A Couple of Zemis from Cuba

Zemis are kinds of religious paraphenalia used by the Arawak Indians. In Africa I suppose they would be called Fetishes. These examples are from the Tainos of Cuba.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zemi

In this case I found images of two of them that look to be representations of Unknown animals.

The one below is a vomit stick to put down a persons throat and make them vomit, for purification rituals. In this cae it looks to me like the big fishing bat that is the American Ahool, also represented in sculptures of Northern South America and in Mesoamerica as Kamazotz (Camazotz)

This would represent the bat with the wings spread (center) and also seated on the ground with the wings folded. The creature is supposed to be the size of a baby or a small child. The wingspan is as big as the wingspan of a large eagle or even bigger than that, 10-12 feet across or so.

 (I added the line between the legs for clarity as well as taking it apart to show the wings better)

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Below is a kind of a sea monster:

And I am just wondering if this is not another portrayal of the Caribbean Elephant seal. The creature is called "Water Horse" in nearby Central America and there are sightings of sea monsters near to Cuba that are probably actually Elephant seals, and some that possibly came ashore at Cuba (Particularly in the 1940s) It is not an alligator and it has mammalian teeth (not Reptillian) with distinctive canines at the corners of its jaws. It is also not a whale because of those teeth.

Caribbean Ground Sloth?

Another Taino artifact is this small "Bear" representation. Since there are supposed to be no bears in the area, the next suggestion is that it could possibly represent a surviving ground sloth. The Tainos lived in Cuba and Cuba is one place the bear-sized Groundsloths are alleged to have survived. Also it does seem the paws are meant to show some sizeable hooked claws, although that part may not seem readily apparent at first.

Another Ameranthropoides loysi?

I came upon the following tattoo design while browsing and I thought of the following comparison. The Tainos are Arawaks in the Caribbean area but they ultimately came from South America and the tattoo pattern could easily have originated in Colombia