Library of Cryptozoology

There is an animal, which I know not where to class, as no European has hitherto succeeded in obtaining a specimen of it: it is supposed by the natives to be far more active, powerful and dangerous than even the lion, and consequently held by them in the greatest possible dread. They call it 'wobbo' or 'mantillit,' and some hold it in superstitious awe, looking upon it more in the light of an evil spirit with an animal's form than a wild beast. Their descriptions of this animal are vague in the extreme: some say that its skin is partly that of a lion, but intermixed with that of the leopard and hyena; others, again, assert that its face is human, or very like it. It appears int he valleys, happily only rarely; for they say that when it takes its abode near a village, it pays nightly visits, entertaining the very houses, and carrying off the children, and even occasionally grown-up persons. One had been killed some years ago on the river Weney, and its skin presented...

Several species of the leopard tribe are found in the country [of Abyssinia] ... the third, (muntillut T. wobo A.) appears to be an unknown species, and is said to be very fierce, occasionally carrying away children, and even men, when it accidentally finds them asleep: its face is described as resembling the human countenance.

In November, 1905, a pair of tusks of the gigantic "forest pig" were exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society. The larger one measured over two feet long on the curve, was collected in Abyssinia by Baron Maurice Rothschild, and the smaller lower tusk came from my collection. The Hon. Walter Rothschild was to have read a paper to the meeting, giving some account of this huge, ferocious beast, of which strange tales are told by African travellers, but he was unfortunately unable to be present. In Mr. Rothschild's absence. Dr. Hartert said that Mr. Rothschild had given a name to the animal to which the tusks were supposed to belong— Colossochoerus —expressing its pig-like nature and colossal bulk, which he considered equal to that of a rhinoceros. When the tusks were handed round for inspection several of the Fellows expressed the opinion that the larger one was an abnormal tusk of an elephant, and this was supported by some of the naturalists of the British Museum ...

At a meeting of the Zoological Society of London held on November 14, 1905, the Hon. Walter Rothschild exhibited two tusks obtained by Baron Maurice de Rothschild in Abyssinia, which were then regarded as so unlike normal tusks of any known animal as to suggest the possibility of their belonging to some unknown creature. Of one of these tusks Mr. Rothschild subsequently presented a cast to the British Museum. This cast indicates a highly curved and much flattened tusk of about 2 feet in length, marked on the broad concave surface by a number of bold longitudinal flutings. In 1907 Mr. L. D. Gosling presented to the Museum three small tusks of female elephants obtained during the Alexander-Gosling expedition from Lake Tchad to the Congo, one of which presents a most striking resemblance to the cast. It is, indeed, considerably smaller and less sharply curved, but is of the same general contour, and likewise bears distinct traces of longitudinal flutings on the flattened concave surface, ...