Chiloe Sea Cow - more information

 

Chiloé area where "sea cow" and "water trauco" were sighted".

Copyright © 2010 by Austin Whittall

 
Continuing with the mysterious Patagonian sea creatures, I will go back to the Patagonian "sea cow" because today I read an interesting post by Alejandra Leighton Naranjo, Anthropologist of the Unidad de Salud Colectiva of Chiloé [1]

She posted the story told to her by an old inhabitant of Mechuque Island, Arsenio Huichaquelen which mentions a "sea cow" and which I quote in full below: (Source: [1]):

The Camahueto and the Sea Cow

[You can read my post on Camahueto, to brush up on this Patagonian unicorn, a bull-like creature with one horn jutting out of its head]

About 60 years ago, Mr. Ramiro Oyarzo, a diving suit diver came across the Camahueto and the Sea Cow while he was diving in the channel between the [Islands of] Cheniao y Aulín. [1]

The channel mentioned by Arsenio is located at approximately 42°15'S and 73°13'W. Aulín Island is part of th Butachauques Islands and Cheniao is part of the Mechuque Islands. Both of these islands are part of the Ancud Gulf, and located between Chiloé Island and the mainland, in Chile. I marked the spot with a red circle in the map above.
Now back to our story:

He barely saved himself because the animals chased him in the deep sea. At that place there is an enclosure where, deep down, the animals lived. Don Ramiro said that that explained why that part of the channel was so bad for sailing.

(The Sea Cow is like a cow, but with fins [1]

The story has both creatures (cow and camahueto) behave like the regular "land" bovines. With an enclosure an all. It also gives them supernatural powers to disturb the waters and imperil navigation.

But lets just imagine that these details are just embellishments that were added to make the story better, and hide the essence of it: the diver came across some weird sea creatures and his mind classed them as sea cow and camahueto.

We can guess that they were not sea wolves or sea lions / seals because the diver would have recognized them. They were surely something else. Maybe a "Southern sea cow" or manatee, or perhaps a walrus? We will never know for sure.

It is interesting to point out that in the same area (see map above), there is another strange being:

The ‘Water Trauco’

Do not mistake it for the minute Trauco, a landlubber evil and perverse dwarf.
This is anothre variety, a sea-run trauco, one that lives in the ocean, quite different to the dwarf.

It lives at Mount Quicaví on the east coast of Chiloé, and is describe as a dangerous male goat. With a long beard and legs similar to those of a guanaco. Its body is covered with fish-like scales and bushy hair. [2] Perhaps some other variety of sea cow.

Bibliography

[1] Relatos de Don Arsenio. Salud Colectiva Chiloé. 01.05.10.
[2] Barrio, J. El Diccionario de Mitos y Leyendas. On line.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Patagonian Walrus bicentennial stamp

 

Patagonian Walrus Stamp. Bicentennial issue.
Copyright © 2010 by Austin Whittall. Adapted from [1]

Another of my "fake" stamp issues. This one, commemorates Argentina's bicentennial (1810-2010), and in view of my latest posts, I chose a walrus, the criptid "Southern walrus" or "Patagonian walrus".

The image is from Conrad Gesner's 1558 De Piscium & Aquatilium Animantum Natura.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Walrus in the River Plate (Río de la Plata)

 
Andrew Battell (1565-1614), was an English sailor, who was part of an expedition led by Captain Abraham Cocke to loot Portuguese and Spanish settlements in South America. However he was captured by the natives in Brazil and handed over to the Portuguese who imprisoned him. He was later rescued and wrote about his adventures.

In his account, he mentions in the River Plate, an: "Isle of Lobos Marinos [Sea wolves] that doth abound with seals and sea-morses[1]

This island, located close (12 km - 7.5 mi.) to Punta del Este city in Uruguay (35° 1' 60 S, 54° 52' 60 W), on the northern tip of the Río de la Plata (River Plate) estuary, is currently the second most important reserve of "lobos" in the world. It has a surface area of only 41 hectares (101 acres).

It is home to two (2) different kinds of seals, the South American Sea Lion or "lobo de un pelo" (Otaria flavescens) and the South American Fur Seal or "lobo de dos pelos" (Arctocephalus australis. Hunting these seals was only banned in 1992 and current population is about 180,000 "Fur seals" and 6,500 "Sea Lions".

