Those who happened to see or at least hear this beast consider themselves the favorites of the gods - because they are lucky to stay alive. Indian grandmothers scare the kids with them. And scientists have been wandering through forests and swamps for years in the vain hope of finding him. This is the mapinguari - the horror of the Amazon, whose name in the language of the aborigines sounds like "lord of the forest."
Bonfire Joao
Long ago, in an Indian village on the Tapajos River (a tributary of the Amazon), there lived a young hunter named João. His hut was at the very edge of the village, very close to the forest. One clear spring morning, João was sitting on the threshold of his house, peacefully smoking his pipe, admiring his beautiful wife, preparing breakfast by the hearth, made of stones in the yard.
Suddenly a shrill scream came from the thicket, as if a man were screaming in pain or fear. Following this, a deafening roar was heard, branches crackled, and a terrible monster came to the edge. He looked like a giant red-headed monkey walking on its hind legs. João was not a coward, but, meeting the gaze of the monster, he seemed petrified with horror.
And even more he was paralyzed by the disgusting smell of feces and rotten meat emanating from the monster. Meanwhile, the terrible creature approached his wife, grabbed her with its paws with huge claws, threw it over its shoulders and instantly disappeared with its prey in the thicket.
Only then did João come to his senses, rushed headlong into the hut, grabbed a gun and rushed in pursuit of the kidnapper. He ran through the forest, looking for traces of the monster. And the footprints were very strange: as if the monster was walking backwards. The chase continued all day. Several times the young hunter almost overtook the enemy, even saw in the distance a red back among the trees. But all the time he was hampered by a terrible stench emanating from the beast. From this, his head was spinning, so that Joao almost fainted.
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Towards evening, the hunter almost caught up with the kidnapper. And then the monster, who was tired of this race, uttered an especially terrible roar, threw the prey to the ground and quickly disappeared into the thicket. Rushing to his wife, Joao saw her decapitated corpse.
After the funeral, the grief-stricken hunter went into the forest, vowing that he would not return to the people until he obtained the scalp of his enemy. For many years he wandered through the woods, hunting down the monster, but he could not find it. Revenge remained unfulfilled, the oath unfulfilled.
And therefore, after the death of Joao, his spirit continues the hunt. Sometimes Indian hunters see a fire in the forest thicket, made by the spirit of the hunter. And then they rush to return to the village to make a sacrifice to the gods and perform a purification ceremony.
He "talked" to the mapinguari
This is just one of the many Native American legends about the mapinguari recorded by the famous explorer David Oren, a Harvard graduate, who organized several expeditions to the Amazon forests at the end of the last century in search of this semi-mythical creature.
“I spoke with seven hunters who claim to have fired at the mapinguari, and 80 people ran into them,” the scientist says. - What do they describe? A creature about two meters in height, moving vertically, with a very strong, unpleasant odor, having a rather heavy and powerful structure, thick tree roots sagging under it. The most likely mechanism of his defense against enemies is the stench described by some witnesses …
This creature has long coarse fur, four large teeth, walks on all fours and on its hind legs. It gives off a disgusting smell of feces and rotting meat. Perhaps this stench helps him to paralyze his victims. The Mapinguari emits an incredibly loud Scream reminiscent of a human, gradually turning into a growl. Its strength is so great that it can rip off the heads of large animals.
Oren recalled that during his expeditions he himself often yelled into the darkness, and the mapinguari answered him.
Monster hunters
However, Oren is not the first to become interested in the "lord of the forest". The bones of the animal were first discovered in 1789 in the coastal swamps of the Luján River near Buenos Aires. The natives decided that it was a giant mole that got to the surface and died in the sun.
Nevertheless, the bones were carefully collected and sent to King Charles IV, who presented them to the Royal Museum of Madrid. Scientist José Corriga collected the skeleton and described it in detail. Even one French diplomat visited the scientist and purchased several engravings of the skeleton for the Paris Museum of Natural History.
In the 1890s, an article by the Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino became a sensation. He wrote about how Ramon Liszt, an Argentine explorer, geographer and adventurer, hunted in Patagonia. Suddenly a huge unknown animal covered with long hair flashed through the bushes. It looked like a giant battleship. Liszt fired at the beast, but the bullets only slid over it, slightly scratching.
Amegino decided to check if the mapinguari existed and went into the forest. There he found quite a few Indian witnesses who had seen this creature. An animal from Indian legends crawled out at night, and during the day hid in a hole dug by huge claws. The hunters said that making an arrow that could pierce the thick skin of the beast was not easy.
One adventurer, João Baptista Azevedo, saw the mapinguari 20 years ago after a 45-day canoe trip.
“I was working by the river when I heard a scream, a terrible scream,” he told Reuters. “Suddenly something resembling a human, completely covered in hair, came out of the forest. The creature walked on two legs and, thank God, did not come close to us. I will always remember that day.
The Indians believe that it is very difficult to kill a monster, a bullet does not take it: the animal's skin is covered with bone growths, like armor. However, there is a known case when a certain rubber collector was hunting in the forest. Suddenly he heard a growl behind his back, turned around and … was stunned with horror.
The native was not taken aback and shot at the creature. At this moment, the air was filled with such a stench that the hunter ran away. After wandering through the forest for several hours, the hunter returned to the carcass and cut off the forepaw of the animal. But the trophy smelled so much that they had to throw it into the bushes.
Pleistocene?
According to Oren's hypothesis, the mapinguari are megateria that have survived to this day, which were previously found in South and Central America.
The giant land sloth was one of those creatures that thrived on our planet during the Ice Age. A bit like a huge hamster, it ate mainly the leaves, which it harvested on the lower branches of trees and bushes. The beast itself lived on the ground, unlike modern sloths, who spend most of their lives in trees.
The territory of America was inhabited by four types of giants. The largest of these was Jefferson's sloth, which grew about the size of a modern elephant and reached five meters in height! All sloths had huge claws, but at the same time they followed a vegetarian diet (so the horror films of the Indians, that the mapinguari allegedly unscrews the heads of the victims and sucks the brain, are most likely groundless). But it is believed that these animals became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene (about 12 thousand years ago).
Oren's main opponent, professor of geology at the University of Arizona Paul Martin, asserts this:
“I think the giant sloth disappeared too long ago. 13 thousand years is a significant period. However, there is a possibility that a native of the Ancient World may still exist in the Amazon, because in this region, huge forests, untouched by civilization, are still preserved, allowing the relict creation to provide the necessary isolation.
The dense and impenetrable, endless forest of the Amazon occupies an area larger than the whole of Western Europe, and 30% of the entire animal and plant world of our planet lives here. The giant sloth was once found in abundance on both American continents, and remains are found from Patagonia to the northwestern United States. The animal could move to the Amazon to hide there from hunters or the invasion of civilization into its natural habitat.
But something more substantial than Native American legends and stories of hunters must confirm Oren's hypothesis. So far, the only material results of his expeditions are the marks of huge claws on the bark of trees, a piece of red wool and about nine kilograms of droppings of unknown origin. But if, nevertheless, Oren or someone else finds a mapinguari, it will be a revolution in science.
Victor MEDNIKOV