OF FROGS AND FIELD GUIDES

Mitchell's reed frog (© Jonathan R. Walz 2002)

I was inspired to write this note about frogs and field guides after seeing the image of a frog posted online by my good friend Jonathan Walz, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rollins College in Florida. This striking photo was taken in 2002 in Amani Nature Reserve in the East Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, and gives a nice sense of the forested environment that Amani is famous for. Its subject was identified for Jonathan by Kim Howell (another friend, and Professor of Zoology in the University of Dar es Salaam) as an example of Mitchell's reed frog, Hyperolius mitchelli, a species that has also been recorded in Malawi and Mozambique. It might well occur elsewhere in Tanzania, but very little collection or sound recording of frogs has taken place in the country, and our knowledge of the distribution of many species like this is correspondingly sketchy.

Banded rubber frog in one of my notebooks

Despite having lived in environments with a superabundance of cacophanous anurans (most notably amidst the seasonally-flooded wetlands of Usangu and the verdant rice valleys of Pemba island), I don't own a single photo of a toad or frog, and regret now that for many years I didn't have a camera capable of taking one. My notebooks, though, do feature the occasional frog that attracted my attention, like the Banded rubber frog (now Phrynomantis bifasciatus, formerly Phrynomerus) that I stumbled upon one day in 1992 in our garden in Nyali, on the north coast of Mombasa. I identified this with the aid of the only guide that I had at the time, Norman Hedges' Reptiles and Amphibians of East Africa (1983), which includes fuzzy and poorly reproduced colour photographs of fewer than a tenth of the frogs known to occur in the region. Needless to say, the Banded rubber frog is quite distinctive, with two vermillion (or orange, or red) stripes along its black back, and that's why it had caught my eye in the first place. For the same reason it's well known in the pet trade. What I didn't know when I scooped it up was that this bright colour scheme signals the presence of skin toxins that can be fatal to predators and result in a raft of distressing symptoms when they enter the human bloodstream. You'll be glad to hear that we didn't exchange body fluids.

I had less success in identifying other frogs. The 'one that got away' was a delicate yellow tree frog that I saw one evening in the foliage next to our outdoor table at the Jambo Inn in Kilimani in Zanzibar town. It was bright and glossy yellow all over its smooth and tiny body, and I noted it as a curiosity before continuing with the meal. This was in July 1996: much later I asked Kim Howell what it might have been and he merely shrugged. Perhaps this was the juvenile or colour morph of an otherwise well-known tree or reed frog, but I still haven't been able to identify it. Lack of a good field guide also scuppered my sundry efforts to make sense of indigenous knowledge about frogs. When living on Pemba in 1994-96 I recorded bits and pieces of information about the island's amphibians, and in 1997 drafted a short article about the local classification of frogs and toads. But I gave up on this when I realised that my preliminary attempt to map Pemban names onto scientific taxonomy was deeply flawed, and based on little more than unsubstantiated guesswork. I had Pakenham's (1983) checklist of the island's amphibians (which he knew was incomplete), but no illustrated field guide with which to compare local descriptions.

Things began to look up at the turn of the millennium, when I was based in Iringa and became aware of the work of Alan Channing (Professor of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology in the University of the Western Cape) and colleagues. Indeed my sole (and admittedly feeble) claim to frog fame is to have been consulted over the specific name of the newly discovered Red sand frog, Tomopterna luganga, first collected by another of my friends, David Moyer, from Kigwembimbi, 14 km east of Iringa town (Channing et al. 2004). This is in the heart of Uhehe, and the name that I was asked to check, luganga, is one of the Hehe words for 'sand'. I bought a copy of Alan Channing's Amphibians of Central and Southern Africa (2001), and at last had a field guide that provided better guidance than Hedges' slim section on frogs. Channing and Howell's Amphibians of East Africa (2006) came out after I'd left East Africa, and I still haven't got my hands on it, though I do have the boiled-down version that was published in the same year in the Pocket Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of East Africa (Spawls et al. 2006).

When he was working on the main guide, Kim Howell sent me a list of local names of frogs that he and his colleagues had collected, together with older records by the herpetologist Arthur Loveridge. While many dictionaries and vocabularies only give a single word for frogs, it is evident that finer discriminations are made in a number of East African languages. Ethnotaxonomies of frogs have been even less studied than the frogs themselves, and it is not impossible that complex systems of knowledge like those of the Kalam (Karam) of highland Papua New Guinea (Bulmer and Tyler 1968) are waiting to be described. At least we now have better guides to work with, together with an increasing number of images online, and if I ever identify that tiny yellow frog, or figure out those Pemban classifications, I'll write another frog blog.

