Mapinguari

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Experts believe it is possible that the Mapinguari could be a species of giant sloth that is still alive today .

The Mapinguari is a myth of Cario- Indians According to a monster in a cave on their tribal lands in the Brazilian rainforest lives, about 2300 km from the mouth of the Amazon . The creature is said to be active only at night and to live on both vegetable and animal food. People are also said to have fallen victim to it.

This legend has recently attracted the attention of cryptozoology . David Oren , an American biologist and anthropologist , and his Brazilian colleague Ilton DaSilva, based on descriptions of the Cario Indians and examinations of the footprints found, came to the conclusion that the Mapinguari could be a giant sloth previously thought to be extinct .

They were part of the American megafauna , the last remnants of which are the jaguar and the tapir , and are considered to have been extinct since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago ( Quaternary extinction wave ). Fossil finds in the limestone quarries of Gainsville (USA) in a 2 million year old rock layer prove that the large animals were at home from the Amazon region up to Florida at the time of their greatest distribution .

Oren and DaSilva provide the following evidence to support their hypothesis that a megatherium still exists as a living fossil in the Amazon today :

  • Matches between fossilized giant sloth footprints and alleged Mapinguari prints from the Amazon
  • During several expeditions into the tribal area of ​​the Cario, the researchers heard loud and strange animal cries at night, which were assigned to the Mapinguari by their Indian leaders.
  • The Cario say that hunters of the tribe tried several times to kill the animal, but that it withstood the bullets of their hunting rifles and even killed several experienced hunters. The researchers found this plausible for a megatherium: An 11,000 year old giant sloth skin from the collection of the British Museum in London shows that pebble-sized pieces of bone were embedded in the skin of these animals and were so close together that they could possibly slow down a bullet far enough. to protect important organs.

Several expeditions are now planned to prove the continued existence of the giant sloth. This task is made more difficult by the size of the search area (about 6.5 million square kilometers ), only 40 percent of which has been explored, and also by the fact that the animal sought would be nocturnal. The supposed evidence of Oren and DaSilva is viewed critically by experts.

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