by Darren Naish
Show me the evidence
The notion of the giant, long-necked pinniped proved popular in the cryptozoological literature, and the idea that the creature might be real has never really gone away, even though truly long-necked pinnipeds remain unknown from the fossil record, and even though the incredible size often described for the creature makes its reality unlikely. Indeed, the idea that such an enormous, unusual pinniped has remained undiscovered means that it must be incredibly secretive: non-vocal (in contrast to the majority of other pinnipeds), choosing to haul out only in places where people never go (err, where?), or perhaps being novel in being wholly aquatic and never visiting land. That's a fine idea, but the problem is that some of the best, most detailed sightings described encounters with the creature on land. What about the 'long-necked seal' described by Parsons (1751)? As noted by Woodley et al. (2008), it is most probably a confused description of a sea lion - a strange, unfamiliar and long-necked animal to someone only familiar with phocids.
Theoretical objections aside, the main problem with the idea of the Long-necked seal is that the evidence is simply not good enough to suggest that we should really take it seriously. The eyewitness accounts - the only evidence we have - are vague and mangled.
A new look at giant, long-necked speculative pinnipeds
But exactly what sort of pinniped would the Long-necked seal be, were it real? Heuvelmans actually didn't think the Long-necked seal was a seal at all (seals belong to the pinniped family Phocidae). Instead, he hinted at an affinity with otariids, the group that includes sea lions and fur seals. He thought this because there's at least one eyewitness report where a large, lolloping, long-necked animal seen on a beach was described as moving quickly on upright forelimbs and with its hindlimbs pointed forwards. Phocids can't do this: their hindlimbs project backwards and they move across the land by wiggling or throwing their bodies forward with their proportionally small forelimbs, only otariids can.
True seals (or phocids) appear short-necked, torpedo-shaped and use a humping, caterpillar-like motion of the body to move on land. Sea lions and fur seals (or otariids) appear long-necked and their large, highly mobile limbs allow them to move rapidly and with great agility when on land.
The giant size and cryptic nature of Megalotaria mean that it must be substantially aquatic, mostly likely living a live divorced from land. However, its enormous size and pelagic lifestyle are relatively new features that have only evolved in the last few million years. Consequently, the animal still retains skeletal features that allow the body to be supported on land, and smaller individuals (young ones of less than 7m in length) can still do this. Profound sexual dimorphism in Megalotaria explains the size discrepancy in sightings, with enormous bulls being twice the length of females.
Megalotaria fills a unique ecological niche for pinnipeds. It does not pursue fish, squid or other such prey at speed in open water. Rather, it is a benthic feeder on the abyssal plain, diving deep to search for sea cucumbers, sea stars and other prey, and apparently finding them by touch. Its paired breathing snorkels mean that it is usually concealed just beneath the surface when lounging between dives. In evolutionary terms, Megalotaria is a remarkable innovation among pinnipeds, absolutely unlike all other members of its group. If it survives the age of man, it should give rise to an entire dynasty of open-ocean, deep-diving, long-necked giant pinnipeds.
Coleman, L. & Huyghe, P. 2003. The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. Tarcher/Penguin, New York.
Cornes, R. 2001. The case for the surreal seal. In Heinselman, C. (ed) Dracontology Special Number 1: Being an Examination of Unknown Aquatic Animals. Craig Heinselman (Francestown, New Hampshire), pp. 39-45.
Costello, P. 1974. In Search of Lake Monsters. Garnstone Press, London.
Heuvelmans, B. 1968. In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents. Hill and Wang, New York.
Magin, U. 1996. St George without a dragon: Bernard Heuvelmans and the sea serpent. In Moore, S. (ed) Fortean Studies Volume 3. John Brown Publishing (London), pp. 223-234.
Parsons, J. 1751. A dissertation upon the Class of the Phocae Marinae. Philosophical Transactions 47, 109-122.
