Is Megatherium still alive in the Amazon?

[Trithemius]

RIO BRANCO, Brazil (July 8) -- Perhaps it is nothing more than a legend, as skeptics say. Or maybe it is real, as those who claim to have seen it avow. But the mere mention of the mapinguary, the giant slothlike monster of the Amazon, is enough to send shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s largest rain forest.

This part caught my attention:


Glenn Shepard Jr., an American ethnobiologist and anthropologist based in Manaus, said he was among the skeptics until 1997, when he was doing research about local wildlife among the Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in Peru. Tribal members all mentioned a fearsome slothlike creature that inhabited a hilly, forested area in their territory.

Dr. Shepard said “the clincher that really blew me away” came when a member of the tribe remarked matter of factly that he had also seen a mapinguary at the natural history museum in Lima. Dr. Shepard checked; the museum has a diorama with a model of the giant prehistoric ground sloth.

Link to article (http://news.aol.com/story/_a/amazon-monster-is-only-a-myth-or-is-it/20070708094909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001)

[Laisrean]

Man, that would be so awesome if it still existed. That region is so remote that it is quite possible that it does.

However, natives can't always be trusted. That member of the tribe had seen the replica in a museum as he said, so he knew what the thing looked like and would know how to lie when describing what he'd seen. I believe something similar was the case with Mokele Mbembe....

I really want it to be be alive still, but oral accounts alone aren't enough to prove it.

[Trithemius]

However, natives can't always be trusted. That member of the tribe had seen the replica in a museum as he said, so he knew what the thing looked like and would know how to lie when describing what he'd seen. I believe something similar was the case with Mokele Mbembe....

If it was just the one native's story of a giant forest creature that just happened to look like this creature he'd seen at a musem, I'd totally agree with you. But when you take into account how widespread the legend is, and how similar the descriptions are, even between tribes that have had no contact with each other, it makes you wonder.

[aluokaloo]

I don't think that megatherium is alive, but if they are...man I would love to see one in the flesh!!! Perhaps some of these myths and legends are ancestral memories passed down from generation to generation!!

[Garm]

For a minute I thought that was Megatherion[one of Crowley's titles]

Then I remembered what I had read about in the fifth grade, something about as tall as a giraffe but built more like a rhino

'Twould be exciting

Wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley way, though

[Laisrean]

If it was just the one native's story of a giant forest creature that just happened to look like this creature he'd seen at a musem, I'd totally agree with you. But when you take into account how widespread the legend is, and how similar the descriptions are, even between tribes that have had no contact with each other, it makes you wonder.

That's true. Their legends and lore goes back well before Europeans arrived on their continent.

That being the case, I have no doubt their tribe really did see Megatherium and passed this memory down in oral legends from generation to generation. That doesn't mean it still exists today, but I can see their tribe having encountered this creature a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago and keeping the memory alive in stories/songs.

The legend of the Thunderbird is theorized to have been a tribal memory passed from oral tradition of real giant condors that really existed a few thousand years ago, but probably don't anymore. Maybe this Megatherium legend is the same way.

I'd like it very much for Megatherium to still exist, and it may in fact still exist, but more evidence is needed. If it is out there then hair and stool samples shouldn't be too difficult to obtain. These things are huge, after all. Maybe an infrared search from the air like the police do in those helicopters could pick up something.

It is certainly worth exploring.

[Laisrean]

I don't think that megatherium is alive, but if they are...man I would love to see one in the flesh!!! Perhaps some of these myths and legends are ancestral memories passed down from generation to generation!!

Yep. I'd say so...

Consider European myths of trolls and wildmen and so on. Couldn't these be dim tribal memories early humans passed on from oral traditions of actual encounters with Neanderthals? I'd say that is very likely.

That doesn't mean this necessarily doesn't still exists, and I would really like very much if it did, but there isn't any hard evidence right now.

[greenmoon]

I like to think that there are still mysteries and creatures on this earth - in the deepest seas is another area I like to think about.