But, at least nowadays there are no "sea-morses" or walrus in the Southern Hemisphere. I recently posted on the possible existence of Patagonian walrus in the recent past. Perhaps Battell came across the last survivors of this now extinct species.

Or, he may have mistakenly believed that the sea lions were walrus. Or, besides the two varieties of seals, there were "sea morses" (morse is an old name applied to walrus, it is a Russian word (morss) also found in Lapp (morsk), Englishmen in the 1600s used the word "morse" when referring to walrus.

Though the Isla de los Lobos is not within Patagonia, it is quite close, and to the north of it, so if our mysterious "morse" lived on that island, it would also have lived in the colder Patagonian waters just to the south of it.

Bibliography.

[1] The strange adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh, in Angola and the adjoining regions. (1901). London. Hakluyt Society. pp. 5



Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Sabretooth "Cats" and Patagonian monsters

 



As promised in my previous post on walruses - Iemisch and sabretooth cats, I did my reading last night and can conclude that: (1) yes, there were sabretooth cats in Patagonia (one of which was not a cat but ia cat-like marsupial) and (2) it is unlikely that they are the Iemisch though they may, if still alive, be some other Patagonian monster (i.e. the water tiger, if and when Iemisch and water tiger are not the same animal, though I believe they are one and the same).

Patagonian sabretooth "cats"

The real felid, the Smilodon populator whose remains seem to have been found among the bones collected at at the “Mylodon Cave” (see my post on Mylodon) as disclosed by recent analysis of old collections (Barnett et al. 2005 and Massone 1996).[1][2]

Then we have the "false" sabretooth cats, the Thylacosmilids. They were predators that became extinct during the Pliocene Epoch, and were large, as big as modern pumas. They had short tails and lived in South America since the Miocene (some 15 Million years ago) and, as most of the marsupials in South America, they were displaced by the later arrivals which were placental (i.e. the smilodons) about 1 Million years ago, becoming extinct.

Thylacosmilids were not "cats" (which are placental mammals), they were marsupials (like the kangaroo, and their young developed after birth in their mother's pouch), fierce carnivores with pouches!

Their name in Greek means "pouch knife" due to their long long upper fangs (15 cm – 6 in.) which rested against their chins, of solid bone, which had flanges thad guided and protected these big yet fragile canines. Unlike felines, Tylacosmilids lacked incisors, their teeth cheek were marsupial.

Smilodons (Greek for “knife teeth”) on the other hand lived well into the Late Pleistocene (about 10,000 years B.P.). They were real cats: the feline ancestry of Smilodon has been confirmed by DNA, and were about 1.2 m (4 ft.) long they had Short tails (bold font mine: this makes them unlikely candidates for our “Walrus” because the image (here) shows a long tailed beast) and enormous upper canines (walrus-like) about 18 cm (7 in.) long (but could reach 25 cm or 10 in).

These big “cats” one marsupial and the other placental were virtually identical to each other despite having different origins. This is a clear example of converging evolution, where a good design is repeated again and again because it is the most suitable one. Similar converging evolutionary examples can be found in: the shark (fish), ichtiosaur (reptile) and dolphin (mammal) as marine animals or, in the pteranodon (reptile), birds and bats (mammals) as flying animals.

Extinction

Getting back to our Sabre teeth, what made them disappear?

They became extinct with all the megafauna at the end of the Last Ice Age. Perhaps the irruption of humans in America tipped the predator-prey balance and led to their demise, or the climate changes could have also affected them. It is still an unsolved question.

The short tail, has a superficial resemblance to the lynx or bob-cat’s tail, but the similarity ends there. They were stocky, had short limbs and do not seem to have been built to run after them. They must have stalked them and ambushed them. Using their massive bodies to push and pin down their prey, which they would hold down with their big paws and then, as its horrid teeth were quite fragile, they must have just used them to bite and cause a dreadful wound. They hunted statically, not “on the run”. Perhaps this specialized hunting mode led to their extinction. [3]

Survival?

Both of these cats lived in Patagonia, and there is a faint chance that they may have survived and lived on to frighten the natives and became incorporated into their myths.

