Thinking Sideways: What is the Mapinguari?

to crime Con dot com. Use our promo code sideways to get a discount on your ticket, and we'll see you there. Because you know we're gonna be there. We're gonna do a live show. We'll probably have a meet up or three. It's gonna be great. You really should go. Okay, we'll talk to you then bye. Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as always joined by Devine, and once again we've got a

mysterious story for you. Yeah, this is creepy. It's a creepy cryptid Yeah, this one that this oh what is the WrestleMania that you smell? But I'm cooking. Yeah, that's not gonna work in this episode, because this is a stinky critter. I also have no idea what you're talking about. So well, it was twelve when I watched WrestleMania, so it's been a long time that the appropriate rates here

all of the angry email. Well, this week we are going to talk about a cryptid, and we're going to talk about a cryptod that I think a lot of people have probably not heard of before. No different, noman, no, no, no, no, it's the mocking waw mopping. I'm gonna probably mispronounce it every time I say, well, I'm just going to really

creatively avoid even saying at once. Okay, Well, the mopping Wari is a creature that is said to live in the Amazon Rainforest, mostly in the northern part of South America, so Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, kind of that general tom portion of the that continent. If that confuses you when you look at the map, it's a fat part, yes, it's South America. Was a drumstick that would be the part with the meat, yes, yes, the part part, not

the sticky part. Yes. Uh So the locals in that area have been telling each other stories for generations about this creature, and when the Europeans came to South America, they very happily told them about the mopping Wari as well. So let's this is a different creater. So let's just kind of start at the beginning. Let's start with what

does it look like? I just want to sidetrack immediately and tell you that my favorite thing about this part of the world is that there are literally so many different species of things that we genuinely have not discovered yet, and so the idea of cryptids and things like that, I just love. And I also extra love when the white people came down there and the natives were like, listen, this is the thing we know. They were like, that's not like anything I've ever sat heard. Absolutely, that's a

fake thing. What stop pulling my leg? There's nothing in my pocket? Yeah no, I I so I don't know. I immediately love the story immediately. Well okay, I feel validated, thank you. Okay. Well, let's uh, let's just like I said, start with the beginning, which is what is the mopping Oar look like. I just want to say I like the story too good. Well, you know, it's okay. I mean, it's it's a it's a gradia. It's graduated scale. As long as we all kind of like it, we're okay. Yeah.

Typically our creature is described as traveling around on four legs, but it has been said to stand when it's standing on its rear legs, stands somewhere between seven to nine ft tall. That converts to to to two and three quarter meters. No, not short at all. We're not really sharing what the creature weighs because nobody's ever found one, so they can't ever get an accurate guess on its weight.

And to be honest, I mean, you know, really, when all you can see is what it stands like in the jungle, you're probably not too worried about its weight. You're probably worried about oh my god, that's a big giant from it actually running away by this point, even looking at it anymore exactly. The skin of the bopping Warrie is said to be super tough. It's described as being so tough that it is impervious to both arrows

and bullets. This particular cryptod is covered in a very thick coat of hair all over its entire body, and that hair is sometimes described as like that. I have you guys seen the photos of the tail of the giant ant eaters. Yeah, yeah, and that hair looks I don't know, it's giant locks of hair, that's what. Apparently

this creature is covered in that length of hair. Something in that range that's fairly rare and wild animals and it well depending well, okay, in high altitude animals, you would expect that density of hair and the range forest. But then again we gotta be careful of Okay, just because the hair is long doesn't mean it's dead. Well,

I guess the length is the thing already. That's throwing me off, because I would agree that, you know, high altitude, you'd want dense, but you wouldn't want long because it would catch all the snow and freeze and get clumpy. You want dead short hair. So really, there's no good reason for an animal to have long hair like that, because it's pretty much always good for in almost any pretty just pretty much just gonna get really awful and hinder them. It's not good, and they have to be

sheered regularly. Does not always proceed in a rational manner. A lot of people try to, you know, believe that it does, but not necessarily. Yeah. Well, in the hair on this particular creature, the coloring is debatable. Some people will say that it is reddish in color. Others will

say that is more of a black colors. We don't have an exact and with cryptids it's always like this, so I'm not really thrown off a lot of times it matters on the lighting that people have, Truman or you know, maybe they're like people and they just have different colored hair. Absolutely, absolutely, the most animals do. Yeahue The hair though, apparently needs to be washed because the

mopping warri is a stinky, stinky, stinky critter. Uh yeah, it by accounts of locals, you know that it has arrived by your nose sensing it before you actually see or hear it show up. How do you know that these are just like, you know, hippies? I really, I was really thinking, man, it's just one of those seventies hippies. But then I realized the story went way back. This is where the hippies came from. The hippie the hippie

origins sounded. No, I don't think that's it, But I do enjoy the stories that I've read from locals that talk about the mopping Warri showing up and they're hiding, and as it gets closed for the smell gets stronger and stronger until it is so strong and overwhelms them and they pass out. I'm just I find it really funny. I mean, it takes a really strong smell to make somebody just pass out. It does, it does. And we'll talk about the reasons of why that might quote unquote

be happening. But it would make sense to me if they had long hair in the rainforest, if the sweat that was coming off of them and then the general stank of being dirty in general was all getting j yeah, or you know, berries and stuff getting stuck in there, yeah, I mean, or sliding through it, you know it, and then it just gets all stuck in the fur and just forments, yep, yep, you don't want to get on

that slipping slide terrible. According to legend, the mopping Wari has really really big claws on both its front and its rear feet. And speaking of the feet, there is something that is described about its rear feet that is strange and it took me a while to sort out, and that is that the description of its rear feet typically says in the accounts that they were backward facing,

