Parapedia - Nandi Bear
The Nandi Bear is a cryptid, or unconfirmed animal, reported to live in Africa. It takes its name from the Nandi people who live in western Kenya, near where the Nandi Bear is reported as living. The Nandi people call it Kerit. Local legend holds that it only eats the brain of its victims.
Descriptions of the Nandi Bear are of a ferocious, powerfully built carnivore with high front shoulders (over four feet tall) and a sloping back; somewhat similar to a hyena. Some have speculated that Nandi Bears are in fact a misidentified hyena (or an unrecognized hyena subspecies).
Other than the extinct Atlas Bear, no living bear are known to be native to Africa, besides those of the prehistoric genera Agriotherium and Indarctos, which died out 4.4 million years ago. Karl Shuker states that a surviving short-faced hyaena Hyaena [now Pachycrocuta] brevirostris would "explain these cases very satisfactorily." Louis Leakey suggested that Nandi Bear descriptions matched that of the extinct Chalicotherium, though chalicotheres were herbivores.
The Nandi Bear is also thought to be a group of presumably extinct species of spotted hyena.
Frank W. Lane wrote, "What the Abominable Snowman is to Asia, or the great Sea Serpent is to the oceans, the Nandi Bear is to Africa. It is one of the most notorious of those legendary beasts which have, so far, eluded capture and the collector's rifle." Nandi Bears were regularly reported in Kenya throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. Bernard Heuvelmans's On the Track of Unknown Animals and Karl Shuker's In Search of Prehistoric Survivors provide the most extensive chronicles of Nandi bear sightings in print.
Descriptions of the Nandi Bear are of a ferocious, powerfully built carnivore with high front shoulders (over four feet tall) and a sloping back; somewhat similar to a hyena. Some have speculated that Nandi Bears are in fact a misidentified hyena (or an unrecognized hyena subspecies).
Other than the extinct Atlas Bear, no living bear are known to be native to Africa, besides those of the prehistoric genera Agriotherium and Indarctos, which died out 4.4 million years ago. Karl Shuker states that a surviving short-faced hyaena Hyaena [now Pachycrocuta] brevirostris would "explain these cases very satisfactorily." Louis Leakey suggested that Nandi Bear descriptions matched that of the extinct Chalicotherium, though chalicotheres were herbivores.
The Nandi Bear is also thought to be a group of presumably extinct species of spotted hyena.
Frank W. Lane wrote, "What the Abominable Snowman is to Asia, or the great Sea Serpent is to the oceans, the Nandi Bear is to Africa. It is one of the most notorious of those legendary beasts which have, so far, eluded capture and the collector's rifle." Nandi Bears were regularly reported in Kenya throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. Bernard Heuvelmans's On the Track of Unknown Animals and Karl Shuker's In Search of Prehistoric Survivors provide the most extensive chronicles of Nandi bear sightings in print.
- * Shuker, Karl P N (1995). In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. Blandford. ISBN 0-7137-2469-2.