As I said at the beginning of this post, they may be reflected in the "Water Tiber" myth or even in the "Iemisch" myth, however I disagree because their short tails are very unlike the long tailed being that the Iemisch is supposed to be or, the long tailed nguruvilu fox-snake.


Sources.
[1] Barnett, R., Barnes, I., et al. (2005). Evolution of the extinct Sabretooths and the American cheetah-like cat. Current Biology. vol 15. No 15.
[2] Massone, M. (1996). Hombre temprano y paleoambiente en la región de Magallanes: evaluación crítica y perspectivas. Anales del Insituto de la Patagonia 24:81–97. P. Arenas
[3] McHenry et al. (2007). Supermodeled sabercat, predatory behavior in Smilodon fatalis revealed by high-resolution 3D computer simulation . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 16010-16015. 10.1073/pnas.0706086104.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Walrus or Iemisch? or a sabretooth?

 
In a recent post I suggested that an image by was a Patagonian Walrus, but I thought it over and I believe that it may be a Iemisch (the creature's tail is long and very unlike that of a walrus. Furthermore it seems more like an otter -look at its paws- than a warlus.

Then one of my blog's readers suggested that it may be a sabre-toothed cat. Which is a very interesting and reasonable idea: the long fangs are definitively similar to those of a smilodon sp., and furthermore if, as I have suggested the iemisch is a water tiger, it may even be an extant smilodon.
That is, the smilodon may be a water tiger.

In all honesty, I have not seriously considered the smilodons as potential candidates to explain Patagonian cryptids, and my book just mentions them as part of the region's megafauna.

I will do some reading and look into smilodons (in Patagonia, Chile, Argentina and South America). The outcome of this research will be published here. We may find something new or interesting.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Patagonian Walrus

 

Natives and animals at the Strait of Magellan ca. 1605. From [1]

Above is a series of images from a book by Dutch traveller and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten [1563-1611], which depicts some natives and weird animals found at the Strait of Magellan. In 1598 he piloted the Dutch fleet on its first voyage by the South-West Passage (of Magellan's Straits) to India, so he really saw what is depicted in his book.

It is remarkable because the upper part shows a seal-like animal with a long thin tail and two sharp walrus-like fangs jutting out of its mouth. The caption says "animal of the Strait of Magellan".

The central part shows a man and a woman which are described as "Magellaneis" (native to Magellan's Strait).

The bottom part of the image shows two men kneeling in front of an idol with horns and snakes protruding from its head. The caption is quite illegible, and I am not sure it shows Fuegians or Aonikenk natives because it seems to say "Lapons" (Laps), and Linschoten did sail to Lapland (northern Scandinavia and Russia) in the late 1590s. So maybe they are not Patagonian natives.

Walruses

Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) are animals that live in the Arctic areas of Asia and America, along its northernmost reaches, in the Arctic Sea and also in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Its long tusks and massive body are the two features which distinguish it.



They evolved in the North Pacific some 18 Million years ago and may have extended their range to Northern Mexico and California. Some 5 to 8 Million years ago, they spread into the Atlantic Ocean through the Central American Seaway, which was a channel that linked the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans when North and South America had not yet joined. [2]

Could these primitive odobenids have moved into the Southern Hemisphere colonizing its coasts with the other southern seals? I have not found any references mentioning walruses in the South Atlantic, or outside of its current northern circumpolar habitat.

There have been historical records which report sightings of walruses in southern England, Ireland, Germany, Netherland, Spain, Belgium and New England (U.S.).[3] So they could have drifted southwards across the Equator into the South Atlantic.

Patagonian walrus?

There may be proof of this in old accounts about Patagonian "Horned" sea creatures, which I had assumed were descriptions of terrestrial cow or bull-like creatures frolicking in the sea. But they may actually describe a walrus-like sea mammal (if instead of "horns" we take them for "tusks"). These animals were reported in Chiloé in Northern Patagonia and also in Tierra del Fuego (right beside the Strait of Magellan). Perhaps they do refer to the same creature, which nowadays is probably extinct.

