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Speaker 1: we'll talk to you then bye. Hey there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as
Speaker 1: always joined by Devine, and once again we've got a
Speaker 1: mysterious story for you. Yeah, this is creepy. It's a
Speaker 1: creepy cryptid Yeah, this one that this oh what is
Speaker 1: the WrestleMania that you smell? But I'm cooking. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not gonna work in this episode, because this is a
Speaker 1: stinky critter. I also have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So well, it was twelve when I watched WrestleMania, so
Speaker 1: it's been a long time that the appropriate rates here
Speaker 1: all of the angry email. Well, this week we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about a cryptid, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about a cryptod that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have probably not heard of before. No different, noman, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's the mocking waw mopping. I'm gonna probably mispronounce it
Speaker 1: every time I say, well, I'm just going to really
Speaker 1: creatively avoid even saying at once. Okay, Well, the mopping
Speaker 1: Wari is a creature that is said to live in
Speaker 1: the Amazon Rainforest, mostly in the northern part of South America,
Speaker 1: so Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, kind of that general tom
Speaker 1: portion of the that continent. If that confuses you when
Speaker 1: you look at the map, it's a fat part, yes,
Speaker 1: it's South America. Was a drumstick that would be the
Speaker 1: part with the meat, yes, yes, the part part, not
Speaker 1: the sticky part. Yes. Uh So the locals in that
Speaker 1: area have been telling each other stories for generations about
Speaker 1: this creature, and when the Europeans came to South America,
Speaker 1: they very happily told them about the mopping Wari as well.
Speaker 1: So let's this is a different creater. So let's just
Speaker 1: kind of start at the beginning. Let's start with what
Speaker 1: does it look like? I just want to sidetrack immediately
Speaker 1: and tell you that my favorite thing about this part
Speaker 1: of the world is that there are literally so many
Speaker 1: different species of things that we genuinely have not discovered yet,
Speaker 1: and so the idea of cryptids and things like that,
Speaker 1: I just love. And I also extra love when the
Speaker 1: white people came down there and the natives were like, listen,
Speaker 1: this is the thing we know. They were like, that's
Speaker 1: not like anything I've ever sat heard. Absolutely, that's a
Speaker 1: fake thing. What stop pulling my leg? There's nothing in
Speaker 1: my pocket? Yeah no, I I so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I immediately love the story immediately. Well okay, I feel validated,
Speaker 1: thank you. Okay. Well, let's uh, let's just like I said,
Speaker 1: start with the beginning, which is what is the mopping
Speaker 1: Oar look like. I just want to say I like
Speaker 1: the story too good. Well, you know, it's okay. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a gradia. It's graduated scale. As
Speaker 1: long as we all kind of like it, we're okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Typically our creature is described as traveling around on four legs,
Speaker 1: but it has been said to stand when it's standing
Speaker 1: on its rear legs, stands somewhere between seven to nine
Speaker 1: ft tall. That converts to to to two and three
Speaker 1: quarter meters. No, not short at all. We're not really
Speaker 1: sharing what the creature weighs because nobody's ever found one,
Speaker 1: so they can't ever get an accurate guess on its weight.
Speaker 1: And to be honest, I mean, you know, really, when
Speaker 1: all you can see is what it stands like in
Speaker 1: the jungle, you're probably not too worried about its weight.
Speaker 1: You're probably worried about oh my god, that's a big
Speaker 1: giant from it actually running away by this point, even
Speaker 1: looking at it anymore exactly. The skin of the bopping
Speaker 1: Warrie is said to be super tough. It's described as
Speaker 1: being so tough that it is impervious to both arrows
Speaker 1: and bullets. This particular cryptod is covered in a very
Speaker 1: thick coat of hair all over its entire body, and
Speaker 1: that hair is sometimes described as like that. I have
Speaker 1: you guys seen the photos of the tail of the
Speaker 1: giant ant eaters. Yeah, yeah, and that hair looks I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's giant locks of hair, that's what. Apparently
Speaker 1: this creature is covered in that length of hair. Something
Speaker 1: in that range that's fairly rare and wild animals and
Speaker 1: it well depending well, okay, in high altitude animals, you
Speaker 1: would expect that density of hair and the range forest.
Speaker 1: But then again we gotta be careful of Okay, just
Speaker 1: because the hair is long doesn't mean it's dead. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the length is the thing already. That's throwing
Speaker 1: me off, because I would agree that, you know, high altitude,
Speaker 1: you'd want dense, but you wouldn't want long because it
Speaker 1: would catch all the snow and freeze and get clumpy.
Speaker 1: You want dead short hair. So really, there's no good
Speaker 1: reason for an animal to have long hair like that,
Speaker 1: because it's pretty much always good for in almost any
Speaker 1: pretty just pretty much just gonna get really awful and
Speaker 1: hinder them. It's not good, and they have to be
Speaker 1: sheered regularly. Does not always proceed in a rational manner.
Speaker 1: A lot of people try to, you know, believe that
Speaker 1: it does, but not necessarily. Yeah. Well, in the hair
Speaker 1: on this particular creature, the coloring is debatable. Some people
Speaker 1: will say that it is reddish in color. Others will
Speaker 1: say that is more of a black colors. We don't
Speaker 1: have an exact and with cryptids it's always like this,
Speaker 1: so I'm not really thrown off a lot of times
Speaker 1: it matters on the lighting that people have, Truman or
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they're like people and they just have
Speaker 1: different colored hair. Absolutely, absolutely, the most animals do. Yeahue
Speaker 1: The hair though, apparently needs to be washed because the
Speaker 1: mopping warri is a stinky, stinky, stinky critter. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it by accounts of locals, you know that it has
Speaker 1: arrived by your nose sensing it before you actually see
Speaker 1: or hear it show up. How do you know that
Speaker 1: these are just like, you know, hippies? I really, I
Speaker 1: was really thinking, man, it's just one of those seventies hippies.
Speaker 1: But then I realized the story went way back. This
Speaker 1: is where the hippies came from. The hippie the hippie
Speaker 1: origins sounded. No, I don't think that's it, But I
Speaker 1: do enjoy the stories that I've read from locals that
Speaker 1: talk about the mopping Warri showing up and they're hiding,
Speaker 1: and as it gets closed for the smell gets stronger
Speaker 1: and stronger until it is so strong and overwhelms them
Speaker 1: and they pass out. I'm just I find it really funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, it takes a really strong smell to make
Speaker 1: somebody just pass out. It does, it does. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the reasons of why that might quote unquote
Speaker 1: be happening. But it would make sense to me if
Speaker 1: they had long hair in the rainforest, if the sweat
Speaker 1: that was coming off of them and then the general
Speaker 1: stank of being dirty in general was all getting j yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, berries and stuff getting stuck in there, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, or sliding through it, you know it, and
Speaker 1: then it just gets all stuck in the fur and
Speaker 1: just forments, yep, yep, you don't want to get on
Speaker 1: that slipping slide terrible. According to legend, the mopping Wari
Speaker 1: has really really big claws on both its front and
Speaker 1: its rear feet. And speaking of the feet, there is
Speaker 1: something that is described about its rear feet that is
Speaker 1: strange and it took me a while to sort out,
Speaker 1: and that is that the description of its rear feet
Speaker 1: typically says in the accounts that they were backward facing,
Speaker 1: and initially I thought, well, that's weird. It's front feet
Speaker 1: facing forward and its back feet are facing completely backwards.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. But what I started doing
Speaker 1: some research. What I figured out is that there are
Speaker 1: some animals that have really large claws, like let's say
Speaker 1: the sloth modern day slaws, they have really long claws. Well,
Speaker 1: those are meant for hanging onto trees and branches and
Speaker 1: traveling around in that arboreal forest, but if they're on
Speaker 1: the ground, it's terrible for walking. So what they end
Speaker 1: up doing is kind of curling their claw underneath their
Speaker 1: foot walk on the clause. Yeah, they kind of walk
Speaker 1: on the claw and the side of their foot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in that very cute sloth picture that devon is
Speaker 1: now waving around. So it's it's very strange, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of a if you if you took your hand
Speaker 1: and you took your fingers and you folded them under
Speaker 1: and then rolled your hand onto the side slash heel,
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of what they're They're walking on the
Speaker 1: side of their face pointed backwards. It feels kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: like your when your nails get really long. I know
Speaker 1: all of you have this happened to you a the time.
