The Kongamato is a flying creature reported from the swamps of north-western Zambia and neighboring Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 1923 it has been the best-known example of a supposed “living pterosaur”: a leathery-winged, toothed reptile that survived the extinction of its relatives 66 million years ago. That reputation comes almost entirely from one book, Frank Melland’s In Witch-Bound Africa. Read in full, Melland’s account shows something more interesting. The original kongamato of Kaonde belief was a dangerous river being that caused sudden floods at fords, and the pterosaur identification came from pictures Melland himself showed to his informants.[1][2]
| Name | Kongamato, recorded by Melland as meaning “overwhelmer of boats” |
|---|---|
| Region | North-western Zambia, especially the Jiundu swamp (Mwinilunga area); also reported from Angola and the DRC |
| First written source | Frank H. Melland, In Witch-Bound Africa (1923), ch. XVIII–XIX |
| Description given to Melland | Wingspan 4–7 ft, red, apparently featherless, possibly with teeth in its beak |
| Traditional powers | Stops a river’s flow and floods fords; invulnerable and immortal |
| Popular identification | A surviving pterosaur (pterodactyl) |
| Likely real animals | Shoebill, other large birds, large bats |
The charm at the river crossing
Frank Hulme Melland (1879–1939) was a British colonial official in the Kasempa district of what was then Northern Rhodesia, the home of the Kaonde people. His book is a detailed, if colonial, account of Kaonde life, religion and witchcraft. The kongamato first appears not in a chapter about animals but in one about charms.[1]
Melland explains that the Kaonde had no spells against floods or rapids, with one exception: a charm called muchi wa kongamato. At certain fords and ferries, he was told, there was a danger of attack by the kongamato, which lived downstream and could stop the water from flowing away, so that the river suddenly rose and overwhelmed anyone crossing. To guard against it, a traveler ground part of the root of the mulendi tree, mixed it with water in a bark cup, and carried a bundle of root strips in the canoe or across the ford. If the kongamato came, the bundle was dipped in the medicine and the water sprinkled, which kept the creature and its flood away.[1]
This is the oldest documented form of the belief, and it describes a river being linked to sudden floods. Nothing in it requires a flying reptile.
“More like a lizard with membranous wings”
Curious about the charm, Melland asked what the kongamato was. He recorded the conversation verbatim. The first answer was “a bird.” When he asked what kind of bird, he was told, “Oh, well it isn’t a bird really: it is more like a lizard with membranous wings like a bat.” He stressed that he had not been looking for prehistoric animals, and that he knew the region already had “a bad reputation for brontosaurus yarns,” which he had debunked.[1]
Further questions produced more details: a wingspan of 4 to 7 feet, a red color, no feathers but only skin, and possibly teeth in its beak, though no one could be sure because “no one ever saw a kongamato close and lived to tell the tale.” It was said to be invulnerable, to swallow any missile thrown at it, and to be immortal, so that no remains were ever found. The Kaonde did not regard it as a spirit, Melland wrote, but as “a very awful thing, like a man-eating lion or rogue elephant, but infinitely worse.”[1]
The pictures problem
Then came the moment that made the kongamato famous. Melland sent for two books from his house that contained pictures of pterodactyls, and, he wrote, “every native present immediately and unhesitatingly picked it out and identified it as a kongamato.” They included a headman named Kanyinga from the Jiundu country, where the creature was supposed to live. They did not identify any of the other prehistoric animals he showed them.[1]
Melland treated this as strong evidence, but it is the weakest part of the story. His informants had already described a creature that was something like a lizard and something like a bat, and he then showed them a small set of pictures that contained one animal matching that description. Of course they chose it. Modern researchers who study eyewitness identification call this a leading procedure: the person showing the pictures has already shaped the answer. The identification tells us that Kaonde descriptions of the kongamato fit a winged, reptile-like creature. It cannot tell us that the creature was a pterosaur.[3]
Melland was candid about the rest of the evidence. No bribe would persuade anyone to take him to see a kongamato or to produce a body, or even part of one. The most recent killing attributed to it, in 1911, was the drowning of two men and two women in the flooded Mutanda River, with no witnesses to how they died. Melland himself called this evidence of the belief, “and no more.” Later details sent to him, that a kongamato could hold a canoe still from beneath, or that it ate only the little toes, little fingers, earlobes and nostrils of its victims, he dismissed as probably the product of “the fertile imagination of some frightened traveller.”[1]
The Jiundu swamp
