The Congos Dinosaur: Mokele-mbembe
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Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. My name is Aaron. The other host that is joining me today is Daniel Sun. Hello.

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Also, remember, our episode, our content is entirely human made. No AI were harmed or used in the process other than for the graphic. And that is the end of the announcements. All right. So the topic that we are going to talk about today is a cryptid that not many people talk about in the United States. However, for the past hundreds of years in the jungles of the Central African countries of Congo and Cameroon,

Tribes have told stories of a very aggressive, very large aquatic animal that's just terrorizing people around there. Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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have a long neck with a long tail and rounded fins with three claws on each fin. So the closest known animal that has the characteristics of this mysterious creature is a sauropod dinosaur. Now, early depictions of sauropod dinosaurs showed them in aquatic or semi-aquatic environments. Scientific evidence now supports that they were primarily land dinosaurs. Also, they went extinct over 66 million years ago, so the chances of it being a sauropod dinosaur

are pretty low. However, that is a theory and we're going to save that for our theory section. But continuing on, this mysterious creature has attacked many villagers over the past hundreds of years. However, some of the villagers have been able to actually kill one of these creatures and actually ate it.

However, all of the villagers who ate the meat of this animal ended up getting sick and died shortly after. Due to all that, all of the villagers now assume the meat of this animal is poisonous. Now, like we said, stories of this animal have been around the Congo and the Cameroon for hundreds of years, and these stories pretty much were just localized.

However, word of this animal ended up spreading around the world in the early 1900s and since then multiple expeditions have been sent out looking for this creature with some finding tracks and others even coming face to face with it.

And the crazy thing is, during these expeditions, the local villagers were shown a picture of a sauropod dinosaur, and they pointed at it, the dinosaur, saying, that is the creature that we have been seeing for the past hundreds of years. And they call this creature Moquele Mbembe. And that is what we are going to talk about today. This mysterious creature, Moquele Mbembe.

So with every topic that we research, we always look for the earliest written report on the source itself. We aren't talking about a report of a report. We find the original report. We do. However, with this case, we couldn't find the original report because it's all word of mouth. Pretty much stories passed down from family members of the villagers in Cameroon. So we decided to look deep into historical expeditions.

We read so many damn books over expeditions in Africa and what they reported. After 160 combined hours, which is almost seven full days of us scanning and translating these books, because most of them were in German, and the reports of them, we finally came across the very first mention of this creature.

And this is what we learned. So back in 1884, Germany established a colony in modern Africa, which they called Cameroon. By the year 1913, this German colony encompassed a large portion of present-day Cameroon,

as well as parts of neighboring countries. Now, in that same year of 1913, the German government sent an expedition under the leadership of Captain Freiherr von Stein-Zulasnitz. And I'm pretty sure I slaughtered his name, so I apologize.

But they sent that Captain von Stein to that area of present-day Cameroon to make a general survey of its German colonies. So the official report of this expedition contains a fairly extensive section dealing with this unknown creature.

And in this report, which is written by Captain Von Stein, he states, and we quote, In certain parts of the territory of the Congo, Cameroon, and the lower Ubanji, the Sanga, and the Ikalimba rivers, there is a creature that is feared very much by the natives in those parts. The creature is reported not to live in the smaller rivers, but in the rivers where only few individuals are said to exist.

At the time of our expedition, we got word that one of the local villages had just captured one of these creatures. However, this village was in part of the Sanga River that we could not get to due to it being inaccessible. We also heard that the alleged creature was at the Sambo River. The narratives of the natives result in a general description as follows.

The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size approximately that of an elephant and at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one. However, some say it is a horn. A few natives spoke about a long muscular tail like that of an alligator.

Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed. The animal is said to attack the vessels at once and kill the villagers inside, but this creature does not eat the bodies of the villagers that it kills. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shore even at daytime in search of food. Its diet is said to be entirely vegetable.

The preferred plant shown to me, it is kind of a liana with large white blossoms with a milky sap and apple-like fruits. At the Sambo River, I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food.

The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby, but since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals, it was impossible to make out a particular track of this creature with any amount of certainty. End quote. So that right there was part of the 1913 expedition report that mentions the creature. Also something else worth mentioning is that Captain von Stein was hesitant to include this information about a creature on his report.

He didn't want it to be made fun of or have his credibility suffered due to writing about something that was so tabooed back then. An example of this would be towards the end of his report, Captain von Stein refers to this mysterious creature and says, and I quote, a very mysterious thing which possibly does not exist except in the imagination of the natives, but is probably based on something more tangible, end quote.