Acknowledgements
As should be clear, I couldn't have written this post without the friendship of Jonathan Walz, Kim Howell and David Moyer. I'm especially grateful to Jonathan, who generously provided a copy of his photograph of Mitchell's reed frog and gave me permission to edit and reproduce it.

References

Bulmer, R. N. H. and M. J. Tyler 1968. Karam classification of frogs. Journal of the Polynesian Society 77 (4): 333-385.

Channing, Alan 2001. Amphibians of Central and Southern Africa. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

Channing, Alan and Kim M. Howell 2006. Amphibians of East Africa. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Channing, Alan, David C. Moyer and Abeda Dawood 2004. A new sand frog from central Tanzania (Anura: Ranidae: Tomopterna). African Journal of Herpetology 53 (1): 21-28.

Hedges, Norman G. 1983. Reptiles and Amphibians of East Africa. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.

Pakenham, R. H. W. 1983. The reptiles and amphibians of Zanzibar and Pemba islands (with a note on the freshwater fishes). Journal of the East Africa Natural History Society and National Museum 177: 1-40.

Spawls, Stephen, Kim M. Howell and Robert C. Drewes 2006. Pocket Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of East Africa. London: A&C Black.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE! (a leopard skin puzzle)

Who says a leopard can't change it's spots? Shown below are five black and white photos of leopard skins (taken and edited by my colleagues Helle Goldman and Jon Winther-Hansen), each showing a comparable section of the midbody.* Can you spot any obvious differences between their coat patterns and configuration of rosettes? Can you group them into different categories?

We've shuffled the pictures up and given them random numbers, from 1 to 5. Use these to identify each skin and send me your thoughts, either by commenting on this blog or emailing us via zanzibar.leopard@virginmedia.com. Give it a go and contribute to science! All will be explained if and when we get some answers...

*Note that the photos aren't quite on the same scale, as the rulers show. Some of them have also become a bit squashed in the process of formatting for this blog.

leopard skin 1

leopard skin 2

leopard skin 3

leopard skin 4

leopard skin 5

IMAGINARY ANIMALS OF ZANZIBAR

On 14 June 2007, the Hon. Ame Pandu Ame, MP for Nungwi constituency in Zanzibar, asked the following question in the Tanzanian parliament:

Given that Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, and that some animals have now disappeared from the islands, such as Ader's Duiker (Paa-Nunga), Impala (Swala), Zebra (Pundamilia), and Ostrich (Mbuni):-

Does the government not see that there is a need to take these animals (which aren't dangerous to man) over to the islands so that people can see them there?*

The Hon. Member's knowledge of his own islands' fauna was evidently on par with that of the brains behind the "Rare Animals of Zanzibar" series of stamps that was issued in the mid-1980s. Two of the mammals depicted, a rhinoceros and a pangolin, have never occurred in the wild in Zanzibar, at least not since Unguja became an island at the end of the last Ice Age. The same applies to impala, zebra, and ostrich. And although Ader's duiker (Cephalophus adersi) is classed as critically endangered, a small population still survives on Unguja island.

The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Professor Jumanne Abdallah Maghembe, was quick to set the record straight. He began his reply as follows:

Honourable Speaker, please allow me to inform your respected Parliament that impala, zebra, and ostrich are not native to Zanzibar, but were taken there in 1980 for a show. Once the show was over, they were put into a zoo in the forest at Dole Masingini.

Honourable Speaker, because of poor management and lack of expertise, the animals broke out of their enclosures time and time again and escaped into people's farms, where they damaged crops before being killed.*

Prof. Maghembe went on to explain that there were currently no plans to import and release such animals into the wild in Zanzibar, and gave the obvious ecological and other reasons for not doing so. He also gave an update on the status of the near-endemic Ader's duiker. "The only animal thought to have disappeared from the forests of Zanzibar", he added, "is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi ["adders" in the original])."

