Mystery Animals of the Shuar: Supplementary Information

The tshenkutshen. © Shakarasa, who states here that 'You are free to use this if you wish,' on DeviantArt

In 1999, Spanish cryptozoologist Angel Morant Fores carried out cryptozoological fieldwork among the Shuar people of Ecuador, detailed by him here. On his return, he was able to report on a number of Ecuadorean cryptids previously unknown in the literature, including the esakar-paki (a peccary), shiashia-yawá, pamá-yawá, tshenkutshen, entzaeia-yawá, tsere-yawá, jiukam-yawá, "jungle lion," (all cats) and ujea (a bear-like animal). The information he received about these cryptids, including descriptions and sightings, can be read online in archived versions in Spanish and English. Instead of simply repeating this information, this post will present more obscure information about these cryptids – principally folkloric and etymological facts – found in various anthropological publications. This information, taken as it is from folklore and heresy, should be considered less reliable than the firsthand accounts gathered by Forés. The “new information” does little or nothing to help identify these animals, but is worth compiling in one place anyway.

An opening note: the Shuar term “yawá” is usually translated as “tiger” (that is, jaguar or puma) and is most commonly applied by the Shuar as a suffix to cats, including many of the cryptids discussed below. However, it does not always refer to cats; it may simply mean any carnivorous mammal, and one Shuar-Spanish dictionary incorrectly translates the word as “dog”. In fact, the Shuar name for the dog either is yawá or ends in yawá, proving that the appearance of the term in a cryptid's name does not necessarily mean the animal is regarded as a cat.

The best-known of the cryptids revealed by Forés must be surely be the “rainbow tiger” (or jaguar), the tshenkutshen. This cryptid was described as a cat like a jaguar with some very unusual features, including stripes of red, white, and yellow across its chest; remarkably simian hands with flat palms; powerful arms; a hump atop its shoulder; and leaping, arboreal habits. The colour of its coat is inconsistent between eyewitnesses; according to some, it is black; others say it is white and speckled, like the shiashia-yawá. An animal with these exact features (and a white spotted coat) was allegedly shot by Macas settler Policarpio Rivadeneira in the jungles of Cerro Kilamo in 1959. In light of its non-feline characteristics, the fact that its name lacks the suffix yawá (“tiger”) seemed significant, suggesting that the Shuar themselves did not actually regard it as a cat.

The first thing I discovered about this cryptid was that “tsénket” is actually the Shuar word for the number seven. Working off of this lead and trying out different spellings of “tshenkutshen” brought up nothing, so I moved on to another of the Shuar's mystery cats – and, in the first book I found, Elke Mader's Metamorfosis del Poder (1999), I came across a list of Shuar cats which included the “tsenkútsenku,” which, alongside “tsenkútsen,” (and, in one case, “tesenkutsen”) appears to be the favoured spelling for this cryptid's name amongst anthropologists.

Some of the works mentioning the cryptid refer to it as the tsenkútsenku-yawá, including a Shuar-language story, which might seem to confirm that it is in fact seen as a feline animal (but remember that yawá does not always refer to cats). The Nombres de los Mamiferos del Ecuador (2004) says that tsenkutsen-yawá does literally mean “rainbow tiger,” and although I have been unable to definitely establish the meaning of the Shuar “senku” or “sen,” (having said that, the similar Shuar word “senta” might be translated as “ribbon” - “seven ribbons” = “rainbow” in idiom?) this etymology makes sense based on the first part of the name – after all, rainbows have seven colours. The name also shows that, although the multicoloured stripes are not always mentioned in the sources below, they are an intrinsic part of the animal. Other sources give the Shuar word for rainbow as “tuntiak,” so perhaps tsenkutsen is a more idiomatic term. Alternatively, Ortalli Sanga suggests that the name is derived from the word “tsenkup” (the common squirrel monkey Saimiri sciureus), presumably in reference to the animal's arboreal habits.

The Nombres de los Mamiferos del Ecuador defines it as a very dangerous melanistic jaguar which lives in the trees, and sees it as more mythological than real. The Glosario Patrimonio Inmaterial also confirms the basic description of the tsenkútsenku as a “very fierce” black, red, white, and yellow-striped cat, and Mundo Shuar (1980) adds that the colours on its chest are those of the ave predicador, the toucan.

