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It has been long rumored that the cryptid in the Amazon Rainforest of South America known as the Mapinguari is none other than a surviving group of giant ground sloths known as the Megatherium (which were the largest of the ground sloths).
So far, the more we discover about the Mapinguari, the more it leads to it being the Megatherium.
With that being said, could the Megatherium possibly still be alive and is now known as the Mapinguari I hope so!
Remember, most of the Amazon Rainforest remains undiscovered to this day, so it very well could be possible that the Mapinguari is in fact the Megatherium. And on top of that, they say that the Giant Ground Sloths didn't go extinct due to climate change, but do to overhunting by humans. They easily adapted to new vegetation so it is very possible for them to still be alive, but with a small population of course!
Can't wait for it all t o be discovered!!!
Ground Sloths and Sloths in general are my favorite animals!
I first read about the mapinguari in Bernard Heuvelmans' "On the Track of Unknown Animals" in high school, in the early 60s. The argument for extinction is their apparent tastiness as a food source for humans (there's some evidence they were kept in pens prior to slaughter), and reduction in suitable habitat. How adaptable they are/were, I don't know but they were definitely alive & kicking 10000 years ago so who knows ...
I first read about the mapinguari in Bernard Heuvelmans' "On the Track of Unknown Animals" in high school, in the early 60s. The argument for extinction is their apparent tastiness as a food source for humans (there's some evidence they were kept in pens prior to slaughter), and reduction in suitable habitat. How adaptable they are/were, I don't know but they were definitely alive & kicking 10000 years ago so who knows ...
Exactly! Some scientists actually say thay they have found subfossils of the Megatherium that date back 500 years ago! Meaning that it is possible that the Spanish Colonists encountered them as well. There is a map of the Americas made of the Spanish back in the 1500s that shows depictions of the animals they had discovered in the places that the settled and it one of the animals shown in the area that is now Argentina and Brazil depicts an animal that very well resembles the Megatherium.
That being said, it is quite possible that if the Ground Sloths still exist today, the Spanish and Portugese colonists reduced their population even further. OR, The Colonists wiped out the last of them! Which I hope is not the case! I hope they are still alive today and I hope we rediscover them soon as well!
Also, the Ground Sloths were very well alive and kicking 4000 years ago as well! Scientists have confirmed that, so they could very well still be alive today.
That would be great news -- but once discovered, they would probably be wiped out by our stoopid curiosity-seeking ways...
Now that's a bit prejudgemental of humanity don't you think?
I'm pretty sure we are not nearly as ruthless and barbaric as we were back in the day when we last encountered them. So that being said, I believe that they will be classified as a protected species once they are rediscovered!
Remember, most of the Amazon Rainforest remains undiscovered to this day, so it very well could be possible that the Mapinguari is in fact the Megatherium. And on top of that, they say that the Giant Ground Sloths didn't go extinct due to climate change, but do to overhunting by humans. They easily adapted to new vegetation so it is very possible for them to still be alive, but with a small population of course!
Ground Sloths and Sloths in general are my favorite animals!
The Amazon is a pretty amazing place - they find new species all the time, so knows what else is there that we don't know about yet.
I've always been a bit partial to the Giant Sloths since I was a kid. I had a book on prehistoric animals, and I had misread a sentence that said something like, "It's range was from New Jersey to Florida" to mean that was the size of the creature itself. I actually believed that for a while. Ah, kids and their active imaginations!
"Missing in Alaska" just aired an episode about the "God bear", and the description was eerily similar to a white Megatherium. Even the stench. Forget South America, maybe the best chance to find a megatherium alive today might be the boreal forests of Alaska. And if they are living at a density of one every 1000 square miles, in a virtually unpopulated area, they could go undetected. And probably those who do detect it wind up eaten (it's an omnivore, they say), so there are few living witnesses of this monstrous creature.
I lived in the Bolivian amazon for a year in the 90s. Never saw the mapinguari but the locals swore it was real. They also swore there were anacondas big enough to swallow cows whole and caymans big enough to eat trucks. The only monster sized things I saw were bugs... the jungle just doesn't support truly giant animals.
Forget South America, maybe the best chance to find a megatherium alive today might be the boreal forests of Alaska. And if they are living at a density of one every 1000 square miles, in a virtually unpopulated area, they could go undetected.
You're as likely to find a Bengal Tiger in the boreal forests of Alaska as a Megatherium because of the climate, food sources, etc. If it still exists, it exists in South America.
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Ah, kids and their active imaginations!
