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Nandi bear

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Nandi Bear
File:Nandibear.jpg
Drawing
GroupingCryptid
Sub groupingBear
Other name(s)Kerit
CountryKenya

The Nandi Bear is an unconfirmed animal, reported to live in East Africa.[1] It takes its name from the Nandi people who live in western Kenya, in the area the Nandi Bear is reported from. It is also known as Chemisit,[1] Kerit, Koddoelo,[1] Ngoloko, or Duba (which derives from dubb or dubbha, the Arabic words for 'bear' and 'hyena' respectively.[citation needed])

Frank W. Lane wrote, "What the Abominable Snowman is to Asia, or the great Sea Serpent is to the oceans, the Nandi Bear is to Africa. It is one of the most notorious of those legendary beasts which have, so far, eluded capture and the collector's rifle."[2]

Description

Descriptions of the Nandi Bear are of a ferocious, powerfully built carnivore with high front shoulders (over four feet tall) and a sloping back, somewhat similar to a hyena. Some have speculated that Nandi Bears are in fact a misidentified hyena or a surviving Ice Age giant hyena: Karl Shuker states that a surviving short-faced hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris, extinct c. 500,000 years before present, would "explain these cases very satisfactorily."[3]

Other than the Atlas bear (extinct by the 1800s), no modern bears are known to be native to modern Africa, though the Etruscan bear, and species of the prehistoric genera Agriotherium and Indarctos, lived in Northern Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Louis Leakey[4] suggested that Nandi Bear descriptions matched that of the extinct Chalicotherium, though chalicotheres were herbivores.

The Nandi people call it "kerit". Local legend holds that it only eats the brain of its victims. Nandi Bears were regularly reported in Kenya throughout the 19th century and early 20th century.[5] Bernard Heuvelmans's On the Track of Unknown Animals and Karl Shuker's In Search of Prehistoric Survivors[3] provide the most extensive chronicles of Nandi Bear sightings in print.

References

  1. ^ a b c Newton, Michael (2009). Hidden Animals: A Field Guide to Batsquatch, Chupacabra, and Other Elusive Creatures. ABC-CLIO. p. 136. ISBN 0313359067. Retrieved 5 January 2018.
  2. ^ Cryptozoology.com
  3. ^ a b Shuker, Karl P N (1995). In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. Blandford. ISBN 0-7137-2469-2.
  4. ^ Louis S. Leakey, “Does the. Chalicothere—Contemporary of the Okapi— Still Survive?” Illustrated London News Vol 187, as cited in Mysterious creatures: a guide to cryptozoology, Volume 1, By George M. Eberhart, ABC-CLIO, 2002, ISBN 1576072835,
  5. ^ Soule, Gardener (December 1961). "Nandi Bear". Boys' Life. Retrieved January 5, 2018. {{cite magazine}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)