I don't know what motivated the CCM MP's question: by and large Zanzibar manages its own natural resources without reference to the mainland, and Zanzibar's wildlife isn't a normal topic of debate in the national parliament. But I do know that the liberalisation of the economy and growth of (eco)tourism in Zanzibar has made people aware of the money-making potential of zoos and animal enclosures in a way that the state-controlled experiment at Masingini could never have done. Mohammed Ayoub Haji's Zala Park, a small zoo that is best known for its reptiles, was opened in Muungoni village, close to Jozani Forest, in the mid-1990s. For a long time this was the only facility of its kind, but more recently Zanzibar's political and economic elite have begun to muscle in on the action. There's now at least one private zoo on Unguja owned by a prominent businessman. Latest on the scene is Zanzibar Park, located on a 20-acre site by the Mwera road, 3 km east of Zanzibar town. This zoo's flashy website suggests that it's a step up from Zala Park in ambition and scale -- perhaps not surprising, given that it's said to be owned by Zanzibar's First Lady, Shadya Amani Karume. It opened to the public in October 2009, and houses at least some of the species mentioned by Hon. Ame in his parliamentary question.

One animal that's unlikely to appear in Zanzibar Park anytime soon is the Zanzibar leopard. As Prof. Maghembe suggested, some zoologists think that it's extinct, though this is by no means certain (Goldman and Walsh 2002). But lack of scientific corroboration hasn't stopped the rural inhabitants of Unguja from seeing this island endemic, or believing that leopards are still being kept and used by witches (wachawi) to frighten their fellow villagers and attack their livestock (Goldman and Walsh 1997; Walsh and Goldman 2007). Leopard-keeping narratives are so pervasive and persuasive that some foreign researchers have fallen for them and gone in search of domesticated leopards. Needless to say, these kept leopard chases have always proved futile. Likewise proposals emanating from the Government of Zanzibar and local conservationists that call for leopard-keepers to display or sell their leopards for display to tourists and other fee-paying members of the public (Ame 2003). Helle Goldman and I have written about this at greater length in a recent workshop paper (Walsh and Goldman 2010), and both the abstract and now part of the text can be seen on our Zanzibar leopard blog.

Afterword (image), 13 February 2011

from the Humphrey Winterton Collection

An undated postcard from the studio of J. B. Coutinho in Zanzibar (not a wild rhino, alas!)...

(Citation: Rhinoceros, Zanzibar. Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston. Object 43-1-43-1. http://hdl.handle.net/2166.DL/inu-wint-43-1-43-1.)

----
* My translation from the Swahili.

References

Ame, Mwantanga 2003. Serikali iko tayari kununua chui. Zanzibar Leo, Sunday 13 April 2003, 6.

Goldman, Helle and Martin Walsh 1997. A Leopard in Jeopardy: An Anthropological Survey of Practices and Beliefs which Threaten the Survival of the Zanzibar Leopard (Panthera pardus adersi). Zanzibar Forestry Technical Paper No. 63, Jozani Chwaka Bay Conservation Project, Commission for Natural Resources, Zanzibar.

Goldman, Helle and Martin Walsh 2002. Is the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi) extinct? Journal of East African Natural History 91 (1/2): 15-25.

Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman 2007. Killing the king: the demonization and extermination of the Zanzibar leopard / Tuer le roi: la diabolisation et l’extermination du leopard de Zanzibar. In Edmond Dounias, Elisabeth Motte-Florac and Margaret Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal symbolism: Animals, keystone of the relationship between man and nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1133-1182.

Walsh, Martin and Helle Goldman 2010. Chasing imaginary leopards: science, witchcraft and the politics of conservation in Zanzibar. Paper prepared for the VIII European Swahili Workshop, Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography, University of Oxford, 19-21 September 2010.

THE LONGEST INSECTS IN THE WORLD

The shortest (and least serious) article that I've ever written was about the longest insects in the world. I wrote it to see how easy it would be to get something published in the East Africa Natural History Society Bulletin. 'A Stick Insect in Same' was published in September 1991, and here's the text in full:

In early September 1990, while staying in Same (between the North and South Pare Mountains) in north-east Tanzania, I stumbled upon what was by far the longest stick-insect that I have ever seen. It was clinging to the sides of some cement steps, and at first I mistook it for a growth of leafless twigs. Not until I saw that these grey twigs were perfectly symmetrical and growing out of nothing did it dawn on me that I might be looking at a living creature. I showed it to some of my colleagues, members of local women's groups, and they were only convinced of its real identity once they had frightened it into moving. Like me they were astounded by its size, and all of them declared that they had never seen anything like it before. They were, indeed, somewhat alarmed, and killed it with a few well-aimed rocks.

