This is but one tale of the insatiable Nundá, but in the old Tanzanian lore there are many versions, all with common elements, (1) The beast is always an insatiable, swallowing monster, which sometimes wallows up the entire populace except for one hero and other times leaves most of the village alive. (2) The father of the hero it’s too slow to take action, and sometimes the victims are really dead, while other times the hero kills the beast and cuts it open, releasing all the victims unharmed. (3) The mother of the hero is the one guiding his actions.

References to this beast in British records first occur in the 1900s. For example, In 1938, an open-minded discussion about this animal appeared in the then-world-famous British scientific journal Discovery. In this discussion there are some witness a...

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