During another of my youtube armchair explorations, I stumbled on several videos seeking to shed light on a gigantic, mysterious, and elusive creature that resides in muddy caves along the lower banks of remote rivers and lakes traversing the Congo Basin and Southern Cameroon.

Known to generations of the Congo's Pygmy tribes as Mokele Mbebme, which translates to mean, "Beast that blocks the flow of rivers", this reputedly foul-tempered and aggressive behemoth invokes abject fear in the local natives and deep curiosity on the part of visiting explorers conducting scientific fact-finding safaris into the area. Numerous scientific expeditions have been conducted dating back to the early 1900s, to try and unravel the mystery of this fearsome beast that is fabled to kill but not devour both human beings and hippopotami that stray across its path in the riparian labyrinth of the Congo and Cameroons more remote and inaccessible waterways.

While many new animal species are discovered every year in the Amazon and Congo River basins, the Mokele Mbebme is the first and ONLY living dinosaur that has been widely witnessed yet never yet documented on film. The first of these two youtube videos is a serious-minded, documentary that gives a short yet detailed history of this fascinating animal, while the second video clip details the wild antics of a Chinese American explorer who went to the Congo in 1994 to try and seek out the beast, with hilarious results.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBjxHafqxM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWMi6WOa56k

I doubt if these creatures still exist today.
Otherwise, more credible sightings would have been made.
Many creatures previously thought to be extinct have been caught on hidden cameras in the wild. These ones shouldn't be an exemption if they still exist.

whirlwind7:
I doubt if these creatures still exist today.
Otherwise, more credible sightings would have been made.
Many creatures previously thought to be extinct have been caught on hidden cameras in the wild. These ones shouldn't be an exemption if they still exist.

The one major omission that has evidently been made in the search for this creature in the Congo has been that hidden motion-activated trail cameras have not been set in large numbers by all the expeditions into that very remote and inaccessible area of the Congo Basin. While most trail cameras operate with several AA batteries whose lifespan can be a month or less, it is possible to adapt the power supply of those cameras so that they can be connected to EXTERNAL car batteries, that can, in turn, be continuously recharged with small solar panels placed high up in trees of that forest.

With a solar-charged car battery as the power source for numerous hidden motion-activated trail cameras set up to monitor and record wildlife movement in the forest, the active life of such systems can be extended to many months. If sufficiently large capacity memory cards are installed in several hundred such cameras all set up in areas known to be inhabited by the elusive creature, it will only be a matter of time before still images will be recorded to prove that the animal exists beyond any reasonable doubt. Video footage would consume too much memory in the cameras, and should therefore only be sought once the animal has actually been captured in still photographs.

This electronic eavesdropping method of investigation will be far more effective than any number of manned excursions that will all disturb the remote and usually dead quiet areas with the noise of motorboats and such. One hopes that National Geographic or some other well-funded organization will invest in trail camera technology and install a couple of hundred cameras all powered by solar-charged car batteries, in order to resolve this enduring mystery once and for all .

Dear Jakumo, there are no more dinos, unless you are talking of the coelacanth. But then I am very sure you know that. This Congo dino is akin to the Loch Ness Monster and there's no substance to it that I can see.

That said, if there indeed is a dino in the Congo, I don't envy it, because it is speedily going to be the most studied, prodded, examined and dissected animal in history. Plus we are in the midst of a mass extinction event and a surprising array of flora and fauna have been going extinct at an accelerating pace. So, how would a large being survive on a planet like this that is filled with people looking to exploit it every way they can?

GabrielYulaw:
Dear Jakumo, there are no more dinos, unless you are talking of the coelacanth. But then I am very sure you know that. This Congo dino is akin to the Loch Ness Monster and there's no substance to it that I can see.

That said, if there indeed is a dino in the Congo, I don't envy it, because it is speedily going to be the most studied, prodded, examined and dissected animal in history. Plus we are in the midst of a mass extinction event and a surprising array of flora and fauna have been going extinct at an accelerating pace. So, how would a large being survive on a planet like this that is filled with people looking to exploit it every way they can?

Gabriel, you have touched on my biggest concern about African wildlife in general, which is the unchecked and rapacious decimation of tropical forests by Chinese logging firms, whose ecological crimes are capable of accelerating mass extinction of species both large and small.

With regards to this particular animal, my speculation is that there does, in fact, exist a massive hitherto unidentified creature in those remote backwaters, whose presence is attested by a proliferation of eyewitness accounts from natives going back generations, along with well-documented and photographed massive clawed footprints that could not have been left by any currently known category of animal life.

One hopes that this creature can be photographed and thereby protected along with its natural habitat before the Chinese strip-mine the entire Congo basin of every standing tree.

Jakumo:


Gabriel, you have touched on my biggest concern about African wildlife in general, which is the unchecked and rapacious decimation of tropical forests by Chinese logging firms, whose ecological crimes are capable of accelerating mass extinction of species both large and small.

With regards to this particular animal, my speculation is that there does, in fact, exist a massive hitherto unidentified creature in those remote backwaters, whose presence is attested by a proliferation of eyewitness accounts from natives going back generations, along with well-documented and photographed massive clawed footprints that could not have been left by any currently known category of animal life.

One hopes that this creature can be photographed and thereby protected along with its natural habitat before the Chinese strip-mine the entire Congo basin of every standing tree.

Dear Jakumo, If there indeed is something there, then better it be undiscovered. It is not harming anyone anyway and bringing it to light can only lead to its eventual destruction by short sighted humans. The northern white rhino for example is currently extinct because poachers have literally hunted it to the point there were a handful and eventually none left. I can't even imagine the kind of mind that's willing to kill the very last of the few remaining members of a species left on this planet, just for its horn. It is beyond evil.

Once this dino is discovered, it will face the same thing and that is so sad for a species that has to have been on the planet for millions of years. Better it stay in the darkness forever.

As for the Chinese, they are more amoral than most. And I think they would cheerfully sell this planet to an alien species even if that meant the death of billions of non-Asian people.

GabrielYulaw:


Dear Jakumo, If there indeed is something there, then better it be undiscovered. It is not harming anyone anyway and bringing it to light can only lead to its eventual destruction by short sighted humans. The northern white rhino for example is currently extinct because poachers have literally hunted it to the point there were a handful and eventually none left. I can't even imagine the kind of mind that's willing to kill the very last of the few remaining members of a species left on this planet, just for its horn. It is beyond evil.

Once this dino is discovered, it will face the same thing and that is so sad for a species that has to have been on the planet for millions of years. Better it stay in the darkness forever.

As for the Chinese, they are more amoral than most. And I think they would cheerfully sell this planet to an alien species even if that meant the death of billions of non-Asian people.

Despite my curiosity to see this mystery unraveled, Gabriel, I do on reflection agree that definitive proof of its existence will very quickly turn the entire area into an amusement park like Disneyland, with tourists being flown into newly cleared landing strips to mob the area and ultimately drive the last few specimens of the beast into extinction long before it would otherwise have occurred.

Some mysteries are perhaps better left unsolved...