I had all but forgotten about this incident until recently, when I came across the following statement in last year's edition of The Guinness Book of Records (p.40): "The longest insect in the world is the Giant Stick Insect Pharnacia serratipes of Indonesia, females of which have been measured up to 330 mm (13 inches)". How I wish that I had made use of a tape measure and camera that day! I could swear that my Same stick insect was much the same size as the longest of its Indonesian cousins. It was certainly much longer than the norm - or what I suppose to be the norm in my ignorance of the relevant entomological records. I would be very happy for someone to write and enlighten me. Otherwise, and not just for those with an eye to the record books, I would recommend a visit to the hostel recently opened by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Same. The hostel buildings enclose a small garden, host (one hopes) to the relatives of a very long, but unfortunately very dead, stick insect. (Walsh 1991)

A couple of months later, in November 1991, I found a dead stick insect in our swimming pool in Nyali, on the north coast of Mombasa. It wasn't quite as big as the one I'd written about, but, with a body length of 180 mm and an overall length (including legs) of around 291 mm, it was impressive enough (the photograph and sketches shown here are of this apparently drowned specimen). The next week I bought a second-hand copy of Pinhey and Loe's introductory text, A Guide to the Insects of Africa (1974), with Ian Loe's illustration of the Congolese Palophus leopoldi (= Bactrododema leopoldi (Schouteden, 1916)) on its cover. This looked superficially similar to my Nyali stick, but was evidently a much longer species, described as the largest stick insect in Africa, "which, with legs stretched out in front and behind, measures over 400 mm" (1974: 20).

Then, searching for better sources in the library of the National Museum and East Africa Natural History Society in Nairobi, I discovered an old reference to large stick insects in the vicinity of Lohumbo in Shinyanga District in (what was then) Tanganyika:  a report of a male "which measured fifteen and a half inches from the tips of the front legs to the tips of the hind legs", and a collected female specimen, tentatively identified as Palophus episcopalis (= Bactrododema episcopalis (Kirby, 1896)), whose total length was "just over fourteen inches" (Carpenter 1942: 75). At c.394 mm the male was reputedly almost as long as the Congolese record-holder. And both of these African Palophus (= Bactrodema) were longer than the 330 mm that The Guinness Book of Records gave for the Asian Pharnacia serratipes (= Giant Malayan Stick Insect, Phobaeticus serratipes (Gray, 1835)) (McFarlan 1989: 40).

I therefore wrote to the Editor of The Guinness Book of Records drawing his attention to the different measurements and enclosing photocopies of my article and the two sources on African stick insects that I'd found. I ended my letter by noting that "Unless the basis for these measurements is different, or they are simply wrong, then it appears that the Palophus of Africa should be described as the longest insects in the world" (Mombasa, 4 December 1991). In reply I received a courteous letter from the Deputy Editor, Maria Morgan, thanking me for my observations and promising to follow up on them: "It may be that the methods of measurement differ slightly but your letter will receive our fullest consideration and the entry will of course be amended if necessary" (Enfield, Middlesex, 6 January 1992). Much to my surprise the next edition of The Guinness Book of Records was changed to read: "The longest insects in the world are stick-insects (walking sticks), especially of the African species [sic] Palophus, which can attain lengths of 400 mm 15¾ in in the case of Palophus leopoldi" (Matthews 1992: 38). It looked as though this had been done without reference to proper scientific authorities, but merely in response to my amateur intervention and ultimately on the basis of the sketchy description in an introductory guide.

The African pretender, Palophus leopoldi (= Bactrododema leopoldi (Schouteden, 1916)), reigned supreme for two years, through to the 40th edition of The Guinness Book of Records (Matthews 1993: 41). Back in England I corresponded with Paul Brock, the Treasurer and Membership Secretary of the Phasmid Study Group, and became PSG Member No.1234. Stuck in a dull academic job, I dreamed of searching for more East African stick insects, until I was discouraged by the discovery that reference materials were few and far between and often difficult to find. This was compounded by the realisation that scientific collecting and study would require the kind of dedication and expertise that I singularly lack.