and initially I thought, well, that's weird. It's front feet facing forward and its back feet are facing completely backwards. It doesn't make any sense. But what I started doing some research. What I figured out is that there are some animals that have really large claws, like let's say the sloth modern day slaws, they have really long claws. Well, those are meant for hanging onto trees and branches and traveling around in that arboreal forest, but if they're on

the ground, it's terrible for walking. So what they end up doing is kind of curling their claw underneath their foot walk on the clause. Yeah, they kind of walk on the claw and the side of their foot. Yeah, like in that very cute sloth picture that devon is

now waving around. So it's it's very strange, but it's kind of a if you if you took your hand and you took your fingers and you folded them under and then rolled your hand onto the side slash heel, That's that's kind of what they're They're walking on the side of their face pointed backwards. It feels kind of like, um, like your when your nails get really long. I know all of you have this happened to you a the time.

But if your nails, imagine your nails were really really long and you're trying to crawl, your nails were like getting stuck, so they'd be pulling your feet like kind of backwards. That's what that looks like to me, which is I think a symptom. A symptom of that is the curling them under there. Either way, they're not actually backwards facing, so like that. But that's a weird thing. Yeah, it is still weird, I guess unique. Yes, it's got two front ends possible. Yeah, that's like, so what it

stands as high and lace. It's really doing a handstanding and standing out both at the same time. So there's all kids of strange things about this critter. Another strange thing about the mopping wire is it's face, which is this is up for a lot of debate. Some people say that the face is like a hairy humanoid face or a monkey ish face, you know, shorter nose, two eyes that are side by side instead of say like a dog's you know, rabbits where they're kind of more

on the side of the head. So it's more humanoid in that regard, But then there's other stories that say that, no, it doesn't have more of your traditional human face. It's got more of a snout. But it only has a single eye, So it's a cyclops, which we have not seen in nature before. Because say, there's no good practical reason for one single eye. That's there's a lot of

reasons to have to at least if the two. At the minimum, I have four, and I'm very happy about that to talk to you about work with two, because the more the better, definite rency. If you lose one or two, you still got a few more. Yeah, if I don't cut my hair, I can still see because I have such long hair. I've been dancing around this.

But we should probably get into yet another weird feature of this cryptod, and that is its mouth, or more appropriately its mouths plural, because it has a normal mouth on its head where you would expect to see said feature, but according to the stories, it also has one in the middle of its stomach. That's. You know, if you happen to be choking to death but you're still hungry, you can still feed yourself. Oh, is that why that happened? We'll see. That's not what I got from the reading.

The reading I got said that the reason there's a second stomach there is because this cryptod you are second mouth, I should say on its stomach is that it's there because this particular cryptod uses it to devour people who upset it, so that it can stuff an entire human being just right into its middle straight of the So it's really like no face from spirited away something like where it's actually just a mask on his face and his actual mouth is just in the middle of his stomach,

and it's just a horrible disaster. That's right, That's yeah. And the reason that the mopping Gwari is supposedly devours

people is that it's a defender of the forest. It's kind of the captain planet of the Amazon, Hary, very stinky, hairy captain planet, wh because he smells bad, and this creature would smell a vision to Harry that too appears that so I have made that joke about it being the defender of the forest because the stories of the mopping Guari are that they overharvest, or they kill too many animals, or they're just disrespectful and burn and they do bad things. And one of the common threads around

owned that is the peckery's. Peckery's for those of you who don't know, they kind they aren't pigs, but they look and a lot like the pigs that we know here in the first world family. They are on the high you know what. I don't even know if they actually are in the pig family, but they are. They there are several feet high. They can wait. They can wait up to a hundred pounds, which is equate tots.

They cloven hooks. They're really hairy little critters and their omnivores, so they will eat anything, though they prefer vegetation, so they dig in the dirt and they eat up roots, and then they eat grasses and trees and whatever comes their way. They're really kind of a cross between goats and pigs when you think about it, you know, yeah, well, goats and pigs are actually kind of the same thing in just a different profile. They will both eat just

about anything. One has more hair than the other, and that's really the difference. And what has club and feet? Things don't have club and feet, do they? Yeah, they totally. They are part of the suborder, the same suborders Okay. When I did the initial reading, I got the feeling that they were on a different branch, but it was just even towd ungulates. Yes, okay, they are part of the even to so goats and deer have something different

going on with them. They're not part of that apparent. Really, you know, we're not going to go to that pack They have different they have a different teeth, oh, their palate. Okay, okay, it's fine. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Because here's the thing is that the packery, it turns out, is a great source of meat, and so folks in South America love

to kill them and harvest them to eat. And there are many, many stories of guys going out and killing way too many packery's at once, only to have the moth worry show up and chase them away from their prize. So well, it's because they were disrespecting the forest and taking way too much at one time, more than the stories say. More than they Yes, I will say that this whole eating people in the stomach mouth thing. Yeah, yeah, you're you're big people eater, you know, the big middle

people eater portion. Uh, that's a little off of some of the descriptions which say that this cryptid is a vegetarian. It's not a vegan, because even cryptids won't be vegans unless they're vegetables. Uh no, well, let's see. That's the problem is that we've we've got these these two sides of the story where it is if the mopping wire is observed eating with its upper mouth, it's headmouth. It's only going to eat vegetation. It only uses the stomach

mouth for devouring humans. So either it is a vegetarian or it's an omnivore, which means that we're safe as long as we don't disrespect the forest, or we're all on the menu. But yeah, I'm not sure that they say it's a vegetarian or you know, or maybe but how would they know. It's like it's only glimpsed occasionally,

