Again,we know nothing about the habits of the giant sloth, but once again thiscreature certainly knows how to avoid mankind. This is also true for the Sasquatch, but it has the particular advantageof been nocturnal.
Inthis case, it looks like simple avoidance and making its living in therainforest. There is no better place forthat strategy than the Amazon where humanity concentrates on navigable rivers. The potential for forest refugia is soimmense that it is impossible to ignore the possibility of survival.
Mostobservers have discounted such reports as unlikely, yet today, the internet issteadily amassing the data itself and providing compelling support for suchsurvival.
Atsome point someone will begin funding proper expeditions to locate and perhaps trankspecimens. Any such effort is surprisinglyexpensive since a professional tracker is necessary and plenty of remote heatsensing cameras needs to be placed on game trails along with centralmonitoring. Expect $200,000 per targetand expedition at least and that only assures you that you will have an actualchance to see something that is much better than zero. The critters could still be off on the annualfishing expedition (Sasquatch?).
Does The Giant Ground Sloth Still Live?
Posted: 06 Apr 2011 10:31 AM PDT
The Giant Ground Sloth, or Megatherium (Giant Beast) was anomnivorous relative of the modern-day sloth that lived in Pliocene -Pleistocene South America .
Evidence has been found suggesting Giant Sloth's survival into modern times.There is reason to believe indians hunted them. Fresh skin, dung and footprintswere discovered in a cave in the Patagonian region ofArgentina Argentina
Evidence has been found suggesting Giant Sloth's survival into modern times.There is reason to believe indians hunted them. Fresh skin, dung and footprintswere discovered in a cave in the Patagonian region of
The Mapinguary
The mapinguary (also spelled "mapinguari") is a hairy biped reportedfrom the Amazon Rainforest of
Other sightings describe what sounds more like a real animal. The mapinguarylooks something like Bigfoot, being a bipedal hairy giant, but it is lesshuman-looking than Bigfoot. In fact, it resembles a giant sloth, an animal thatwas alive during the last Ice Age. Even its footprints resemble those of thegiant sloth. Therefore, cryptozoologists who are investigating this creatureusually think that if it exists, it is really a giant sloth.
Ornithologist David C. Oren is the researcher who is most strongly associatedwith the theory that mapinguary legends represent sightings of living giantsloths who survived the Ice Age extinctions, but there are many otherscientists and adventurers who have looked into the problem. Charles Fort wasperhaps the first to suggest the survival of giant ground sloths in SouthAmerica, in reference to legends about the "blonde beast" of
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Sloth Scares the Boonville Natives
Wednesday, August 18, 1937
The man said he and his uncle were returning home from
When a sloth is hungry and frightened, he said, it will give vent toblood-curdling shrieks and yells such as terrified river valley residents havereported they have heard intermittently since Friday night [August 13].
At that time Mrs. Ralph Duff reported she caught a fleeting glimpse of theanimal and said it looked like an ape.
Posses, according to reports here, are searching the river bottoms cautiouslyin the hope of tracking the beast to its lair.
River folk said today that they had seen an empty circus truck in the vicinity,and assumed that animal experts are endeavoring to capture the alleged monsteralso.
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A Huge Amazon Monster Is Only a Myth. Or Is It?
Perhaps it is nothing more than a legend, as skeptics say. Or maybe it is real,as those who claim to have seen it avow. But the mere mention of themapinguary, the giant slothlike monster of the Amazon, is enough to sendshivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s largest rainforest.
The folklore here is full of tales of encounters with the creature, and nearlyevery Indian tribe in the Amazon, including those that have had no contact withone another, have a word for the mapinguary (pronounced ma-ping-wahr-EE). Thename is usually translated as “the roaring animal” or “the fetid beast.”
So widespread and so consistent are such accounts that in recent years a fewscientists have organized expeditions to try to find the creature. They havenot succeeded, but at least one says he can explain the beast and its origins.
“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the mapinguary is based on humancontact with the last of the ground sloths,” thousands of years ago, said DavidOren, a former director of research at the Goeldi Institute in Belém, at themouth of the Amazon River. “We know that extinct species can survive as legendsfor hundreds of years. But whether such an animal still exists or not isanother question, one we can’t answer yet.”
Dr. Oren said he had talked to “a couple of hundred people” who had said theyhad seen the mapinguary in the most remote parts of the Amazon and a handfulwho had said they had had direct contact.
In some areas, the creature is said to have two eyes, while in other accountsit has only one, like the Cyclops of Greek mythology. Some tell of a gaping,stinking mouth in the monster’s belly through which it consumes humansunfortunate enough to cross its path.
But all accounts agree that the creature is tall, seven feet or more when itstands on two legs, that it emits a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, andthat it has thick, matted fur, which covers a carapace that makes it all butimpervious to bullets and arrows.
