# A giant grey cat unknown to science, the Mngwa or Nunda, stalks the coastal forests of Tanzania

**No verdict.** The folklore is real and old: coastal Swahili tradition describes the mngwa (the strange one), also called the nunda, as a grey, brindled cat larger than a lion, and a colonial magistrate, Captain William Hichens, recorded a wave of fatal maulings at Lindi in 1922 whose tracks and grey fur he could not match to a known animal. The claim we rate is narrower: that these accounts point to a distinct, undiscovered species of great cat. No specimen, skull, skin, or photograph has ever been produced. Analysis of the one physical sample returned only probably cat, and there are documented human explanations for some killings. The literal-creature claim is therefore unproven, neither confirmed by evidence nor ruled out.

Category: Cryptids & Monsters · Era: 19th century to present · First circulated: Rooted in older Swahili oral tradition and printed folklore (Edward Steere collected the nunda tale in 1870); the modern cryptozoological version dates to Captain William Hichens' accounts of the 1922 Lindi killings, popularized in his 1937 article and Bernard Heuvelmans' 1955 book · Believed by: Elements of the coastal Tanzanian folk tradition, where the animal is treated as distinct from lion and leopard, together with a small cryptozoological readership following Hichens and Heuvelmans
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/mngwa

## Summary
Along the coast of Tanzania, in the old Tanganyika, folklore speaks of the mngwa, Swahili for the strange one, also known as the nunda. It is described as a cat the size of the largest lion, but greyish and marked with brindled, tabby-like stripes, moving in silence through the coconut groves and killing people before vanishing. The tradition is genuinely old, surfacing in Swahili storytelling collected in the nineteenth century, and it acquired a documentary spine in 1922, when a British colonial magistrate, Captain William Hichens, recorded a series of deadly maulings at Lindi whose paw prints looked like a leopard's but were the size of a lion's, and whose victims clutched tufts of coarse grey fur. This case file holds two things apart. What is on the record, a durable folk creature and a real, unexplained cluster of killings, is one thing. The claim we rate, that a large cat unknown to zoology is the cause, is another. On the physical evidence that survives, which is thin and inconclusive, and against ordinary alternatives, that claim is unproven.

## The claim
That a real, distinct species of great cat unknown to science, grey and brindled and larger than a lion, lives (or lived) in the coastal forests of Tanzania, and is responsible for a pattern of human killings attributed to the mngwa or nunda.

## Origin and timeline
- 1870: Bishop Edward Steere publishes Swahili Tales, as Told by Natives of Zanzibar, which includes the story of Sultan Majnun and his monstrous cat that grows until it devours livestock, then people, then the Sultan's own sons. In the tale the beast is called the nunda, the eater of people.
- 1901: Andrew Lang reprints an abridged version as “The Nunda, Eater of People” in The Violet Fairy Book, carrying the Swahili creature into a wide English-language readership and fixing the name nunda in print.
- 1922: At Lindi, in coastal Tanganyika, a series of fatal night attacks occurs while Captain William Hichens serves as Native Magistrate. On wet sand the tracks are unusually clear: leopard-shaped but the size of a lion's. Victims are found with clumps of coarse grey fur in their hands.
- 1922: Hichens sends a sample of the grey fur for expert analysis. The reply he reports receiving is only that it was “probably cat.” Traps and poison are set and armed police are posted, but no animal is caught, and after roughly a month the attacks stop as abruptly as they began.
- 1930s: Hichens records a further series of killings attributed to the mngwa in his district, keeping the reports alive across two decades rather than as a single isolated episode.
- 1937: Hichens publishes “African Mystery Beasts” in the London journal Discovery, describing the mngwa alongside other reported East African cryptids and presenting it as a furry, silent, purring killer of the coconut groves, distinct from lion and leopard.
- 1955: In On the Track of Unknown Animals, the zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans devotes a chapter to the mngwa. He treats the reports seriously but suggests the animal may be an abnormally coloured specimen of a known species rather than a wholly new one.
- 1986: Heuvelmans, revisiting the question in the journal Cryptozoology, proposes that the mngwa might be a large, undescribed subspecies of the African golden cat rather than a giant relative of the lion, an attempt to fit the reports to an existing lineage.
- Present: No skull, skin, carcass, live specimen, or clear photograph of a mngwa has ever been catalogued by science. The animal remains a figure of folklore and cryptozoology, its status unresolved.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The tracks at Lindi were leopard-shaped but lion-sized, so they must belong to a cat unknown to science.
  Evidence: The track description, recorded by Hichens, is the strongest single detail in the whole account, and it is genuinely odd. But a print is not a species. Large, atypical prints can be produced by an unusually big individual of a known cat, by overlapping or splayed impressions, or, as skeptics note, by deliberate faking. Hichens' measurement was never independently cast, photographed for the record, or matched to a specimen, so it documents an anomaly without identifying its source.
- Claim: Victims were found clutching grey fur that did not match any local animal.
  Evidence: The one physical sample Hichens submitted came back as “probably cat,” which is consistent with a known felid and does not establish a new one. Grey, coarse hair is not diagnostic of an undiscovered species; it could come from a discoloured or aged individual of a familiar cat, or, if the fur was planted, from almost any animal. A sample that cannot even be assigned to a genus cannot carry the weight of a new great cat.
- Claim: Coastal people clearly distinguish the mngwa from the lion and the leopard, so it must be a separate real animal.
  Evidence: That folk taxonomy separates the mngwa from other cats is well attested and worth respecting, but it speaks to how a tradition classifies danger, not to zoology. Distinct folk categories can attach to an unusually coloured or unusually aggressive individual, to a composite figure built from many frightening encounters, or to a creature of story. Cultural distinctness is evidence about belief and language, not proof of a distinct biological species.
- Claim: A month of coordinated killings that then stopped points to a single extraordinary predator.
  Evidence: It points to something unexplained, but not necessarily to a new animal. Felid biologists Mel and Fiona Sunquist document that in parts of Tanganyika, ritual killers known as mjobo, or “lion men,” murdered people while dressed in skins and clawed gloves, sometimes faking animal tracks. Karl Shuker has noted that some mngwa killings in Hichens' time could plausibly have been such human work, with tracks and planted fur staged, which would explain a sudden start and stop better than an animal would.
- Claim: Serious naturalists took the mngwa seriously, which shows a real creature lies behind it.
  Evidence: Heuvelmans did take the reports seriously, but the substance of his position undercuts the strong claim. He proposed that the mngwa was most likely an aberrant colour form of a known cat, or at most a large subspecies of the African golden cat, not a giant new species. Taking testimony seriously enough to investigate it is not the same as confirming it, and his best guesses stayed inside the family of animals already known.