So how do they really know what it eats? Well, okay, so one of the ways that we know that is to the stories that are told, because there's a story that how did the people who tell these stories notice do they find have they found droppings? Well, so it's it seems to be through observation of possible attacks as well as bite marks. Because here's a here's a story that we have here of a farmer who said that

has heard of cattle. It's like a hundred cattle if I remember right, And over a very short period of time, all of his cows were killed and eaten or fed upon, and he blamed it all on the mopping glory. Now, I'll be I'll be honest with you. I'm pretty sure that this guy was just bitter because he originally started out farming goats only to find out that choopy had moved into the area. Yeah, and then he went for cows, yeah, just to find out that the mopping glory was also

in the mobby's fault that he likes cow. Yeah. So in this case, it probably was the message that he was setting is it's not even so much that I hate cows. It's just like you cleared all this area to raise cows. You low down all these trees. Maybe there's that the message, because I wouldn't think the moping wary would really hate cows. No, No, because I mean, cows are dumb, lovable critters. So I'm guessing that it

would send a message. Yeah, but I mean, not only are you clearing a bunch of forest, but a large herd of cows on a naturally large herd of cows does some things to the environment around it that it gives a complete misuse often of the environment. And like really, so I can see if that's if that follows it, that he will only he they it will only you know, go after things that are really threatening their environment for whatever reason, whether it be killing too many of one

thing or clear cutting and whatever. A giant heard of cows trying to bring the number down to a more sustainable harmonyic harmony harmonious harmonious group makes sense to me as well. But harmonic harmonic, harmonic, harmonious harmonious. Yeah, yeah,

that's a great point. Okay, that could be it hereens Oh yeah, it turns out the mop Warry he sees the bigger picture and he says, look at all the methane those cows are produced, all that belting, and well you know what comes out to the other end parting, Oh my god. Turns out, by the way, cows are terrible on waterways because they just destroy the banks of all Stralia, which is a huge natural oregon can in

large enough numbers. Yeah, they found out some of some of the eco systems like in uh, you know, in the Midwest or in America. They found out when they did away with all the predators that the els in the deer actually did a lot more damage than they would have done normally when things were a little more imbalanced because there was just chew things. Yeah, it's a really interesting study. I think Yellowstone they re released a bunch of wolves into yellow Stone and they found out

that literally everything suddenly just became way better. Yeah, I mean everything, like even the fact like the forest actual trees and the forests were suddenly way healthier because it just they just kept everything in checking. Those kind of tap those top predators to really keep everything in check. So maybe that's what this is. Sorry, that's probably too close, you know. I mean it's it's it's a great idea. I mean it could explain a lot of things, which

we'll get into when we're in the theory. Let's continue with their description because we must have a couple of little bits of description of the boping wari left. Turns out this particular cryptod is not indstructible. You remember in the beginning I said it's skin is supposedly so tough that arrows and bullets can't go through it. But if you shoot it in the head, I'm guessing through the eye,

you can kill it. I don't know where this information comes from, but you see it everywhere, which is weird because of the fact that there has never been a body found and nobody actually says they've ever killed one. Yet they tell you this is how you kill it. So it's that's a subs A few people have killed them, but they just didn't bother bringing the body back home, or which smelled too bad. Yeah, I mean, either it's

smells you bad or you know. If this is a very old oral tradition, we I think it's fair to say that there's the possibility that somebody years ago killed and you know, and and said, okay, well this is how you do it if you ever really need to.

But really try not to because the only reason they're going to come after you is if you're being horrible, right right, Ye see final bit of information we have here the So overall, I think we've all kind of established that the mopping Wari sounds like a legend, as Devon was just saying years ago, and it is possible that that's the case, but there actually is today or in recent history a group of people who have been

actively looking forward. And they are, or they were at least a couple of years ago, headed by a man named David orn Or was an ornithologist, but he's pronounced ornithologist or anthologist. What do you make Okay, forget it. Yeah, I did that a purpose, Okay, forget it. But he was in orthologist and he went to South America on a regular basis to study the birds there, and at some point while he was there he heard about and

then became very interested in the Mopping Guarry. He's gone on several expeditions over the years, but of course has never found anything conclusive. I mean, it's it's funny is that I read the articles about him and he's going down there, He's doing this is the same thing that bigfoot hunters do, which I just totally don't get. Yes, he goes down, he does this call. He has no idea if it's the right call. He could literally be saying shut up and run away in their language, but

he has no freaking idea. But he's still bellowing this noise out. Hopefully it's not saying I's like, hey, I'm a hot I'm a hot mopping garry chick. Um. Yeah, it's kind of like me with my cats, you know, if I'm trying to call my cats and I go wow wow. Yeah, we've had a conversation about that. We've heard you do that before. I don't know what what the cats here at there and if that even remotely sounds to a cat like at meow? Butth head butt head?

Apparently he thinks butt head? Is it a dermot? Did you means? But you know, the thing is is that he went He's been down there for several expeditions. He hasn't found squat. I don't know if he's still doing these. It sounded like his career. A lot of people were looking at him very poorly for this in this scientific community. It's he's frowned upon to look for a cryptod like this and buy in so heavily. So we don't know. So I guess this is the initial fail for science.

So our questions here as we get into theories are what is the moppinguarri and does it exist or does it not? So let's I want to say that just for star and is that I don't think from a professional standpoint, he's done anything wrong, because it's not like he's out there publishing luney articles about it. He just goes out and walks on the jungle looking for evidence that it might exist. Well, he publish this stuff about it, but I mean, he doesn't make looney claims about it.

