Case file · Cryptid
Blancou's 'elephant killer'
In 1954 Lucien Blancou, a former game inspector in French Equatorial Africa, wrote in the journal Mammalia about the emela-ntouka, Lingala for 'elephant killer', an animal larger than a buffalo said to live in the Likouala swamps.
1954 CE · 1.60, 17.60 · status: account
The account
Local hunters said it had a single horn on its snout, lived in the water, and gored elephants, buffalo and hippos while eating only plants. Roy Mackal heard further accounts on his expeditions of 1980 and 1981, and some writers imagined a surviving ceratopsian dinosaur. The point is approximate.
The sceptical view
The descriptions fit a rhinoceros, which once lived nearer the region, and a water-loving one could explain the rest.