So he states that this thing might not exist, but it might exist, but it's probably some other creature. And we have a fly that is just bombarding us. That's been living here for like two weeks. You got a fly swatter around here? So I got to slap it? You can never catch it.

Oh, you see that? I got that. Okay. I slapped the shit fly. Fuck that fly, man. I just karate chopped it. Is it still flying around? No. Yeah. I slapped the shit out of it. It's down there somewhere. It's probably knocked out. Now it's going to come back with vengeance. Yeah. Oh, well, I hope that the camera caught that. I slapped the shit out of it. The flies here in Texas are vicious. Yeah, they are. They literally attack you. I came over the other day to do some research and you were like, there's a fly. It's a fly.

that keeps dive bombing me in my forehead and I was like okay then all of a sudden it started dive bombing me in my knee I was like oh shit he was right but anyway so back to the episode Captain Von Stein like we said very hesitant on including this creature in his report however though Captain Von Stein ends the report by stating that he spoke to many experienced guides and natives in different parts all who repeated the characteristic features of this creature and the stories without knowing what

one another the natives named the creature mokele mbembe yep so all the natives in the area all say the same thing about the creature and they all named it the same thing and not none of those natives or guides had talked to each other yeah and that right there was the first ever documented report of this creature and it would be this documented report that would spread across the world at a rapid rate

people started to believe that actual living dinosaurs existed in parts of the Congo and Cameroon. Of course, this news resulted in a large number of expeditions throughout the years in the Congo and Cameroon of individuals trying to find and capture this Smokele Mbembe.

And that is what we are going to talk about next. Some of those notable expeditions. And they get fucking crazy in these expeditions. Like there's a scammer who takes this one group and then steals all their equipment. We'll talk about that. So like we previously stated, the first report that mentioned the creature by name was in 1913. That report ended up going viral back then and then it caught the attention of the Smithsonian Institution.

So six years later, in 1919, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. sent a 32-man expedition to Central Africa. Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile.

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and what GMC has done for over 100. We are professional grade. Visit GMC.com to learn more. Assembled in Flint and Hamtramck, Michigan and Fort Wayne, Indiana of U.S. and globally sourced parts. All right, welcome back. The primary objective of this expedition was said to secure additional specimens of plants and animals for the institution itself.

Also, film producers with Universal Film accompanied the expedition in order to document the life of interior Africa. Local African guides were hired to help the crew and during the expedition, they found large unexplained tracks along the bank of a river. Also, the team heard mysterious roars which had no resemblance with any known animal. However, the expedition ended in tragedy.

An entire tribe told the expedition group, the Smithsonian one, that they had recently seen this dinosaur that they were looking for. The crew could not get to that location of the sighting due to the pathway being heavily flooded at the time.

However, they learned that they could take a train ride around the flooded area to get to that location of where the sighting took place. So the crew got on the train and during it, the train didn't really go completely around the flooded area. It actually decided to go through parts of it. Yeah, kind of like at the time, the area was flooded to a certain extent. But by the time they got onto the train, it had flooded more and taken up some of the spots of where the tracks went through.

And that was a bad thing, because as the locomotive train was chugging along, the flooded area got too bad, the train derailed and turned over.

Four members of the team were crushed to death by the train and 12 additional team members were seriously injured. Of course, after that incident, the expedition was halted and the Smithsonian Institution team went back home. So in 1932, 13 years after the Smithsonian exploration, a cryptozoologist named Ivan Sanderson went to Cameroon for an expedition.

Ivan hired native guides to help him explore the area. The guide took him to the Manu River, which is located in the southwest region of Cameroon. When they arrived at the river, Ivan stated that he witnessed an enormous creature. Ivan stated that this creature was badly wounded and was only briefly visible as it lurched into the water. Now, what he did see for that brief moment was that the creature was dark-colored and its head was huge. It was nearly the size of a hippo.

Ivan stated that his native guides told him that it was the creature they call Imku Membembu. So those are the first two expeditions. Six years later, in 1938, an explorer named Leo von Boxberger heard about the reports of the Mokele Membembe creature, and Leo decided to go on his own expedition and find the creature. During this trip, Leo interviewed a lot of the nearby natives, collecting as much information as he could,

having multiple notes and even sketches of the animal. He had a ton of information compiled. Like every time he interviewed a villager, he had it translated and wrote down and he had tons of documents and drawings all compiled. However, though, during the expedition, a nearby wildfire broke out and Leo had to quickly leave the village he was staying at, abandoning all of his research, notes and sketches. Of course.

Now, of course, the village burned down along with all of his research and Leo returned back home. That sucks. Everything he had just done was all just ruined. And he was like, fuck it. Going back home. If he really did it. Yeah.