I planned an early version of this note, describing how the entry in The Guinness Book of Records had been changed without any real evidence, and making the point that the interesting scientific question was not how long particular species and specimens were, but how and why some stick insects had evolved to such large sizes. Using the few sources at my disposal, including Brock (1992), I drew up a table of the reported lengths of the longest stick insects. As soon as I did this, it dawned on me that two different measurements were being reported in the literature, body length and the total length including the outstretched legs. The earlier records in The Guinness Book of Records were based on body length (330 mm for Pharnacia serratipes), whereas the reports for Palophus spp. that I'd found were based on overall length (e.g. 400 mm for P.leopoldi). It may be that some of the African Palophus (= Bactrododema) had bodies equal or greater in length to the Asian Pharnacia (= Phobaeticus), but there was no actual evidence for this. When writing to The Guinness Book of Records I'd expressed some caution about the basis for different measurements, and now it turned out that I was right to do so.

In the summer of 1994 I returned to East Africa and forgot about my phasmid fantasies. The next edition of The Guinness Book of Records gave primacy to Pharnacia kirbyi (= Phobaeticus kirbyi Brunner von Watenwyl, 1907), a species from Borneo. Although I didn't know it at the time, phasmid researcher Phil Bragg had published a paper in The Entomologist pointing out that the original record was based on a misidentification, and that the African record was based on the measurement of overall rather than body length (1995: 26). I didn't see another large stick insect until one day in May 2002, driving from Dar es Salaam to Iringa in a project Landrover. As we sped along the road approaching Kitonga I caught sight of a very large stick crossing in front of us, heading into the bush northwards. We were travelling at 110-120 km per hour, and I had a split second in which to ask the driver, Aston, to slam on the brakes. I thought of the hassle, hesitated, and the moment had gone. Gone too, I mused, was my chance to change the record books again, this time with some real evidence. Instead the world record is now held by another Bornean species, recently described by Phil Bragg (Chan's Megastick, Phobaeticus chani Bragg, 2008) and displayed in the Natural History Museum in London.  

Afterword, 20 August 2010

Martyn Tovey has kindly gone through different editions of The Guinness Book of Records (and its successors) and painstakingly examined the entries for the world's longest insect. His analysis shows a surprising number of changes, updates, and errors. One change is of particular significance to my own tale: whereas early editions had all made it clear that the principal measurements given referred to the body length of stick insects, this detail was omitted from the 29th edition (published in 1982) onwards, and wasn't reintroduced until the 41st edition (1994), which picked up on Phil Bragg's observations. Martyn's notes are reproduced with minor amendments below. For details of the different editions and their dates of publication readers are referred to his wonderful Guinness Record Book Collecting website.

The longest insect record appeared in the very first edition in 1955 (under Insects, Largest), as:
Some tropical stick-insects (Plasmidae) have a body length up to 13 inches (330 mm.) [p.34]

The entry was slightly modified in the 2nd edition in 1956 (now known as the 5th edition):
Some tropical stick-insects (Phasmidae) have a body length up to 13 inches (330 mm.) [p.30]

The 10th edition (1962) has:
Some tropical stick-insects (Phasmidae) have a body length up to 13 inches (330 mm.) and in the case of the Palophus titan from Australia a wing span of 10 inches. [p.29]

The description changes slightly for the 13th edition in 1966:
Some tropical stick-insects (family Phasmidae) have a body length up to 13 inches and in the case of the Palophus titan from Australia a wing span of 10 inches. [p.35]

In the 18th edition (1971), the record changes again to:
Some tropical stick-insects have a body length of up to 13 inches (e.g. Phoboeticus fruhstorferi) and, in the case of Palophus titan from Australia, a wing span of 10 inches. [p.41]

The next (19th edition) moves the record into its own category (Insects, Longest):
The longest insect in the world is the tropical stick-insect Pharnacia serratipes, females of which have been measured up to 33 cm (12.99 inches) in body length. [p.42]

In edition 28, published in 1981, the record becomes:
The longest insect in the world is the giant stick-insect Pharnacia serratipes of Indonesia, females of which have been measured up to 330 mm (13 inches) in body length. [p.46]

The 29th edition had a reference to the record in the usual place, but the actual record was shown in a two-page table of "Superlatives of the Animal Kingdom". It omitted the detail "in body length". The table appeared in the 30th, 31st, 32nd and 33rd editions. For the 34th edition (published 1987), the record was back in the main text as:
The longest insect in the world is the Giant stick-insect (Pharnacia serratipes) of Indonesia, females of which have been measured up to 330 mm 13 in. [p.39]

The record in the 39th edition is:
The longest insects in the world are stick-insects (walking sticks), especially of the African species Palophus, which can attain lengths of 400 mm 15¾ in in the case of Palophus leopoldi. [p.38]

The record changes in the 41st edition to:
The longest recorded insect in the world is Pharnacia kirbyi, a stick insect from the rainforests of Borneo. The longest-known specimen is in the British Natural History Museum in London, UK: it has a body length of 328 mm 12.9 in and a total length, including the legs, of over half-a-metre 20 in.

