The Mapinguari! That’s the name of a cryptid that is said to stalk the Amazon rainforest! The folklore is most common in Brazil as that is where the vast majority of the Amazon rainforest lies in. The Mapinguari if you haven’t guessed, looks like a giant sloth-like or ape-like creature that is reported to have been seen by many local residents within these rainforests.
Given that the Amazon is so big and given that we are still often discovering new species here on the regular it isn’t completely impossible that there are still things there that we have yet to discover, although larger animals are less likely to have not been discovered yet of course… but that doesn’t stop alleged encounters with other large cryptids all over the world such as bigfoot and even dinosaurs and some continue to believe that small groups of larger animals can exist on in very isolated and dense environments far away from civilization.
There is a legend in Brazil that tells of how the Mapinguari came to be and that it once used to be a man, a shaman who discovered the secret to immortality and in response the gods, angered by this, cursed him to live as a beast for the rest of his life… which of course is eternal. Although many claims have it looking like a giant-sloth, many more claim it looks more like some kind of ape-like creature and other claims also say that the beast has backwards pointing feet and a giant cyclops-like eye and even more horrifyingly a mouth in the middle of its stomach! The backwards feet remind me of several other supposed cryptids in South America that also have backwards pointing feet, it seems to be a common folkloric trait on the continent.
In typical cryptid beast fashion, the creature is said to also stink real-bad, awfully bad… to the point that you might even faint upon encountering such a thing.
Interestingly giant ground sloths or the Megatherium did once used to be endemic to the South American continent, from the Early Pliocene to the end of the Pleistocene epochs. So of course, many people will make the claim that perhaps some managed to still survive until this day and live in scarce numbers deep in the Amazonian rainforest, while others claim that giant sloth cryptids could be their decedents. The claws on this giant ground sloth are also curved in such a way and how they would walk would look like backwards feet…
When you think of a sloth you see them as slow, docile, friendly and very relaxed… but their ancestors were much fiercer and more ferocious by miles. The giant ground sloth could easily kill a human if it wanted to and it was one of the largest animals on the continent and even in the world at the time, some as big as modern-day elephants.
Of course, as usual as well there is mis-identification, for example giant anteaters could mistakenly be taken for the Mapinguari.
The Encounter
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A young girl from Brazil told of her story, featured on the program Man Vs. Monster on the National Geographic channel. In the alleged encounter the young girl was out looking for fruit. Eventually strange noises further into the brush would alert the girl, sounding like some kind of big aggressive-sounding animal was nearby.
While peering around looking for the source of the noise, she eventually caught sight of something terrifying through the trees and vegetation, described as large with long black hair, so long that it reached all the way down to its feet. The girl, admittedly very afraid for her life from whatever the creature was, decided to run away.
On further description by the girl, she said the creature was very tall, almost 7ft in height and that it was stood up-right like a man. Due to being scared and quickly running away from the encounter the girl was unable to describe much more of the creature as she didn’t get a good look, but she does believe it was the Mapinguari.
This is one of the many common sightings by locals of the legendary creature.
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