All right, so now we're going to fast forward to the year of 1979. A Reverend Eugene Thomas from Ohio. He was just sitting there chilling after church service one day, reading the newspaper when he came across a story of some explorers who stated that they were going to go try and find the creature called Moquele Mbembe. Now, Reverend Thomas was like, oh, shit.

I actually have a story of my own. So Reverend Thomas got a hold of those explorers and told them that he has some information that may help them with their exploration in finding that creature. Reverend Thomas stated that in 1955, he went to the Congo to work as a missionary. In 1959, he was with some natives of the Bengombe tribe who lived near Lake Telly. In the area where the river runs into Lake Telly, the natives constructed a large spiked fence.

Now, this fence was to keep Mokele Mbembe from swimming from the river itself into the Lake Telly and interfering with the villagers as they were fishing because the villagers fished the lake and the river ran into it. And the villagers were saying, man, every time we fish this lake, fucking Mokele Mbembe dinosaur comes through the river into the lake and fucks with us. So they built this giant spike contraption at the pretty much the mouth of where the river and the lake meet. So Mokele Mbembe couldn't go into there.

So Reverend Thomas stated that for a while, the natives fished in peace and he assumed that the creature did not exist. He was like, okay, look, the natives are fishing in peace. Creature doesn't exist.

And that large spiked fence that they had built was sort of something that they, you know, built for superstition reasons. You know, they were like, oh. However, not long after that, Thomas stated that a Mokele Mbembe managed to break through the spiked fence. However, it was wounded badly from the spikes and the natives ended up killing the creature.

As the creature was being killed, two of the natives mimicked the cry of the creature. Two natives said that two natives were on the shore with Thomas and he was watching and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was like, oh my God, that's actually a mokele mbembe. And he was watching the fishermen, the village fishermen, kill this mokele mbembe. And it was crying out. And he said the natives next to him were being like, every time mokele mbembe would be like,

like a dying, they would go as in like mocking the creature. Crazy. Uh, so that night Thomas stated that a victory feast was held during which parts of the animal were cooked and eaten. However, those who participated in the feast quickly died. Their cause of death was supposedly from the creature being poisonous.

So that is what Reverend Thomas stated about what happened back in 1959. However, he didn't have any proof of this to back up his claim. So then in 1981, an American engineer named Herman Rugustus, he led his own expedition to find Mokele Mbembe. So at this point, there have been a fuck ton of people

going out to try to find this creature. And none of them have been successful except for this reverend who stated he saw the creature get killed, but he didn't have any proof. So in 1981, this American engineer named Herman was like, I'm going to go try to find it.

Herman and his wife, Kai, traveled to Lake Telly and stayed there for about two weeks. Now, at the same time, there was an additional expedition of 30 plus extra people on their own expedition trying to find Mokele Mbembe. And they were at a nearby village. And Herman and his wife were originally supposed to be a part of that expedition.

But that expedition said, no, you can't come. Sorry, you provide no help whatsoever. You're an engineer. So that's why Herman was like, I'm going to do it on my own. So during his time there, Herman and his wife claimed to have observed a long necked member traveling across Lake Telly. They also claimed to have tried filming the creature, but they said their film was ruined by the heat and humidity. And none of the other people there stated that they had seen the creature, just them two. Can you imagine? They probably said that just to get at them. Yeah.

So two years later, in 1983, biologist Marcielen Agnagna led an expedition to Lake Telly. During his expedition, Marcielen claimed to have seen a Moquele Mbembe at close distance for about 20 minutes. He just stood there, frozen for 20 minutes, staring at this creature.

He tried to film the creature, but said that in his excitement, he forgot to remove the camera's lens cap. So a year later in 1984, Marcellin was interviewed and during it, he actually contradicted himself. He stated that the camera lens cap was off his camera and that he was able to film the creature. However, he had his Super 8 camera on the wrong setting, macro instead of telephoto, and that is why he didn't have the film.

So two years after Marcellin's expedition in December of 1985 to early 1986, William Gibbons actually hired Marcellin to take him and four of his friends to Lake Telly to try and find this creature. William had previously done research and found out that the only person supposedly who had come face to face with this creature was

was Marcelin, who said he stared at it for 20 minutes. So that is why William Gibbons and four of his friends hired Marcelin to help him find this Mokele Mbembe. But during their expedition, the group did not report any sightings of the creature. Now get this. The men did say that during the expedition, William Gibbons and his men said that Marcelin did lie, cheat, and steal their film supplies, and he also turned some of the nearby villagers against them.