According to Marco Vinicio Rueda, there are a total of nine extant myths regarding the tsenkútsenku, but only one story, which can be found in a number of works, is recounted. In the most concise version, as told in Los Nombres Shuar (2000) by Carmelina Jimpikit and Gladys Antun', a hunter is killed with a single bite by a tsenkútsenku hiding in a tree, and his sickly brother sets out to take revenge, summoning some other Shuar and building a trap – baited with his brother's scant remains – with which to trap the predator. The plan is successful, and the tsenkútsenku is caught and killed. In one version of the story, the hunter beheads the tsenkútsenku and takes the head to a sacred ceremony, alarming several women, and in vengeance for this desecration, an angered spirit either takes the form of a tsenkútsenku and kills the Shuar, or creates many more tsenkútsenku on the Earth. Full-length versions may be found in Rueda's Setenta Mitos Shuar (1983) and Siro Pellizzaro's Arutam: Mitología Shuar (1990), which both contain details not found in the other. According to one anthropologist, the story probably exists to illustrate the usefulness of traps, and how to hunt very dangerous animals.

The story itself doesn't really give any new information about the rainbow tiger, beyond further confirming that it is indeed regarded as extremely dangerous. Also, its call might sound like “Tsara! Tsara! tsara! tsara!,” or that might be it's attempt at mimicking a monkey call – the text is a little unclear. The ending of the story does also imply that the rainbow tiger was not regarded as a rare animal when the myth originated, as the conclusion to one version has the tsenkútsenku actually being multiplied, and the sacrilegious hunter is blamed for unleashing this “great evil” upon the land: one might almost read the tale as an origin myth for the cryptid. Rueda's notes also provide some more details. He confirms the information given to Forés regarding its arboreal habits, writing that “it jumps from one tree to another and does not walk on land,” (however, in one version of the story, it drags the body of the hunter to a cave to eat, and is later seen drinking from the river). He also states that it ordinarily travels in pairs, which reminds me of the Brazilian giant black jaguar onça-canguçú, which is also said to have a white “bib,” though it does not otherwise resemble the rainbow tiger. In fact, throughout the story, the tsenkútsenku itself is referred to simply as a black jaguar more than once. There is actually no mention of it's most striking characteristic – the rainbow stripes which give it its name – in this tale at all.

Finally, the rainbow tiger is mentioned in a Shuar poem included as the frontispiece of Letras Indígenas en la Amazonía Peruana (1993) by Ricardo Vírhuez. In the poem, the gloating narrator states that he is as “fierce as a tsenkútsenku tiger,” showing that the rainbow tiger's ferocity is or was proverbial among the Shuar.

There are some non-feline possibilities for the tshenkutshen, mostly founded on its strange simian characteristics: a carnivorous, superficially cat-like primate; a giant procyonid similar to the olingo; or even a surviving sparassodont marsupial, thought to have gone extinct in the Pliocene. On the other hand, if it is indeed a cat, one animal which, it is sometimes speculated, may best explain this cryptid, is a giant form of margay (Leopardus wiedii; first suggested by the owner of the website Messybeast and TheMorlock on DeviantArt).

There are still more discrepancies and questions regarding the tshenkutshen. Why do different sources describe it with different coat colours and patterns? Why do no other sources mention the simian paws, strong arms, and fatty hump described by Rivandeneira? And why does the old Shuar myth make no mention of its rainbow chest, despite that feature apparently giving it its Shuar name, instead describing it merely as a “black jaguar” – unless the stripes were sufficiently well known to not warrant a mention?

One piece of information may go some way towards explaining some of these discrepancies. When I first came across the spelling tsenkútsenku, I took it to be the same thing as the tshenkutshen/tsenkútsen because their descriptions were so similar, and Glosario Patrimonio Inmaterial and Mundo Shuar also explicitly describe the tsenkútsenku (not tsenkútsen) as a rainbow-striped animal. However, the Nombres de los Mamiferos del Ecuador seperately lists the tsenku-tsenku-yawá as a very aggressive cat which lives in trees near rivers, alongside the tshenkutshen. Tsenku-tsenku-yawá is presumably the same thing as the tsenkútsenku, but are they both also the same thing as the original rainbow jaguar, tshenkutshen, or have are they distinct creatures which have been confused by various authors? Alternatively, have the authors of Nombres de los Mamiferos del Ecuador mistakenly split one animal into two on account of the spelling differences?