You know, Well that depends on your definition of looney. He doesn't say stuff like, wow, you know, this totally exists, you know, and it's it's a super badass and it's thirteen feet tall. And then he doesn't say stuff like that. He just says, you know, I think it might exist. Maybe possibly there's something too, which he's producing accounts from natives, and so in that way, he is recording their their

their tradition, their tradition, their perspective, and their stories. But he's he's taking it in a very serious scientific approach, and he is not pursuing very serious scientific things according to the scientific community. So I understand where you're coming from. But that is the reason that they are poo pooing him. We're doing there's uh, you know, it's it's it's one of those things. There might be just a you with

them out there. They might just be very elusive, So let's all for not and we're going to cover that and yeah, which we should do right now. Remember it's up to us. Bigfoot is the crucial part of the ecosystem if he exists, So let's all keep Bigfoot possibly alive for few generations. Unless he doesn't exist, then we shouldn't the end that FUTA doesn't. It's just how I feel about this, Okay, right, Well, then you're gonna be happy to know that we're going to get in a

theory perfect we're going to solve this one. So the first theory is that indeed the mock Bingwari is a legend because I mean, well it's it sounds very legendary. And as we all know, every culture out there has stories of creatures that they used to explain. They used them to explain away things that they just don't understand. I think also every culture has a story to scare the crap out of the kids so they won't wander

off into the darkness they do. I mean, I was just let's this theory does say could be based on something kind, right, but I would say pretty solidly most indigenous people have some lore around something that is deeply discouraging greed and over use of land's absolutely, but is usually based on some sometu whether it be a bear, lion right exactly, or a fox. And the thing is is that this area, this part of South America or South America itself, has some really unique creatures that are

in this legendary vein. My favorite one is the boto. This cracks me the hell up. Yeah, the bhoto is a dolphin that lures girls away from their village and then has sex with and impregnates them. So whenever a girl shows up and she shouldn't be pregnant quote unquote shouldn't be a pregnant because she is not married, you know, according to local custom, they grab it off and have

a shotgun wedding. Makes sense, Well, it means that this dolphin critter has shown up and everybody is pulling out their iPhone and sending back and forth dolphin and eggplant emojis. Now I did. I did a bunch of reading, and it turns out that having a creature like the mopping garry to blame things on is a great way to save face when something goes bad or you don't do the best job that you could. So little house. My house fell over. You know it's not because I can't

build a foundation where the crap there's that. Or the example that I have is that you go out into the forest to hunt peckery's because you're gonna hunt them and you're gonna butcher them and sell their meat or use that meat to feed your family. And maybe you're not a very good hunter. It turns out crappy hunter or your dink fod and you screw around and you

don't actually do anything. Well, then you can say, oh, well, the mopping guari was there and it scared me away, Or if you really need to ratch at the story up, you say, oh, I shot seven of them with in one day, but then the creatures showed up and chased me away and took my pride. I really liked the idea of some like really lazy guy or no guy. I mean, it's okay guy going out into the forest and then later people go out to look for him and they find him asleep and they wake him up

and he goes, oh, the smell of the mopping. I can't say, yeah, it knocked me out. I can't The last thing I remember, it's some really long hair, it smelled so bad, just like okay, yes, why is your blankie here? Yeah, it's like the idea of you know, the guy who's an hour late to his job and he's about to invent daylight saving time, whereas bosses like, why are you in our late and he's like, oh,

haven't you heard? It's great? Same thing. This is probably the Yeah, that's a and the same with the invention of this where some guy got caught napping and he was like, well haven't you heard of this thing? And everybody else. I was like, oh, I don't want to look like I'm dumb, so I'll just go along with it. I don't want to think. I don't want it to seem like I don't understand this art. Of course I understand it. Yeah, So it turns out that makes sense.

Devin might be right, But it also could be that there are a lot of strange things in the jungle, and when it is dark and inhospitable in that environment, sometimes you see and you hear things that you just can't explain. And while they may just be perfectly normal. Run the day critters when it is dark and they are crashing through the forest and underbrush at you. You are not willing to stand around and wait for them to figure out what they are. Instead, you hide tail

it away. That is the time at which point you will make up a description of said animal. Yeah, so that could be where it is that the mopping water came from. I will say, the thing that I find really interesting about the story of the mopping Wari is that the that north that, as Joe called it, the top of the stick of South America, that is huge area.

It is really big. And there are all of these indigenous tribes that don't have any contact with one another, and yet they all have a different name for the mopping guari, but they all seem to describe the same creature. So that makes you wonder if they're not talking to one another in it. Well, please please dash my hopes. Well, no, I'm not going to dash her hopes. I'm just going to say that I think there are enough similar but different descriptions of this creature. Right. Some say that it

is a cyclops. Some say that it's got a giant mouth in its stomach. I would assume that we're saying their general assumptions of the very giant, hairy thing, the very giant, hairy, stinky thing. Yeah, which like could describe us in this room right now? Really, why does she

keep talking? No? But you see where I'm going with this, right is that I think that there are enough kind of different descriptions of this thing to explain there could be a sighting of something that's fairly normal, but the own lore has kind of taken it to that next level and made it the legends. Because again, if there is, if there is in fact a seven to nine foot giant hairy thing, even if it's a total total vegetarian creature,

that is no threat whatsoever. But if there's something like that in the forest up there, which there may well could be, I would absolutely take that to scare my children out of not going in I would, you know, sure the kids didn't go in there. And you know, you change one thing, you change an eye, you make a giant mouth in the middle, you whatever to make