When William got back from his expedition, he ended up filing criminal charges against Marcellin, and the court ordered him to return the item he had stolen from the expedition. Ain't that some shit? That's some shit. He's like, well, I'm going to get what I can get.

So those were all the expeditions leading up to 1992. And no one really had any proof. And if you look up Moquele Mbembe, you'll see some footprints, some photographs of some footprints, two different photographs. But those are fake. One is from a movie that someone claims was Moquele Mbembe, but it was taken from a movie. And the other one was tracks of a dinosaur from a long time ago.

and had nothing to do with mokele memembe but somebody posted that on the wikipedia of it and claimed that that was it and then all the other reporters and people who wrote about the mokele memembe story picked that up and used that as proof which that's not the case yeah now just state though the only one so far that could have actually had real proof would have been the reverend reverend if he could have gotten proof that some of the villagers had died

Not just that. If they killed it and ate part of it. He could have had a bone or some type of. He could have just grabbed one part of the bone. Any part. And used it as DNA later on. Exactly. Yeah, but he didn't. He was afraid because they had ate it and all the villagers who had ate it had died. I wouldn't have grabbed a piece of the bone if I knew that. I mean, as long as you didn't touch it. Bare skin, I guess. And you put it in something.

Alright, so that leads us up to 1992 and that is when the next expedition took place. A team of explorers and cryptozoologists from Japan embarked on a bold expedition into the heart of the Congo Basin.

This team was hoping to uncover evidence of the creature Mokele Mbembe that everyone was talking about. The Japanese team was equipped with state-of-the-art cameras and tools. They journeyed deep into the dense jungles of Cameroon, far from civilization, and they were guided by local tribespeople who were all familiar with the creature they were searching for. During their exploration, the Japanese decided that they wanted to get a small plane to get aerial footage of

from them flying over Lake Telly for the documentary that they were making. So they're like, hey, let's get aerial footage of Lake Telly for our documentary. It'd be great. And they were like, okay, cool. Now, as they were filming the aerial footage, the cameraman noticed a disturbance in the water down below.

Something large was in the water below. It was swimming along, making a noticeable wake in the water. So the cameraman zoomed in towards the object but struggled to maintain focus on it. In total, they were able to capture 15 seconds of footage of something extremely large swimming in Lake Telly. Now we do have that footage from 1992 and we are going to play it.

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However, if we get hit with a copyright strike from YouTube, then we are going to cut this footage out from the episode. And you can go to our website, theoriesofthe3rdkind.com, click on today's episode, and a link to that 15-second video clip can be found there from that 1992 Japanese expedition. And we're going to play that footage right now. So that's them flying the plane. That's them overseeing the forest. And then...

That's the lake right there. And then that's them kind of just general parts of the lake, Tokyo Broadcasting Systems. And then, boom, something large is swimming along. And he zooms in. Cameraman, sucks. See, that is something gigantic swimming in the lake. That's not a boat. That is a creature of some type of creature. It almost looked like a rhino. Yeah, that did.

And looking it up, they have the greater one horned rhinos that are known for swimming across rivers. So that could have been a greater one horned rhino. Could have been, but it could have been a Mokele Mbembe. Yep. A Meku Mbembu. Yeah. So that was the footage right there. And like I said, if it just cuts to me talking about it right now, it means we were hit with a copyright strike and we had to take the footage off and you can go to our website and watch it. If not, the footage will still be there. Okay.

So following the release of that footage in 1992, William Gibbons decided to go back for a second expedition that same year. Now, William Gibbons was a dude that hired Marcellin, who got, you know, pretty much robbed back in 1985. And, you know, William and his four friends, when they went, they didn't find anything. And...

They only just got robbed, pretty much. That's it. Yeah, and they ended up suing Marcellin. So like I said, William decided to go back for a second expedition in 1992. During this, William searched almost two-thirds of the Baye River, along with two lakes that had been poorly charted in the past, but villagers stated that they had seen the creature there. So William's expedition failed to find any evidence of the creature.

Then, nine years later, in 2001, a joint venture between a British-Columbian scientific cryptozoology club and the Crypto Safari decided to put together a research team and send them to Central Africa to try and find the elusive creature. The research team was also accompanied by a BBC film crew to document the journey. However, no evidence of the Mokele Mbembe was found.

Then in April of 2012, explorers named Stephen Mincola and Sam Newton, they launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an expedition to Central Africa to search for Mokele Mbembe.

