The Mngwa, also known as the Nunda, is a mysterious creature sighted in Tanzania. It was described as a gigantic grey feline the size of a donkey.
Description[]
Evidence of this creature first arose in the early 1900s. In 1938, in the famous British scientific journal Discovery, William Hichens, a British administrator working in Tanzania reported that several natives stated that they were attacked by this beast. He thought it to be a giant, man-eating lion that was responsible for the attacks, but both fur-samples and tracks were different from those of a lion. In Frank W. Lane's 1954 issue of Nature Parade, Patrick Bowen, a hunter who tracked the Mngwa at one time, remarked that the animal's tracks were like those of the leopard, but much larger. The Mngwa was also described to have brindled fur that was visibly different from that of a leopard. Lane believed that the attacks reported in the 19th century by the Chimiset, associated with the Nandi Bear, might actually have been attacks by the Mngwa.
Bernard Heuvelmans speculated that the creature may possibly have been an abnormally coloured variation and larger size of the African golden cat (Profelis aurata).
In Popular Culture[]
Mngwa appears in the Harry Potter universe, and it's named Nundu. It is a highly dangerous beast and resembles a lion with a pufferfish-like sack instead of a mane.