Mapinguari: The Amazon's Ground Sloth Cryptid
The mapinguari is a smelly Amazonian beast of folklore. A ground sloth survivor is the best-known theory, but mainland sloths died out around 12,000 years ago.
Reports of the mapinguari come from Amazonian folklore and from hunters and rubber tappers in Brazil. The creature is said to be tall, hairy and extremely smelly, with backward feet. It is one of Brazil’s best-known cryptids.
What people say
Folklore gives the mapinguari a loud scream, a hairy body and sometimes one eye and a belly mouth. The name is from a Tupi-Guarani phrase that Câmara Cascudo glossed as a thing with a twisted or backward foot. Not every telling is the same, and Cascudo suspected the screaming detail came from the rubber-tapper era. The Karitiana, the Matsigenka and other peoples have their own named beings, so these stories may not all describe one animal.
The sloth theory
David C. Oren of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi proposed in 1993 that some tales might concern surviving ground sloths. By 2001 he said seven hunters claimed to have killed one, and more than 80 people claimed to have seen one. Remains were not kept. He admitted that the short tail did not fit.
The problem of time
Ground sloths vanished from the mainland around 12,000 years ago. Island species in the Caribbean survived to about 4,800 years ago. Nothing younger has been found. Without bones, hair, dung or a photograph, the theory stays speculative, and the single eye and belly mouth do not fit.
Sources
- Mapinguari (Wikipedia) - folklore, name origin, indigenous names, Oren’s hypothesis and critics
- Does the Endangered Xenarthran Fauna of Amazonia Include Remnant Ground Sloths? (David C. Oren, Edentata, 2001) - Oren’s own account of his informants and the hunters’ claims
- Ground sloth (Wikipedia) - extinction dates and sizes of ground sloths