Ucumar Zupai – Killer of Horses Part I

Whenever a report of an unknown bipedal hairy hominid surfaces, the cynics will invariably trot out that old saw: “It must have been a bear.”

There are a lot of people around the province of Salta, Argentina who are annoyed that they are not being taken seriously when they say they are having real problems with a biped known as the Ucumar. You could call the Ucumar the Andean version of sasquatch or an Andean Yeti.

Aside from Argentina this beast has been reported in other countries in the Andean Range including, Bolivia, Peru and Chile. It is also known as the Ukamar-zupai and ranges in colour from reddish-brown to black. Its footprints are positively huge at 17 inches in length. No bear on this planet leaves tracks that size.

The trouble around the town Arroyo Salado in 2003 was largely concerned with the particularly aggressive behaviour of an alleged member of the Ucumar tribe. This character was particularly aggressive and came down from its refuge in the Andes to inflict damage on the unknowing populace of Arroyo Salado. It was a tall specimen too measuring two metres (six feet six inches) in height. Locals blamed the Ucumar for savaging and devouring a colt found dead in the area.

Reports of the presence of an actual Ucumar brought out from the nearby towns of Rosario de la Frontera and Metan, some 20 police officers, 15 rangers on horseback, and a dozen members of the Ciudad Termal fire department under the leadership of Police Chief Rene Tacacho and fire chief Jose Alvarez, to a heavily wooded area where eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the creature. They were aided in their search by members of the Juan Carlos Rivas Archaeological and Paleontological Research Group.

Now while there is a bipedal hairy hominid called the Ucumar, there is an opinion that the true Ucumar, is actually the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus). The bear is the only South American plantigrade but there is only one problem: its size. Spectacled bears do not stand much taller than 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall and are not even native to Argentina and none exist there now. It is over two feet shorter than an Ucumar hominid and not exactly likely to spread that sort of panic in the hearts of people who know what bears look like and would be easily able to identify them.

The focus of the search centred around the municipal garbage dump located 3 kilometres (2 miles) from central Rosario de la Frontera. It wasn’t long before the searchers heard strange howls and found prints that seemed to indicate that the Ucumar had been hanging around at about one o’clock in the morning.

One of the searchers, a cameraman at a Rosario TV station named Miguel Moreno, said he and others had heard the sound of leaves being crunched and briefly witnessed a dark shape which promptly vanished into the bush. Some 30 dogs in the area began to bark loudly and one of them chased after the creature. There was a growl in the darkness, followed by deafening silence. The dog never emerged from the bush and is feared to have been lost to the creature.

A list of 14 sighting accounts was then compiled following a decision by court judge Mario Dilascio to grant formally legal recognition to the investigation.

Oddly the first report gathered was one from 2001 which included the testimony of a couple who were in a wooded area of Arroyo Salado, who claimed that they were set upon by a strange creature over two metres tall, covered in hair, possessed of very sharp claws and exposed its "bare buttocks".

John Kirk About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998). In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur. Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC. In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.

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