Speaker 1: But if your nails, imagine your nails were really really
Speaker 1: long and you're trying to crawl, your nails were like
Speaker 1: getting stuck, so they'd be pulling your feet like kind
Speaker 1: of backwards. That's what that looks like to me, which
Speaker 1: is I think a symptom. A symptom of that is
Speaker 1: the curling them under there. Either way, they're not actually
Speaker 1: backwards facing, so like that. But that's a weird thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is still weird, I guess unique. Yes, it's got
Speaker 1: two front ends possible. Yeah, that's like, so what it
Speaker 1: stands as high and lace. It's really doing a handstanding
Speaker 1: and standing out both at the same time. So there's
Speaker 1: all kids of strange things about this critter. Another strange
Speaker 1: thing about the mopping wire is it's face, which is
Speaker 1: this is up for a lot of debate. Some people
Speaker 1: say that the face is like a hairy humanoid face
Speaker 1: or a monkey ish face, you know, shorter nose, two
Speaker 1: eyes that are side by side instead of say like
Speaker 1: a dog's you know, rabbits where they're kind of more
Speaker 1: on the side of the head. So it's more humanoid
Speaker 1: in that regard, But then there's other stories that say that, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have more of your traditional human face. It's
Speaker 1: got more of a snout. But it only has a
Speaker 1: single eye, So it's a cyclops, which we have not
Speaker 1: seen in nature before. Because say, there's no good practical
Speaker 1: reason for one single eye. That's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons to have to at least if the two. At
Speaker 1: the minimum, I have four, and I'm very happy about
Speaker 1: that to talk to you about work with two, because
Speaker 1: the more the better, definite rency. If you lose one
Speaker 1: or two, you still got a few more. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I don't cut my hair, I can still see because
Speaker 1: I have such long hair. I've been dancing around this.
Speaker 1: But we should probably get into yet another weird feature
Speaker 1: of this cryptod, and that is its mouth, or more
Speaker 1: appropriately its mouths plural, because it has a normal mouth
Speaker 1: on its head where you would expect to see said feature,
Speaker 1: but according to the stories, it also has one in
Speaker 1: the middle of its stomach. That's. You know, if you
Speaker 1: happen to be choking to death but you're still hungry,
Speaker 1: you can still feed yourself. Oh, is that why that happened?
Speaker 1: We'll see. That's not what I got from the reading.
Speaker 1: The reading I got said that the reason there's a
Speaker 1: second stomach there is because this cryptod you are second mouth,
Speaker 1: I should say on its stomach is that it's there
Speaker 1: because this particular cryptod uses it to devour people who
Speaker 1: upset it, so that it can stuff an entire human
Speaker 1: being just right into its middle straight of the So
Speaker 1: it's really like no face from spirited away something like
Speaker 1: where it's actually just a mask on his face and
Speaker 1: his actual mouth is just in the middle of his stomach,
Speaker 1: and it's just a horrible disaster. That's right, That's yeah.
Speaker 1: And the reason that the mopping Gwari is supposedly devours
Speaker 1: people is that it's a defender of the forest. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the captain planet of the Amazon, Hary, very stinky,
Speaker 1: hairy captain planet, wh because he smells bad, and this
Speaker 1: creature would smell a vision to Harry that too appears
Speaker 1: that so I have made that joke about it being
Speaker 1: the defender of the forest because the stories of the
Speaker 1: mopping Guari are that they overharvest, or they kill too
Speaker 1: many animals, or they're just disrespectful and burn and they
Speaker 1: do bad things. And one of the common threads around
Speaker 1: owned that is the peckery's. Peckery's for those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know, they kind they aren't pigs, but they
Speaker 1: look and a lot like the pigs that we know
Speaker 1: here in the first world family. They are on the
Speaker 1: high you know what. I don't even know if they
Speaker 1: actually are in the pig family, but they are. They
Speaker 1: there are several feet high. They can wait. They can
Speaker 1: wait up to a hundred pounds, which is equate tots.
Speaker 1: They cloven hooks. They're really hairy little critters and their omnivores,
Speaker 1: so they will eat anything, though they prefer vegetation, so
Speaker 1: they dig in the dirt and they eat up roots,
Speaker 1: and then they eat grasses and trees and whatever comes
Speaker 1: their way. They're really kind of a cross between goats
Speaker 1: and pigs when you think about it, you know, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: goats and pigs are actually kind of the same thing
Speaker 1: in just a different profile. They will both eat just
Speaker 1: about anything. One has more hair than the other, and
Speaker 1: that's really the difference. And what has club and feet?
Speaker 1: Things don't have club and feet, do they? Yeah, they totally.
Speaker 1: They are part of the suborder, the same suborders Okay.
Speaker 1: When I did the initial reading, I got the feeling
Speaker 1: that they were on a different branch, but it was
Speaker 1: just even towd ungulates. Yes, okay, they are part of
Speaker 1: the even to so goats and deer have something different
Speaker 1: going on with them. They're not part of that apparent. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to go to that pack
Speaker 1: They have different they have a different teeth, oh, their palate. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Because here's the thing
Speaker 1: is that the packery, it turns out, is a great
Speaker 1: source of meat, and so folks in South America love
Speaker 1: to kill them and harvest them to eat. And there
Speaker 1: are many, many stories of guys going out and killing
Speaker 1: way too many packery's at once, only to have the
Speaker 1: moth worry show up and chase them away from their prize.
