Two Possible Cryptids
From
(originally published in The Cryptozoology Review 2:1, Summer 1997)
The Indian tribes of North America have a mythology particularly rich in legends of gods, deified heroes, and immensely powerful monsters. The fantastic nature of this mythology is lessened in some regards and increased in others as one travels further south, into Mexico and the countries of Central America.
The Maya, the first inhabitants of the region, told of alternating cycles of creation and destruction of worlds, hidden races of men, and demons in animal form. One of these animal-demons was called Camazotz, and he supposedly took the form of a gigantic bat. The camazotz ("snatch bat") has been, for the most part, ignored by cryptozoologists. However, based on reports of bat-like creatures from throughout the area, and the palaentological record, I surmise that, living in Mesoamerica, is not a pterosaur, as some cryptozoologists believe, but an as-of-yet unrecognized type of bat.
Among the later civilizations in Central America is that of the Aztecs. Most members of the Aztec nobility had some animal or object that served as a spiritual advisor and protector. A ruler late in the Aztec Empire, Ahu�zotl, had as his totem animal a small, unidentifiable, rodent-like creature. I have tentatively identified the animal as a type of otter, different from the common otter described as aitzcuintli, possibly an until-now unrecognized species which inhabited Mexico in the recent past.
These are not the only possible cryptids from ancient Mesoamerica. The Aztecs believed in a big cat called cuitlamiztli; after the Spaniards arrived, the animal was known as the onza. In 1986, a specimen of onza was shot in Sinaloa State, in northwestern Mexico, and sent to a laboratory for examination. However, scientific identification of the cat is still pending.
A series of controversial petroglyphs depicting "elephants" appear in the writing of the Maya. Some cryptozoologists say that these glyphs are evidence for survival of prehistoric elephant species, although most archaeologists declare that they clearly depict stylized macaws. Looking at known macaw glyphs and then the supposed elephant glyphs, I believe that the glyphs are, indeed, of macaws.
Other animals from the tales of the Aztecs which may or may not be merely mythical beings include the tlaltecuhtli, the toad-like "earth monster"; the cipactli, a crocodile-like monster which lived in the sea; and even the "feathered serpent" Quetzalcoatl, which supposedly dwelt in northern Mexico.
Around 100 B.C., a peculiar religious cult grew up among the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico. The cult venerated an anthropomorphic monster with the head of a bat, an animal associated with night, death, and sacrifice (1). This monster soon found its way into the pantheon of the Quich�, a tribe of Maya who made their home in the jungles of what is now Guatemala. The Quich� identified the bat-deity with their god Zotzilaha Chamalcan, the god of fire.
Popol Vuh, a Mayan sacred book, identifies Zotzilaha as not a god, but as a cavern, "The House of Bats" (2). Zotzilaha was home to a type of bat called camazotz; one of these monsters decapitated the hero Hunahp�. Camazotz has been translated as "death bat" (3) and "snatch bat" (4). It is recorded in chapter 10 of this book that the Camazotz's call was similar to eek, eek (5). A vastly different story appears in Chapter 3. Here a demon called Camalotz, or "Sudden Bloodletter", clearly a single entity, is identified as one of four animal demons which slew the impious first race of men (6).
In the Latin American region, it seems that the ancient belief in the "death bat" survives even to the present day. Several cultures have traditions of bat-demons or winged monsters; for example, legends of the h?ik'al, or Black-man, still circulate among the Zotzil people of Chiapas, Mexico. Perhaps revealingly, the H?ik'al is sometimes referred to as a "neckcutter" (7). Other bat-demons include the soucouyant of Trinidad and the tin tin of Ecuador (8).
Yet another similar creature in folklore appears in the folklore of rural Peru and Chile. The chonchon is a vampire-type monster; and it is truly bizarre, even for a legendary creature. It is said that after a person's death, the head will sometimes sprout enormous ears and lift off from the shoulders. This flying head is the Chonchon; its sound, as recorded by Jorge Luis Borges, was like tui-tui-tui (9). Could the legends of the Chonchon have sprung from the same source as the Camazotz legends?
But what exactly was the basis for the Camazotz legend? Most archaeologists believe that the monster was based on the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), a bat traditionally associated with bloodletting and sacrifice (10). Another suspect is the false vampire bat (Vampyrum spectrum), due to its large size and habit of attacking prey around the head or neck (11).
One of the most prominent and commonly mentioned features of the Camazotz is "a nose the shape of a flint knife" (12), which could be an exaggerated interpretation of the nose-leaf possessed by members of the Phyllostomidae, or leaf-nosed bats. The vampire bat is a relative or member of this group; thus we are once more forced to look at D. rotundus, or its relatives, as suspects (13).
