Despite the hundreds of years through which humanity has discovered and classified the organisms that inhabit our planet, new species are still being found today. In 2004, scientists from the United States discovered a new species of monkey in the jungle of the Madidi National Park in Bolivia. The ape, from the group of marmosets, belongs to the genus Callicebus . Its specific name was the result of an internet contest won by the Golden Palace Internet Casino that donated 650,000 dollars to the National Park for the name Callicebus aureipalatii , which means in Latin “golden palace” (Golden Palace).
In 2016 several new species were found. Some of them are small animals, difficult to see, although this is not the case with the recently discovered seven-meter-long black whale that has not yet been baptized.
The whale is joined by the ninja lantern shark ( Etmopterus benchleyi ), discovered in the sea near Costa Rica in 2015. This shark was found by North American scientists traveling aboard the Spanish research ship B / O Miguel Oliver. The name refers to Peter Benchley, author of the novel Jaws.
‘Ghost’ species
So far we have talked about new species. But what about those animals that are suspected to exist but have not yet found ? The example that immediately comes to mind is that of the Loch Ness “monster” in Scotland which, despite several searches, continues to go unseen. But there are other less known but no less interesting cases …
Let’s go back to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the early 1900s. RJ Cunninghame was a wild animal hunter who became famous for saving the life of the then US President, Theodore Roosvelt , by shooting down a hippopotamus that attacked while on safari in East Africa in 1909.
And it was to Cunninghame that a Frenchman named Le Petit told about the water elephant that he had observed a couple of times in 1907 during his five-year stay in the Congo. Le Petit saw it for the first time while traveling along the river of the same name, and for the second time in the wetlands between the Leopold II lakes (today Mai-Ndombe lake) and the Tumba lake.
What Le Petit saw the first time was just a head and neck that appeared on the surface of the water . His companions, natives of the place, told him that it was the water elephant. The second sighting was more fortunate, as he was able to observe up to five animals for about a minute. He described them as between 180-240 cm tall, with relatively short legs and a curved back like that of elephants.
Its head was ovoid and elongated with a short trunk 60 cm long, but without fangs. The leather reminded him of hippos, only darker. Also, when he was able to examine his footprints in the sand, he saw four separate toes. This was the last time they were seen, as they quickly disappeared into the deep water . He was informed by his local travel companions that these elephants were common in the area and that they spent a lot of time in the water like hippos.
In that same region there would be another animal known as the mokèlé-mbèmbé , a creature with a prehistoric appearance similar to the Nessie of Loch Ness. Despite the fact that several expeditions have traveled the area of the Congo in search of it, none of them found the mokèlé-mbèmbé … and neither did the water elephant.
However, in 2005 aviators flying over Lake Tumba claimed to have seen animals that would fit Le Petit’s description of the water elephant.
Science is suspicious of this type of “discoveries” that have not been confirmed. However, both the Congo region and Bolivia have surprised us before with the discovery of other interesting creatures. It is possible that the beasts Petit saw were African bush elephants ( Loxodonta cyclotis ), which have also been considered pygmy elephants for quite some time, although the latter are now recognized as small specimens of L. cyclotis .
Author Philippe Coudray, who we thank for his permission to use the illustration, theorizes that it is possible that elephants that we considered extinct could still exist. Coudray bases his reasoning on the discovery of a tusk with an inverse curvature to the normal of elephants in Ethiopia in 1904. The fact that the tusk was not fossilized would indicate that the animal did not live that long ago.
Does the water elephant really exist or was it a confusion of Le Petit that actually saw the smallest African jungle elephants? Access to the area of the Congo where they could be found is quite complicated, so the final solution to the mystery could still take many years to arrive. Meanwhile, we can only wait …
Image: The water elephant according to the interpretation of the artist and writer Philippe Coudray. Reproduced with the autor’s permission.
Text: Julio de Castro, veterinarian and Doctor in Parasitology. He has worked for FAO for 25 years and now lives in Zimbabwe. Write about her experiences in Africa on the blog A Bushsnob in wild Africa
Edition: Victoria González