Speaker 1: So well, it's because they were disrespecting the forest and
Speaker 1: taking way too much at one time, more than the
Speaker 1: stories say. More than they Yes, I will say that
Speaker 1: this whole eating people in the stomach mouth thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're big people eater, you know, the big middle
Speaker 1: people eater portion. Uh, that's a little off of some
Speaker 1: of the descriptions which say that this cryptid is a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: It's not a vegan, because even cryptids won't be vegans
Speaker 1: unless they're vegetables. Uh no, well, let's see. That's the
Speaker 1: problem is that we've we've got these these two sides
Speaker 1: of the story where it is if the mopping wire
Speaker 1: is observed eating with its upper mouth, it's headmouth. It's
Speaker 1: only going to eat vegetation. It only uses the stomach
Speaker 1: mouth for devouring humans. So either it is a vegetarian
Speaker 1: or it's an omnivore, which means that we're safe as
Speaker 1: long as we don't disrespect the forest, or we're all
Speaker 1: on the menu. But yeah, I'm not sure that they
Speaker 1: say it's a vegetarian or you know, or maybe but
Speaker 1: how would they know. It's like it's only glimpsed occasionally,
Speaker 1: So how do they really know what it eats? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so one of the ways that we know that is
Speaker 1: to the stories that are told, because there's a story
Speaker 1: that how did the people who tell these stories notice
Speaker 1: do they find have they found droppings? Well, so it's
Speaker 1: it seems to be through observation of possible attacks as
Speaker 1: well as bite marks. Because here's a here's a story
Speaker 1: that we have here of a farmer who said that
Speaker 1: has heard of cattle. It's like a hundred cattle if
Speaker 1: I remember right, And over a very short period of time,
Speaker 1: all of his cows were killed and eaten or fed upon,
Speaker 1: and he blamed it all on the mopping glory. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll be I'll be honest with you. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that this guy was just bitter because he originally started
Speaker 1: out farming goats only to find out that choopy had
Speaker 1: moved into the area. Yeah, and then he went for cows, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to find out that the mopping glory was also
Speaker 1: in the mobby's fault that he likes cow. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in this case, it probably was the message that he
Speaker 1: was setting is it's not even so much that I
Speaker 1: hate cows. It's just like you cleared all this area
Speaker 1: to raise cows. You low down all these trees. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's that the message, because I wouldn't think the moping
Speaker 1: wary would really hate cows. No, No, because I mean,
Speaker 1: cows are dumb, lovable critters. So I'm guessing that it
Speaker 1: would send a message. Yeah, but I mean, not only
Speaker 1: are you clearing a bunch of forest, but a large
Speaker 1: herd of cows on a naturally large herd of cows
Speaker 1: does some things to the environment around it that it
Speaker 1: gives a complete misuse often of the environment. And like really,
Speaker 1: so I can see if that's if that follows it,
Speaker 1: that he will only he they it will only you know,
Speaker 1: go after things that are really threatening their environment for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, whether it be killing too many of one
Speaker 1: thing or clear cutting and whatever. A giant heard of
Speaker 1: cows trying to bring the number down to a more
Speaker 1: sustainable harmonyic harmony harmonious harmonious group makes sense to me
Speaker 1: as well. But harmonic harmonic, harmonic, harmonious harmonious. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. Okay, that could be it hereens
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it turns out the mop Warry he sees
Speaker 1: the bigger picture and he says, look at all the
Speaker 1: methane those cows are produced, all that belting, and well
Speaker 1: you know what comes out to the other end parting,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Turns out, by the way, cows are
Speaker 1: terrible on waterways because they just destroy the banks of
Speaker 1: all Stralia, which is a huge natural oregon can in
Speaker 1: large enough numbers. Yeah, they found out some of some
Speaker 1: of the eco systems like in uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: the Midwest or in America. They found out when they
Speaker 1: did away with all the predators that the els in
Speaker 1: the deer actually did a lot more damage than they
Speaker 1: would have done normally when things were a little more
Speaker 1: imbalanced because there was just chew things. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting study. I think Yellowstone they re released a
Speaker 1: bunch of wolves into yellow Stone and they found out
Speaker 1: that literally everything suddenly just became way better. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean everything, like even the fact like the forest actual
Speaker 1: trees and the forests were suddenly way healthier because it
Speaker 1: just they just kept everything in checking. Those kind of
Speaker 1: tap those top predators to really keep everything in check.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's what this is. Sorry, that's probably too close,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean it's it's it's a great idea.
Speaker 1: I mean it could explain a lot of things, which
Speaker 1: we'll get into when we're in the theory. Let's continue
Speaker 1: with their description because we must have a couple of
Speaker 1: little bits of description of the boping wari left. Turns
Speaker 1: out this particular cryptod is not indstructible. You remember in
Speaker 1: the beginning I said it's skin is supposedly so tough
Speaker 1: that arrows and bullets can't go through it. But if
Speaker 1: you shoot it in the head, I'm guessing through the eye,
Speaker 1: you can kill it. I don't know where this information
Speaker 1: comes from, but you see it everywhere, which is weird
Speaker 1: because of the fact that there has never been a
Speaker 1: body found and nobody actually says they've ever killed one.
Speaker 1: Yet they tell you this is how you kill it.
Speaker 1: So it's that's a subs A few people have killed them,
Speaker 1: but they just didn't bother bringing the body back home,
Speaker 1: or which smelled too bad. Yeah, I mean, either it's
Speaker 1: smells you bad or you know. If this is a
Speaker 1: very old oral tradition, we I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that there's the possibility that somebody years ago killed
Speaker 1: and you know, and and said, okay, well this is
Speaker 1: how you do it if you ever really need to.
Speaker 1: But really try not to because the only reason they're
Speaker 1: going to come after you is if you're being horrible,
Speaker 1: right right, Ye see final bit of information we have
Speaker 1: here the So overall, I think we've all kind of
Speaker 1: established that the mopping Wari sounds like a legend, as
Speaker 1: Devon was just saying years ago, and it is possible
Speaker 1: that that's the case, but there actually is today or
Speaker 1: in recent history a group of people who have been
Speaker 1: actively looking forward. And they are, or they were at
Speaker 1: least a couple of years ago, headed by a man
Speaker 1: named David orn Or was an ornithologist, but he's pronounced
Speaker 1: ornithologist or anthologist. What do you make Okay, forget it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that a purpose, Okay, forget it. But he
Speaker 1: was in orthologist and he went to South America on
Speaker 1: a regular basis to study the birds there, and at
Speaker 1: some point while he was there he heard about and
Speaker 1: then became very interested in the Mopping Guarry. He's gone
Speaker 1: on several expeditions over the years, but of course has
Speaker 1: never found anything conclusive. I mean, it's it's funny is
Speaker 1: that I read the articles about him and he's going
Speaker 1: down there, He's doing this is the same thing that
Speaker 1: bigfoot hunters do, which I just totally don't get. Yes,
Speaker 1: he goes down, he does this call. He has no
Speaker 1: idea if it's the right call. He could literally be
Speaker 1: saying shut up and run away in their language, but
Speaker 1: he has no freaking idea. But he's still bellowing this
Speaker 1: noise out. Hopefully it's not saying I's like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: a hot I'm a hot mopping garry chick. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like me with my cats, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm trying to call my cats and I go
Speaker 1: wow wow. Yeah, we've had a conversation about that. We've
Speaker 1: heard you do that before. I don't know what what
Speaker 1: the cats here at there and if that even remotely
Speaker 1: sounds to a cat like at meow? Butth head butt head?
Speaker 1: Apparently he thinks butt head? Is it a dermot? Did
Speaker 1: you means? But you know, the thing is is that
Speaker 1: he went He's been down there for several expeditions. He
Speaker 1: hasn't found squat. I don't know if he's still doing these.
Speaker 1: It sounded like his career. A lot of people were
Speaker 1: looking at him very poorly for this in this scientific community.
Speaker 1: It's he's frowned upon to look for a cryptod like
Speaker 1: this and buy in so heavily. So we don't know.
Speaker 1: So I guess this is the initial fail for science.
Speaker 1: So our questions here as we get into theories are
Speaker 1: what is the moppinguarri and does it exist or does
Speaker 1: it not? So let's I want to say that just
Speaker 1: for star and is that I don't think from a
Speaker 1: professional standpoint, he's done anything wrong, because it's not like
Speaker 1: he's out there publishing luney articles about it. He just
Speaker 1: goes out and walks on the jungle looking for evidence
Speaker 1: that it might exist. Well, he publish this stuff about it,
Speaker 1: but I mean, he doesn't make looney claims about it.
Speaker 1: You know, Well that depends on your definition of looney.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say stuff like, wow, you know, this totally exists,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's it's a super badass and it's
Speaker 1: thirteen feet tall. And then he doesn't say stuff like that.
Speaker 1: He just says, you know, I think it might exist.
Speaker 1: Maybe possibly there's something too, which he's producing accounts from natives,
Speaker 1: and so in that way, he is recording their their
Speaker 1: their tradition, their tradition, their perspective, and their stories. But
Speaker 1: he's he's taking it in a very serious scientific approach,
Speaker 1: and he is not pursuing very serious scientific things according
Speaker 1: to the scientific community. So I understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 1: But that is the reason that they are poo pooing him.
