David Oren

Image credit BigfootEncouners.com
What else is out there? How incredibly all-embracing our ignorance is.
David C. Oren is an American biologist who currently lives in a small villa in South America. He is a firm believer in the Mapinguary, and as such has been somewhat ostracised from the scientific community.

Oren was educated at Harvard University.

Oren travlled to the Amazon in 1977, and for years worked for the Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belem, one of Brazil's foremost Amazon research centers.

Oren first heard stories of the Mapinguary in 1988, and initally dimissed them as just another legend. However, after a colleauge of his had an encounter, he looked further into the legend, and found over eighty reports of the animal from native Indians, including seven people who claimed to have killed a Mapinguary. Based on the description given by his friend and the natives, Oren determined that, if real, the Mapinguary would have to be a ground sloth. He had gone on expeditions into the Amazon ever since.

He recently moved from Belem to take up a post with U.S. environmental group Nature Conservancy in Brasilia, thousands of miles from the Amazon.

Owing to his belief in the Mapinguary, Oren was refused a position with the National Geographic Society, and recieves no funding, using his own money for his expeditions.

Oren keeps some evidence of the Mapinguary at his villa, including plaster casts of giant sloth-like footprints, and photographs of large claw marks in trees. He has also yelled into the jungle, and heard responses from what he believes to be a Mapinguary.

In 2009, Oren was interviewed by Josh Gates for Destination Truth. In 2011, Oren was interviewed by Pat Spain for an episode of Beast Man. He gave Pat his version of the Mapinguary call, a slowed-down sloth scream. In Pat's night investigation, this call got a response.

Oren has published two papers on the Mapinguary: one in 1993, before he had interviewed people who claimed to have killed the animals, and one more recently.

Notes and references

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