#dingonek

Found in a cave in Western Cape of South Africa, this cave painting fits the description of the Dingonek almost perfectly. The first time that a photo of this cave painting was shared was in the book ‘Rock-Paintings in South Africa’ by George William and Dorothea Bleek, published in 1930. The Dingonek, a creature that is said to live in the Congo, is also known as the Jungle Walrus.

Cryptid of the Day: Dingonek

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‘ The Dingonek is among the relatively numerous monsters that originate from exaggerated or incorrect descriptions of African wild animals ecountered by big game hunters. Like the vast majority of those, the real animal barely resembles the fantastical image spawned by human imagination, but its identification is in a rather weird place. The real creature this beast was based on was found some time ago, but many cryptozoologists seem to have missed this fact.’

Video made by CCockatrice

The Dingonek is said to be a walrus-like creature found in the parts of Africa; Kenya in particular. John Alfred Jordan, an explorer, claimed to have shot at this unidentified creature in the River Maggori in Kenya in 1907 (some reports say 1909). Jordan claimed this scale-covered creature was 18 feet (6 metres) long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, a long tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks. Locals of the area also describe it as having a scorpion-like tail and that it would kill any hippos, crocodiles, or fishermen that happened to wander into its territory.

Cryptober day 26: Dingonek

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European explorers ventured into the jungles of West Africa and found dozens of undiscovered species like the bongo and the okapi. Along with confirmed species, they also brought back tales of bizarre beasts that they learned of only through African legends or brief glimpses along the shores of steamy jungle rivers. There are dozens such creatures, but the dingonek takes the prize as the weirdest of them.

Called the "jungle walrus," big game hunter Edgar Beecher Bronson described dingonek as, "fourteen or fifteen feet long, head big as that of a lioness but shaped and marked like a leopard, two long white fangs sticking down straight out of his upper jaw, back broad as a hippo, scaled like an armadillo, but colored and marked like a leopard, and a broad fin tail…Gad! But he was a hideous old haunter of a nightmare, was that beast-fish…Blast that blighter's fangs, but they looked long enough to go clean through a man." A shot with a .303 caliber rifle only angered it"