Speaker 1: We're doing there's uh, you know, it's it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. There might be just a you with
Speaker 1: them out there. They might just be very elusive, So
Speaker 1: let's all for not and we're going to cover that
Speaker 1: and yeah, which we should do right now. Remember it's
Speaker 1: up to us. Bigfoot is the crucial part of the
Speaker 1: ecosystem if he exists, So let's all keep Bigfoot possibly
Speaker 1: alive for few generations. Unless he doesn't exist, then we
Speaker 1: shouldn't the end that FUTA doesn't. It's just how I
Speaker 1: feel about this, Okay, right, Well, then you're gonna be
Speaker 1: happy to know that we're going to get in a
Speaker 1: theory perfect we're going to solve this one. So the
Speaker 1: first theory is that indeed the mock Bingwari is a
Speaker 1: legend because I mean, well it's it sounds very legendary.
Speaker 1: And as we all know, every culture out there has
Speaker 1: stories of creatures that they used to explain. They used
Speaker 1: them to explain away things that they just don't understand.
Speaker 1: I think also every culture has a story to scare
Speaker 1: the crap out of the kids so they won't wander
Speaker 1: off into the darkness they do. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: just let's this theory does say could be based on
Speaker 1: something kind, right, but I would say pretty solidly most
Speaker 1: indigenous people have some lore around something that is deeply
Speaker 1: discouraging greed and over use of land's absolutely, but is
Speaker 1: usually based on some sometu whether it be a bear,
Speaker 1: lion right exactly, or a fox. And the thing is
Speaker 1: is that this area, this part of South America or
Speaker 1: South America itself, has some really unique creatures that are
Speaker 1: in this legendary vein. My favorite one is the boto.
Speaker 1: This cracks me the hell up. Yeah, the bhoto is
Speaker 1: a dolphin that lures girls away from their village and
Speaker 1: then has sex with and impregnates them. So whenever a
Speaker 1: girl shows up and she shouldn't be pregnant quote unquote
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a pregnant because she is not married, you know,
Speaker 1: according to local custom, they grab it off and have
Speaker 1: a shotgun wedding. Makes sense, Well, it means that this
Speaker 1: dolphin critter has shown up and everybody is pulling out
Speaker 1: their iPhone and sending back and forth dolphin and eggplant emojis.
Speaker 1: Now I did. I did a bunch of reading, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that having a creature like the mopping
Speaker 1: garry to blame things on is a great way to
Speaker 1: save face when something goes bad or you don't do
Speaker 1: the best job that you could. So little house. My
Speaker 1: house fell over. You know it's not because I can't
Speaker 1: build a foundation where the crap there's that. Or the
Speaker 1: example that I have is that you go out into
Speaker 1: the forest to hunt peckery's because you're gonna hunt them
Speaker 1: and you're gonna butcher them and sell their meat or
Speaker 1: use that meat to feed your family. And maybe you're
Speaker 1: not a very good hunter. It turns out crappy hunter
Speaker 1: or your dink fod and you screw around and you
Speaker 1: don't actually do anything. Well, then you can say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the mopping guari was there and it scared me away,
Speaker 1: Or if you really need to ratch at the story up,
Speaker 1: you say, oh, I shot seven of them with in
Speaker 1: one day, but then the creatures showed up and chased
Speaker 1: me away and took my pride. I really liked the
Speaker 1: idea of some like really lazy guy or no guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's okay guy going out into the forest
Speaker 1: and then later people go out to look for him
Speaker 1: and they find him asleep and they wake him up
Speaker 1: and he goes, oh, the smell of the mopping. I
Speaker 1: can't say, yeah, it knocked me out. I can't The
Speaker 1: last thing I remember, it's some really long hair, it
Speaker 1: smelled so bad, just like okay, yes, why is your
Speaker 1: blankie here? Yeah, it's like the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: the guy who's an hour late to his job and
Speaker 1: he's about to invent daylight saving time, whereas bosses like,
Speaker 1: why are you in our late and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: haven't you heard? It's great? Same thing. This is probably
Speaker 1: the Yeah, that's a and the same with the invention
Speaker 1: of this where some guy got caught napping and he
Speaker 1: was like, well haven't you heard of this thing? And
Speaker 1: everybody else. I was like, oh, I don't want to
Speaker 1: look like I'm dumb, so I'll just go along with it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to think. I don't want it to
Speaker 1: seem like I don't understand this art. Of course I
Speaker 1: understand it. Yeah, So it turns out that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Devin might be right, But it also could be that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of strange things in the jungle,
Speaker 1: and when it is dark and inhospitable in that environment,
Speaker 1: sometimes you see and you hear things that you just
Speaker 1: can't explain. And while they may just be perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: Run the day critters when it is dark and they
Speaker 1: are crashing through the forest and underbrush at you. You
Speaker 1: are not willing to stand around and wait for them
Speaker 1: to figure out what they are. Instead, you hide tail
Speaker 1: it away. That is the time at which point you
Speaker 1: will make up a description of said animal. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that could be where it is that the mopping water
Speaker 1: came from. I will say, the thing that I find
Speaker 1: really interesting about the story of the mopping Wari is
Speaker 1: that the that north that, as Joe called it, the
Speaker 1: top of the stick of South America, that is huge area.
Speaker 1: It is really big. And there are all of these
Speaker 1: indigenous tribes that don't have any contact with one another,
Speaker 1: and yet they all have a different name for the
Speaker 1: mopping guari, but they all seem to describe the same creature.
Speaker 1: So that makes you wonder if they're not talking to
Speaker 1: one another in it. Well, please please dash my hopes. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to dash her hopes. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to say that I think there are enough similar but
Speaker 1: different descriptions of this creature. Right. Some say that it
Speaker 1: is a cyclops. Some say that it's got a giant
Speaker 1: mouth in its stomach. I would assume that we're saying
Speaker 1: their general assumptions of the very giant, hairy thing, the
Speaker 1: very giant, hairy, stinky thing. Yeah, which like could describe
Speaker 1: us in this room right now? Really, why does she
Speaker 1: keep talking? No? But you see where I'm going with this,
Speaker 1: right is that I think that there are enough kind
Speaker 1: of different descriptions of this thing to explain there could
Speaker 1: be a sighting of something that's fairly normal, but the
Speaker 1: own lore has kind of taken it to that next
Speaker 1: level and made it the legends. Because again, if there is,
Speaker 1: if there is in fact a seven to nine foot
Speaker 1: giant hairy thing, even if it's a total total vegetarian creature,
Speaker 1: that is no threat whatsoever. But if there's something like
Speaker 1: that in the forest up there, which there may well
Speaker 1: could be, I would absolutely take that to scare my
Speaker 1: children out of not going in I would, you know,
Speaker 1: sure the kids didn't go in there. And you know,
Speaker 1: you change one thing, you change an eye, you make
Speaker 1: a giant mouth in the middle, you whatever to make
Speaker 1: it a little extra scary. But it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the internet, you want to punch things, right, But so
Speaker 1: that that just kind of seems like that to me.
Speaker 1: I mean American Native American tribes have a lot of
Speaker 1: that too. You see a lot of lower crossover in areas.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And the thing about it is is these
Speaker 1: tribes are like all separated now, but they all came
Speaker 1: from the same place Africa they did, and well Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: But well, and how long did it take the story
Speaker 1: to travel from one side of the continent to the other. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it could be that. Yes, they tell the
Speaker 1: same vary variation, but it has a central a central point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also thousand years ago or something far farther than that.
Speaker 1: I mean, man, you know humans arrived in ten, ten,
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand years ago. But and so that would explain
Speaker 1: something else too. This could be a creature that existed
Speaker 1: like ten thousand years ago, and it may well have existed,
Speaker 1: and so something very similar. It seems unlikely that a
Speaker 1: real cyclops with a giant mouth in the middle of
Speaker 1: it existed, but some version of this may have existed.
