Mapinguari of the Amazon
Natives and settlers tell of the mapinguari, a smelly hairy beast of the Amazon. It is folklore, and the surviving ground sloth theory lacks evidence.
The mapinguari is a creature in the folklore of the Brazilian Amazon. It has been described as a huge, hairy, foul-smelling beast with a roar that carries through the forest. Some stories say it has one eye, a mouth in its belly and backward feet.
Folklore and variants
Câmara Cascudo derived the name from a Tupi-Guarani phrase for a thing with a clubbed or backward-turned foot. Wikipedia notes that the stories reach the forests of Pará, Amazonas and Acre. Karitiana and Matsigenka traditions describe related beings. Cascudo thought the loud scream was a later addition. Various writers have said the beast is an unknown primate or a spectacled bear, such as Bernard Heuvelmans and Mário Monteiro.
The ground sloth hypothesis
David C. Oren, a zoologist at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, proposed in 1993 that the stories might reflect surviving ground sloths. In 2001 he wrote that seven hunters claimed to have killed one and over 80 people said they had met one. None of the remains survive. He accepted that a short tail and other details did not match a sloth.
Reality check
Ground sloths died out on the mainland around 12,000 years ago and in the Caribbean about 4,800 years ago. No later remains have been found. The belly mouth and single eye match no known animal. The mapinguari is a legend that may have grown from real animals, fear of the forest and older spirit stories.
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