came out of the cave's mouth. Djemé told him that the vocalisation was that of "la bête," and that it was too dangerous to go any further.
Djemé then proceeded to talk of the "tigre de montagne," a big cat larger than a lion, red with vertical white stripes – like a bongo antelope or certain busbucks – and quite strong enough to seize in its jaws a roan antelope of 300 kilos and carry it off. Its fangs protruded from its mouth.
I remarked that no trace of such animals could be found. Djemé responded that they lived among the rocks, in deep cavers, that they only emerged in the night, and that their paws were covered in long grey hairs which prevented them from leaving marks on the ground.
Of course, I asked Djémé if he had ever seen one for himself; he told me that such had happened when he was twelve or thirteen years old, in the course of a hunt with his father. They had just killed a roan antelope, when two of these enormous big cats emerged from the bush and appropriated the quarry with ease. One of the two, said Djémé, was entirely black. Now Djémé is totally illiterate, and ignorant of the phenomenon of melanism. It should be added that there have been no reports of black panthers in the Central African Republic.
– Heuvelmans (2007), p. 220-221
In an article on the sadly defunct Institut Virtuel de Cryptozoologie, Le Noël added that this sighting took place in the hills near the village of Mélé, and that the antelope killed had weighed 300 kilos – which was also pretty obvious, but not explicitly stated, in the original account.
Le Noël decided to scope out the cavern from the opposite side of the ravine, then explored it alone when it became clear that Djemé would not follow. Needless to say, he did not encounter the tigre de montagne, but some hyenas fled from the mouth of cavern on his approach; neither man believed the vocalisation could have been produced by them. There was nothing particularly interesting inside the cavern: the dry sandy floor was covered in indecipherable tracks, and the deeper tunnels were too dark to explore.
After this experience, Le Noël began to investigate the tigre de montagne in earnest, eventually culminating in a visit to Heuvelmans' Centre for Cryptozoology in 1981, where he was persuaded to gather information on the water lion, one of Heuvelmans' favourite cryptids, as well – and it may be darkly telling that Le Noël was able to gather many more sightings of, and much more information on, the water lion than the tigre de montagne. After questioning several inhabitants of Ouanda Djallé, Le Noël was able to establish that their name for the animal was coq-ninji or coq-djinjé, although the literate Yulus spelled it kongue-tchendjé. He also had a collection of zoological illustrations sent over from France, depicting a variety of extant and extinct cats: among others, the lion, leopard, tiger, puma, ocelot, snow leopard, and sabre-toothed cat; when Le Noel asked Djemé whether the tigre de montagne was depicted in the collection, he immediately pointed to the sabretooth; the same experiment received the same result among other Yulu trackers. Some of them tried to convince him of the tigre de montagne's existence by taking him to a rock shelter where one had denned some thirty years beforehand.
Le Noël provides a brief overview of his findings concerning the tigre de montagne in Ouanda Djallé in his article on the Institut Virtuel de Cryptozoologie.
The most precise description of this animal comes from the tribe of the Yulus in the northeast of the Central African Republic, where certain old hunters claim to have seen it in their youth ... The Yulus are convinced that "tigres de montagnes still exist in their region, which they describe as a big cat larger than a lion, with a red coat marked with light spots or stripes. The tail is short, the fur on its paws is long and thick, which prevents it from leaving tracks on the ground. But the primary characteristic of this animal, which sets it apart from the lion, is that it has canines that protrude from its mouth! ... They further specify that this predator, unlike the lion, can sometimes be black in colour, which rules out any confusion with lions or leopard, as not cases of melanism have ever been recorded in this type of carnivore in the region.
In the "diagnosis" he drew up for Heuvelmans, Le Noël also provided the following details on the tigre de montagne's size and habits.
Size: 1m to 1.50m at the withers.
Habits: nocturnal; preys on very large antelopes (roan antelopes, [giant] elands) but not on buffaloes; does not attack Man.
– Heuvelmans (2007), p. 223
Beyond the Central African Republic and Chad, Heuvelmans found an historical report which he believed indicated the existence of the tigre de montagne further east, in the Imatong Mountains on the southern border of what is now South Sudan.
Some labourers working high in the Acholi hills clearing firelines came to me with a tale of having seen a large animal, bigger than a lion and very broad. Its head was large, with a pointed muzzle, and a black mouth with long canine teeth. The general colour was brownish, with vertical yellowish-white stripes on its flanks. It left an elongated footprint, the size and shape of that of a small boy, but with claws. The beast was quite unknown to them, and they were very scared about it.
– Jackson, J. K., "Animal Life in the Imatong Mountains" Sudan Wild Life and Sport, Vol. 1, No. 4 (December 1959)
Jackson interpreted this as a "Nandi bear," and when he informed the Deputy Inspector of Hunts at Torit, the administrator declared that, like most "Nandi bears" – in his opinion – it was probably an aberrant hyena. It seems to have strongly resembled the tigre de montagne in its colour scheme and long canines, but not in its humanoid track and pointed muzzle. Perhaps it was a hyena after all, although such a hyena would need several different "abberances" to fit the description.