Woodley, M. A., Naish, D. & Shanahan, H. P. 2008. How many extant pinniped species remain to be described? Historical Biology 20, 225-235.
Kelpie
Paradoxical hoofed carnivore of cold northern lakes
Location: known from the folklore of Great Britain (especially Scotland) and Scandinavia
Time: a creature of ancient folklore, though with sightings made right up to the present attributed to it by some cryptozoologists
Call of the Kelpie
Kelpie is an old Scottish name for a creature sometimes called the Water Horse, Kelpy or Water Kelpie. Actually there is little clear indication of what a Kelpie is meant to look like other than that it is horse-like, with the word itself supposedly being based on the Gaelic 'colpach', meaning 'colt'. Similar creatures are present in Scandinavian and Welsh folklore and several different names are used for them.
Some descriptions of Kelpies say that they are simply black, wild-looking horses, sometimes with especially large, bulging eyes, sometimes with dripping manes, and sometimes with sleek, seal-like skin, but they are also attributed shape-shifting abilities and, in some tales, are described as dangerous killers of people and even as carnivores. In the most frequently heard Kelpie tales, people who choose to climb on to the Kelpie's back find that they are unable to move or climb off; the Kelpie then rushes into a nearby deep lake or pool, drowning the person and consuming them deep beneath the water. Occasionally the term Kelpie has been associated with other water monsters, including the Loch Ness Monster, but we do not consider this true to the original meaning of the name.
Could Kelpies be real? No, stupid
We, like probably all modern researchers, are confident that Kelpies are mythical beasts combining assorted motifs like shape-shifting, magical events associated with water, the concept of the bottomless pool, and so on. Perhaps the mythical idea of a killer pseudo-horse is based on the age-old idea that horses and other creatures seen near water might sometimes be dangerous, and perhaps the idea of creatures like Kelpies was maintained by people who wished children to stay away from treacherous bodies of water. In fact, it makes brilliant sense that people would deliberately instill fear in children in an effort to make them stay away from dangerous places. It may be that many monster stories were perpetuated for this reason.
The name Kelpie is currently used for a domestic dog breed that originated in Australia, often thought (erroneously) to incorporate Dingo DNA. The dog was named after the Scottish water monster, specifically for the Kelpies mentioned in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 story Kidnapped.
Beware Sarcomoschus!
Can we interpret the Kelpie as a real animal? While there are no amphibious horses, and while it seems odd to imagine a horse-shaped quadruped as being willing or able to run into the water and become completely submerged, there are several hoofed mammal species (including water buffalo, the sitatunga antelope and various deer; all members of the even-toed hoofed mammal clade, or Artiodactyla) that routinely wallow and stand in water so frequently that they can almost be regarded as amphibious. More surprisingly, there are even artiodactyls - the best example is the African Water chevrotain Hyemoschus aquaticus - that become entirely submerged and will then walk along the bottom of the river or pool that they have waded into.
We cheekily propose that Kelpies are actually giant, especially robust amphibious relatives of chevrotains, adapted for cool northern climates and possessing thick, luxuriant manes and tails that make them look superficially horse-like from a distance. An oily, dense, velvety pelt insulates the Kelpie during its aquatic forays but has a sticky feel, and it is clearly this characteristic which has given rise to the idea that Kelpies are adhesive.
Identification of the Kelpie - we're calling it Sarcomoschus borealis - as a large, cool-adapted chevrotai
n-like artiodactyl could also explain the occasional carnivorous behaviour that has become the stuff of legend, since chevrotains and other similar artiodactyls are not pure herbivores: they frequently eat small animals including frogs, birds and insects. We imagine that a giant species retains concealed, fang-like teeth beneath flexible lips and that it can tear vertebrate prey asunder and consume them on occasion, its prey including such large animals as the odd human. Seen from a distance and not studied in detail, the Kelpie (a solitary creature that only meets up with others at breeding time) is similar enough to a horse or pony to be mistaken for one.