The total length is given as 546 mm (20 inches) in the 42nd edition, but 54.6 cm (21.5 inches) in the 43rd. The 1999 44th edition (published in 1998) has a picture of the specimen from the Natural History Museum (pp.258-259). The 2008 54th edition updates the record:
Two stick insects share this record, depending on how they are measured. Pharnacia kirbyi is a stick insect from the rainforests of Borneo. The longest specimen known had a body length of 32.8 cm (12.9 in) and a total length, including the legs, of 54.6 cm (21.5 in). This makes it the longest insect in the world based on head-plus-body length. A specimen of Malaysia's Phobaeticus serratipes had a head-plus-body length of 27.8 cm (10.9 in), but when its outstretched legs were included, it measured a record 55.5 cm (21.8). [p.45]

The 2010 56th edition (published in 2009) has a new entry:
On 16th October 2008, the UK's Natural History Museum announced a new holder for the record of the longest stick insect: Phobaeticus chana - aka Chan's megastick - from the rainforests of Borneo. The longest of the three known specimens [...] measured 56.6 cm (22.3 in) with its legs stretched; its body alone measured 35.5 cm (14 in) - also a record for the insect class. [p.48]

Paul Brock adds that in his opinion "an Australian species Ctenomorpha gargantua Hasenpusch & Brock, 2006 will compete for the 'longest insect in the world' title, as they are over 300mm".

Acknowledgements
I remain very grateful to Paul Brock for his correspondence in 1993-94 and for taking the trouble to send me hard-to-obtain literature on phasmids. I'm sorry that I've been able to make no better use of it than this! Thanks also to James Walsh for his photograph and drawing of the stick insect (very likely Bactrododema sp.) that appeared in our swimming pool that Sunday morning in 1991. Martyn Tovey and, again, Paul Brock are thanked for their contributions to the Afterword.

References

Bragg, P. E. 1995. The Longest Stick Insect in the World, Pharnacia kirbyi (Brunner). The Entomologist 114 (1): 26-30.

Bragg, P. E. 2008. In Frank H. Hennemann and Oscar V. Conle, Revision of Oriental Phasmatodea: The Tribe Pharnaciini Günther, 1953, Including the Description of the World's Longest Insect, and a Survey of the Family Phasmatidae Gray, 1835 with Keys to the Subfamilies and Tribes (Phasmatodea: "Anareolatae": Phasmatidae), Zootaxa 1906.

Brock, Paul D. 1992. Rearing and Studying Stick and Leaf-Insects (The Amateur Entomologist 22). Feltham, Middlesex: The Amateur Entomologists' Society.

Brock, Paul D. 2004. Taxonomic Notes on Giant Southern African Stick Insects (Phasmida), including the Description of a New Bactrododema Species. Annals of the Transvaal Museum 41: 61-77.

Carpenter, G. D. Hale 1942. Notes by E. Burtt, B.Sc., F.R.E.S., on a Species of Palophus (Probably episcopalis Kirby): A Giant Phasmid (Orthoptera) from Tanganyika Territory. Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society of London (A) 17 (7-9): 75-76.

McFarlan, Donald (ed.) 1989. The Guinness Book of Records 1990 (36th edition). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Publishing Ltd.

Matthews, Peter (ed.) 1992. The Guinness Book of Records 1993 (39th edition). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Publishing Ltd.

Matthews, Peter (ed.) 1993. The Guinness Book of Records 1994 (40th edition). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Publishing Ltd.

Pinhey, Elliot and Ian D. Loe 1974. A Guide to the Insects of Africa. Hamlyn: London.

Walsh, Martin 1991. A Stick Insect in Same. East Africa Natural History Society Bulletin 21 (3): 48.

THE USANGU METEORITE MYSTERY

One of the most puzzling reports that I heard when I lived in Utengule-Usangu in the early 1980s was that a meteorite had fallen to earth somewhere to the east of the village. This event was supposed to have taken place in the early hours (around 2.30-3.00 in the morning) of Thursday 12th November 1981. The first I knew about it was later that day when I joined my usual kikao or drinking group in the main village club and listened to intense speculation about what had happened. Was it really a meteorite that had fallen out of the night sky? Could it have been a plane crash? Or an explosion of some kind, a bomb perhaps? No one was sure.

