Marozi

Though various cryptozoological theories have been advanced, a single book published in 1963 claims that the general consensus at the time[1] was that the marozi is a colour morph of some known subspecies of lion, perhaps involving individuals that retained juvenile spots into adulthood.

[4] Another incident was in 1931, when a white farmer, Michael Trent, shot and killed two individuals, a male and a female, in the Aberdare mountains at an elevation of 10,000 feet (3,000 m).

He favoured the hypothesis that a small group of Somali lions (taxonomized at the time as Panthera leo somalica) — including aberrant spotted individuals — had migrated into the Kenyan Aberdare Range.

[2] Author Noel Simon commented in 1962 that the consensus of opinion about sightings of marozi is that they are "plains lions which have retained their cub spots into adult life".

[1] In 1963, zoologist Charles Albert Walter Guggisberg claimed that there is no reliable evidence for the marozi as a distinct variety of lion, saying, "...to this day nobody has been able to produce any proof of its existence.