Striped desert beasts

 A tiger-like feline in North Africa

    African big cats are extremely curious and majestic animals that are not captivated by our beginnings as a species. The powerful lions, the stealthy leopards and the elegant cheetahs have always been admired and respected by humans.

But it is possible that on the large and vast African continent there are species of big cats that have not yet been discovered or that existed for some time without being detected, One of them is what we will see next, a species similar to the tiger that is believed to have roamed North Africa.

The legend of the Ethiopian wobo and the abu-sótan of Sudan

   It is a strange feline, which is said to be or was endemic to North Africa, living from Ethiopia to Sudan where it is known as abu sotan, living particularly in the mountains near the Rahad River.

Described as equal to or slightly larger than a lion, with yellowish brown or brownish gray fur with black stripes, in addition to living in rocky mountains, inhabiting several such mountains in Ethiopia up to even the Sudanese mountains, in both versions although everyone agrees that it is a more savage predator, bold and powerful than other felines, in others they also say that in the case of the wobo that it is only found in the warmest low areas.

In the case of Abu sotan, it has a completely the same description, only changing the name. The only physical evidence that exists to this day is a skin that is (or was, I do not know its current state), exhibited in the main cathedral of Eifag, Ethiopia, where several people have seen it to this day, including several European monarchs, although there is more complex evidence, which is the following:

• An illustrated limestone relief from the tomb of Ti, a wealthy Egyptian landowner and courtier of the Fifth Dynasty, at Saqqara, Egypt, where among several animals portrayed a striped cat resembling a tiger appears, but with a clearly leonine tuft at the tip of the tail, this being next to a lion and a leopard.

• A more irascible testimony comes from none other than Nelson Mandela in his 1994 autobiography: Long Walk To Freedom, where he pointed out that there is a word for "tiger" in the Xhosa language of South Africa, Mandela revealed this fascinating little fact while arguing with several fellow prisoners on Robben Island who insisted that they had seen tigers in the jungles of Africa, Mandela even argued that if the word exists in that language, the creature must have once existed on the African continent.

• Even stronger is the fact of an alleged subspecies of African tiger, named panthera tigris sudanensis, described based on a skin, seen in Sudan, by Paul EP Deraniyagala, which was being sold in a Bazaar in Cairo, Egypt in 1951, and that according to the seller's words it had been hunted in the Sudan area, because only a photo of the skin was taken and based on that, The analyzes were inconclusive, although due to the stripe pattern, it was stated that perhaps it was a Persian tiger.,(today Siberian tiger), since these were similar to this variety that was almost extinct at that time, and the skin was smuggled to Egypt.

Although the matter remains forgotten today, the truth is that this case is very unlikely., Although it is theorized that such skins are imported and the animals seen are escaped pets, this has not been proven. although there is also the idea that it could be a mutation, knowing that there is a more rugged theory.

The striped lion theory

   Well, it is theorized that these animals were mutated lions, having stripes instead of uniform coats.

In the book available in our library, Marcopolo's travels, Marco Polo mentions striped lions in his descriptions of his travels at the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 13th century, living in china, described as larger than normal lions, with stripes along the sides of black, red and white, but this is surely only a confusion with tigers, but the truth is that it is believed that such a mutation could exist, and in fact here we have a photo, from the 1976 book "Animal Coloration", where we are shown this creature, although it remains doubtful.

In short, an escaped animal, smuggled skins or unknown varieties, They are tangles of theories that are still being considered about this animal, which have not yet been proven to exist if they really exist, leaving us at a crossroads that is difficult to resolve.

[Reading links]

http://messybeast.com/genetics/lions-spotted.htm

https://handwiki.org/wiki/Biology:Panthera_tigris_sudanensis

https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2012/11/tigers-in-africa-puzzling-pelt-mandela.html?m=1

http://messybeast.com/genetics/anomalous-bigcats.html