“The only way you can kill a mapinguary is by shooting at its head,” saidDomingos Parintintin, a tribal leader in
Geovaldo Karitiana, 27, a member of the Karitiana tribe, claims to have seenone about three years ago, as he was hunting in the jungle near an area thathis tribe calls “the cave of the mapinguary.”
“It was coming toward the village and was making a big noise,” he said in arecent interview on the tribe’s reservation in the western Amazon. “It stoppedwhen it got near me, and that’s when the bad smell made me dizzy and tired. Ifainted, and when I came to, the mapinguary was gone.”
Mr. Karitiana’s father, Lucas, confirmed his son’s account. He said that whenhis son took him back to the site of the encounter, he saw a cleared pathwaywhere the creature had departed, “as if a boulder had rolled through andknocked down all the trees and vines.”
Though the descriptions of the mapinguary may resemble the sasquatch of
“Often, the mapinguary gets revenge on people who transgress, who go where theyshouldn’t go or harvest more animals or plants than they can consume, or setcruel traps,” said Márcio Souza, a prominent Brazilian novelist and playwrightwho lives in Manaus, in the central Amazon, and often draws on Amazon historyand folklore in his works.
Amazon folklore, in fact, is full of fanciful creatures that are usedto explain unwelcome or embarrassing phenomena. The boto, for example, is atype of dolphin that is said to be able to transform itself into human form,wearing a white hat to cover its air spout, and seducing and impregnatingimpressionable young virgins.
When a hunter or woodsman gets lost in the jungle, he often blames thecurupira, a mischievous red-haired elf who has feet that face backward andtakes delight in making trails that lead travelers astray. And when anexperienced navigator inexplicably disappears or drowns in calm waters, he isusually said to have fallen victim to the iara, a cross between a siren and amermaid.
Scientists link the current mapinguary legends to the Megatherium, one of thelargest mammals ever. It vanished thousands of years ago.
“If you’re a rubber tapper and you’re returning to camp empty-handed, you’dbetter have a pretty good explanation for your boss,” said Marcos ViníciusNeves, director of the government’s department of historical and culturalpatrimony in
Mr. Souza, the writer, counts himself among those who believe the mapinguary isa myth. The deforestation of the Amazon has accelerated so rapidly over thelast generation, he argues, that if the creature really existed, “there wouldhave been some sort of close encounter of the third kind by now.”
Partly for that reason, most zoologists scoff at the notion that it could bereal.
The giant ground sloth, Megatherium, was once one of the largest mammals towalk the earth, bigger than a modern elephant. Fossil evidence is abundant andwidespread, found as far south as
“When you travel in the Amazon, you are constantly hearing about this animal,especially when you are in contact with indigenous peoples,” said Peter Toledo,an expert on sloths at the Goeldi Institute. “But convincing scientific proof,in the form of even vestiges of bones, blood or excrement, is always lacking.”
Glenn Shepard Jr., an American ethnobiologist and anthropologist based inManaus, said he was among the skeptics until 1997, when he was doing researchabout local wildlife among the Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in
Dr. Shepard said “the clincher that really blew me away” came when a member ofthe tribe remarked matter of factly that he had also seen a mapinguary at thenatural history museum in
“At the very least, what we have here is an ancient remembrance of a giantsloth, like those found in
Even so, the mystery of the mapinguary is likely to continue, as is the search.
“There’s still an awful lot of room out there for a large sloth to be roamingaround,” Dr. Shepard said. - The New York Times
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A July 2007 report from Rio Branco , Brazil
Geovaldo Karitiana, 27, a member of the Karitiana tribe, claims to have seen assimilar creature in 2003, as he was hunting in the jungle near an area that histribe calls “the cave of the mapinguari.”
“It was coming toward the village and was making a big noise,” he said in arecent interview on the tribe’s reservation in the western Amazon. “It stoppedwhen it got near me, and that’s when the bad smell made me dizzy and tired. Ifainted, and when I came to, it was gone.”
Mr. Karitiana’s father, Lucas, confirmed his son’s account. He said that whenhis son took him back to the site of the encounter, he saw a cleared pathwaywhere the creature had departed, “as if a boulder had rolled through andknocked down all the trees and vines.”
Source: Witness accounts to reporter
NOTE: The mere mention of the mapinguari, the giant sloth-like monster of theAmazon, is enough to send shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell inthe world’s largest rain forest. The name is usually translated as “the roaringanimal” or “the fetid beast.” Though the descriptions of the mapinguari mayresemble the Sasquatch of
Here is an interesting link - On the trail of a man-eating megatherium...Lon
Sources:
Clark, Jerome and Coleman, Loren - "Cryptozoology A-Z" -
cryptozoology.wikia.com
www.newanimal.org
www.nytimes.com
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