The explorers raised around $29,000 and they decided to start their expedition. However, shortly after arriving in Central Africa, the individuals abandoned the exploration due to financial difficulties and they disappeared. They took the money and left. I was going to say, like, this was 2012. They got $29,000 and then all of a sudden, financial difficulties. Yeah. Well, for the most part,

That was the majority of the explorations throughout history. While no conclusive evidence has yet been found, the tales continue to weave through the jungles, whispered by locals and explorers alike.

And that right there is the supposed Congo's dinosaur, Mokele Mbembe. Mku Mbembu. However, our episode does not stop here because now we are going to get into the strange facts and findings that we had come across while researching this topic. So Dan, can you start that off for us? Of course. So our first strange fact and finding is about fruit.

So in the report from 1913, Captain Von Stein mentioned that the local natives showed him what the plant the creature prefers. He describes it as a kind of liana with large white blossoms with a milky sap and apple-like fruits. So we decided to look up plants in Cameroon and the Congo that are similar to what Captain Von Stein described. And what we learned, that the description of the plant matches up perfectly with the

The Landolphia oareensis. And I hope I pronounced that correctly because that is the scientific term of this plant or commonly known as the rubber vine or wild rubber. Like the movie? The rubber. That's a great movie, by the way. Killer tire. This plant is common in tropical forests of Central and West Africa, including Cameroon.

It is a woody climbing vine, aka liana, with large white flowers. It has milky sap and also grows apple-like fruits that are often round and about the size of a small apple or orange. Which this fruit contains seeds that are surrounded by edible pulp. So based on that, we can say without a doubt that the plant that was shown to Captain von Stein in 1930 by the natives is the Landolphia bovarieensis.

And it is supposedly the favorite food of the Mokele Mbembe. So that plant does exist there. So you did see that plant, but something's eating it. It's like a salad and fruit at the same time. Yep. All right. So our next strange fact and finding is about a Google Earth picture. So around six years ago, someone went on the website of Reddit and made a post on the Cryptozoology subreddit.

In this post, the individual states that they had possibly found Mokele Mbembe in Central Africa on Google Earth. They provided the coordinates of where to go on Google Earth and a screenshot of what they had seen, in which we do have that screenshot that they had posted. And we decided to go on Google Earth and try to find that image. And we did. And it was in 2015 that it was last seen here in that spot.

And we also used a measuring device on this supposed creature. So the first image right here is of the supposed creature showing its head, body, and tail. And I went back and took that same screenshot and used the measuring device to measure the length of the creature or supposed creature. And it is 51 feet in length. Damn, that thing's long. That's what she said.

I was going to say, kind of looks like a crocodile. I tried to use historical GPS photos and other things, and the only clear photograph of that area is on Google Earth from 2015. They haven't updated it yet. But if they do update it, and it's still there, that's just probably like a sandbar or like a rock or something. Probably. Yeah. But, I mean...

If you first glance, you look at it, it does look like a creature. Odd. Very odd. Anyways, so let's go on to our last strange fact and finding. All right. So our last strange fact and finding is called Additional Explorations. So in 2016, a travel documentary crew from South Africa made a documentary about searching for Mokele Mbembe, which they later sold to Discovery Africa. The team spent roughly four weeks visiting various villages, collecting stories of the creature's existence.

During interviews, many villagers stated that the creature died at least a decade ago. Also, in 2018, a group of individuals, along with a film crew from Danish Radio and a DNA scientist, traveled to Lake Telly in search of Mokele Mbembe. They did not find the cryptid. However, they did find a new species of green algae.

It's like how underwhelming it's like we're gonna find a creature, but hey, we found some algae. Yeah. And I bet they gave it some weird ass long ass name that makes no sense. Instead of just calling it green algae, green algae. Yeah. All right. So that right there was our last strange fact and finding. And now we are going to get into the theory section of our episode and discuss the theories around this cryptid. So Dan, would you like to start that off for us? Of course.

So the first theory we have is called folklore. So the overall belief in the scientific community is that this creature is another animal, which we'll get into next, or that this creature is just a myth and part of folklore that was made up by the natives so that the children don't go swimming in the rivers and drown. To back up this theory, the rivers in Cameroon can be very dangerous, both naturally and situationally.

They have extreme strong currents, dangerous rapids, and waterfalls. These rivers have crocodiles, hippos, which are very aggressive, snakes, and parasites. Also, mosquitoes near rivers transmit malaria and yellow fever. And to add to that, in Cameroon, malaria causes about 50% of hospital stays. Also, 65% of malaria cases occur in children of five years old. One last thing.

Out of the total number of children deaths in Cameroon, malaria is responsible for 13% of them.