It even leaves horse-like tracks, since the cloven hooves typical of an artiodactyl have fused together to form a superficially horse-like hoof (a process which has genuinely occurred in the real world: there are various domestic pig breeds - the most famous is the Mulefoot - with syndactyl, hoof-like feet (Porter 1993). Syndactyl cattle have been bred as well). Close inspection of a Kelpie reveals a different head shape, a peculiar velvety pelt and dark, bulging eyes different from those of a horse but typical of chevrotains and other artiodactyls. Next time you approach horses grazing around a Scottish lake… beware, Sarcomoschus could be among them!
Porter, V. 1993. Pigs: A Handbook to the Breeds of the World. Helm (Mountfield, Easy Sussex).
Dingonek
Freshwater 'walrus' from tropical Africa
Time: early 1900s, though with tales stretching back some unknown period beforehand
Location: river systems in Kenya, Tanzania and perhaps throughout sub-Saharan Africa (if similarly described beasts are regarded as the same sort of creature)
The Dingonek in lore and literature
The east African Dingonek is a remarkable aquatic or amphibious cryptid, our knowledge of which is based almost entirely on a few accounts from the early 1900s. All come from Kenyan and Tanzanian rivers, some of which flow into Lake Victoria. As is typical for creatures described in cryptozoology books, the original descriptions are vague and do not clearly describe a recognizable sort of animal. What then happens is that cryptozoologists put together the different reported features, think they can determine the creature's identity, and end up with a 'classified', anatomically plausible version of the animal. It is this version of the creature that ends up being illustrated and believed in by cryptozoological enthusiasts as the true identity of the animal behind the original reports.
In this case, Dingonek accounts refer to a large (5-6m long), spotted, scaly water beast that has an otter- or lion-like head, small ears, short legs, a long, broad tail and, most remarkably, a pair of long, white tusks in the upper jaw. The creature was reported by several european explorers and adventurers who learnt about it from local people. One hunter, John Alfred Jordan, apparently caught sight of a Dingonek in 1907 and tried to shoot it. This creature is sometimes dubbed the 'water lion' and is supposedly the same as the Ndamathia, Ol-maima, Muru-ngu, Dilali and Mamaimé reported by other peoples across Africa from the Central African Republic in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.
Those large upper jaw tusks have led cryptozoologists to suggest that the Dingonek is an aquatically-adapted, walrus-like sabre-toothed cat! Heuvelmans argued in his 1978 book Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique that the large upper canines of sabre-tooths perhaps encouraged them to evolve in a sort of walrus-like direction whereby the enlarged canines became modified for use in hauling out onto riverbanks, not to dispatch prey. He explained the 'scaly' appearance of the animal as mistaken references to light seen shining off a reflective pelage where the wet fur had massed into small clumps (Heuvelmans 1978, Shuker 1989).
All of this sounds ridiculous (and it's certainly not supported by fossil or other evidence). However, a remarkable piece of rock art discovered at Brackfontein Ridge in South Africa really does depict a tusked, long-tailed, walrus-like quadruped, shown approaching a hippo-like beast while in a swimming pose.
Rock art image believed to show a Dingonek.
Confronting the Dingonek
The Dingonek reports are so weird that we are at a loss to provide any sort of half-decent explanation. Furthermore, the fact that the Brackfontein Ridge rock illustration seems to depict a matching animal seemingly provides support for the notion that Heuvelmans and Shuker might be right, and that walrus-like jungle monsters really do exist. However, a few things need saying, and they haven't been said (or, at least, said clearly enough) in the cryptozoological literature.
