Emela-Ntouka
The very same area of the Congo which is home to the supposed dinosaur mokele-mbembe may also be home to another, similar, animal. Called by various names, with emela-ntouka being one of the most common, the animal--which seems to be an aquatic (or at least amphibious) rhinoceros-like creature--is reputed to have a penchant for killing elephants and hippopotami with its single horn, although according to native informants it is an herbivore.
In December, 1919, the London Daily Mail published a letter from C.G. James, who had lived in Africa. He reported that an enormous beast with a single ivory horn lived in the waters of Lakes Bangweulu, Mweru, and Tanganyika, as well as the Kafue swamps. James said this animal was called chipekwe by the natives, and that it was reputed to leave tracks similar to, but different than, those of a hippopotamus. The Chipekwe was also mentioned in Far Away Up the Nile, a book written in 1924 by John G. Millais. According to Millais, a hunter named Denis Lyall corroborated James' statement, although he added that the animal seemed to be extinct in those lakes.
These statements were further corroborated by J.E. Hughes in 1933. His book Eighteen Years on Lake Bangweulu reports the the Wa-Ushi tribesmen had killed such a creature along the Luapula River, between Lakes Mweru and Bangweulu.
It is described as having a smooth body, without bristles, and armed with a single smooth horn fixed like that of a rhinoceros, but composed of smooth white ivory, very highly polished. It is a pity they did not keep it...
The natives near Lake Edward, Zaire, call this creature irizima. Although this name is confused at times with the Mokele-Mbembe and analogous creatures, it usually refers to "...a gigantic hippopotamus with the horns [sic] of a rhinoceros on its head." Clearly, it is describing a creature identical to the Chipekwe.
The name Emela-Ntouka is used specifically by natives in the Likouala region of the Congo. The animal is mentioned in a 1954 article in the journal Mammalia. The article's author, Lucien Blancou, was a former game inspector in Likouala. He reported that a "beast which sometimes disembowels elephants" had been reported from several localities, among them Epena, Impfondo, and Dongou. At Dongou, he said, one of these animals was supposedly killed some two decades before, or about 1934.
It is interesting that in no case is the horn of this mystery animal recorded to be a dark mass of hair, as in true rhinoceroses. Rather, it is always described as a solid piece of ivory, which, if true, would suggest that the Emela-Ntouka is not a rhinoceros. Roy P. Mackal has suggested that the animal is a surviving ceratopsian dinosaur. Specifically, he suggests the one-horned Monoclonius (AKA Centrosaurus). To me, however, the descriptions of the Emela-Ntouka tally more with some sort of aquatic mammal, possibly closely related to the hippopotamus and rhinoceros to which it is often compared - not in the least because Monoclonius is known from fossils found in Alberta, Canada!
MACKAL, Roy P.
1987 A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-Mbembe. Leiden: E.J.
Brill.
SATTLER, Helen Roney.
1990 The New Illustrated Dinosaur Dictionary. New York: Lothrop.
SHUKER, Dr. Karl. P.N.
1995 In Search
of Prehistoric Survivors. London: Blandford.