So it wouldn't be crazy to think that the villagers created the story of this creature as a way to scare their children so they stay away from the river and not get malaria and they can live. So that's that theory is that's just folklore created by the villagers in order to keep their children alive so they don't get malaria or don't get killed by hippos. Doesn't Africa have that one parasite if, say, you were a male or I guess it could be female, too. Goes up your pee hole. Yeah.

Does Central Africa have the parasite that climbs up your pee hole? No, Central Africa does not have the canduru, the fish infamous for allegedly swimming up the urethra. It is a freshwater fish found in the Amazon River Basin in South America, not in Africa.

Okay. While there's known for stories of this fish entering the urethra, the stories are largely considered myths with very little scientific evidence to support them. Well, the more you know,

The camera dew, or whatever the fish is called, is not attracted to urine and is more likely to be found near the gills of larger fish. There's little credible evidence of it invading the human urethra. So pretty much all that was just don't pee in the river because we drink from that root. Central Africa is known for other parasitic diseases such as

I'm not even going to, scomorosomorosis, which is caused by a different type of parasite and affects the urinary tract and other organs. So basically that first theory is folklore to save the children. And I can see that. That's a high probability. I mean, they have really big crocodiles. Hippos are very aggressive and like they're territorial. Yeah. And your first theory kind of goes along with the second one. Do you want to read the second one off? Yeah. This theory is called other animals.

This theory states that what the villagers could be seeing is not a mythical creature or dinosaur, not the sauropod, but a common animal in the area. Many believe it could be a giant lizard with a long neck, or a rhino, or even an elephant. Or a hippo. Or a hippo. Hippos are extremely aggressive, but you'd think they would know the difference between a hippo and a dinosaur.

yeah i mean the hippo doesn't have one large tooth and doesn't have a long neck doesn't have a long tail has a really really small tail yeah same with the rhino but the rhino does have the long horn which is made of uh what keratin or something keratin yeah but they kill the rhinos because the horn is like a aphrodisiac gets them fucking hard you know i used to hunt with the hunting club when back in the day in virginia with my dad and uh

What the main guy. He used to take, he used to take keratin and show you his boner. He pulled out a bottle and he's just like, if y'all ever need some of this stuff, it'll get you going with a bunch of dudes around with a bunch of dudes around. And I'm just like, we're like, Oh, what the hell is that? He's just like, it's, uh,

It wasn't even in a pill form. It was like powder. Powder. And he's just like, it's like. No, it's the horn of a rhino. He's like. Oh, that's illegal. I got this, you know, shipped in and all that. And it gets you going. That's all we need is a bunch of guys out here with guns and. Lonely. No women. Bunch of boners running around. I'm going to fuck this deer instead of shoot it. You know, some of them are questionable. Oh, Jesus.

All right. Oh, there was a tick tock. I saw real quick of this. These guys that went to this, what they thought was a hunting reserve, like a hunting resort. And it was like called the bear club or whatever. It wasn't a hunting resort. It was a bunch of gay dudes posted it on tick tock.

Look, I got nothing wrong with gay people. I love gay people, right? I love them. It's just when you don't know the terms that they use. Yeah. Like, I never knew what bear was until my buddy told me. I'm just like, yeah, okay.

Alright, so let's get on to the next theory. So the next theory we have is called exaggerated money grab. This theory states that the stories told of this creature, Mokele Mbembe, were just passed down from generation to generation and that the creature never existed or it was just folklore created by the local villagers. However,

after the 1913 report was published by Captain von Stein and all the explorers started coming into that area, asking the villagers about this creature and searching for it. That is when the villagers of that area realized, hey, we could make money off of this. So the villagers decided to keep telling the stories of this creature and sightings as a way to get the explorers

to come to their village so the locals would offer guide services to these explorers for a fee and make money off of it. That is one of the theories. Exaggerated money grab. I can see that or more so bartering because they would bring in rare teas and stuff from outside and it could help their village. Yeah. I can see that.

Because, I mean, currency probably wasn't that big of a thing. So it was probably more. It's just a bartering system. Yeah. Yeah. I could definitely see that. Yeah. So what's this next theory we got? This next theory is called it does exist. This theory is pretty much self-explanatory. The creature does exist and it is hidden in the inaccessible rivers of Central Africa. Over the past hundreds of years, the local villagers have hunted these creatures down, dwindling their numbers until they finally went fully extinct. Now, is there anything to back up this theory? No.

Well, a lot of people point to the red cullibus monkey. So, these monkeys, which is a type of monkey in Central Africa, was long thought extinct, with no confirmed sightings since the 1970s. However, in 2015, scientists launched an expedition into a national park in Central Africa. During the expedition, they encountered a group of red cullibus monkeys capturing the first-ever photographs of the species, which confirmed that they were not extinct.