For one thing, none of the Dingonek accounts are really good enough for us to be at all confident about the creature's appearance, or indeed its existence. As implied above, we face a problem when we combine (1) local lore and legend with (2) an alleged eyewitness account from a European person, and (3) a precise hypothesis about the imagined creature's identity and evolutionary history. Increasingly, it seems that these mashups - the standard approach in conventional cryptozoology, as advocated by Heuvelmans (1982) - are doomed to failure. Such legends and accounts might be based on real animals, but they might not be: they might combine a spiritual view of the world with erroneous interpretations and codified tales that impart knowledge, act as warnings or morals, or are simply remembered for entertainment (Rabbit 2000). Because ideas about spirit-creatures and malevolent entities are frequently deliberately vague, we might be making a big mistake when we imagine them as descriptions of flesh-and-blood creatures.
On a similar note, the frequent assumption in cryptozoology that creatures with different names represent the same flesh-and-blood species is very likely often wrong. If we look in detail at the features used to link such entities as the Dingonek, Muru-ngu, Dilali and so on, we find that their association is far from convincing. Indeed, our treatment here of those assorted water-beasts - we're writing as if they're all names of the same one entity - only perpetuates what is probably a major mistake. The main point here is that you would need to be an experienced and specialised expert on African folklore, culture and linguistics to properly appreciate the context of these monsters. We can't do research of that sort, and we can't help but feel that Heuvelmans and other cryptozoological writers have only investigated the subject in a fashion that is both cursory and loaded with assumptions.
Indeed, despite his own confidence, and despite the enthusiastic support he reviews from his followers, Heuvelmans is notorious for lumping together discordant accounts in order to 'create' the cryptids he endorsed. This is, in fact, one of the primary flaws of his research, affecting his hypotheses about African water monsters (Meurger & Gagnon 1988), sea-serpents (Magin 1996), krakens and other non-serpentine sea monsters (Paxton 2004), the South American Minhocão and others.
As for John Alfred Jordan's eyewitness account of 1907: this is related as a colourful (but seemingly non-fictional) anecdote, the creature being described by Jordan as "a reptilian bounder" and "beast-fish" witnessed submerged in a swift current, using "slow, lazy swishes" of its "broad tail fin" to stay in place (Bronson 1910). Jordan also described the animal's head (not its whole body, as some researchers seem to have thought) as leopard-like in shape, and also referred to two white fangs, armadillo-like scales, and a leopard-like colouring and markings. The most likely interpretation of this creature is that it was a short-headed, heavily spotted crocodile, its short and supposedly cat-like head being the result of substantial damage. Wild crocodiles missing massive portions of their skulls have been reported on several occasions (e.g., Irwin 1996), and it's plausible that such a creature, witnessed through fast-flowing water, could well appear short-headed.
Finally, what about that piece of rock art? It should be noted that the illustration features two remarkable, mystery creatures, the other being a hippo-shaped animal covered in long spines. Rock art produced around the world demonstrates that people have often illustrated mythical or wholly imaginable creatures: there are examples from the Palaeolithic of Europe (Battersby 1997), and from prehistoric North America and elsewhere. Rather than being a faithful reproduction of an unknown animal (or, rather, two
unknown animals), the illustration might more plausibly show fabricated or mythical entities.
The speculative Dingonek
Despite all that we've just said, we found it irresistible to imagine the Dingonek as the great, sabre-toothed water-cat of the cryptozoological literature. As per some of the cryptids we feature, we don't really have much to add in the way of speculative biology here, since Heuvelmans (1978), Shuker (1989) and others have already said just about everything there is to say on the possible biology and evolution of this animal.
Encouraged by competition from feline cats, a lineage of African sabretooths - the dingonekines - took to amphibious and eventually fully aquatic life. They became giants, insulated by fat and thick skin, and hence eventually came to superficially resemble the walruses of the far north. The largest, most familiar, and most walrus-like of them all is Dingonek odobenomimus. Like other pinnipeds, walruses possess a short tail, perhaps because a lengthy tail loses heat in cold climates. But dingonekines evolved in the tropics, where there were no such evolutionary pressures, and they have hence enlarged, lengthened and broadened the tail to the extent that it now serves a useful function in swimming. A similar pattern of tail evolution occurred in the earliest sirenians and cetaceans.