## Why people believe it
- The tradition is old and specific. The mngwa is not a modern invention; it appears in nineteenth-century Swahili storytelling and in a distinct folk category separate from lion and leopard, which gives it the texture of a real, named thing rather than a passing rumour.
- The 1922 Lindi killings are documented by a named colonial official, Captain William Hichens, who recorded tracks and physical fur rather than mere hearsay. A magistrate's contemporaneous account carries more weight than a campfire story and anchors the legend to a real, deadly event.
- The physical clues that survive are unresolved rather than debunked. The oversized leopard-shaped prints and the grey fur were never fully explained, and a mystery that ends in “probably cat” leaves room for the imagination to supply a bigger answer.
- The animal fits a coherent ecological niche in the telling: a silent, ambush-hunting coastal cat, neither lion nor leopard, purring rather than roaring. A description that hangs together as a plausible predator is easier to believe than an obvious fantasy.
- Respected figures lent it credibility. Bernard Heuvelmans, the father of cryptozoology, examined the case and did not simply dismiss it, and that scholarly attention signals to believers that the question is open rather than closed.

## Open questions
- What made the coarse grey fur and the oversized, leopard-shaped tracks at Lindi, and could a surviving sample, if one exists in any colonial-era collection, still be tested with modern methods to settle whether it is a known cat, a new one, or a plant?
- Could the mngwa reports reflect real but rare individuals, an oversized, discoloured, or hybrid felid, rather than either a new species or pure folklore, as Heuvelmans suspected?
- How much of the Lindi and 1930s killing waves was the work of the mjobo “lion men,” and how much, if any, resists a human explanation once faked tracks and staged evidence are accounted for?
- Why does the coastal Swahili tradition draw such a firm line between the mngwa and the lion and leopard, and what does that distinction tell us about the animals and dangers those communities actually encountered?

## Sources
- The Nunda, Eater of People, Wikipedia (2024): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nunda,_Eater_of_People
- The Violet Fairy Book/The Nunda, Eater of People, Wikisource (1901): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Violet_Fairy_Book/The_Nunda,_Eater_of_People
- The Violet Fairy Book (full text), Project Gutenberg (1901): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/641/pg641-images.html
- Nunda: In Search of the Strange One, ShukerNature (Dr Karl Shuker) (2010): https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2010/04/nunda-in-search-of-strange-one.html
- Nunda, A Book of Creatures (2015): https://abookofcreatures.com/2015/09/02/nunda/
- On the Track of Unknown Animals, Wikipedia (2024): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Track_of_Unknown_Animals
- Mngwa, the Strange One (On the Track of Unknown Animals, ch. 31), Taylor & Francis / Routledge (1958): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9781315828855-31/mngwa-strange-one-heuvelmans

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/mngwa