Now, a lot of people point to this and say that it's possible for a dinosaur to be hidden in Central Africa, like the red monkeys were, and the dinosaur hasn't been rediscovered yet. Or maybe a different species of an animal that hasn't been discovered yet. I mean, the junk, Africa is pretty big. There's a lot of stuff that people haven't probably discovered. I mean, they went there trying to discover the Mokele Mbembe, but they discovered green algae. So...

I mean, pretty sure every expedition probably discovered something new, but probably didn't know. Yeah, I agree. But it would be significantly harder for a giant ass 75 foot dinosaur to be hiding somewhere. Yeah. I mean, you had that, I'm starting to think of that big ass snake that the helicopter saw. Yeah. That, what was that snake called? I don't know. Let's see the, it was the big snake attacking the helicopter. We did an episode over that, I think.

The big snake attacking the helicopter refers to the incident reported by Belgian pilot Remy van Lerde in 1959, where he claimed to have encountered a very large snake while flying a helicopter in the Katagonga region of Belgian Congo. He estimated the snake to be around 50 feet long and described it as a dark brown triangular shaped head. You see that there's,

there's big ass snakes hiding in there. And he estimated this one to be about 50 feet, whether it was real or not. Maybe that's what the thing is, just a big ass snake. And the horn is one of its teeth.

That would explain why they built that spike trap and that Reverend thought it was Mokele Mbembe, but it was just a big fucking snake. Because if you look at the snares that they make for snakes in rivers and ponds, the snares are very similar. So they could have built a spike trap with a snare on it, caught the snake, killed it, ate it, but actually ate part of its venom sack and then died. Well, I mean, if it's an Anaconda, Anaconda doesn't.

Have a venom sack? Well, maybe it's a different species of a snake that is venomous. I mean, it could be undiscovered type of venomous snake, because I don't think a lot of them get as big as anaconda. I mean, you got pythons, but then maybe it's something in their saliva, because you got like Komodo dragons, where their saliva is just so full of bacteria that... It could be that, a big Komodo dragon. It could be that. Well...

Do they have Komodo dragons in Africa? I don't know the... Are Komodo dragons in Central Africa? I feel like no. No, Komodo dragons are not found in Central Africa. They're native to a few Indonesian islands. But could they survive there? Could Komodo dragons survive in Central Africa? No, Komodo dragons would not likely survive in Central Africa. While they are an apex predator on their native Indonesian islands...

The competitive environment of Africa makes their survival improper, improbable. Now there is the Nile monitors that are huge and venomous, but they're generally not fatal to humans. They possess venom glands in their lower jaw. How big do Nile monitors get? Eight feet long. That's way far away from the 70 to 80 feet. Yeah.

All right. So before we get into our own personal theories, let's talk about our last theory, which honestly is my favorite one to think about. So our last theory is called Smithsonian Institution Hitman. So as we know, back in 1919, the Smithsonian Institution sent a large group of explorers and filmmakers to Central Africa. They supposedly encountered some footprints of a weird creature and heard some weird sounds.

Now, the story they told is that they did not see the creature, but as they were making their way to a nearby sighting, their train derailed, flipped over, and some crew members died.

What if that is not what happened? Instead, what if the Smithsonian Institution has a group of hitmen that are sent out to kill off any cryptids or aliens or creatures as a way to cover up their existence? When the group went to Central Africa in 1919, they encountered the Mokele Mbembe, began to fight it, to kill it,

and some of the crew members were killed in the process. As a way to explain their deaths of their crew members, they made up a story of the train derailing and that they found no evidence of the creature, when in reality, the film documenters went there as a way to film them killing the creature and then took the creature back with them and then made up the story that the train derailed and that their crew members died. And that's why their crew members died. They didn't die due to Mokele Mbembe fighting it.

They died because of the train. That could be a possibility. It's fun to think about. The probability of it happening and that being true is low, but it's fun to think about because there are rumors of the Smithsonian covering up things in the past, like giants and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. And they do have a knack for arriving in places where discoveries have been made and stuff disappearing. This is very true. We did an episode over on doing this shit. Yep.

It made me think, though, let's say that Mokele-Membe was real and the train derailing wasn't because it was flooded, but more so the area was flooded, allowing the Mokele-Membe to travel further inland and just possibly at the right time. Hit the train. Boom. Maybe.