it a little extra scary. But it's kind of like the internet, you want to punch things, right, But so that that just kind of seems like that to me. I mean American Native American tribes have a lot of that too. You see a lot of lower crossover in areas. So yeah, And the thing about it is is these tribes are like all separated now, but they all came from the same place Africa they did, and well Mesopotamia. But well, and how long did it take the story

to travel from one side of the continent to the other. Well, yeah, but yeah, it could be that. Yes, they tell the same vary variation, but it has a central a central point. Yeah. And also thousand years ago or something far farther than that. I mean, man, you know humans arrived in ten, ten, fifteen thousand years ago. But and so that would explain something else too. This could be a creature that existed like ten thousand years ago, and it may well have existed,

and so something very similar. It seems unlikely that a real cyclops with a giant mouth in the middle of it existed, but some version of this may have existed. Something that something with two eyes, I think, but in something that maybe resembled a mouth in its midriff. I would agree, maybe something that resembles is not actually a mouth, But I didn't think. There are more theories and we

can explore that more in the theory. Yes, absolutely, you're both absolutely right, and we're gonna We're actually gonna re We're gonna cover some of that territory. Again, Let's move on to theory number two, which is everybody's favorite theory, which is that it was Biggie, not Biggie Smalls, but Biggie Foot. Because yes, yes, so it is believed that possibly the mopping Guari is just a relative of Bigfoot if you look at and and By the way, this is not an episode on Bigfoot, so please excuse the

brevity here, but in general terms, Bigfoot is. Sightings are reported all over the United States, but the vast and Canada, but the vast majority of them are on the West coast. That's where the highest concentration of sightings are. If you look and you run down the coast, the western coast of the US, you know what you find. You find a great trail right into that drumstick portion of South America.

That's the way they went down there. So that is the theory is that they migrated south over time, the Bigfoot clan, and they, you know, they said, hey, we like soccer more than you do here in North America, so we're gonna go down there where they have soccer. So that's why they traveled south, and now the mopping guarr is all over the Amazon forest playing soccer. Well,

you know, I look at it this way. It's like man started emigrating, migrating across the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska years and years ago, and yes, just decades ago. And actually it was decades ago if you have a lot of decades, literally tens of decades, yea hundreds of anyway,

hundreds of thousands of tens of decades. Right, And so here's all these these humans showing up and there's Bigfoot just hanging out, and they're like, crap, Like all these people now we've got to like hide and be elusive

and all this crap. And I don't like that. A lot of them packed up and move south to get away from these interlopers, and the interlopers, unfortunately, kept moving south all christ time to move again, and so essentially mankind was just pushing big Foot further and further south, and essentially big feet excuse me, yeah, and until eventually, you know, they wind up all the way in South America.

Would a big, big big Foot with a Well, the thing is, though, is if I mean to Joe's to talk about what Joe saying is that the ones that didn't move, the ones you said this is my land, I own this land. They then became our modern Bigfoot,

who are the international hide and see champions. So if they are related, if the mopping Guiri is related to Bigfoot, then it's no wonder that they haven't even been able to get a blurry photo of them, because the mopping guiries even better at hide and the seat that you don't even know that they exist. Bingo, we know they exist, of course they do. Well, yeah, maybe, yeah, Let's move on to our next sery though. The next theory is that the mopping Wari is a relative, or actually the

relative it is a giant slot. I like this one a lot. I really dig one. You've seen pictures of this guy, I have, I mean everybody the megatheriyeah. Yes, ancient giant slots. Yes. So for those of you who don't know, there was a huge giant animal that lived in South America during the early play a scene which is the giant slop and this creature is much like slots today, except way mega bigger. There are a lot

of big animals back then. Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of megafunt like around around here in the in the Organ area North Pacific Northwest. Yeah, it's fun, but we have like six rom pound beavers. Imagine a six pounds. I cannot but that that was the joy of having such a high density of oxygen and things like that. It could s a stain that sort of critter and an oxygen level drop. That's why we don't have giant dragonflies anymore because spiders. Thank God for that Cawaite children. Yes, yes,

maybe that's what happened to Washington's eagle. But the the biggest, the giant sloth, weighed about four tons and was somewhere around twenty ft long from nose to tail. That converts to about six meters. And this thing was basically the size of a mammoth, you know, ye old wooly mammoth, that we wooly mammoth that is somehow larger than modern elephants. Right,

so it's bigger than a modern elephants. Giant creature nowhere near as cute as a modern sloth, I am sure fifty times or scary as long as he said, I don't know, as long as he was in of the same thing as he was just being slothful. Well, they had longer noses. They walked on the ground and the trees yeah yeah, way way too big to be in trees. And I mean there was mega fauna at that point or flora as well as meg yeah, but not not

that big. And so they walked on the ground and they stood up to feed on plants trees at that time, big big nose, big mouths, not like now. But the thing is is that these creatures, as with a lot of the creatures, the mega fauna from the pli scene, they died out about ten thousand years ago because it turns out the Earth was not made to sustained stuff. The Earth changed to a point that it couldn't sustain those kinds of things it actually was designed or for

like a hot second. Yeah, it's actually right about right about that time that man was discovering how to make two was including like spears. But we did coexist, right yeah with them, Yeah, I mean we exist at the same time, like at least most of these things did, like you know, the sabracute tiger and the wooly man. No. I just think that's an important distinction to make when

we talk about this, like prehistoric time, especially giants. Well it's not necessarily before man, but we talked about dinosaurs, and then oftentimes this kind of era gets plumped in with this dinosaur world but different but totally different era, and an era that humans were developing with not written but certainly oral traditions. Yes, this is before we were hunched over a keyboard. We were still the running, we were still hunched over, we were standing. Yes, yeah, we