Melland described the kongamato’s reputed home in loving detail. The Jiundu swamp was some fifty square miles of inland delta, where the Jiundu River split into countless channels under tall swamp forest, with tangled undergrowth, creepers and ferns, before reuniting downstream as a clear stream. Much of the water vanished underground into the limestone. “Nor could one conjure up a more perfect picture of a haunted forest,” he wrote. Until a few years earlier, the swamp had also been a refuge for hundreds of outlaws and tax-dodgers who shot at any official who came near. By the time he wrote, a road had been cut through it and families passed through safely. He ended the chapter with a question: “Has the winged reptile got this swamp-forest all to himself; or is he, too, but a story that is told?”[1]
Later reports
- About 1925. The British journalist Ward Price, traveling with the Prince of Wales on his African tour, reported a man in Northern Rhodesia who said he had been attacked in a swamp by a large bird with terrible teeth, and who fled in terror when shown a picture of a pterosaur.[2]
- 1932. In Cameroon, far to the north-west, the naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson and Gerald Russell described a huge, dark, bat-like animal swooping at them over a river. Sanderson called it the olitiau and later linked it to the kongamato and to Java’s Ahool.[2]
- 1956–57. An engineer, J. P. F. Brown, reported sightings of large flying creatures, and a hospital patient with chest wounds said he had been attacked by a big bird in the Bangweulu swamps, sketching a pterosaur-like outline.[2]
- Late 1950s. A supposed photograph circulated and was later shown to be fake.[2]
The French-Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans gathered these and other accounts in Les derniers dragons d’Afrique (1978). In 1928 the Swedish paleontologist Carl Wiman suggested that stories might have spread from pterosaur reconstructions at the famous dinosaur dig at Tendaguru in Tanzania, but later researchers have judged that unlikely.[3]
Why not a pterosaur?
The paleontologist Darren Naish has summarized the problems with living-pterosaur claims. The fossil record shows that pterosaurs died out at the end of the Cretaceous, about 66 million years ago, along with the non-bird dinosaurs, and no pterosaur fossil younger than that has ever been found anywhere. The descriptions also fit poorly. By the end of the Cretaceous, surviving pterosaurs were toothless, and many were covered in fine, hair-like fibers rather than bare skin. A population of large flying animals living for tens of millions of years in central Africa without leaving a single bone is extremely hard to accept.[3]
What might people have seen?
- The shoebill. This huge, grey, prehistoric-looking stork of central African swamps stands up to about 1.4 m tall, with a wingspan of 2.3 to 2.6 m and an enormous, shoe-shaped bill with a hooked tip. It lives in exactly the kind of swamps where the kongamato is reported, including the Bangweulu swamps of Zambia, and it makes loud bill-clattering sounds at the nest. It is now listed as Vulnerable, with perhaps 5,000 to 8,000 birds left.[4]
- Other large birds. Saddle-billed storks, hornbills, eagles and cranes have all been proposed for individual sightings. Naish notes that birds are the most common explanation for living-pterosaur reports worldwide.[2][3]
- Large bats. The hammer-headed bat of West and Central Africa, the continent’s largest bat, has a wingspan approaching a meter and a bizarre, horse-like head, and males gather at night to give loud, honking calls. Seen at dusk, it would be a startling sight.[5]
- Floods. The original kongamato of Melland’s charm was blamed for sudden rises in river level at fords, a real and deadly danger in the rainy season.[1]
Our assessment
The kongamato is a genuine Kaonde belief, recorded by a careful if colonial observer, about a fearsome being associated with rivers, floods and drowning. The pterosaur identification was introduced by Melland’s picture books, and later reports were shaped by it. There is no physical evidence for a surviving pterosaur, and good reasons to think none exists. The swamps of north-western Zambia do hold remarkable real animals, though, and the shoebill in particular looks prehistoric enough to explain why a “winged reptile” story found a home there.
For another reported flying creature, see the Ahool of Java.
References
- Frank H. Melland, In Witch-Bound Africa: An Account of the Primitive Kaonde Tribe and Their Beliefs (London: Seeley, Service & Co., 1923), ch. XVIII (“Charms and Talismans,” pp. 236–237) and ch. XIX (“The Kongamato,” pp. 237–242). Internet Archive.
- “Kongamato,” Wikipedia.
- Darren Naish, “Pterosaurs alive!” Tetrapod Zoology (23 December 2007), citing B. Heuvelmans, Les derniers dragons d’Afrique (1978); C. Wiman (1928); and G. Maier (2003).
- “Shoebill,” Wikipedia, citing the IUCN Red List.
- “Hammer-headed bat,” Wikipedia.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from the original 1923 source and later literature. An earlier version described glowing eyes, a long tail, scaly or feathered patches, attacks on livestock and a role as guardian of sacred swamps among the Kaonde, Ila and Lozi, none of which appears in the sources. The illustration above is an artistic impression.