Speaker 1: Something that something with two eyes, I think, but in
Speaker 1: something that maybe resembled a mouth in its midriff. I
Speaker 1: would agree, maybe something that resembles is not actually a mouth,
Speaker 1: But I didn't think. There are more theories and we
Speaker 1: can explore that more in the theory. Yes, absolutely, you're
Speaker 1: both absolutely right, and we're gonna We're actually gonna re
Speaker 1: We're gonna cover some of that territory. Again, Let's move
Speaker 1: on to theory number two, which is everybody's favorite theory,
Speaker 1: which is that it was Biggie, not Biggie Smalls, but
Speaker 1: Biggie Foot. Because yes, yes, so it is believed that
Speaker 1: possibly the mopping Guari is just a relative of Bigfoot
Speaker 1: if you look at and and By the way, this
Speaker 1: is not an episode on Bigfoot, so please excuse the
Speaker 1: brevity here, but in general terms, Bigfoot is. Sightings are
Speaker 1: reported all over the United States, but the vast and Canada,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of them are on the West coast.
Speaker 1: That's where the highest concentration of sightings are. If you
Speaker 1: look and you run down the coast, the western coast
Speaker 1: of the US, you know what you find. You find
Speaker 1: a great trail right into that drumstick portion of South America.
Speaker 1: That's the way they went down there. So that is
Speaker 1: the theory is that they migrated south over time, the
Speaker 1: Bigfoot clan, and they, you know, they said, hey, we
Speaker 1: like soccer more than you do here in North America,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna go down there where they have soccer.
Speaker 1: So that's why they traveled south, and now the mopping
Speaker 1: guarr is all over the Amazon forest playing soccer. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I look at it this way. It's like
Speaker 1: man started emigrating, migrating across the land bridge between Siberia
Speaker 1: and Alaska years and years ago, and yes, just decades ago.
Speaker 1: And actually it was decades ago if you have a
Speaker 1: lot of decades, literally tens of decades, yea hundreds of anyway,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of tens of decades. Right, And so
Speaker 1: here's all these these humans showing up and there's Bigfoot
Speaker 1: just hanging out, and they're like, crap, Like all these
Speaker 1: people now we've got to like hide and be elusive
Speaker 1: and all this crap. And I don't like that. A
Speaker 1: lot of them packed up and move south to get
Speaker 1: away from these interlopers, and the interlopers, unfortunately, kept moving
Speaker 1: south all christ time to move again, and so essentially
Speaker 1: mankind was just pushing big Foot further and further south,
Speaker 1: and essentially big feet excuse me, yeah, and until eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, they wind up all the way in South America.
Speaker 1: Would a big, big big Foot with a Well, the
Speaker 1: thing is, though, is if I mean to Joe's to
Speaker 1: talk about what Joe saying is that the ones that
Speaker 1: didn't move, the ones you said this is my land,
Speaker 1: I own this land. They then became our modern Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: who are the international hide and see champions. So if
Speaker 1: they are related, if the mopping Guiri is related to Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: then it's no wonder that they haven't even been able
Speaker 1: to get a blurry photo of them, because the mopping
Speaker 1: guiries even better at hide and the seat that you
Speaker 1: don't even know that they exist. Bingo, we know they exist,
Speaker 1: of course they do. Well, yeah, maybe, yeah, Let's move
Speaker 1: on to our next sery though. The next theory is
Speaker 1: that the mopping Wari is a relative, or actually the
Speaker 1: relative it is a giant slot. I like this one
Speaker 1: a lot. I really dig one. You've seen pictures of
Speaker 1: this guy, I have, I mean everybody the megatheriyeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: ancient giant slots. Yes. So for those of you who
Speaker 1: don't know, there was a huge giant animal that lived
Speaker 1: in South America during the early play a scene which
Speaker 1: is the giant slop and this creature is much like
Speaker 1: slots today, except way mega bigger. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of big animals back then. Yeah, yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of megafunt like around around here in the in
Speaker 1: the Organ area North Pacific Northwest. Yeah, it's fun, but
Speaker 1: we have like six rom pound beavers. Imagine a six pounds.
Speaker 1: I cannot but that that was the joy of having
Speaker 1: such a high density of oxygen and things like that.
Speaker 1: It could s a stain that sort of critter and
Speaker 1: an oxygen level drop. That's why we don't have giant
Speaker 1: dragonflies anymore because spiders. Thank God for that Cawaite children. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: maybe that's what happened to Washington's eagle. But the the biggest,
Speaker 1: the giant sloth, weighed about four tons and was somewhere
Speaker 1: around twenty ft long from nose to tail. That converts
Speaker 1: to about six meters. And this thing was basically the
Speaker 1: size of a mammoth, you know, ye old wooly mammoth,
Speaker 1: that we wooly mammoth that is somehow larger than modern elephants. Right,
Speaker 1: so it's bigger than a modern elephants. Giant creature nowhere
Speaker 1: near as cute as a modern sloth, I am sure
Speaker 1: fifty times or scary as long as he said, I
Speaker 1: don't know, as long as he was in of the
Speaker 1: same thing as he was just being slothful. Well, they
Speaker 1: had longer noses. They walked on the ground and the
Speaker 1: trees yeah yeah, way way too big to be in trees.
Speaker 1: And I mean there was mega fauna at that point
Speaker 1: or flora as well as meg yeah, but not not
Speaker 1: that big. And so they walked on the ground and
Speaker 1: they stood up to feed on plants trees at that time,
Speaker 1: big big nose, big mouths, not like now. But the
Speaker 1: thing is is that these creatures, as with a lot
Speaker 1: of the creatures, the mega fauna from the pli scene,
Speaker 1: they died out about ten thousand years ago because it
Speaker 1: turns out the Earth was not made to sustained stuff.
Speaker 1: The Earth changed to a point that it couldn't sustain
Speaker 1: those kinds of things it actually was designed or for
Speaker 1: like a hot second. Yeah, it's actually right about right
Speaker 1: about that time that man was discovering how to make
Speaker 1: two was including like spears. But we did coexist, right
Speaker 1: yeah with them, Yeah, I mean we exist at the
Speaker 1: same time, like at least most of these things did,
Speaker 1: like you know, the sabracute tiger and the wooly man. No.
Speaker 1: I just think that's an important distinction to make when
Speaker 1: we talk about this, like prehistoric time, especially giants. Well
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily before man, but we talked about dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: and then oftentimes this kind of era gets plumped in
Speaker 1: with this dinosaur world but different but totally different era,
Speaker 1: and an era that humans were developing with not written
Speaker 1: but certainly oral traditions. Yes, this is before we were
Speaker 1: hunched over a keyboard. We were still the running, we
Speaker 1: were still hunched over, we were standing. Yes, yeah, we
Speaker 1: were definitely bipedal at this point. But I think that
Speaker 1: is something that's interesting to mention when we talk about
Speaker 1: this because, as we were talking about in the last theory,
Speaker 1: if this is an oral tradition, it is possible. Man,
Speaker 1: it was so old, this legend that just kept getting
Speaker 1: passed down and down and down, and people just were saying, well,
Speaker 1: they're still there. Of course they're still there. Why would
Speaker 1: they not still be there. They're not there anymore? Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably true. Yeah. I just think that's worth many yeah
Speaker 1: yeah so so. But the basic theory here is that
Speaker 1: the mopping Wari is in fact a megatherium, and that
Speaker 1: the species had somehow managed to live nearly undiscovered all
Speaker 1: these years in the Amazon Force. Remember they were in
Speaker 1: South America ten thousand years ago, and the descriptions of
Speaker 1: its size and its claws would certainly support that they
Speaker 1: are very similar. And there there is the issue of
Speaker 1: the second mouth that definitely was not But I would
Speaker 1: say a giant sloth is much larger, right, but we're
Speaker 1: going to but as we're talking, an ancient giant sloth
Speaker 1: genuinely would be way bigger. They also and that's the
Speaker 1: next theory. And there are their animals out there right
Speaker 1: now that they're you know, we all read about them
Speaker 1: all the time. Oh my god, we thought this thing
Speaker 1: was extinct. For they found, like fifty years ago there
Speaker 1: was some fish that they were certain had died out
Speaker 1: of thousand or five thousand years ago. Think it starts
Speaker 1: with an L and then I think it's like luck something.