were definitely bipedal at this point. But I think that is something that's interesting to mention when we talk about this because, as we were talking about in the last theory, if this is an oral tradition, it is possible. Man, it was so old, this legend that just kept getting passed down and down and down, and people just were saying, well, they're still there. Of course they're still there. Why would they not still be there. They're not there anymore? Yea, yeah,

probably true. Yeah. I just think that's worth many yeah yeah so so. But the basic theory here is that the mopping Wari is in fact a megatherium, and that the species had somehow managed to live nearly undiscovered all these years in the Amazon Force. Remember they were in South America ten thousand years ago, and the descriptions of its size and its claws would certainly support that they

are very similar. And there there is the issue of the second mouth that definitely was not But I would say a giant sloth is much larger, right, but we're going to but as we're talking, an ancient giant sloth genuinely would be way bigger. They also and that's the next theory. And there are their animals out there right now that they're you know, we all read about them all the time. Oh my god, we thought this thing

was extinct. For they found, like fifty years ago there was some fish that they were certain had died out of thousand or five thousand years ago. Think it starts with an L and then I think it's like luck something. But then they found it and oh my god, we discovered it again and then dropped it and killed it. Yeah, but but it was living in some river in some Amazonian for situation, because that's usually where these stories happened.

And that's why this story is so interesting to me. Again, as as I said at the top, that these stories of no, no, that's totally extinct. It's been extinct for like hundreds of thousands of then suddenly they say, oh my god, we founded they've been alive this entire time. So the other things that that kind of seemed to work against this but maybe don't. Is we talked about

that whole second mouth thing. It turns out though modern sloths have scent glands on their backs, and the fur around that scent gland is completely in the color of in contrast to the rest of their fur, so it stands out. So it could be that something that is a modern equivalent of the megatherium has sent glands as well,

but they're on its front. And because of that different colored skin and the look of those glands, it could be that people said, oh my god, that thing looks like a mouth or it was running and they didn't know. And if it's a giant thing with a giants gland, that would explain the giant stink coming off the giants. That would explain that. I was going to say, there are plenty of much smaller species. There are a lot of like moths, for instance, in this world that have

over the millennia evolved. Basically, it's just a defense mechanism

or a fear mechanism. To make it so that they look like something else, right, And so it is possible also that they just evolved that when they stand up, it looks like they have a giant or something like giant and scary exactly to scare things away, and that their defense mechanism is in fact to stand up and put their arms out, like we're supposed to defend ourselves against cougars, and it just looks like there's a giant face everywhere, and that scares most of the other animals

where it's a giant head or it could be march. Yeah, you want you want to hear something weird about moths and evolution. So it turns out, you know, there are these crazy maths that have these amazingly long probiscus okay, And everybody said, well, that must have evolved in response to a really long flower. And Darwin got involved in this.

This is that's how old this conversation is. And if I remember correctly, what Darwin said was, oh, there's these flowers that have these really long things, Well, then it must have been there was a moth with this amazing

probiscus first, and the flowers went towards it. I think as he said, it went the opposite direction of what you would expect it to be, and they have recently affirmed a hundred and fifty years or so later, they found evidence that proves that, oh yeah, the plants were reacting to this critter instead of the critter reacting to the evolution of the plan. I don't know it was. It was way outside of my pay grade, but just the moth thing got me on that. Let's get back

into the theory. Though. I'm easy to side track, but I can tell you where we're at. Which is the problem with this whole theory of it being a megatherium, and that is, of course, that the Amazon rainforest is continually shrinking under pressures of both logging and the desires for usable farmland. So I could see that, you know, hundred or two hundred years ago, would be hard to find this critter because none of this land is developed. But it's more and more pressure is put on it.

In the area is shrinking more and more. You think that the chances of finding what, yeah, would increase, It would become easier and easier to find, and we have not found. I would say not necessary really, because it's totally reasonable to assume that the population is decreasing as well, because lack of habitat, a population tends to grow to the size on the land that it's supported, or decrease

to the land that it's supported. It's not as though, Yeah, basically, if you know, we had twenty acres and we had a hundred of these creatures, and then suddenly you have ten thousand acres, you're probably not going to have that same amount of those creatures. They're gonna die off, They're gonna the alpha males are going to kill each other, whatever is going to happen, it's gonna happen. Yeah, it's

not sustainable. So I agree with that. Well, I agree with that in theory, but I also think that nature, um, what's the quote life finds a way something like that, right, But of course that the whole counter to my account, well, the whole counter to the megatherium theory is, as Joe brought up, is that humans existed around the same time as these creatures did. So it is possible, as he said, that the story of them was simply passed down through the generation. I said that, I said that it's it's

it's stuff. So Joe had to say, because he's the old one of the group, so he was around I was not around that quite then. I'm sorry, I was trying to give you credit. But okay, Devin, I said it last. Joe might have said it first, but I think it doesn't really matter. Yea, yeah, and that's good. So we have another theory, which is the unknown descendant of the giant sloth already but probably my favorite. But there's some details that we haven't gone over as to

why this could be a viable theory. There is and this is something that you will see in a lot of stuff in the animal kingdom, and that is the reduction and scale of animals. Because it is based on the changes in the environment. Animals will grow bigger or smaller, which is why we saw things in the early Pliocene start to get bigger, and then as the environment changed, they started I mean, we went from three six pound beavers to thirty pound beavers or beavers like they shrunk greatly.

