Mapinguari

The Mapinguari or Mapinguary is a mythological creature from Brazilian folklore. Referred to as the 'Brazilian Bigfoot' in popular media, the Mapinguari is often described as a man-eating monster that is extremely foul-smelling and hairy, with hook-shaped nails, backwards-facing feet, bipedal gait, a gaping mouth in its belly, and a single eye like a Cyclops.

Names and etymology

Câmara Cascudo identified the name Mapinguari as deriving from the Tupi-Guarani mbaé-pi-guari (Guarani: mba'e "that, the thing" + pĭ "foot" + guarî "crooked, twisted") meaning "the thing that has a clubbed, twisted, or backwards-turned foot".

Mapinguari is known to the Karitiana people of Brazil as Kida harara (Karitiâna: "laughing beast"), Kida so'emo ("beast with black face") or Owoj/Owojo (lit. "maternal grandfather" or "mother's brother's son").

Some authors[who?] relate the Mapinguari to the Segamai of the Machiguenga people of Peru. Ethnologist Glenn H. Shepard, who collected testimonies about the Segamai instead identified a different Machiguenga mythical creature as equivalent to the Mapinguari, called Oshetoniro ("mother of spider monkeys"). This is a large monkey-like creature possessing "demonic powers and gigantic penises. They can summon wind and darkness, cause panic and confusion, and are said to rape and kill human victims".

The Juma has been cited as another name of the Mapinguari. Candace Slater distinguishes the two as different beings, though grouped together as types of Curupiras.

Description

Mapinguari was believed to haunt the forests of Pará, Amazonas and Acre into the 20th century.

The Mapinguari is described as a giant monkey, with a monkey-like face, hairy like a spider monkey but human-sized or larger than a man, with backwards-oriented donkey-like hooves, and a large mouth split from nose to stomach. It has long red, brown, or black hair, dense enough as to make the Mapinguari effectively bulletproof bar the area near the navel, which is the only place vulnerable to gunshots. Different, or additional defense features may be present. In Acre, the Mapinguari was said to have a crocodilian-like hard-shelled skin, and feet shaped like the end of a pestle or Brazil nut capsules. In Tefé, Amazonas a Mapinguari was described as having a shell similar to a turtle's.

The other recurring feature of the Mapinguari is a large, single eye in either the belly or the forehead, like a Cyclops. A typical description is found among the Mura people, with a single eye on the head and a large vertical mouth on the belly.

The Mapinguari is a man-eater that eats its victims head-first. It chews its victim's head slowly, as if it was chewing tobacco. It is variously said to be nocturnal, crepuscular, or diurnal, and to lay in wait in the dim light of the deep forest before lunging to attack. It announces itself with loud screaming, frightening humans into flight (Cascudo suspected this part to be relatively young lore, as it was mentioned by 20th century rubber tappers but not in the literature of the colonial period). Mapinguari may also scream while retreating into the forest after having been attacked itself, even without having been injured.

Although the common version claims the Mapinguari only devours the head, a testimony described the creature devouring an entire body piecemeal: the head, then limbs, entrails, and torso of a man. Cascudo also noted that the Mapinguari can tear the flesh in large pieces.

A rubber tapper (seringueiro) quoted in 1928 claimed that he had gone hunting in the woods while his workmate remained in their shared hut for the Sunday. When the rubber tapper returned to their dwellings, he found his companion being devoured by the Mapinguari, which had jaguar-like claws and a mouth "as large as a lapel", reaching from the face to the stomach. This tale frames the Mapinguari as a punishment for breaking Sabbath, and exhibits Christian influence as a result. The hunter leaves the hut arguing that "one goes hungry even on a Sunday", or "one still must eat on Sunday". Conversely, Mapinguari deliberately chooses a holiday or Sunday to hunt its victims, putting the people that remain active in such days at risk.

The ornithologist David C. Oren recorded that the voice of the Mapinguari is alternatively said to be loud but similar to a human screaming, or akin to thunder. In a break with the portrayal of the Mapinguari as a predator, Oren recorded claims that the Mapinguari twists bacaba palm trees (Oenocarpus bacaba) to the ground and feeds on the palm heart and its berry-like fruit.

In Acre, it was said that Indians who attain an advanced age transform into Mapinguari. The idea that men who grow exceedingly old turn into Mapinguaris was shared by the Macuna people of Colombia and the natives of the Yotahy river[clarification needed], who in the later case would kill the elderly before they could turn into Mapinguari. An indigenous chief (tuixaua) claimed that the Mapinguari was "the ancient king of the region". Different folklore describes the Mapinguari as a former human shaman.[bettersourceneeded]

Mapinguari dung resembles the droppings of a horse.

Related mythological beings

Cascudo suggested that the Mapinguari did not arise at once but was a composite of the Gorjala (a giant), the Pé de Garrafa ("bottle footed"), the Curupira (invulnerability, backwards feet), and the Matutiú (black-haired, long-armed and clawed giant).

Although part of the folklore of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, the Mapinguari shares several similarities with the Afro-Brazilian Quibungo. Both are described as hairy monsters that eat people, have a large, vertical gaping mouth from the face to the stomach, and originate when a man grows exceedingly old and transforms into the monster. It has been proposed that Mapinguari folklore incorporated the idea of having a large vertical mouth from the Quibungo. While the Mapinguari always has this mouth between face and stomach, the Quibungo is variously reported as having it from the nose or the throat to the stomach, or even on its back.

