Mpinguari or Mpinguary, (also called the ''Juma'') are monsterous jungle-dwelling spirits from
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
ian folklore.
Description
There are two major depictions of it. Some described them as a hairy humanoid
cyclops
In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes ( ; el, Κύκλωπες, ''Kýklōpes'', "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes"; singular Cyclops ; , ''Kýklōps'') are giant one-eyed creatures. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguish ...
. This version is often said to have a gaping mouth on its abdomen.
Others claim that it is a modern day sighting of the
giant ground sloth
''Megatherium'' ( ; from Greek () 'great' + () 'beast') is an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. It is best known for the elephant-sized type species ' ...
, an animal estimated to have gone extinct during the early
holocene
The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...
.
[Oren, David C. "Does the Endangered Xenarthran Fauna of Amazonia Include Remnant Ground Sloths?", ''Edentata'' (June 2001) p. 2-5] Skeptics point out that there haven't been any fossil records of ground sloths for thousands of years
Terminology
According to Felipe Ferreira Vander Velden, its name is a combination of the
Tupi-Guarani words "mbaé", "pi", and "guari", meaning "''a thing that has a bent ''
r' crooked foot ''
r' paw''".
[Felipe Ferreira Vander Velden "Sobre caes e indios: domesticidade, classificacao zoologica e relacao humano-animal entre os Karitiana", ''Revista de Antropología'' 15 (2009) p. 125-143] Other names by which they are referred to include the
Karitiana ''kida harara'',
and the
Machiguenga
The Machiguenga (also Matsigenka, Matsigenga) are an indigenous people who live in the high jungle, or''montaña'', area on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the Amazon Basin jungle regions of southeastern Peru. Their population in 2020 amou ...
''segamai''.
See also
*
List of legendary creatures
The following is a list of lists of legendary creatures, beings and entities from the folklore record. Entries consist of legendary and unique creatures, not of particularly unique individuals of a commonly known species.
Alphabetical lists
* ...
* ''
Mylodon
''Mylodon'' is a genus of extinct ground sloth belonging to the family Mylodontidae, known from the region of Patagonia in Chile and Argentina in southern South America. With a total length of 3 to 4 m, it is one of the best-known and largest rep ...
''
References
Sources
*
Martin, Paul S. 2007. ''Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America''.
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
.
*Shepard, G. H. 2002. "Primates and the Matsigenka" in Agustín Fuentes & Linda D. Wolfe. ''Primates Face to Face: The Conservation Implications of Human-nonhuman Primate Interconnections''.
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
. {{ISBN, 9781139441476
Brazilian folklore
Indigenous Amazonian legendary creatures