In 1988, a species of fossil bat related to Desmodus rotundus, but 25 percent larger than it, was described as D. draculae. It was described on the basis of two specimens from Monagas State, Venezuela, and a third from S�o Paulo State, Brazil, was described in a 1991 article by E. Trajano and M. de Vivo. The Brazilian specimen had not yet been dated when the article was written, but the two biologists suggest a "relatively recent age" for the skeleton. They refer to reports circulating among local natives of large bats which attack cattle and horses; these reports may suggest that the bat still lives (14).
Its recent age and large range suggest that the bat could have co-existed with the Quich�, giving rise to the legends of the Camazotz. Trajano and de Vivo also speculate that D. draculae may have fed on larger prey than did normal-sized vampire bats (15); possibly even humans?
Several other stories supporting the idea of a large bat-like creature have come out of out of Latin America in the last century. A report from 1947 of a creature presumed to have been a living pterosaur may in fact have been of a large bat. J. Harrison saw five "birds" with a wingspan of about 12 feet. Harrison's birds were brown, featherless, and beaked (16).
The next report of a bat-like monster from the area is a story told by a Brazilian couple, the Reals. One night in the early 1950s, they were walking through a forest outside of Pelotas, Brazil, when they saw two large "birds" in a tree, both of which alighted on the ground (17). Although reported as winged humanoids, the proximity of the sighting area to the Ribeira Valley, where the Brazilian specimen of D. draculae was found, forces one to wonder whether the Reals' "birds" were actually bats.
In March, 1975, a series of animal mutilations swept the countryside near the Puerto Rican town of Moca, and during the "flap" a man named Juan Mu�iz Feliciano claimed that he was attacked by a large, gray-feathered creature. These bird-like creatures were seen numerous times during the outbreak (18).
But these reports didn't gain real notoriety until the mid-1970s, when a number of reports surfaced in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, of large birds or bats. The first report came from the town of San Benito, where three people reported encounters with a bald-headed creature (19). But rumors had long circulated among the Mexican inhabitants of the town about a large bird-like creature, believed to make tch-tch-tch sounds (20).
On New Year's Day, 1976, two girls near Harlingen watched a large, birdlike creature with a "gorillalike" face, a bald head, and a short beak. The next day, a number of three- toed tracks were found in the field where the creature had stood (21). On January 14, Armando Grimaldo said he was attacked by the creature at Raymondville. He said it was black, with a monkey's face and large eyes (22). Further reports surfaced from Laredo and Olmito, with a final sighting reported from Eagle Pass on January 21 (23).
The reports cited above, as well as the countless others which await careful researchers, support a conclusion that a mysterious winged creature exists in the deserts and jungles of Mesoamerica. The prominence of the bat in Latin American mythology and the discovery of the recently-extinct Desmodus draculae in South America point to the possible identity of the creature as a large, as-of-yet unknown bat, rather than a living pterosaur, as is generally supposed.
One of the strangest and most confusing of all Mesoamerican mythological figures was the water-beast ahu�zotl, or "water-dog," a small animal that was depicted as something like a rodent or dog.
Some confusion seems to have arisen about the Ahu�zotl, due to the fact that Ahu�zotl was also the name of an Aztec ruler, the predecessor of Motecuhzoma (Montezuma) (24). It is well-known that the water-monster was the symbol of the king (25). However, it seems that the Aztecs thought the water-monster was a creature in its own right, not merely a mythical beast created as the symbol of the king; the creature has its own entry in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex (a description of the plants and animals of Mexico). Here it is described as:
...very like the teui, the small teui dog; small and smooth, shiny. It has small, pointed ears, just like a small dog. It is black, like rubber; smooth, slippery, very smooth, longtailed. And its tail is provided with a hand at the end; just like a human hand is the point of its tail. And its hands are like a raccoon's hands or like a monkey's hands. It lives, it is a dweller in watery caverns, in watery depths. And if anyone arrives there at its entrance, or there in the water where it is, it then grabs him there. It is said that it sinks him, it plunges him into the water; it carries him to its home, it introduces him to the depths; so its tail goes holding him, so it goes seizing him ... [When the body is retrieved] the one it has drowned no longer has his eyes, his teeth, and his nails; it has taken them all from him. But his body is completely unblemished, his skin uninjured. Only his body comes out all slippery-wet; as if one had pounded it with a stone; as if it had inflicted small bruises ... When it was annoyed - had caught no one, had drowned none of us commoners - then was heard as if a small child wept. And he who heard it thought perhaps a child wept, perhaps a baby, perhaps an abandoned one. Moved by this, he went there to look for it. So there he fell into the hands of the au�tzotl [sic], there it drowned him...
