The six person team visited the Gambia and Senegal last summer, to investigate the legend of a monster so awful, locals believe that to look upon it is death. The Ninki-Nanka is said to resemble a gigantic crested serpent and provokes terror in the locals even to this day.

“One man was so frightened of the monster he refused to enter a swamp where, years before, a sighting of the beast had caused a whole village to be abandoned. We had to speak to him from behind a bush, where he was hiding in terror,” said Richard Freeman, Zoological Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology.

The team spoke to many people who claimed their relatives or friends had seen the dragon, and had subsequently died. One man, who claimed to have seen the beast himself, described it as a monstrously huge snake with a horse-like head, and a crest. He believed that only a herbal potion from a holy man saved him from the Ninki-Nankas’ curse. When shown pictures of an Apatosaurus, a Komodo dragon, a Nile monitor lizard, and a Chinese dragon, he chose the Chinese dragon as being most like what he saw.