This item establishes another
recent sighting of an apparent giant sloth in the Southern
Appalachians. The observer was able to establish that he was not
looking at a bear or a Sasquatch for that matter. This also establishes why
such sightings are so rare. It is simply that the creature will be seen as a
bear in the majority of cases particularly since it sticks to woodland and views
will always be obscured.
As I posted earlier this year,
the creature is certainly a giant sloth. What is more, its presence in North
America is in the
Southern Appalachians which
is an area able to provide limited succor during the extinction events of the
Pleistocene Nonconformity. That succor may have been little more than residence
in an East West running valley that provided
shelter from the shock wave. The
Appalachians also provided succor from competition with
the western Grizzly which may well have hunted them out.
What this does establish is
that it was possible for large Ice Age Creatures to occasionally survive in the
Appalachians. Thus greater care is well
justified on reports from there with the special caution that misidentification
is a serious risk and that witness need to be carefully questioned to determine
what they actually saw. We also need a refresher on old Indian tales, as they
had a far better opportunity to scout the wildlife.
It is also worth recalling that
all large creatures are sparsely distributed throughout these mountains and
woodlands, but all can shelter in the natural canopy provided by large conifers
with branches draping to the ground. Try it sometime in case you do not
understand what this means.
Our Eastern menagerie now
includes the Sasquatch, the Giant Sloth and the Thunderbird. Further media
exposure should flush out a large number of individual sightings that have never
surfaced for lack of an outlet.
Curiously, the Mastodon should
also have made it through, but were likely hunted out by humanity. On the other
hand airborne heat sensing is overdue over the obvious remote tracts that can be
searched.
In the meantime, we have
several hard reports for both the sloth and the Thunderbird. I expected to see
neither and for the moment neither appears to be particularly nocturnal. Yet a
rabbit hunting giant owl like bird would naturally be nocturnal and would
explain the rarity of sightings generally. The sloth will surely be vegetarian
and not a ruminant. It may well strip leaves and conifer needles. In fact,
recent conifer growth is incredibly plentiful and easily masticated. All that
is needed is an adjusted digestive system not unlike the adaptation of the Giant
Panda. Such a diet would allow feeding at night and no need to travel much at
all.
My key point is that I can feed
the works without breaking a sweat. After that they merely need to stick to the
woods to never interact with humanity.
Huge Sloth-Like Cryptid Sighting in
Southeast Georgia
FRIDAY, APRIL 06, 2012
An associate forwarded an inquiry they
received about a sighting in southeast Georgia:
Last Autumn I caught
sight of a large animal moving through the cypress trees of the swampy area that
borders one of the fields I work. I live in Ware County, Georgia. I was working the field at
the time and noticed the movement. It was late afternoon and still light out.
The animal was huge, hairy and walked on all fours but I did see it rear up
once. It reminded me of a black bear but much larger and lighter in color. I was
about 200 yds. away from it but I still had a good look. I know for a fact that
this was not a bear. I've seen black bears in the Okefenokee and this didn't
look like one of those at all. I later saw a picture of an animal, a mapinguari,
that is supposed to be a legend. I swear that is what I saw. Have you heard of
this animal? I haven't seen it since but there have been a lot of cypress trees
tore up lately and I'm wondering if it has been causing it. Some people have
said for many years that there's a swamp beast in Ware County but I never paid it no mind until
now. Henry
NOTE: could this have been a
Bigfoot? I have included other information about the Mapinguari...which is a
creature supposedly from the Amazon rain forests. Anybody familiar with a swamp
beast story in southeast Georgia? Lon
-----
Sloth Scares the
Boonville Natives
Hammond Times, Hammond, Indiana
Wednesday, August 18,
1937
Boonville, Ind., Aug. 18. [1937] – (U.P.) – A stranger
who declined to identify himself strolled into the newspaper office here today
and declared that the weird, mysterious beast whose screams and prowlings have
terrified residents of the Ohio river valley is simply a giant
sloth.
The man said he and his uncle were
returning home from Mexico two years ago with the sloth,
which they had captured on a game hunting expedition. He said they lost it
near Evansville and never had found a trace of it
since. He was uncertain if it was two-toed or three-toed, but averred that
sloths came in both varieties.
When a sloth is hungry and frightened,
he said, it will give vent to blood-curdling shrieks and yells such as terrified
river valley residents have reported they have heard intermittently since Friday
night [August 13].
At that time Mrs. Ralph Duff reported
she caught a fleeting glimpse of the animal and said it looked like an
ape.