The next day the Village Secretary (the CCM-appointed Katibu wa Kijiji) came to the kikao with the news that the cause of the loud noise that people had heard was indeed a “star” (Swahili nyota) that had fallen in the vicinity of Rujewa, the administrative centre of what was then Mbarali Sub-District. Needless to say on Saturday 14th debate in the kikao continued. The most detailed account I could obtain was from Paulo, a young Sangu man who had relatives in the area in question. The meteorite had fallen at Uyelevala, beyond Ubaruku village, and it was now being guarded by soldiers. People as far away as Luhanga, the village to the north of Utengule, had seen the earth light up at night, and some of them had thrown themselves to the ground, thinking that the world was coming to an end.

My fieldwork in Usangu was drawing to a close, and I left Utengule at the end of the year none the wiser about this seemingly apocalyptic event. Was it a meteorite that blazed its way to earth in a fireball? Thousands of meteorites are thought to fall to the earth every year, but only a small proportion of these are observed, located, and officially recorded and reported. The 5th edition of the Catalogue of Meteorites (Grady 2000) lists a mere 1,005 meteorite falls (the technical term for meteorites that have actually been seen falling to earth) and 21,502 meteorite finds (meteorites discovered on the ground but not observed falling). Only nine meteorites are listed in current databases for Tanzania, eight of them observed falls, and one a find – the famous Mbosi (= Mbozi) Meteorite, one of the largest iron meteorites in the world (Sassoon 1967). But only two meteorite falls have been reported since national independence (one in 1963 and one in 1988), and none are recorded in Usangu.

It is possible, I suppose, that a meteorite did fall but wasn’t reported to the wider scientific community: after all the Tanzanian state in 1981 wasn’t the most open of societies. Otherwise I find myself continuing the lively speculations of my drinking companions in Utengule. Was it a plane or even a piece of military hardware that had dropped out of the sky? Is that why soldiers were guarding the site, and was the meteorite story merely a cover? Or was something more sinister going on? Is Uyelevala Tanzania’s Roswell? And should I start writing more creatively (von Däniken-style) about Sangu cosmology; the belief that pangolins are sent down to earth by the ancestors, the complex of ideas about chiefship and fertility that this connects to (see Walsh 1995/96; 2007; also 2010), including the announcement of the death of a chief with the statement that “the sky has fallen down” (Sangu uwulanga wagwa)? Turn my ethnographic knowledge into a cross between The X-Files and The Gods Must Be Crazy? Answers in a bottle please.

Acknowledgement
The photo of the Mbozi Meteorite (above) is from the Maisha ni Vita blog.

References

Grady, Monica M. 2000. Catalogue of Meteorites (5th edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sassoon, Hamo 1967. Guide to the Mbozi Meteorite. Dar es Salaam: Department of Antiquities.

Walsh, Martin 1995/96. The Ritual Sacrifice of Pangolins among the Sangu of South-west Tanzania. Bulletin of the International Committee on Urgent Anthropological and Ethnological Research 37/38: 155-170.

Walsh, Martin 2007. Pangolins and Politics in the Great Ruaha Valley, Tanzania: Symbol, Ritual and Difference / Pangolin et politique dans la Vallée du Great Ruaha, Tanzanie: Symbole, rituel et différence. In Edmond Dounias, Elisabeth Motte-Florac and Margaret Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal symbolism: Animals, keystone of the relationship between man and nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1003-1044.

Walsh, Martin 2010. Red Velvet from Heaven. East African Notes and Records, 13 June 2010.

SCRIBD AND, FOR EXAMPLE, LEOPARDS

I started this occasional blog by posting short articles that I'd already written and (in all but one case) published. 'Occasional' became an understatement when I started scanning and posting papers and other miscellaneous writings to the document-sharing website Scribd. I've now uploaded more than 170 files to Scribd, including my doctoral dissertation (1984) about Usangu and a collection of research assistants' notebooks from western and central Kenya. I've still got a way to go, and haven't begun to scan notebooks written in Swahili by assistants in Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania.

One of the advantages of doing this is that I can now link directly to files on Scribd and/or embed them in the text of this blog. Here's an example, a poster shown at a conference in Oxford in 2007:



And here's a paper about the Zanzibar leopard:



To view and/or download these (and other documents) use the Scribd toolbar at the top of the windows.