Speaker 1: But then they found it and oh my god, we
Speaker 1: discovered it again and then dropped it and killed it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it was living in some river in some
Speaker 1: Amazonian for situation, because that's usually where these stories happened.
Speaker 1: And that's why this story is so interesting to me. Again,
Speaker 1: as as I said at the top, that these stories
Speaker 1: of no, no, that's totally extinct. It's been extinct for
Speaker 1: like hundreds of thousands of then suddenly they say, oh
Speaker 1: my god, we founded they've been alive this entire time.
Speaker 1: So the other things that that kind of seemed to
Speaker 1: work against this but maybe don't. Is we talked about
Speaker 1: that whole second mouth thing. It turns out though modern
Speaker 1: sloths have scent glands on their backs, and the fur
Speaker 1: around that scent gland is completely in the color of
Speaker 1: in contrast to the rest of their fur, so it
Speaker 1: stands out. So it could be that something that is
Speaker 1: a modern equivalent of the megatherium has sent glands as well,
Speaker 1: but they're on its front. And because of that different
Speaker 1: colored skin and the look of those glands, it could
Speaker 1: be that people said, oh my god, that thing looks
Speaker 1: like a mouth or it was running and they didn't know.
Speaker 1: And if it's a giant thing with a giants gland,
Speaker 1: that would explain the giant stink coming off the giants.
Speaker 1: That would explain that. I was going to say, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of much smaller species. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of like moths, for instance, in this world that have
Speaker 1: over the millennia evolved. Basically, it's just a defense mechanism
Speaker 1: or a fear mechanism. To make it so that they
Speaker 1: look like something else, right, And so it is possible
Speaker 1: also that they just evolved that when they stand up,
Speaker 1: it looks like they have a giant or something like
Speaker 1: giant and scary exactly to scare things away, and that
Speaker 1: their defense mechanism is in fact to stand up and
Speaker 1: put their arms out, like we're supposed to defend ourselves
Speaker 1: against cougars, and it just looks like there's a giant
Speaker 1: face everywhere, and that scares most of the other animals
Speaker 1: where it's a giant head or it could be march. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want you want to hear something weird about moths
Speaker 1: and evolution. So it turns out, you know, there are
Speaker 1: these crazy maths that have these amazingly long probiscus okay,
Speaker 1: And everybody said, well, that must have evolved in response
Speaker 1: to a really long flower. And Darwin got involved in this.
Speaker 1: This is that's how old this conversation is. And if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, what Darwin said was, oh, there's these
Speaker 1: flowers that have these really long things, Well, then it
Speaker 1: must have been there was a moth with this amazing
Speaker 1: probiscus first, and the flowers went towards it. I think
Speaker 1: as he said, it went the opposite direction of what
Speaker 1: you would expect it to be, and they have recently
Speaker 1: affirmed a hundred and fifty years or so later, they
Speaker 1: found evidence that proves that, oh yeah, the plants were
Speaker 1: reacting to this critter instead of the critter reacting to
Speaker 1: the evolution of the plan. I don't know it was.
Speaker 1: It was way outside of my pay grade, but just
Speaker 1: the moth thing got me on that. Let's get back
Speaker 1: into the theory. Though. I'm easy to side track, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you where we're at. Which is the
Speaker 1: problem with this whole theory of it being a megatherium,
Speaker 1: and that is, of course, that the Amazon rainforest is
Speaker 1: continually shrinking under pressures of both logging and the desires
Speaker 1: for usable farmland. So I could see that, you know,
Speaker 1: hundred or two hundred years ago, would be hard to
Speaker 1: find this critter because none of this land is developed.
Speaker 1: But it's more and more pressure is put on it.
Speaker 1: In the area is shrinking more and more. You think
Speaker 1: that the chances of finding what, yeah, would increase, It
Speaker 1: would become easier and easier to find, and we have
Speaker 1: not found. I would say not necessary really, because it's
Speaker 1: totally reasonable to assume that the population is decreasing as well,
Speaker 1: because lack of habitat, a population tends to grow to
Speaker 1: the size on the land that it's supported, or decrease
Speaker 1: to the land that it's supported. It's not as though, Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: if you know, we had twenty acres and we had
Speaker 1: a hundred of these creatures, and then suddenly you have
Speaker 1: ten thousand acres, you're probably not going to have that
Speaker 1: same amount of those creatures. They're gonna die off, They're
Speaker 1: gonna the alpha males are going to kill each other,
Speaker 1: whatever is going to happen, it's gonna happen. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not sustainable. So I agree with that. Well, I agree
Speaker 1: with that in theory, but I also think that nature, um,
Speaker 1: what's the quote life finds a way something like that, right,
Speaker 1: But of course that the whole counter to my account, well,
Speaker 1: the whole counter to the megatherium theory is, as Joe
Speaker 1: brought up, is that humans existed around the same time
Speaker 1: as these creatures did. So it is possible, as he said,
Speaker 1: that the story of them was simply passed down through
Speaker 1: the generation. I said that, I said that it's it's
Speaker 1: it's stuff. So Joe had to say, because he's the
Speaker 1: old one of the group, so he was around I
Speaker 1: was not around that quite then. I'm sorry, I was
Speaker 1: trying to give you credit. But okay, Devin, I said
Speaker 1: it last. Joe might have said it first, but I
Speaker 1: think it doesn't really matter. Yea, yeah, and that's good.
Speaker 1: So we have another theory, which is the unknown descendant
Speaker 1: of the giant sloth already but probably my favorite. But
Speaker 1: there's some details that we haven't gone over as to
Speaker 1: why this could be a viable theory. There is and
Speaker 1: this is something that you will see in a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in the animal kingdom, and that is the
Speaker 1: reduction and scale of animals. Because it is based on
Speaker 1: the changes in the environment. Animals will grow bigger or smaller,
Speaker 1: which is why we saw things in the early Pliocene
Speaker 1: start to get bigger, and then as the environment changed,
Speaker 1: they started I mean, we went from three six pound
Speaker 1: beavers to thirty pound beavers or beavers like they shrunk greatly.
Speaker 1: And that's based on the what the environment was, or
Speaker 1: the populations and populations and so it it is the
Speaker 1: known phenomena. And there is something that you see in
Speaker 1: the reading. Sometimes you'll see it referred to as island
Speaker 1: dwarfism or insular dwarfism, and that is where a population
Speaker 1: is contained in an area and based on that their
Speaker 1: their numbers reduced, but the general size of the individuals
Speaker 1: in that population will reduce. And here's an example. So
Speaker 1: we all know the mammoth. Mammoths were humongous creatures exactly,
Speaker 1: except there was a population of them that ended up
Speaker 1: on some islands and in I think we don't even
Speaker 1: know actually I can't even say. I think I don't
Speaker 1: know how many generations, but a very small number of generations.