And that's based on the what the environment was, or the populations and populations and so it it is the known phenomena. And there is something that you see in the reading. Sometimes you'll see it referred to as island dwarfism or insular dwarfism, and that is where a population is contained in an area and based on that their their numbers reduced, but the general size of the individuals in that population will reduce. And here's an example. So

we all know the mammoth. Mammoths were humongous creatures exactly, except there was a population of them that ended up on some islands and in I think we don't even know actually I can't even say. I think I don't know how many generations, but a very small number of generations.

Their size reduced greatly from creatures that stood twenty plus feet tall two creatures that stood more about four to five feet tall, and they are very small and based on environmental changes that just happens because that's the way they were able to live. Because the ones we probably yeah, I was gonna say, we probably don't need to dive into this whole evolutionary theory or but but realistically, you know,

you're on a small island. It's going to be able to support genetically smaller things because they better to be a physical island. If your habitat is very specific, that counts as an island as well, and so not. What the theory is, that's exactly what I was just saying before, is that either a population size will diminish or the actual physical size will diminish. So those are the two options, right,

it's either or both or both. And so at this point what's happened is that everything is shrunk and they're in a very specific set of areas. But of course nobody's mapping that. The locals are just freaking out running away. They don't know. So it could be that these creators really do exist, but they're in such small population sizes and they diminished enough and they don't even necessarily exist today.

Maybe they all died out a couple of hundred years ago, or maybe they are you know, the size of a sloth just kept striking. Now they're tiny well and they're you know, the same size as a sloth, and then stores could have killed them out. We don't know. I mean, it's trick with that area. The thing is so yeah, there's just there's this there's this mopping guy out there and you were over harvesting the pack rays and he's

really ticked about it. But it's a little pip squeak about He's like the equivalent of a house cat, right, God's perfect killing machine, but somehow tiny. Yes, we just keeps from from Zutopia. I'm going to get weirded you exactly. Yeah, joke ever in an animated movie. Anyho, you need to see that movie. I think if you can stream it, I know you can stream it. So our last theory here is that indeed the mopping Guari is a totally different actual animal. Yeah, so it could be that it

is just getting credit for the giant and eater? Did Grant and eater? You've got have seen photos of the giant and they are creatures, but they're they're kind of cute, Yeah, they got they're Yeah, they're kind of they're like a pug. They're so ugly they can be cute and either giant Andrews for those of you who don't know that, of course,

so they got the big long, weird head. But they also are about six to seven ft long, which is the equivalent of about two meters, and they weigh in about seventy to ninety pounds, which is thirty three tots, which is nowhere. So this puts them standing upright sort of in the same range and side up though, I don't they do. They can't. I don't think they do normally, but they and I don't know that they smell bad.

But they, like we talked about before, they've got really long fur and it's kind of blackish I think normally the images I've seen there, they're grayish black. Right, It depends on there. Okay, it's like dogs, they have different colors. And again, I think it depends on where they're from to You'll get a lot of this happens with almost every species. What it depends on where they are, how what they need to be blending you, Like corgis there's

different breezes depending on where and what eales they're from. Yes, yeah, yeah, depending on their natural environs. Is the furniture in this house that? Yeah? Well so the thing to remember though, is that the giant ant eater is a pretty passive creature. They are not normally an aggressive creature, but they will fight back if they are threatened, So yes, that's very true.

They also apparently like to sleep in dense foliage, which could lend credence to the It's rushing out of the underbrush at me, and it's super scary that could be part of it. I don't know, but I mean again, the whole thing of people running away before they see the animal that that could lend. Oh well, I didn't realize there's a certain embarrassment factor there too. I ran away from you ran away from an ant eater, ted, Yeah, you are no, it was much scared a bigger than that.

I'm currently looking at a picture of a giant ant eater is a certain breed I full disclaimer, I don't know where it is or anything. And gray one, but yeah, it's black and gray. But the black patch is in a very distinct like smile across its shoulders and through its chest outlined in white that I can imagine if that were standing up, I would maybe think that was a giant open mouth att Yeah. Almost. Yeah, So there are patterns like that in in their species. The giant

ant eater also has really big claus. Now, of course, those are designed digging to dig up ants and get into their it's colonies. I would say, yeah, most animals that I know of, at least that have really terrifyingly long clause use them for digging or climbing. They don't really use them to like shred yah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And and so that's the thing is that, well, okay, they don't they're not all that aggressive, they're not all that dangerous, except that it turns out that, as we said, you can make them mad and they will come at you.

I was reading stories of a couple of hunters a couple of times over the past years that have cornered an antagonized ant eaters giant ant eaters, and guess who lost The hunters The ant eaters killed them because they are big enough and they have big enough clause that if they do land the lucky strike your how stupid human. It's like, yeah, it kind of makes you wonder why you would do that, not just because of the danger obviously, but just because you're more on, You're more on in

your jerk. But yeah, I mean, maybe they just figured they're so passive that we can just mess with them forever. They're never gonna lash out of Well. One thing, one thing that I also wonder is the time of year that most of these interactions are happening. And I was going to say, more like, if on accident, somebody wandered in between an anti eater mama and her babies and they're going to get probably pretty aggressive or maybe wandering between like an antiae or in a really fat, juicy

colony of ants. You know, they probably take them off too, probably lest they probably be a little more patient to wait. But you know, if you're standing in between pretty much any mama and her babies, you're going to get. This is my My direction was a bull and a cow. He's he's going to try to quote unquote defend his territory. Well, and I don't know how that works with to be honest,

they are such an alien creature to me. They literally could reproduce by osmosis and I would have no idea, and somebody could tell me that, and I would say that sounds right, Yeah, totally. I mean, look at that for it makes sense. They're so weird looking at the are I mean, like I said, they're kind of cute,