That's how people died and how people got seriously injured. They were getting eaten. Well, he supposedly didn't eat the Mokele Mbembe. He supposedly didn't eat human flesh. He saw testicles and thought they were fruits. Yeah. All right. So that right there was our last theory. Let's get on to our own personal thoughts and theories. And I'm going to ask you, Dan, do you believe the Mokele Mbembe exists or has existed the past few hundreds of years? And that is what the villagers believe.

had seen. See, if it was somewhere in the United States, I'd probably say it's more so like folklore. But it being in Africa, I feel like a lot of the things they describe is something that they have seen. They might exaggerate a little bit on, but I feel like if the stories passed down then, more than likely they saw something of that sort. Might not have actually been a sauropod dinosaur or like what they described, but maybe something

Something that they've been fighting for a while and it's like all messed up now. So it looks even more dangerous. Whether it, I want to say crocodile to say like they've been trying to capture it, fight it and all that. It does have big teeth, but I wouldn't say that it had like a long one, but more so like they probably fucked up one side and one only one side sticking up now. So you're saying that a creature does exist. There's a creature out there that,

resembles what they're describing but it's not actually like a sauropod dinosaur or some mythical creature it's just something that probably has been around for quite a while crocodiles live quite long and look like dinosaurs are you going to say that are you going to go with what the one group said in 2000 and what was it 18 or 16 2016 when the documentary crew went there and the villagers stated that the creature died at least a decade ago

Are you going to use that or are you going to say that the creature still exists? Because it would make sense if the creature died at least a decade ago. I'd probably say it probably died off. Because, I mean, you think about it, if all these stories of them fighting them off and killing them and all that stuff, whatever the creature was or the species was, they probably did get rid of it by then. Because obviously they couldn't eat it and it was just, it was stopping them from catching fish or living in peace. If it wasn't attacking kids, so it was like...

It can't be part of folklore for them not to go in the water and all that because if it wasn't attacking people. It was attacking people, though. The villagers stated that it killed, anytime a canoe gets in the water and it gets close to the canoe, it flips it over and kills everybody in the water, but it doesn't eat them. So it's territorial. Yes. Hippopotamuses are territorial. And they go on land, too. They do have, like, two big bottom teeth, but they're not, like, really sharp. But they can do a lot of damage with them. Maybe it was, like, a fucked up hippopotamus.

Like an inbred hippopotamus. Like mutated. Like a superpotamus. A superpotamus. Yeah. And that horn was just that big one single tooth. It's a hippopotamus that decided to start working out. Slimmed down and... And hippopotamuses do eat vegetables. They do eat vegetables. But do they really go on land to eat though? Yeah. Really? Yeah. All I think about is they eat like seaweed.

Because they're always at the very bottom eating and all that stuff. Hmm. Okay. So that's what you're going with, where your theory that it's some type of creature that they're seeing. I think there was some type of creature they were seeing. It probably died off. But was it a dinosaur? Probably not. It was probably just some messed up, mutated, maybe animal. So that is going to be my second belief.

My first belief that I truly think what it is, is just folklore. It's in my opinion, the one that makes the most sense. Do I want there to be a dinosaur living in central Africa? Absolutely. Is there proof to back it up? No.

So I have to go with the most simplest explanation, which is just being folklore. The natives want their kids to survive and the kids rebel. They want to go swim in the river. They want to have fun. So what way to keep them safe? Because they know that majority of the deaths come from children swimming in the river. Then to keep them from the river by making up a story of a creature that resides in it, that kills people. I mean, they already got that though. They got a lot of them. Yeah. Is this like, but.

Maybe they're just like, oh, I can see a crocodile from far away, but not a Mokele Mbembe. Yeah. They're bigger and faster and they hide easier. So you'll never know when it attacks you. No, that's what I'm going with. That would be my second belief would be folklore. Well, if you or a loved one have seen, captured, or you are in possession of a Mokele Mbembe, please send us an email or write us a letter and let us know.

what it is like to have one in your possession or what would, what it was like seeing one. We would love to hear from you. That's right. If you have photos, that's even better of Mokele Mbembe. How do you think the world would react if they did find like a sauropod dinosaur or an area that they actually had dinosaurs like Jurassic Park, for example, that there was an island just totally full of dinosaurs. How do you think the world would react? Exactly like Jurassic Park did.

They'd try to make money off of it. Then there'd be a giant war between corporations and PETA, protections of dinosaurs. All right. Well, you have anything else you'd like to add? Nope. That's it. That is the end of today's episode. I want to thank you for joining us. And again, thank you for your support and love. If you have a dinosaur, send us an email. We want to see pictures. That's right. But with that being said, I want to thank you for joining us today. And we love you and we are proud of you.

So with that being said, Dan, would you like to roll us out? Sure will. It's okay to be out of this world with your thoughts. Because you are not alone. Unless you're okay.

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