Speaker 1: Their size reduced greatly from creatures that stood twenty plus
Speaker 1: feet tall two creatures that stood more about four to
Speaker 1: five feet tall, and they are very small and based
Speaker 1: on environmental changes that just happens because that's the way
Speaker 1: they were able to live. Because the ones we probably yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, we probably don't need to dive
Speaker 1: into this whole evolutionary theory or but but realistically, you know,
Speaker 1: you're on a small island. It's going to be able
Speaker 1: to support genetically smaller things because they better to be
Speaker 1: a physical island. If your habitat is very specific, that
Speaker 1: counts as an island as well, and so not. What
Speaker 1: the theory is, that's exactly what I was just saying before,
Speaker 1: is that either a population size will diminish or the
Speaker 1: actual physical size will diminish. So those are the two options, right,
Speaker 1: it's either or both or both. And so at this
Speaker 1: point what's happened is that everything is shrunk and they're
Speaker 1: in a very specific set of areas. But of course
Speaker 1: nobody's mapping that. The locals are just freaking out running away.
Speaker 1: They don't know. So it could be that these creators
Speaker 1: really do exist, but they're in such small population sizes
Speaker 1: and they diminished enough and they don't even necessarily exist today.
Speaker 1: Maybe they all died out a couple of hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: or maybe they are you know, the size of a
Speaker 1: sloth just kept striking. Now they're tiny well and they're
Speaker 1: you know, the same size as a sloth, and then
Speaker 1: stores could have killed them out. We don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's trick with that area. The thing is so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just there's this there's this mopping guy out there
Speaker 1: and you were over harvesting the pack rays and he's
Speaker 1: really ticked about it. But it's a little pip squeak
Speaker 1: about He's like the equivalent of a house cat, right,
Speaker 1: God's perfect killing machine, but somehow tiny. Yes, we just
Speaker 1: keeps from from Zutopia. I'm going to get weirded you exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: joke ever in an animated movie. Anyho, you need to
Speaker 1: see that movie. I think if you can stream it,
Speaker 1: I know you can stream it. So our last theory
Speaker 1: here is that indeed the mopping Guari is a totally
Speaker 1: different actual animal. Yeah, so it could be that it
Speaker 1: is just getting credit for the giant and eater? Did
Speaker 1: Grant and eater? You've got have seen photos of the
Speaker 1: giant and they are creatures, but they're they're kind of cute, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they got they're Yeah, they're kind of they're like a pug.
Speaker 1: They're so ugly they can be cute and either giant
Speaker 1: Andrews for those of you who don't know that, of course,
Speaker 1: so they got the big long, weird head. But they
Speaker 1: also are about six to seven ft long, which is
Speaker 1: the equivalent of about two meters, and they weigh in
Speaker 1: about seventy to ninety pounds, which is thirty three tots,
Speaker 1: which is nowhere. So this puts them standing upright sort
Speaker 1: of in the same range and side up though, I
Speaker 1: don't they do. They can't. I don't think they do normally,
Speaker 1: but they and I don't know that they smell bad.
Speaker 1: But they, like we talked about before, they've got really
Speaker 1: long fur and it's kind of blackish I think normally
Speaker 1: the images I've seen there, they're grayish black. Right, It
Speaker 1: depends on there. Okay, it's like dogs, they have different colors.
Speaker 1: And again, I think it depends on where they're from
Speaker 1: to You'll get a lot of this happens with almost
Speaker 1: every species. What it depends on where they are, how
Speaker 1: what they need to be blending you, Like corgis there's
Speaker 1: different breezes depending on where and what eales they're from. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: depending on their natural environs. Is the furniture in this
Speaker 1: house that? Yeah? Well so the thing to remember though,
Speaker 1: is that the giant ant eater is a pretty passive creature.
Speaker 1: They are not normally an aggressive creature, but they will
Speaker 1: fight back if they are threatened, So yes, that's very true.
Speaker 1: They also apparently like to sleep in dense foliage, which
Speaker 1: could lend credence to the It's rushing out of the
Speaker 1: underbrush at me, and it's super scary that could be
Speaker 1: part of it. I don't know, but I mean again,
Speaker 1: the whole thing of people running away before they see
Speaker 1: the animal that that could lend. Oh well, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize there's a certain embarrassment factor there too. I ran
Speaker 1: away from you ran away from an ant eater, ted, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are no, it was much scared a bigger than that.
Speaker 1: I'm currently looking at a picture of a giant ant
Speaker 1: eater is a certain breed I full disclaimer, I don't
Speaker 1: know where it is or anything. And gray one, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's black and gray. But the black patch is in
Speaker 1: a very distinct like smile across its shoulders and through
Speaker 1: its chest outlined in white that I can imagine if
Speaker 1: that were standing up, I would maybe think that was
Speaker 1: a giant open mouth att Yeah. Almost. Yeah, So there
Speaker 1: are patterns like that in in their species. The giant
Speaker 1: ant eater also has really big claus. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: those are designed digging to dig up ants and get
Speaker 1: into their it's colonies. I would say, yeah, most animals
Speaker 1: that I know of, at least that have really terrifyingly
Speaker 1: long clause use them for digging or climbing. They don't
Speaker 1: really use them to like shred yah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And and so that's the thing is that, well, okay,
Speaker 1: they don't they're not all that aggressive, they're not all
Speaker 1: that dangerous, except that it turns out that, as we said,
Speaker 1: you can make them mad and they will come at you.
Speaker 1: I was reading stories of a couple of hunters a
Speaker 1: couple of times over the past years that have cornered
Speaker 1: an antagonized ant eaters giant ant eaters, and guess who
Speaker 1: lost The hunters The ant eaters killed them because they
Speaker 1: are big enough and they have big enough clause that
Speaker 1: if they do land the lucky strike your how stupid human.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it kind of makes you wonder why
Speaker 1: you would do that, not just because of the danger obviously,
Speaker 1: but just because you're more on, You're more on in
Speaker 1: your jerk. But yeah, I mean, maybe they just figured
Speaker 1: they're so passive that we can just mess with them forever.
Speaker 1: They're never gonna lash out of Well. One thing, one
Speaker 1: thing that I also wonder is the time of year
Speaker 1: that most of these interactions are happening. And I was
Speaker 1: going to say, more like, if on accident, somebody wandered
Speaker 1: in between an anti eater mama and her babies and
Speaker 1: they're going to get probably pretty aggressive or maybe wandering
Speaker 1: between like an antiae or in a really fat, juicy
Speaker 1: colony of ants. You know, they probably take them off too,
Speaker 1: probably lest they probably be a little more patient to wait.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're standing in between pretty much
Speaker 1: any mama and her babies, you're going to get. This
Speaker 1: is my My direction was a bull and a cow.
Speaker 1: He's he's going to try to quote unquote defend his territory. Well,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how that works with to be honest,
Speaker 1: they are such an alien creature to me. They literally
Speaker 1: could reproduce by osmosis and I would have no idea,
Speaker 1: and somebody could tell me that, and I would say
Speaker 1: that sounds right, Yeah, totally. I mean, look at that
Speaker 1: for it makes sense. They're so weird looking at the
Speaker 1: are I mean, like I said, they're kind of cute,
Speaker 1: but they are really freaking weird. Yeah, I would say,
Speaker 1: just in general on this story, unless would we have
Speaker 1: more theorious Well, the only thing that I have left
Speaker 1: in this theory particular is that the at one point
Speaker 1: I think I talked about this maybe I didn't, was
Speaker 1: that the legends say that the mopping Guarry can't cross water,
Speaker 1: that it won't cross water, which is kind of screwy
Speaker 1: since the Amazon is lousy with waterways. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out the the giant ant eater loves to swim, has
Speaker 1: no problems with it. So I mean these both say
Speaker 1: that maybe the legend is wrong and the giant eater
Speaker 1: isn't the critter. I don't know, but that's all I got.
