Serra do Divisor and the Amazon — the Mapinguari

OVERVIEW

The Mapinguari is a creature of Brazilian Amazon folklore, said to haunt the forests of Pará, Amazonas and Acre into the 20th century: a giant ape-like animal with long hair, backward hooves, a mouth from nose to stomach, invulnerable except near the navel, announcing itself with screams. The Serra do Divisor National Park in Acre is one of the places the ornithologist David Oren collected accounts.

HISTORY

By 2001 David Oren had spoken with fifty to eighty Indigenous Brazilians, rubber tappers and miners who said they had seen it, and seven hunters who said they had shot one but kept nothing because of the stench — in places including Eirunepé, Manicoré, Carauarí, Marabá, Juína and the Serra do Divisor National Park. In a 1993 paper he proposed that the Mapinguari might be based on sightings of a surviving ground sloth, whose armoured skin would leave only the belly vulnerable.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

LEGEND. Oren's hypothesis was criticised by other scientists; Paul S. Martin argued against any ground sloth surviving, though some species are now known to have survived into the early Holocene. No specimen has been produced. The source gives no year for the first written report, so none is entered.

VISITING

A remote national park; access by river, with permits.