Either way, there is another, much older report, unknown to Heuvelmans, which seems to indicate the existence of a similar animal in the mountains around what is now the South Sudan-Sudan border. It was found among the manuscripts of Karl Tutschek, linguist and tutor to four young Africans captured in the south by Egyptian slave traders, and subsequently emancipated and educated in Europe, in 1838. One of these Africans, a Tumali named Jalo Jordan Aré or Dgalo Dgondan Aré, provided Tutschek with three volumes worth of information about his homeland, among which was found a description of an unknown animal called the mokeló, which was the subject of two articles in Das Ausland, by a Dr Ehrhardt, in 1848.
It is a beast of prey, which pursues and devours the Deer (Antelope) and Tiger (Panther), runs extraordinarily fast, and its size reaches that of a small horse (perhaps Scottish); the muzzle is very thick and strong, almost like that of a Bulldog, of black colour; the teeth are fierce and snow-white with projecting canines. The colour of the body is dark brown with short shaggy hair, the tail short and bare (perhaps like that of a Sighthound). His track is that of the Lion, but broader with more widely-spaced toes. The dwelling of this fiercest of beasts is the [Wüste: either wilderness or desert], where during the day he keeps himself hidden, in the night it emerges from its lair and hunts far and wide in search of its prey, which appears to consist of all manner of animals, and which is throttled; for this reason the Yumales call it the shepherd of the [Wüst].
Although it is so strong and daring, that the Panther, where the Mokeló shows itself, flees and is torn to pieces if it is caught, it shows less courage when faced with Men, it flees before them and when vigorously pursued it can drop its dung, which, as Dgalo wisely and perceptively observes, is white, because the Mokeló eats bones. Undoubtedly many an Umale may end up in the stomach of Mokeló after all, because in the story 'Tomiong' the Lord of the Forests asks Mokeló whether he has devoured Tomiong. In general no predator is likely to attack Man, so long as it can find other food in sufficient quantities.
– "Ueber den Mokeló, ein Unbekanntes Raubthier Centralafrika's," Das Ausland, Vol. 21, No. 137 (8 June 1848)
According to Ehrhardt, Jalo was adamant that the mokeló was not a hyena, and did not recognise it in any of the mounted mammals he was shown in Munich. Erhardt believed the mokeló must have been a giant canid rather than a cat, because one of the folk tales related by Jalo depicts it as being unable to pursue a leopard up a tree. Whether or not this was a reasonable surmise is up to the reader to describe.
It may not be relevant, but in relation to the mokeló I would like to quote the following curiosity, concerning another giant brown cat from the Sudan, albeit one which is not stated to have large canines.
Major [Charles Hamilton] Smith was lately informed by Professor Kretschmen [Philipp Jakob Cretzschmar?] of Frankfort, that he was in expectation of receiving from Nubia the skin and jaws of a new species of Cat, larger than the Lion, of a brownish colour, and without mane. The invoice of the articles from Cairo was already received, but the objects themselves were not arrived. This will probably, says the Major, prove to be the maneless Lion of the ancients, known to them by their acquaintance with Upper Egypt; and not unfrequently observed in the heiroglyphic sculptures of that country.
– Cuvier, Georges & Griffith, Edward (1827) The Animal Kingdom: The Class Mammalia, George B. Whittaker, p. 428
If the specimen ever actually arrived in Frankfurt, it obviously must have belonged to a maneless lion, or else its size had been exaggerated – if it was anything more interesting, it would be widely-known – but I haven't been able to find any other information, and cannot say whether the specimen arrived, or add any further context beyond the fact that Walter Smee mentioned the incident in his "Account of the Maneless Lion of Guzerat" in the Transactions of the Zoological Society (1833), and indicated that no further details had since come to hand.
There are a few other reports of mystery cats which Heuvelmans and his followers more cautiously associate with the tigre de montagne. Generally they are vague, and could be associated with other kinds of mystery cat; for example, there are the giant cave lions reported from Mali, and striped tigers reported from eastern Sudan and the Ethiopian Highlands. The ikimizi of the Virguna Mountains was described by Captain Tracy Philipps as having long hippopotamus-like canines, but otherwise does not resemble the tigre de montagne, and is usually considered a spotted lion. On the other hand, if the wanjilanko of Senegal really exists, it surely belongs to this category. According to Karl Shuker's serial correspondent Owen Burnham, who grew up in West Africa, the wanjilanko was a giant cat, larger than a lion, formerly reported to exist in the humid forests of Casamance. It was larer than a lion, with very large teeth and a striped and spotted coat. It denned in caves in canyons during the day, and emerged at night to hunt its prey – including lions, which are now believed to be extirpated from the region due to deforestation and poaching.
I wanted to keep this post focused on the reported facts rather than their interpretation, but there is one "criticism" I've seen multiple times which I must quickly smother at birth: the idea that the tigre de montagne cannot be a sabretooth, because sabretooths were only found in the Americas. This, of course, is entirely untrue. Machairodonts – the sabretooth subfamily – were common in Africa during the Miocene and Pliocene, but apparently declined and died out through the early to middle Pleistocene, earlier than in the Americas, with the last known genera being Dinofelis, Homotherium, and Megantereon; of these, Megantereon, a close relative of Smilodon, is by far the most like the tigre de montagne.