Not much else is to be said about the Ahu�zotl, as the creature has apparently become extinct - in Mexico, anyway. A similar creature was described by Christopher Columbus, in a letter sent from Jamaica to the King and Queen of Spain on July 7, 1503:
A cross-bowman slew a beast that resembled a large cat, but was much bigger and had a face like a man. He transfixed it with an arrow from the breast to the tail. Nevertheless it was so fierce that he had to cut off an arm and a leg. When a wild boar, which had been given to me as a present, caught sight of this beast its bristles stood on end and it fled with all speed ...
[the animal] immediately attacked the wild boar, encircled its mouth with its tail and squeezed vigorously. With the one arm it had left, it throttled the wild boar's throat as one strangles a foe (27).
The folklore and traditions of the Aztec people has its roots in that of the American Indians of the southwestern states and the Great Plains. We would expect to find relatives of the Ahuizotl here, if it was a widespread animal. And indeed we do.
The Hopi Indians of Arizona and New Mexico tell of creatures called pavawkyaiva (water-dogs). These creatures figured prominently in the Hopi creation myth; originally, so the story goes, the Hopis were a nomadic tribe. In a striking parallel to a famous Aztec myth in which the sun-god Huitzilopochtli tells the Aztecs to wander until they found an eagle eating a snake, the Hopis were told by a god to wander until they found "the lake where the Pavawkyaivas played," and then to settle there (28).
The Shasta Indians of northern California also have legends of a "water-dog," although this creature seems to have been larger than the Ahu�zotl:
They live in dangerous whirlpools in the river, and appear like huge spotted dogs. They cause the death of persons by drowning. The bodies of those drowned thus are, it is thought, always found covered with spots similar to those of the "water-dog" itself (29).
Similar creatures are found in the folklore of lands south of Mexico. The Sumu Indians of Nicaragua tell of a "water-tiger" which dwelt among the rocks of large rivers. The animal will "devour anyone swimming in the neighborhood or falling into the water" (30).
So what was this creature? It is nearly impossible to reconcile all the attributes of the Ahu�zotl with any known animal. The coyote, proposed as a candidate for the ahuizotl's identity by Ferdinand Anders (31) is not a viable explanation, given its decidedly nonaquatic habits. Another candidate, the porcupine, suggested by Eduard Seler (32), is likewise unlikely to be the true culprit, given its nonaquatic habits and the fact that the Ahu�zotl is described by the Florentine Codex as being smooth (and therefore spineless). Charles Dibble and Arthur Anderson identify the Ahuizotl as Lutra felina (33), the sea cat or marine otter, which inhabits the coast of southwestern South America; however, as its common name implies, L. felina is a mainly marine animal (34), whereas the Ahu�zotl was described as living "either in a river or somewhere in a spring" (35). Furthermore, Mexico is beyond the northern boundary of the range of L. felina, which historically reached (and presently reaches) only to Peru (36). Nor could the Ahu�zotl have been the sea otter (Enhydra lutris) of the Pacific coast of North America, which is also marine in habitat, and which ranges from Alaska to California. Another possibility is the river otter (Lutra canadensis), which is found in Mexico (37); however, this creature was known to the Aztecs as aitzcuintli, and has its own entry in the Florentine Codex. Clearly the Ahu�zotl was some animal sufficiently different from other known animals for the Aztecs to identify it as a seperate creature. Perhaps it could have been another, unknown, species of otter? Listed below are short excerpts from the Codex entry which support an otter identification.
1. It has small, pointed ears, just like a small dog. Most otters do, indeed, have small ears. They seem to me to be rather more rounded than pointed, but they could be described as "like a small dog" (38).
2. It is black, like rubber; smooth, slippery... Most, if not all, otters appear dark, shiny, and hairless (39).
3. ...very smooth, long-tailed. Most otters have long and flat tails, most notably Pteronura brasiliensis (the giant otter), a member of the aonychine family (40).
4. ...its hands are like a raccoon's hands or like a monkey's hands. Most types of otter have rather man-like hands with which they can grasp shellfish and other food items (41).
5. ...then was heard as if a small child wept. Many otters do, indeed, make a sound likened to "Hah!" when startled. This could be interpreted as sounding like a child weeping (42).
Furthermore, on a depiction of the ahu�zotl reproduced by Eduard Seler, a blade-like structure is seen projecting from under the tail (43). The lower pelvis, pubic bone (baculum) and penis of otters would, indeed, project outward, accounting for this feature (44)--although the size of the projection is doubtless exaggerated.