Speaker 1: I would say. In general, my feeling on this story
Speaker 1: is that it's certainly based in truth, whether tenuously based
Speaker 1: in truth or not. Uh, there are enough animals that
Speaker 1: could be this animal, both in distant past as in
Speaker 1: the giant sloth or modern yeah, or in the modern
Speaker 1: day with a giant ant eater or some here to
Speaker 1: with not yet discovered that's the right, some some now
Speaker 1: as of now undiscovered creature in the Amazon, because there
Speaker 1: are tons of them, I'm sure. Still, I just feel
Speaker 1: that this this is kind of one of those things
Speaker 1: where an indigenous people or lots of different groups of
Speaker 1: indigenous people's came up with a story to not only
Speaker 1: talk about why it's important that you only take what
Speaker 1: you need, but also to scare the kids and also
Speaker 1: to explain some things they maybe didn't understand, and that
Speaker 1: legend just grew and grew and grew, and so South
Speaker 1: America's captain planet, got it? Yeah, Joe, what's yours? Probably,
Speaker 1: I mean all these all these stories are around. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously people tell stories. They like to tell stories, and
Speaker 1: telling fictional stories is nothing new, probably, so you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they could legends have been around for a while.
Speaker 1: I am currently listening to Dracula. So obviously we all
Speaker 1: love scary stories or I mean, you know, any of
Speaker 1: the Homer stories. Yeah, and that's really really early days.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I mean that's what we do as
Speaker 1: we tell stories. There was not cautionary tales. Cautionary tales,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I mean that we love that kind
Speaker 1: of a story. I mean that kind of that kind
Speaker 1: of a story where you know, somebody gets his rightful
Speaker 1: come up and that kind of thing, and cautionary tales,
Speaker 1: and they they're all it's kind of in the same vein.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, I could totally see this whole thing
Speaker 1: just being entirely made up of full cloth. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: sort of an amalgam of various critters that have been
Speaker 1: seen in the general Yeah, yeah, kind of just of
Speaker 1: the we didn't wait around, and it made a bunch
Speaker 1: of smells, and it made a bunch of rucks, and
Speaker 1: you saw bits and pieces, and so you just in
Speaker 1: your mind you glue these three things together and suddenly
Speaker 1: new faery giant skunk. Yeah, I'm gonna say there are
Speaker 1: actually their animals out there. Beside the giant skunk. There's
Speaker 1: a stink badger of Southeast Asia. And you know another
Speaker 1: something else that can project a hideous, horrible smell, although
Speaker 1: generally it seems to be a really small skape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that skunk, but it seems like really small creatures kind
Speaker 1: of need to have that particular defense against the people
Speaker 1: to use it as a defense. Yeah, totally. Where we're huge,
Speaker 1: you don't really need that. But what's to say that, Well,
Speaker 1: I was going to say, what's to say that this
Speaker 1: animal isn't the natural predator of say the skunk. I
Speaker 1: think it's sprayed a lot. Well, they just get sprayed
Speaker 1: a lot for all the skunks they're killing because they
Speaker 1: have no sense of smell, right, so that's evolved for them.
Speaker 1: They don't care. They're just killing all of these stink
Speaker 1: animals and it's there for is just so full of
Speaker 1: the years and years of stink. Okay, I could be
Speaker 1: able by that. I you know, I want to say
Speaker 1: that it is just it is a reason that you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's stinky Ted with his dreads which Joe started
Speaker 1: us a rhyming mood from earlier tonight apparently, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I I really I don't think. I don't think the
Speaker 1: mop and guari is a current contemporary creature. I will
Speaker 1: call it a cryptod because I think that it may
Speaker 1: have been an unknown animal in the past in you know,
Speaker 1: the scale that it's described at. I don't think that
Speaker 1: it's the megatherium o megafauna like we had in the past.
Speaker 1: I think it might have been some scale down version
Speaker 1: that is no more that. That's really what I think
Speaker 1: until Or and his team come back with better data,
Speaker 1: because remember they they've been collecting samples from people for years.
Speaker 1: People have been turning in uh scat samples and hair
Speaker 1: samples saying I think that this was the mopping g
Speaker 1: warri and every time they tested it turns out to
Speaker 1: be some other animals, some kind of monkey or an
Speaker 1: ant eater or some other animal that's indigenous to the area.
Speaker 1: So so far they literally have squat to show. So
Speaker 1: I really, unfortunately I think that I don't think that
Speaker 1: it's it's a real thing anymore. Um, they've you've we've
Speaker 1: over lefted the area. Actually, what I said, it's just
Speaker 1: the local Indians pulling the white man's leg too. You know,
Speaker 1: I almost wrote that. I'm glad you brought that up
Speaker 1: because I put that in there earlier, the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, the Europeans showed up and the locals said, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, there's this big, starty, smelly, stinky, gross
Speaker 1: things out there, and that might have been their way
Speaker 1: to try to protect what they considered a precious item,
Speaker 1: whether it be gold or plants or pigs or literally
Speaker 1: the forests. Yeah, you really, actually just I could even
Speaker 1: see like that. It's not even so much of that
Speaker 1: motivation as you have these people showing up. The next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, you get these really credulous people from universities.
Speaker 1: It's anthropologist types. You're saying, please tell us about your
Speaker 1: folklore traditions, and you're like, what the hell, Okay, let
Speaker 1: me make something up here and we'll pay you to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, I tell a good story. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you must have all sorts of really fascinating, colorful stories
Speaker 1: like people like you always do. Okay, let me pull
Speaker 1: something in my butt here and they make us some
Speaker 1: they've just so totally absurded off the top and they're
Speaker 1: like and they're like, and then they go to all
Speaker 1: the other you do you know of the mopping Quarry.
Speaker 1: Do you have stories? Oh? Oh yeah, yeah, we totally
Speaker 1: have that. We do. Our smells worse, do we have yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me more about this and then but yeah, and
Speaker 1: you see that this guy after he makes this thing
Speaker 1: up at a whole cloth years ago, and then later
Speaker 1: on he's telling his place and they totally bought it.
Speaker 1: I don't know why these people think there's so much
Speaker 1: freaking smarter than we are. Oh my god, they just
Speaker 1: bought the whole thing there. Stupid. Yeah, we really are stupid.
Speaker 1: We are. Okay, Well, that is the that is the
Speaker 1: end of the Mopping Guarry Cryptids story. Let's give you
Speaker 1: the important details, which are If you are the Mopping
Speaker 1: Guarry and you want to tell us about yourself, you
Speaker 1: were more than welcome to do that. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: If you are not the Mopping Guarria but you would
Speaker 1: also like to communicate with us, you can do so.
Speaker 1: You can do so through the same avenue, So story, suggestions,
Speaker 1: or comments, or whatever it may be, send it to
Speaker 1: us there. You can get ahold of us all over
Speaker 1: the internet. So we are on the social media. You
Speaker 1: can get ahold of us on Facebook through the Facebook
Speaker 1: page or the Facebook group. You can get ahold of
Speaker 1: us on Twitter. We are on Instagram, on Reddit, so
Speaker 1: in order Facebook page, Facebook, a group, Instagram. We are
Speaker 1: thinking sideways podcast, are thinking sideways on Reddit, Instagram, and
Speaker 1: and thinking sideways on Twitter. So put that out of order.
Speaker 1: But you got it. You can rewind. You'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: We are on just about every streaming service out there,
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Speaker 1: Com really easy, really fun to find. With that having
Speaker 1: been said, something smells in here, So we're going to
Speaker 1: get out of here. And you, guys, week big big
Speaker 1: foot is that you. I'm not like the other's big foot.
Speaker 1: I see through the monster coding and the gentle loaner inside.
Speaker 1: But you have a wounded raccoon friend that you tenderly
Speaker 1: nurse back to health way you go, but in the
Speaker 1: end they shoot you. But you teach us about things.
Speaker 1: No