but they are really freaking weird. Yeah, I would say, just in general on this story, unless would we have more theorious Well, the only thing that I have left in this theory particular is that the at one point I think I talked about this maybe I didn't, was that the legends say that the mopping Guarry can't cross water, that it won't cross water, which is kind of screwy since the Amazon is lousy with waterways. Well, it turns out the the giant ant eater loves to swim, has

no problems with it. So I mean these both say that maybe the legend is wrong and the giant eater isn't the critter. I don't know, but that's all I got. I would say. In general, my feeling on this story is that it's certainly based in truth, whether tenuously based

in truth or not. Uh, there are enough animals that could be this animal, both in distant past as in the giant sloth or modern yeah, or in the modern day with a giant ant eater or some here to with not yet discovered that's the right, some some now as of now undiscovered creature in the Amazon, because there

are tons of them, I'm sure. Still, I just feel that this this is kind of one of those things where an indigenous people or lots of different groups of indigenous people's came up with a story to not only talk about why it's important that you only take what you need, but also to scare the kids and also to explain some things they maybe didn't understand, and that legend just grew and grew and grew, and so South America's captain planet, got it? Yeah, Joe, what's yours? Probably,

I mean all these all these stories are around. I mean, obviously people tell stories. They like to tell stories, and telling fictional stories is nothing new, probably, so you know, I mean they could legends have been around for a while. I am currently listening to Dracula. So obviously we all love scary stories or I mean, you know, any of the Homer stories. Yeah, and that's really really early days. So yeah, so I mean that's what we do as

we tell stories. There was not cautionary tales. Cautionary tales, I mean, yeah, I mean that we love that kind of a story. I mean that kind of that kind of a story where you know, somebody gets his rightful come up and that kind of thing, and cautionary tales, and they they're all it's kind of in the same vein. Uh So, Yeah, I could totally see this whole thing

just being entirely made up of full cloth. Maybe it's sort of an amalgam of various critters that have been seen in the general Yeah, yeah, kind of just of the we didn't wait around, and it made a bunch of smells, and it made a bunch of rucks, and you saw bits and pieces, and so you just in your mind you glue these three things together and suddenly new faery giant skunk. Yeah, I'm gonna say there are actually their animals out there. Beside the giant skunk. There's

a stink badger of Southeast Asia. And you know another something else that can project a hideous, horrible smell, although generally it seems to be a really small skape. Yeah, that skunk, but it seems like really small creatures kind of need to have that particular defense against the people to use it as a defense. Yeah, totally. Where we're huge, you don't really need that. But what's to say that, Well, I was going to say, what's to say that this

animal isn't the natural predator of say the skunk. I think it's sprayed a lot. Well, they just get sprayed a lot for all the skunks they're killing because they have no sense of smell, right, so that's evolved for them. They don't care. They're just killing all of these stink animals and it's there for is just so full of the years and years of stink. Okay, I could be

able by that. I you know, I want to say that it is just it is a reason that you know, it's it's stinky Ted with his dreads which Joe started us a rhyming mood from earlier tonight apparently, But yeah, I I really I don't think. I don't think the mop and guari is a current contemporary creature. I will call it a cryptod because I think that it may have been an unknown animal in the past in you know,

the scale that it's described at. I don't think that it's the megatherium o megafauna like we had in the past. I think it might have been some scale down version that is no more that. That's really what I think until Or and his team come back with better data, because remember they they've been collecting samples from people for years.

People have been turning in uh scat samples and hair samples saying I think that this was the mopping g warri and every time they tested it turns out to be some other animals, some kind of monkey or an ant eater or some other animal that's indigenous to the area. So so far they literally have squat to show. So I really, unfortunately I think that I don't think that it's it's a real thing anymore. Um, they've you've we've over lefted the area. Actually, what I said, it's just

the local Indians pulling the white man's leg too. You know, I almost wrote that. I'm glad you brought that up because I put that in there earlier, the fact that, you know, the Europeans showed up and the locals said, oh, by the way, there's this big, starty, smelly, stinky, gross things out there, and that might have been their way to try to protect what they considered a precious item, whether it be gold or plants or pigs or literally the forests. Yeah, you really, actually just I could even

see like that. It's not even so much of that motivation as you have these people showing up. The next thing, you know, you get these really credulous people from universities. It's anthropologist types. You're saying, please tell us about your folklore traditions, and you're like, what the hell, Okay, let me make something up here and we'll pay you to do it. Yeah, I tell a good story. Yeah, And you must have all sorts of really fascinating, colorful stories

like people like you always do. Okay, let me pull something in my butt here and they make us some they've just so totally absurded off the top and they're like and they're like, and then they go to all the other you do you know of the mopping Quarry. Do you have stories? Oh? Oh yeah, yeah, we totally

have that. We do. Our smells worse, do we have yeah, yeah, tell me more about this and then but yeah, and you see that this guy after he makes this thing up at a whole cloth years ago, and then later on he's telling his place and they totally bought it. I don't know why these people think there's so much freaking smarter than we are. Oh my god, they just bought the whole thing there. Stupid. Yeah, we really are stupid. We are. Okay, Well, that is the that is the

end of the Mopping Guarry Cryptids story. Let's give you the important details, which are If you are the Mopping Guarry and you want to tell us about yourself, you were more than welcome to do that. You can send us an email at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. If you are not the Mopping Guarria but you would also like to communicate with us, you can do so. You can do so through the same avenue, So story, suggestions, or comments, or whatever it may be, send it to

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I see through the monster coding and the gentle loaner inside. But you have a wounded raccoon friend that you tenderly nurse back to health way you go, but in the end they shoot you. But you teach us about things. No