In fact, the above-mentioned book lists a number of very obscure, possibly cryptozoological cats from Shuar lore – mostly defined as “mythological” – including the white jaguar wampúwash-yawá; the yampikia-yawá with its “somehow different” fur; the blue-furred sechá-yawá; and the intriguing juríjri-yawá, a cat which lives in caves and is very fierce, but which is nonetheless domesticable. Perhaps these cats are simply myths, or are now extinct, because they don't appear to have been mentioned to Forés. On they other hand, the first three probably would not be new animals anyway, as there are a wide range of jaguar colour morphs reported from South America, which are usually considered seperate species by local people. The juríjri-yawá sounds more like its own animal, but if it is or was real, it may well be some known species; as noted above, “yawá” does not imply that the animal is necessarily a big cat, nor even a cat at all, only a carnivorous mammal. Incidentally, a monster named juríjri also appears in the afformentioned Shuar poem, when the narrator brags that “I can eat you while you sleep like a juríjri,” but based on other sources, this may be a different creature to the supposed cat. The Los Shuar y los Animales also includes another mystery animal, the giant black-and-white cat uunt-yawá.

Although it's the tshenkutshen that has monkey-like characterstics, it's another of the mystery “cats” reported by Forés, the tsere-yawá, which now turns out to have some connection with monkeys. This cryptid was described simply as a brown-furred “one meter long semiaquatic cat which is said to hunt in packs of 8 to 10 individuals”. Karl Shuker has speculated on his blog that this animal may actually be the small-eared dog or zorro (Atelocynus microtis). By all accounts, it is not very simian at all – and yet the word “tsere” is in fact the Shuar term for either “spider,” or a sort of small monkey (probably the white-fronted capuchin Cebus albifrons, though some sources say a marmoset or a night monkey), giving us a basic etymology of “monkey-tiger” or, apparently considered much less likely, “spider-tiger”!

Los Shuar y los Animales describes the tsere-yawá simply as “a kind of tiger”. Metamorfosis del Poder also mentions the tsere-yawá (giving the etymology as “monkey-tiger”), but provides no details. The same goes for the white speckled, medium-sized cat shiashia-yawá, as well as the suach-yawá (the black jaguar, which appears in another Shuar poem). The Nombres suggests that the shiashia-yawá or shia-shia-yawá may be the oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus), which is spotted, but has brown fur.

Then there's the entzaeia-yawá (“water tiger” or “river tiger”), a man-eating, cow-tailed water cat which may be one of the aquatic “sabre-toothed cats” reported from elsewhere in South America, though it doesn't seem to have long fangs. There's little new to say about this one, as the etymology of its name was already known, and I can find no new stories regarding it beyond a Shuar-language text. The Nombres, in which it is listed as the entsáya-yawá, only says that it is very ferocious and probably mythical, and that the name is also used to refer to caimans, and to the greater grison by the Shuar-speaking Achuar. Los Shuar y los Animales reveals that there is another Shuar “water tiger,” the black-furred wankánin-yawá, but since this isn't described, it may be some smaller known animal, and Forés' original description of the entzaeia-yawá already listed black as one of its many colour morphs.

Similar to this in habits and in lack of new information is the pamá-yawá (“tapir tiger”), a very large grey-furred water-cat which is supposedly the only predator in the jungle big enough to hunt tapirs. In the Nombres, the pamá-yawá is simply a “big fierce jaguar”.

Moving quickly on, we come to another pack-hunting cat (besides this and the tsere-yawá, other mystery pack-hunting cats of South America include the Guyanese waracabra tiger and the Peruvian jungle wildcat), the jiukam-yawá, an animal for which Forés could find no eyewitnesses. According to some sources, “jiukam” signifies a “famous tiger”; others say that it is a term derived from “jiu-jiutin,” meaning “flexible”.

There is little new to say about the esakar-paki, a very small and aggressive peccary which has reddish fur and lives in groups of fifty or sixty individuals near the Peruvian border – other than that famed zoologist Marc van Roosmalen has described (not in the taxonomic sense of the term), from Brazil, a species of peccary which is small, orange-furred, and lives in groups. Could this be the same animal? Los Shuar y los Animales aslo lists the “ferocious and dangerous” esakar-paki, alongside a grand total of seven other peccaries (many of which may just be colour morphs or life stages), when only two species are currently known from Ecuador.

Passing over the “maned lion” (perhaps identical to the “Peruvian lion” of Peter Hocking), we come to the ujea, which Forés described as a bear-like animal which reminded him of a ground sloth, though as he could find no first-hand accounts of the animal, he could not give a detailed description. There is more information, much of it contradictary, available about this creature, which is regarded by anthropologists as a demon and not an animal, than about any of the other cryptids covered here except the tshenkutshen. Some of the “new” facts suggest a possible connection with the mapinguari, and tend to strengthen the identification of the ujea as a surviving (or now-vanished lingerling?) ground sloth.

