The Mapinguari is a creature of Brazilian folklore, called the "Brazilian Bigfoot." It is described as a man-eating monster, extremely foul-smelling and hairy, with hook-shaped nails, backward-facing feet, and a gaping mouth in its belly.
The ornithologist David C. Oren proposed that the creature might be a cultural memory of an extinct ground sloth, but his hypothesis was met with criticism from other scientists — the ground-sloth idea remains a contested speculation rather than established fact.