The auli is a reported freshwater “sea cow” of Ethiopia and Eritrea, said to live in Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, and in rivers of the Mareb basin. It was described to the German explorer Theodor von Heuglin in the early 1860s, and he became convinced it was a manatee. If he was right, it would be a sirenian far from any known population. No specimen has ever been collected.[1][2]
| Other names | Ia-baher-tedcha (“sea calf” or “water calf” in Amharic), ouila; possibly the ourha-bieh of the Mareb tributaries |
|---|---|
| Type | Reported freshwater sirenian (manatee-like mammal) |
| Region | Lake Tana and the Mareb river system, Ethiopia and Eritrea |
| First published report | Theodor von Heuglin, 1868 |
| Physical evidence | None |
| Nearest known relatives | West African manatee (far to the west); dugong (marine, in the Red Sea) |
A note on this entry
An earlier version of this page described the “Auli” as a serpent spirit of Finnish folklore. We have found no such creature in Finnish tradition or in any published source. The only documented creature by this name is the Ethiopian auli described below, and this entry has been rewritten accordingly.
Heuglin’s report
Theodor von Heuglin was a German explorer and naturalist who traveled in Ethiopia in 1861–62, partly in search of the missing explorer Eduard Vogel. In his account of the journey, published in 1868, he reported that Lake Tana was home to a manatee-like animal known locally as ia-baher-tedcha, auli or ouila. He thought it might be the same as the ourha-bieh, a large water animal reported from tributaries of the Mareb such as the Sibda. Later he restated that the auli was “undoubtedly a manatee.”[1][3]
Not everyone agreed. The zoologist Leopold Fitzinger, who catalogued the mammals Heuglin collected, considered the auli reports to be based on a fable.[1]
The story reached English readers through reviews of Heuglin’s book in 1868 and an 1882 Popular Science Monthly article on sirenians.[4][5]
Who was Heuglin?
Martin Theodor von Heuglin (1824–1876) was one of the most experienced naturalists in northeast Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. Trained as a mining engineer, he turned to zoology, especially birds, and first traveled to Ethiopia in 1852. He then served as Austrian consul in Khartoum and explored the Red Sea and Somali coasts. In 1861 he was chosen to lead an expedition to find out what had happened to the explorer Eduard Vogel, who had vanished in the central Sahel. The party landed at Massawa, and Heuglin made a long detour through the Ethiopian highlands, which cost him the leadership of the expedition but gave him the material for his 1868 book. He later explored Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic, and he is remembered in the name of Heuglin’s gull.[8]
Heuglin was therefore not a credulous traveler. He knew African wildlife well, collected specimens and published widely. That is part of why his report has been taken seriously. But he did not see the auli himself; he recorded what local people told him, and he never obtained a specimen.
Could a manatee live in Lake Tana?
- The West African manatee is the only freshwater sirenian in Africa, but its range lies in western and west-central Africa, nowhere near the Nile basin. Bernard Heuvelmans doubted it could have reached the Nile system from the Chad basin.[1][6]
- The dugong lives in the Red Sea, the closest sirenian to Eritrea, but it is strictly marine and cannot survive in fresh water.[1]
- An unknown sirenian. George Eberhart, following Heuvelmans, suggested that if the auli exists it might be a distinct species descended from ancient sirenians known from Egyptian fossils.[1][7]
Lake Tana today
Lake Tana is the largest lake in Ethiopia, covering roughly 3,000 to 3,500 square kilometers depending on the season. It lies high in the northwestern highlands at about 1,790 meters, and it is surprisingly shallow, with a maximum depth of about 15 meters. Its outflow is the Blue Nile. The lake is famous for its fish: 20 of its 27 species are found nowhere else, including a “species flock” of 15 large barbs, some up to a meter long, that evolved within the lake. Hippopotamuses live there, mostly near the Blue Nile outlet. The lake’s islands hold centuries-old Ethiopian Orthodox monasteries, and in 2015 the region was nominated as a UNESCO biosphere reserve.[9]
For a lake that has been fished, surveyed and studied this intensively, the absence of any sirenian record since 1862 is telling. A herd of large, air-breathing grazers would need extensive beds of water plants, would surface regularly, and would be well known to local fishers. The lake does have one large, air-breathing, plant-eating mammal that fits much of that description: the hippo.
A problem of geography
There is also a basic physical obstacle. Lake Tana sits on a high plateau, and the Blue Nile leaves it through steep gorges and over the Blue Nile Falls, known in Amharic as Tis Abay, a short distance downstream. Even if manatees had once lived in the lower Nile, which there is no evidence for, they could not have swum up a waterfall into a highland lake almost 1,800 meters above sea level. A Lake Tana sirenian would have to have been isolated there for a very long time without leaving a single bone, specimen or reliable record. The Mareb reports are less constrained by geography, but they are even thinner.
Africa’s real fossil sea cows
Sirenians do have a long history in northeast Africa, which is why Heuvelmans and Eberhart mentioned fossils. Egypt’s Wadi Al-Hitan, the “Valley of Whales,” a UNESCO World Heritage Site, preserves skeletons of three species of early sea cows alongside its famous early whales. They lived about 40 to 41 million years ago, and they were fully marine animals that grazed on seagrass in the shallow sea that then covered northern Egypt. They show that sirenians evolved in the region, but they are separated from any modern Ethiopian lake by tens of millions of years and a complete change of environment.[10]
Other explanations
- Hippopotamuses. Hippos are large aquatic grazers in Ethiopian waters. A partly submerged hippo, or a young one, might be described as a “water calf.”
- Otters and large fish. Otters and big fish could account for some brief sightings.
- Travelers’ tales. Heuglin, by his own account, was relaying local reports. Without a specimen there is no way to know whether the auli was a real animal, a misidentified one or a story.
Lake Tana has been studied extensively by biologists since Heuglin’s time, and no sirenian has been found. The auli remains one of cryptozoology’s least-known mysteries. For a reported freshwater creature on another continent, see the Mokele-Mbembe of the Congo.
References
- “Auli,” Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology (Cryptid Archives wiki).
- George M. Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2002), s.v. “Auli.”
- Theodor von Heuglin, Reise nach Abessinien, den Gala-Ländern, Ost-Sudàn und Chartum in den Jahren 1861 u. 1862 (Jena, 1868).
- Andrew Murray, “Heuglin’s ‘Reise nach Abessinien,'” Journal of Travel and Natural History 1 (1868).
- W. H. Larrabee, “The Sirens of the Sea,” Popular Science Monthly 20 (March 1882).
- Bernard Heuvelmans, Les Derniers Dragons d’Afrique (Paris: Plon, 1978).
- Bernard Heuvelmans, “Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown Animals with Which Cryptozoology Is Concerned,” Cryptozoology 5 (1986).
- “Theodor von Heuglin,” Wikipedia, drawing on the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911).
- “Lake Tana,” Wikipedia.
- “Wadi Al-Hitan (Whale Valley),” UNESCO World Heritage Centre; see also Wikipedia.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was completely rewritten. The earlier version described a Finnish serpent called the Auli, with iridescent scales, hypnotic eyes and a role as guardian of sacred lakes. We could find no evidence that this creature exists in Finnish folklore or in any published source, and it has been replaced with the documented Ethiopian auli. The illustration above is an artistic impression.