Posses, according to reports here, are
searching the river bottoms cautiously in 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 monster also.
The Mapinguary
The mapinguary (also spelled
"mapinguari") is a hairy biped reported from the Amazon Rainforest of South America. It is firmly embedded in local folklore,
and some legends show characteristics that would tend to classify this beast as
supernatural, scaring away researchers who work in the field of cryptozoology.
The mapinguary sometimes speaks, likes to punish hunters who violate religious
holidays, and is often bulletproof. Certain lore seems to link it with the South
American werewolf. The more werewolf-like version of the mapinguary is called
the "wolf's cape" and is thought to have originally been human. [Alternately a more cowshaped creature is said to wear a wolf's skin and this is the better description of a groundsloth. This is a separate Cryptid with a separate name, and it has a TAIL, which the Mapinguari clearly does NOT-DD]
Other
sightings describe what sounds more like a real animal. The mapinguary looks
something like Bigfoot, being a bipedal hairy giant, but it is less
human-looking than Bigfoot. In fact, it resembles a giant sloth, an animal that
was alive during the last Ice Age. Even its footprints resemble those of the
giant sloth. Therefore, cryptozoologists who are investigating this creature
usually think that if it exists, it is really a giant
sloth.
Ornithologist David C. Oren is the
researcher who is most strongly associated with the theory that mapinguary
legends represent sightings of living giant sloths who survived the Ice Age
extinctions, but there are many other scientists and adventurers who have looked
into the problem. Charles Fort was perhaps the first to suggest the survival of
giant ground sloths in South America, in reference to legends about the "blonde
beast" of Patagonia.
-----
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 the mapinguary, the giant slothlike monster of the Amazon,
is enough to send shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s
largest rain forest.
The folklore here is full of tales of
encounters with the creature, and nearly every Indian tribe in the Amazon,
including those that have had no contact with one another, have a word for the
mapinguary (pronounced ma-ping-wahr-EE). The name is usually translated as “the
roaring animal” or “the fetid beast.”
So widespread and so consistent are such
accounts that in recent years a few scientists have organized expeditions to try
to find the creature. They have not 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 human contact with the last of the ground sloths,”
thousands of years ago, said David Oren, a former director of research at the
Goeldi Institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. “We know that
extinct species can survive as legends for hundreds of years. But whether such
an animal still exists or not is another question, one we can’t answer
yet.”
Dr. Oren said he had talked to “a couple
of hundred people” who had said they had seen the mapinguary in the most remote
parts of the Amazon and a handful who had said they had had direct
contact.
In some areas, the creature is said
to have two eyes, while in other accounts it 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 humans unfortunate enough to cross its
path.
[The Groundsloth explanation has no way to account for these strange variations in description whereas the ape explanation explains both features and very well. For that reason I say the Mapinguari is an ape and the groundsloth is a different cryptid with a different name. See any of my earlier blog postings on the matter-Dale D.]
But all accounts agree that the creature
is tall, seven feet or more when it stands on two legs, that it emits a strong,
extremely disagreeable odor, and that it has thick, matted fur, which covers a
carapace that makes it all but impervious to bullets and
arrows.
“The only way you can kill a mapinguary
is by shooting at its head,” said Domingos Parintintin, a tribal leader in
Amazonas
State. “But that is hard to
do because it has the power to make you dizzy and turn day into night. So the
best thing to do if you see one is climb a tree and hide.”
Geovaldo Karitiana, 27, a member of the
Karitiana tribe, claims to have seen one about three years ago, as he was
hunting in the jungle near an area that his tribe calls “the cave of the
mapinguary.”
“It was coming toward the village and
was making a big noise,” he said in a recent interview on the tribe’s
reservation in the western Amazon. “It stopped when it got near me, and that’s
when the bad smell made me dizzy and tired. I fainted, and when I came to, the
mapinguary was gone.”
Mr. Karitiana’s father, Lucas, confirmed
his son’s account. He said that when his son took him back to the site of the
encounter, he saw a cleared pathway where the creature had departed, “as if a
boulder had rolled through and knocked down all the trees and
vines.”
Though the descriptions of the mapinguary may resemble the
sasquatch of North America or the yeti of
Himalayan lore, the comparisons stop there. Unlike its counterparts in the
Northern Hemisphere, the creature is said not to flee human contact, but to
aggressively hunt down the hunter, turning the tables on those who do not
respect the jungle’s unwritten rules and limits.