Whale Walrus

Yet there was a strange whale or dolphin-like creature that looked like a walrus which lived in the Southern Hemisphere about 4 or 5 Million years ago, the Obenocetops peruvianus. Its remains have been found in Peru (in the Pisco Formation of Early Pliocene age), and the animal's reconstruction is strikingly similar to a walrus:[4]

Odobenocetops peruvianus Whale-Walrus. From [4]

Another very similar species was discovered also by Muzion in 1999 [5], in the same area, and the same period but is about 1 Million years younger, the Odobenocetops leptodon (its image can be seen below):

Odobenocetops (Museum of Natural History, Washingon, DC). By Mary Parrish From [5]

Its tusks point backwards instead of downwards as in walruses.

Note that none of these animals have the snake-like tail of the "Fuegian Walrus" shown in the first image.

Sources.

[1] Memoria Chilena, Portal de la Cultura de Chile. Histoires de la navigations. Jean Hugues de Linschot .../ avec annottations de B. Laludanus. 3eme ed. augm. 1689. 522 p., [22] h. with plates.
[2] Annalisa Berta, James L. Sumich, Kit M. Kovacs, (2006). Marine mammals: evolutionary biology. Academic Press. pp. 124.
[3] Ronald M. Nowak, (1999). Walker's mammals of the world. JHU press, vol.1, pp. 862.
[4] Christian de Muizon, (1993). Odobenocetops Peruvianus: Una Remarcable Convergencia De Adaptación Alimentaria Entre Morsa Y Delfín. Bull. Inst. fr. études andines 1993, 22 (3): 671-683
[5] Muizon, C. de, D. P. Domning & M. Parrish, (1999). Dimorphic tusas and adaptive strategies in a new species of walrus-like dolphin (Odobenocetopsidae) from the Pliocene of Peru. Comptes-rendus de l’Academie des Sciences, Paris, Sciences de la Terre et des Planetes 329:449-455.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Sea monster by Chiloe Island and the "water Trauco"

 

Chilean historian Diego de Rosales wrote in 1674 that in the sea by Chiloé Island the natives had seen fish that were:

as large as whales with two heads and one with the body of a small whale with a horrible head notably out of proportion with its body, armed with two long and sturdy horns; that on its back it had a wide eye. It was an enormous and stupendous beast.[1]

A similar myth circulated among the Selk’nam at Tierra del Fuego which told of a fat yet agile man named Shai who “transformed into a fish without scales, thick, with two horns on its head”.[2]

"Horned" sea creatures. From: [3]

A horned aquatic beast is something unheard of by science, excluding the one horned narwahl that lives in the Arctic waters; there is no other animal with this feature (the see einhorn or sea unicorn shwon above is a mythical creature).

Perhaps it was some large huemul deer swimming in the sea, or the “water Trauco”. The “two heads” part seems to be made up or, perhaps refers to some unknown animal.

The water “Trauco”

The dwarfish Trauco mentioned in our post Here is not always depicted as a midget troll, it has some local variations. For instance on Mount Quicaví on the eastern coast of Chiloé Island it is described as a dangerous goat with a long beard that has guanaco-like legs; its body is covered with scales and tufts of bristly hair.[4]

At other places within Chiloé it is a sea creature “with the legs of a guanaco, fish tail, the [spiky] bristles of a sea urchin and two pointed horns”.[5]

Walrus?

This is a very strange sea creature, a horned fish-goat hybrid. But what if the descriptions are wrong and the two horns are not horns but fangs, that is tusks?

Perhaps it is a Southern Hemisphere walrus? However walruses do not live outside of the arctic sea and the north Atlantic and Pacific Oceans close to the polar region. This southern walrus may be an unknown and possibly extinct animal.

Chiloé map. Quicaví is shown with an arrow.

Bibliography.

[1] de Rosales, D. Op.Cit. v. 1 pp. 308-309.
[2] Canclini, A., (2007). Leyendas de Tierra del Fuego. Mitos de los onas y yaganes, aborígenes fueguinos. B. Aires: Zaguier & Urruty. pp. 92.
[3] Online, Here.
[4] Barrio, J. El Diccionario de Mitos y Leyendas. Online.
[5] Housse, E., (1939). Une épopée indienne: les Araucans du Chili; histoire... Paris: Lib. Plon. pp. 150.


Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters