Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. He is the author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), Dragons: A Natural History (1995), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), The Unexplained (1996), From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997), Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), The Hidden Powers of Animals (2001), The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013), The Menagerie of Marvels (2014), A Manifestation of Monsters (2015), Here's Nessie! (2016), and what is widely considered to be his cryptozoological magnum opus, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016) - plus, very excitingly, his first two long-awaited, much-requested ShukerNature blog books (2019, 2020).

Dr Karl Shuker's Official Website - http://www.karlshuker.com/index.htm

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my ShukerNature blog's articles (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my published books (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my Eclectarium blog's articles (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my Starsteeds blog's poetry and other lyrical writings (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's articles (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

Search This Blog


PLEASE COME IN, I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU...

PLEASE COME IN, I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU...
WELCOME TO SHUKERNATURE - ENJOY YOUR VISIT - BEWARE OF THE RAPTOR!


Tuesday 19 November 2013

THE IRAQI AFA - A MIDDLE EASTERN MYSTERY LIZARD



Salvator water monitors - could the afa be an unknown giant relative?

One of the world's most obscure cryptozoological reptiles is the afa - a Middle Eastern mystery lizard briefly reported by explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger in his book The Marsh Arabs (1964).

Also known as the Madan, the Marsh Arabs inhabited the marshlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south and east of Iraq, and along the Iranian border – formerly a vast area of wetland covering more than 5.8 square miles. According to Thesiger, who had lived among them intermittently for eight years during the 1950s prior to the Iraqi revolution of 1958, the canoe-borne Madan claimed that the marshes at the mouth of the Tigris in Iraq was home to a monstrous lizard, which they termed the afa.

Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq's marshlands - the abode of the afa

Little else appears to have been documented concerning it. As various species of varanid or monitor lizard are native to this region of Asia Minor, however, it is plausible that the afa may be one too, albeit bigger than those formally recognised by science here - and hence either an unknown giant species, or based upon sightings of extra-large specimens of some known species.

Sadly, however, the question of the afa's taxonomic identity may be nothing more than academic nowadays. This is because following the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi government initiated a major programme to divert the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers away from the marshes in retaliation for a failed Shia uprising among the Arabs living there. This not only eliminated the Madan's food sources, forcing them to move elsewhere, but also turned the marshes themselves into a desert.

Consequently, the afa may well have been exterminated, especially if it were primarily aquatic, as I am not aware of any post-1991 reports alluding to it. If any ShukerNature reader is aware of any such reports, however, I'd be very interested to receive details.

The desert monitor lizard Varanus griseus, a common Iraqi varanid (Knockout Mouse/Wikipedia)




3 comments:

  1. "Afa" means venomous snake in Arabic. Unless the term was relexicalized by the Madan, it's possible that Thesiger didn't quite understand what he was told by his informants.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Or it may be that the Madan mistakenly believed the afa to be venomous - there are many instances on record of harmless lizards and other reptiles being wrongly considered venomous by their layman neighbours (elsewhere on ShukerNature I discuss this in relation to the Indian bis-cobra.

      Delete
  2. Seen one in 2004 or 5 in Babylon.

    ReplyDelete