“Often, the mapinguary gets revenge on
people who transgress, who go where they shouldn’t go or harvest more animals
or plantsthan they can consume, or set cruel traps,” said Márcio Souza, a
prominent Brazilian novelist and playwright who lives in Manaus, in the central
Amazon, and often draws on Amazon history and folklore in his
works.
Amazon folklore, in fact, is full of
fanciful creatures that are used to explain unwelcome or embarrassing phenomena.
The boto, for example, is a type 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 impregnating impressionable young virgins.
When a hunter or woodsman gets lost in
the jungle, he often blames the curupira, a mischievous red-haired elf who has
feet that face backward and takes delight in making trails that lead travelers
astray. And when an experienced navigator inexplicably disappears or drowns in
calm waters, he is usually said to have fallen victim to the iara, a cross
between a siren and a mermaid.
Scientists link the current mapinguary
legends to the Megatherium, one of the largest mammals ever. It vanished
thousands of years ago.
“If you’re a rubber tapper and you’re
returning to camp empty-handed, you’d better have a pretty good explanation for
your boss,” said Marcos Vinícius Neves, director of the government’s department
of historical and cultural patrimony in Acre State, where a statue of a
mapinguary has been erected at a public plaza here in the capital. “The
mapinguary is the best excuse you could possible imagine.”
Mr. Souza, the writer, counts himself
among those who believe the mapinguary is a myth. The deforestation of the
Amazon has accelerated so rapidly over the last generation, he argues, that if
the creature really existed, “there would have 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 be real.
The giant ground sloth, Megatherium, was
once one of the largest mammals to walk the earth, bigger than a modern
elephant. Fossil evidence is abundant and widespread, found as far south as
Chile and as far north as
Florida. But
the trail stops cold thousands of years ago.
“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 in Manaus, said he was among the
skeptics until 1997, when he was doing research about local wildlife among the
Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in Peru.
Tribal members all mentioned a fearsome slothlike creature that inhabited a
hilly, forested area in their territory.
[NOT by any name resembling "Mapinguari", BTW-DD]
Dr. Shepard said “the clincher that
really blew me away” came when a member of the tribe remarked matter of factly
that he had also seen a mapinguary at the natural history museum in Lima. Dr. Shepard checked;
the museum has a diorama with a model of the giant prehistoric ground
sloth.
“At the very least, what we have here is
an ancient remembrance of a giant sloth, like those found in Chile recently,
that humans have come into contact with,” he said. “Let me put it this way: Just
because we know that mermaids and sirens are myths doesn’t mean that manatees
don’t exist.”
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 roaming around,” Dr. Shepard said. - The
New York Times
-----
A July 2007 report from Rio Branco, Brazil states that a creature with
one eye, like the Cyclops of Greek mythology, as well as a gaping mouth was seen
wandering in the deep jungle. The creature was tall, seven feet or more when it
stood on two legs, that it emitted a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, and
that it has thick, matted fur.
Geovaldo Karitiana, 27, a member of the
Karitiana tribe, claims to have seen as similar creature in 2003, as he was
hunting in the jungle near an area that his tribe calls “the cave of the
mapinguari.”
“It was coming toward the village and
was making a big noise,” he said in a recent interview on the tribe’s
reservation in the western Amazon. “It stopped when it got near me, and that’s
when the bad smell made me dizzy and tired. I fainted, and when I came to, it
was gone.”
Mr. Karitiana’s father, Lucas, confirmed
his son’s account. He said that when his son took him back to the site of the
encounter, he saw a cleared pathway where the creature had departed, “as if a
boulder had rolled through and knocked down all the trees and
vines.”
Source: Witness accounts to reporter
NOTE: The mere mention of the
mapinguari, the giant sloth-like monster of the Amazon, is enough to send
shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s largest rain
forest. The name is usually translated as “the roaring animal” or “the fetid
beast.”
Though the descriptions of the mapinguari
may resemble the Sasquatch of North America,
the comparison stop there. Unlike its counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere,
the creature is said not to flee human contact, but to aggressively hunt down
the hunter, turning the tables on those who do not respect the jungle’s
unwritten rules and limits.
Sources:
Hammond Times, Hammond, Indiana
The Blemmyes (Latin Blemmyae) was a tribe which became fictionalized as a race of creatures believed to be acephalous (headless) monsters who had eyes and mouths on their chest. Pliny the Elder writes of them that Blemmyes traduntur capita abesse, ore et oculis pectore adfixis ("It is said that the Blemmyes have no heads, and that their mouth and eyes are put in their chests"). The Blemmyes were said to live in Africa, in Nubia, Kush, or Ethiopia, generally south of Egypt.
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