Tiktaki

**Habitat** | Jungles and Wetlands

In cryptozoology, the **Tiktaki** is a water-dwelling entity that supposedly lives in the Congo River Basin, sometimes described as a living creature, sometimes as a spirit. Those that have allegedly seen the creature describe it as a large bipedal herbivore with smooth skin, a long tail, short arms, a short neck, and a pair of thumb spikes.

In early to mid 20th century, the entity would become a point of focus among adherents of the pseudoscience of cryptozoology, and young Earth creationism, resulting in numerous expeditions led by cryptozoologists and funded by young Earth creationists and other groups with the objective to find evidence that invalidates or contradicts the scientific consensus regarding evolution. Paleontologist Donald Prothero remarks that "the quest for Tiktaki... is part of the effort by creationists to overthrow the theory of evolution and teaching of science by any means possible". Additionally, Prothero observes that "The only people looking for tiktaki are creationist ministers, not wildlife biologists."

## History

The first description of the tiktaki as an iguanodont-like beast was in 1909, in Beasts and Men, the autobiography of famed big-game hunter Carl Hagenbeck. He claimed to have heard from two independent sources about a creature living in Gambia, which was described to them by natives as "half kangaroo, half dragon." Naturalist Joseph Menges had also told Hagenbeck about similar stories. Hagenbeck speculated that "it can only be some kind of dinosaur, seemingly akin to the Iguanodon." Another of Hagenbeck's sources, Hans Schomburgk, asserted that while at Lake Bangweulu, he noted a lack of giraffes; his native guides informed him of a large bongo-killing creature that lived in Lake Tanganyika; however, as noted below, Schomburgk thought that native testimony was sometimes unreliable.

Tales of entities like tiktaki, living saurians walking around the African rain forest, are not rare; there have been multiple tales of large, smooth-skinned bipeds with short necks and thumb spikes that fed on large prey still living in central Africa. It was only after the description of the tiktaki surfaced that the rest of the world started interpreting those legends as possessing a dinosaur-like body structure. A notable example would be the emela-ntouka, an elephant-sized ceratopsian-like creature, and the mokele-mbembe, an elephant-sized sauropod-like creature, that shares a lot of similarities with the tiktaki. It is described as having smooth skin, a strong and muscular tail, and a pair of thumb spikes. Another similar creature, the Ngembo-monene, was described by Alfred Aloysius Smith, who had worked for a British trading company in what is now Gabon in the late 1800s, who briefly mentions it in his 1927 memoir.

Reports of entities described to be dinosaur-like in Africa caused a minor sensation in the mass media, and newspapers in Europe and North America carried many articles on the subject in the early 1910s; some took the reports at face value, while others were more skeptical. It is notable that Western Europe and the Americas were going through a pop cultural interest in dinosaurs, of which the Iguanodon was one of the most popular. This could have contributed to both the reports as well as the tendency for newspapers to claim the reported beast was an iguanodont.

In 2001, BBC broadcast in the TV series Congo a collective interview with a group of pygmies, who identified the tiktaki as a ground hornbill while looking at an illustrated manual of wildlife. The ground hornbills are entirely absent from the rainforests of the Congo, and the tiktaki may be a mixture of mythology and folk memory from a time when ground hornbills were found in the area.

In 2016, a travel documentary crew from South Africa made a documentary about searching for tiktaki, which they later sold to Discovery Africa. The team spent roughly four weeks in the Lake Bangweulu region visiting various pygmy villages, collecting stories of the creature's existence. They point out the difficulty of differentiating between tiktaki's metaphysical and physical existence. While they interviewed people who believed in its presence, others stated it died at least a decade ago.

## Explanations

* The Tiktaki may be a living non-avian iguanodont dinosaur, similar to Iguanodon. However, this is considered as a flimsy excuse, since it most closely matches outdated Iguanodon reconstructions, not how they really looked in life; real Iguanodon were bulky, semi-bipedal, hoofed animals with tails held high from the ground, while the Tiktaki is described as a skiny, fully bipedal animal with a dragging tail.
* The Tiktaki may actually be a spirit being with supernatural powers, but spirits are not considered scientifically plausible to exist in the natural world.
* The entire story may have been hoaxes by Roy Mackal just to get more famous and possibly to try to overthrow the theory of evolution; however, the living iguanodont would actually strengthen the theory of evolution rather than denying. This explanation as a hoax is further supported by Roy Mackal claiming that the creature is often hunted by Kasai Rex, which was shown as a hoax during the mid to late 20th century.