Angel's Cryptids of Ecuador

In 1999, Spanish cryptozoologist Angel Morant Forés travelled to the Ecuadorian Amazon for a few months. There, the native people told him of a number of animals which seem unknown to the civilised world. The most well-known of his discoveries must be the rainbow jaguar and the mysterious animal he photographed in a shop, but he was actually told of a stunning ten unidentified mammals inhabiting the region.

According to Forés, the local Shuar Indians assigned no mystical qualities to the animals, and were very sober in their descriptions. They told him that all the animals could still be found in the area.

Extended Scenes of Beast Man

Screencap from the episode.
Image credit National Geographic.

On the American National Geographic website, there are a number of behind-the-scenes and extended videos from Beast Man, "Nightmare of the Amazon". None of them are the deleted scenes that can be read in the script, but they are interesting, and offer more information. There are also a number of videos of scenes which can be watched in the episode. I have left these out.

Berry Pickers in Kapok Forest Reserve see Mapinguary

According to a new report, a group of acai berry pickers in the Kapok Forest Reserve claim to have seen a Mapinguary.

In what appears to be only the second documented Mapinguary sighting of the century, the anonymous eyewitnesses say that they heard a loud scream whilst picking berries, and began to imitate it. However, they realised that the sound was coming from nearby, and soon noticed "a creature dark in colour", two feet high and with only one eye. They fled, and apparently did not sleep for the following week.

Needless to say, a two foot-high Mapinguary has never been reported before. If the story is true, and the animal is a Mapinguary, it could have been a youngster, like the ones allegedly raised by an Indian tribe in the 1980's. This does seem likely, given the fact that it did not attack the berry-pickers.

Of course, this is assuming that the sighting is genuine, and the animal was a Mapinguary, either sloth or ape.

Review: Man V. Monster: Amazon River Beast

Richard holding the green anaconda.
Image credit National Geographic.

In the fifth episode of Man V. Monster, Richard Terry travels to the Amazon Rainforest in search of a creature responsible for a series of violent attacks. This is the second episode dealing with the Amazon: the first covered giant spiders, and the already-reviewed Mapinguary episode was the third and final. Like with that review, this is constructed entirely from memory.

Happy International Sloth Day

Bit creepy.
Image credit aiunau.org.

Today is International Sloth Day, apparently (Sloth Day is on the 19th, not, as NatGeo would have you believe, the 20th), so in honour of the occasion, here are abridged versions of four lesser-known (and one very famous) cryptozoological exploits through history relating to ground sloths. As we will see, ground sloths have had a very important place in palaeontological history. Most of these will eventually get their own blog entries.

Identifying the... Amazonian Death Worm

An illustration of a caecillan Minhocão.
Image credit user Kryptid of Wikipedia.

One of the most well known of all cryptids, ranking among the likes of Nessie and Bigfoot, is the Mongolian death worm. However, the death worm is often misinterpreted amongst non-cryptozoologists as a giant, supremely aggressive and dangerous animal, akin to the wyrms of heraldry.

In actuality, the death worm is usually described as a fairly small, fat burrowing creature, which only attacks when disturbed, fighting back with acid and electric shocks.

Giants in Patagonia

Image credit www.naturalheightgrowth.com.

The word "Patagonia" - which is, in case anyone was unaware, a South American region near Chile and Argentina - actually comes from the name of a (sort-of) cryptid.