Mapinguari is one of many folklore creatures around the world that have backwards feet, which make backwards prints and confuse hunters attempting to track them. This same feature has been given to mythical human tribes like the Caapora in Brazil, Máguare in Venezuela, Cauá in Bolivia, and Chudiachaque in Peru.

Besides the Cyclops of Greek mythology, a single eye like the Mapinguari has also been assigned to the European Ogre, and other fantastic beings of Brazilian folklore including the Labatut, Capelobo, and Curupira.

Cryptozoology

Bernard Heuvelmans (1958) speculated that the Mapinguari was an unknown primate, akin to Bigfoot. Likewise, Câmara Cascudo (1962) noted close similarity between the Mapinguari and the Mongolian "Wild Man" or Kümün Görügesü, also known by its Russian name Almas.

Monteiro[pt] (1977) conjectured that the Mapinguari was based on the Andean or spectacled bear, which is said to "hug" its victims.

In a 1993 paper, David C. Oren suggested that the Mapinguari might be based on recent sightings of an extinct ground sloth. His theory first favored a small sized mylodontid about 1,8 meters tall, then a megalonychid after collecting more testimonies, due to claims of the animal having four canine-like teeth. Oren recorded tales of recent hunting of Mapinguari during his research in the Tapajós river basin between the 1970s and the 1990s, including claims of hunters who had kept hair and claws of this animal before discarding them due to the stench, which was compared to a mixture of feces and rotten flesh. One of Oren's arguments for a ground sloth identification was that mylodontid ground sloths are known to have had multiple layers of protective osteoderms in the skin of their shoulders, back, and thighs, and also very thick and close ribs in their chest, leaving the belly as the only unarmored spot. This would account for the Mapinguari being regarded as invulnerable to projectile weapons except in the belly, eye, or mouth during vocalizations. Oren dismissed claims of Mapinguari having a single eye, considering such accounts the result of incorporating this element from European monsters like the Cyclops, as a result of Portuguese colonial influence. This same point had been previously raised by Cascudo despite Cascudo not considering ground sloths as a possible origin for the Mapinguari. In the native testimonies collected by Oren, the creature was said to have a monkey-like face instead, with a muzzle similar to a horse's, except shorter. Oren's hypothesis was received with criticism by other scientists.

Ethnologist Gerard H. Shepard (2002) also identified the Oshetoniro of the Machiguenga with a folk memory of a ground sloth. In the same essay compilation, Manuel Lizarralde compared the Mapinguari to the legendary red-colored "giant monkey" Shaaroba of the Barí people of Colombia and Venezuela, described either as a 500–800 kg animal similar to a spider monkey with jaguar-like claws, or a cross between a cow and a jaguar. Lizarralde reasoned that this could be another memory of a ground sloth, because the Barí call monkeys (monos in Spanish) not only primates but also non-primate tree-climbing mammals like kinkajou and olingo, bringing the possibility that they would also include sloths. According to Oren, peri-Amazonian peoples in contact with spectacled bears regard the bear and the Mapinguari as very different animals, despite their similar size.

Long before Oren, the Argentinian paleontologist Florentino Ameghino (1898) believed that ground sloths were still alive in South America. Ameghino based this opinion on a piece of apparently fresh ground sloth pelt found in a cave of Última Esperanza Province, Chile and the testimony of explorer Ramón Lista, who claimed to have shot at a hairy pangolin-like creature without scales while in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, without being able to injure it. This pelt indeed belonged to a mylodontid ground sloth, but was later dated to the late Pleistocene, around 13,200 years ago.

Geobiologist Paul S. Martin (2005) argued against any credible possibility of ground sloth survival, pointing out that no ground sloth remains had been found in Holocene fossil records. However, a number of ground sloth species are now known to have survived into the early Holocene. These include one mylodontid, Glossotherium robustum, whose reconstructed range extended into the Amazonian region.

Like living tree sloths, ground sloths had laterally rotated feet that impeded them to run and might account for the twisted feet repeatedly attributed to the Mapinguari. They also had long claws that they are presumed to have used to grasp vegetation for feeding and in self-defense, which would account for the Mapinguari's jaguar-like claws. Unlike the Mapinguari, ground sloths have long been interpreted as strict vegetarian animals including specialized browsers, grazers, and mixed feeders (browsers and grazers). Nevertheless, a 2021 study indicated that at least one of the most recent ground sloths, the mylodontid Mylodon, was omnivorous.

A 2023 academic study of the 1995 discovery of giant sloth osteoderms "modified into primordial pendants” suggested that humans lived in South America contemporaneously with giant sloths and made these artifacts between 25,000 and 27,000 years ago. As the last ground sloths didn't become extinct until several millennia later, journalists speculated that they may very well have "served as inspiration for the Mapinguari, a mythical beast that, in Amazonian legend, had the nasty habit of twisting off the heads of humans and devouring them".

Mapinguari

Names and etymology

Description

Related mythological beings

Cryptozoology

See also

Bibliography

External links