More than any of the other Shuar cryptids documented here, the ujea seems to inhabit a border region between jungle reality and jungle mythology. Most anthropological sources describe it without physical detail as a generic monster or demon which is frequently said to be colossal and nocturnal. According to the Glosario Patrimonio Inmaterial, it is a nocturnal “gorilla-like” monster which is so dangerous that Shuar women and children feared to go out at night, though it could be speared to death from the doorways of houses, which it was too large to fit through. Other books describe it vaguely as a giant monkey or human.

These accounts are at odds with a description and illustration of the ujea by a Shuar, a certain Cesar who was a guide for a world-travelling blogger. Here is that blogger's description of the ujea, as given to him by Cesar:

The ujea is a weird mix between a bear and a human. Apparently the Shuar used to hunt these. As you can see in the picture the stench was enough to knock a grown man unconscious. These aren't dangerous to humans as they eat the nectar of flowers.

Other characteristics mentioned in different works include nocturnal habits, a terrifying call, and a cave-dwelling lifestyle (Metamorfosis del Poder refers to the ujea as a “neanderthal”).

Besides the fact that the Shuar once hunted ujeas suggesting they were considered animals and not demons (but did the Shuar stop hunting them because they went extinct, or for some other reason?), this information also suggests a possible link with the mapinguari, which is also famously noxious – as are the Peruvian segamai and Brazilian kida harara. Also, although they're most likely just there to show that the animal is unhygenic and smells bad, it's interesting that the mapinguari is also described as being followed by swarms of flies. But having said all that, an overpowering, even fatal odour is also a quality of other South American mythical creatures which clearly are not ground sloths – including the iwia, another Shuar being illustrated at the top of the linked blog post – so this alone would not be enough to link the two cryptids. The other behavioural characteristic given, the consumption of flower nectar, also probably owes more to mythology than reality, and might perhaps be based on the animal's long tongue. Interestingly, there is a (very jolly-sounding) Shuar song about the ujea entitled “Ujea (jungle caretaker),” a title which also suggests a very different view of the animal to the ferocious, feared monster described above – a view similar to that taken of the mapinguari by some Brazilians, who view it as a defender of the rainforest which punishes hunters who kill more animals than they need to.

But, noxious stench and mapinguari connections aside, it's the illustrations in the above-linked article, made by the Shuar Cesar, which actually provide the best evidence that the ujea may indeed be a ground sloth. The illustration of the ujea really shows a creature which seems half-man, half-ground sloth. It has a general human form (but is on all fours), with only somewhat hairy limbs, face, and undercarriage, and human hands, feet, and genitals. But some of its other features are suggestive of a ground sloth – a mane of shaggy red hair on the head and back; some very heavily hooked claws on its five fingers; and what appears to be a long, giraffe-like tongue. And although the angle prevents me from being certain, the head looks pretty elongated (I also have to wonder what, if the ujea is or was a real animal, led to the “half-human” part of its appearance. Perhaps it was capable of walking bipedally?)

The ujea also appears in an old Shuar myth. In this story, it is a ferocious predator which almost wiped out the Shuar by eating their women and children, though it also ate a fruit called the yash el caimito. Eventually the hero Kunamp tricked it to its death, luring it with this fruit to cross over a rope tied across a crevice, a rope which Kunamp cut when the ujea was halfway across, sending the monster plummeting to its death. Does this mean the ujea is no longer a denizen of the forest? Similar stories are told across the Americas of dangerous monsters and enemy tribes being vanquished, and the former stories often seem to refer to animals known only from the fossil record. Cesar's account said that the Shuar “used to” hunt the ujea. And of course, Forés could find no eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen a ujea: surely such a large animal, even if it were very rare, would be seen on occasion if it still existed.

Nevertheless, there is one relatively recent (1980's) account of an apparent ground sloth sighting from Ecuador, though it's specific location within the country is unstated, and more details about the sighting itself are currently unavailable to me. The eyewitness, a colleague of cryptozoologist J. Richard Greenwell, claimed to have seen a 10' long shaggy-haired quadruped, with a head like a horse, rear up onto its hind legs to feed on vegetation beside a cave. As Karl Shuker notes, this animal “very much [resembled] a ground sloth”.

Finally, it should be mentioned that the book Los Shuar y los Animales describes two different types of bear, both of which are “large” and edible (i.e. hunted by the Shuar), in the forests where only the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) is currently recognised. The first is supposedly the spectacled bear itself, the chai or chae, which is 1.20 metres at the shoulder (where the spectacled bear does not reach 1 metre), hairy, and lives in the mountains feeding on fruits. The second, the nankupchai, is black and eats birds and fruits. This same work also lists six different kinds of armadillo, where only four are known.