How, though, do we account for the prehensile or hand-tipped tail given so often in accounts of the creature and which is the most problematic of all the Ahu�zotl's attributes to reconcile with any known animal? Very easily, in fact--in On the Track of Unknown Animals, in the chapter discussing the iemisch of southern Argentina, Bernard Heuvelmans quotes Dr. Robert Lehmann-Nitsche. Lehmann-Nitsche says:
The Araucan Indians have similar traditions of a prehensile tailed monster called nurufilu, or zorro-vibora (viper-fox) in Spanish. Since the otter's claws are small, its tail is held to be the object of fear(45).
Could a similar legend have arisen around the Ahu�zotl? It seems as though it did not actually have a hand-tipped tail, but just interpreted as having such.
In conclusion, it appears very likely that the Ahu�zotl was a type of otter, possibly one of some unknown species.
[1] Day, Jane S. Aztec: The World of Moctezuma. Denver: Denver Museum of Natural History, 1992.
[2] Seler. Eduard. The Bat God of the Maya Race. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 28 (1904), p. 234.
[3] Goetz, Delia, and Morley, Sylvanus G., trans. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950.
[4] Tedlock, Dennis, trans. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods & Kings. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
[5] Tedlock, Popol Vuh, p. 125.
[6] Tedlock, Popol Vuh, p. 71.
[7] Blaffer, Sarah C. The Black-Man of Zinacantan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.
[8] Benson, Elizabeth P. The Maya and the Bat. Latin American Indian Literatures Journal 4 (1988). pp. 118-120.
[9] Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Imaginary Beings. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969.
[10] Benson, The Maya and the Bat, p. 104.
[11] Benson, The Maya and the Bat, p. 105.
[12] Nicholson, Irene. Mexican and Central American Mythology. 1967. (Repr. New York: Peter Bedrick, 1985). pp. 37-38.
[13] Benson, The Maya and the Bat, p. 105.
[14] Trajano, E., and de Vivo, M. Desmodus draculae Morgan, Linares, and Ray 1988, reported for Southeastern Brazil, with palaeoecological comments (Phyllostomidae, Desmodontinae). Mammalia 55 (1991). pp. 456-458.
[15] Trajano and de Vivo, Desmodus draculae, p. 458.
[16] Bord, Janet, and Bord, Colin. Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century. Chicago: Contemporary, 1988.
[17] Bord, Janet, and Bord, Colin. Monsters On the Wing. In Peter Brookesmith, ed., Creatures From Elsewhere. London: Macdonald, 1989.
[18] Bord and Bord, Monsters On the Wing, p. 23.
[19] Berliner, Don. Big Bird. INFO Journal 6 (1977): p. 16.
[20] Clark, Jerome. Unexplained! 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1993. p. 25.
[21] Clark, Unexplained!, p. 26.
[22] Berliner, Big Bird, p. 16.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Sowards, J. Kelley, ed. Makers of World History (Volume 1). New York: St. Martin's, 1995.
[25] Seler, Eduard. The Temple Pyramid of Tepoxtlan. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 28 (1904).
[26] Dibble, Charles E., and Anderson, Arthur J.O., trans. Florentine Codex (Volume 11). Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1963.
[27] Wendt, Herbert. Out of Noah's Ark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959.
[28] Waters, Frank. The Book of the Hopi. New York: Viking, 1963.
[29] Dixon, Roland B. Water Monsters in Northern California. Journal of American Folklore 19 (1906). p. 99.
[30] Lankford, George E. Native American Legends. Little Rock, AR: August House, 1987. p. 99.
[31] Anders, Ferdinand. Der Altmexikanische Federmosaikschild im Wien. Archiv f�r Volkerkunde 32 (1978). pp. 78-80.
[32] Seler, Eduard. Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften. Zeitschrift f�r Ethnologie 41 (1909). pp. 390-393.
[33] Dibble and Anderson, Florentine Codex (Volume 11), p. 68.
[34] "Threatened and Endangered Species Database - Entry - Otter, marine." http://www.nceet.snre.umich.edu/~david/html.dir/entry.237.html.
[35] Dibble and Anderson, Florentine Codex (Volume 11), p. 68.
[36] "Threatened and Endangered Species Database - Entry - Otter, marine." http://www.nceet.snre.umich.edu/~david/html.dir/entry.237.html.
[37] Chanin, Paul. The Natural History of Otters. New York: Facts On File, 1985. p. 9.
[38] Chanin, The Natural History of Otters.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Seler, The Temple Pyramid of Tepoxtlan, p. 347.
[44] Chanin, The Natural History of Otters.
[45] Heuvelmans, Bernard. On the Track of Unknown Animals. London: Kegan Paul, 1995.