The Mapinguari
Deep in the Amazon, people tell of a huge, shaggy creature with a terrible smell that walks on two legs.
What was reported
In the western Amazon, Indigenous peoples, rubber tappers and hunters tell of the mapinguari: a large, shaggy animal that walks upright, roars, smells foul and is almost impossible to kill. Some versions give it a single eye or a mouth on its belly.
In the 1990s, American ornithologist David Oren, who had worked in the region for years, collected dozens of accounts and suggested the stories might describe a surviving giant ground sloth, an animal thought to have died out about 10,000 years ago.
Explanations offered
Oren's searches found no animal, and most scientists think a large animal like that could not stay hidden. Others suggest the legend may preserve a very old memory of giant sloths, which did live alongside the first people in South America.
- When
- Told for generations
- Where
- Western Amazon, Brazil
- Witnesses
- Rubber tappers, hunters and Indigenous communities
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.