Yacumama

The world is filled with secrets. Many of them it does not give up easily. Empires have risen and empires have fallen in the midst of mysteries-riddles that remained unsolved through the centuries.

One such mystery has haunted the darker, steamier regions of the fabled land of the Amazon.The Amazon, a dark, forbidding river sluggishly twisting its way through Brazil and eight other South American countries. It is a river second in size only to the mighty Nile and it is so wide that no bridge passes over it.

As far back as the Aztecs, legends have been spoken about the monster snakes. The Aztecs of central Mexico made it one of their most powerful gods: Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl tasting human flesh.

In the centuries that followed, the indigenous people of the Amazon often spoke of the Yacumama—the snake of the water. The Yacumama is a giant anaconda-like snake that has been frightening Brazilians for many years. This immensely strong serpent, capable of sucking up everything around it, has the power to cause mudslides and general chaos. European and American herpetologists shrugged off the talk as myths or as references to the great aquatic boa, the anaconda.

According to the indigenous peoples, other giant snakes inhabit the Amazon's shadowy realm too: the Sachamama and the Minhocão, a snake that some Amazon natives believe can alter the land as they pass through.

Despite the herpetologists' belief, the natives were not speaking of big anaconda by different names. They spoke of true monsters-leviathans so huge that the anaconda would be small in comparison. The snakes the natives sometimes spoke of in fear and awe over village campfires and the safety of their homes—measured 120, sometimes 160 feet long. The heads of these mammoth creatures were said to reach 6 feet wide. They can bring down their prey with explosive jets of water, toppling trees in their passage and change the course of minor tributaries.

During the year 1906, the world-famous explorer Major Percy H. Fawcett claimed of encountering a gigantic anaconda while traveling up the Amazon River. A report from Percy H. Fawcett reads: 

 “We stepped ashore and approached the reptile with caution. It was out of action, but shivers ran up and down the body like puffs of the wind on a mountain tarn. As far as it was possible to measure, a length of 45 feet lay out of the water, and 17 feet in it, making a total length of 62 feet.....such large specimens as this may not be common, but the trails in the swamps reach a width of six feet and support the statements of Indians and rubber pickers that the anaconda sometimes reaches an incredible size, altogether dwarfing the one shot by me. The Brazilian Boundary Commission told me of one killed in the Rio Paraguay exceeding 80 feet in length!"

Major Fawcett was inspired by tales of giant anacondas (Picture based in part on a photograph published in the newspaper of Pernambuco, January 24, 1948.)

However, they were far from convinced academic professionals and herpetologists. The monstrous snakes just seemed to be something obviously crazy. As the dispute continued for another century until two brothers, Mike and Greg Warner, mounted an expedition in the jungles of the Amazon looking for evidence of monstrous snakes. The expedition was inconclusive, although recorded mammoth trails giant snake and took testimonies of natives who claimed to have seen the Yacumama.

Mike Warner spoke to hundreds of indigenous and workers who had encounters with Yacumama. He researched thousands more. He noted that certain native tribes of both African and Native near the Amazon River in South America describe an enormous snake "takes water with it." Although the first expedition could not find the elusive Yacumama, the brothers were undeterred. After two new fundraising, they mounted another expedition to the Amazon.

During the second expedition, Warner succeeded in finding and photographing areas where Yacumama lives, gaps are formed near rivers, their trenches (some almost 2 meters wide) and photographing some of the giant snakes, not Yacumama but just as impressive. In fact, their findings are so credible that the National Geographic Society expressed serious interest in the brothers' research and findings.

What they found tallied with the reports of previous witnesses. Through the years, many sightings have included descriptions Yacumama snake with horns sprouting from his head. This peculiar feature, mentioned in many reports of independent observers along the Amazon, has led Warner to the hypothesis that Yacumama could be a prehistoric version of modern day caecilians.Most of the roughly 50 species of caecilians that have been rated have a groove along both sides of the head containing retractable tentacles. To the untrained observer, they may appear as horns. According to Mike Warner, "The exact species of this creature is unknown but we believe that the physical characteristics and behavior are a snake - or amphibians - similarly to a caecilian behavior. " - An amphibious snake-like creature.

A snake photographed in Brazil with a length of 35 meters, 75 cm wide and 4 tons.

Most of the witnesses who have sighted one Yacumama have not spent much time studying the creature -. Been generally passed over it by accident and then gave swing and ran for their lives. Warner's research led him to discover that seeks Yacumama prey near the regions where two rivers merge into one, called "confluence". He determined that those areas provide the colossal predators a steady supply of food. He hypothesizes that this capacity may have one or more of the following purposes:

1. The stunning prey or tear down trees in its path. The Yacumama allegedly swallows water and throws his prey like a water cannon. 
2. while "takes water with it" you may use this water pressure to sustain its skeletal structure, while moving through the jungle . . 
3 You can also use water as an instrument of burrow - like a worm does on the ground, therefore, has some similarity to a Gymnophiona features. The Indians of the Peruvian Amazon witness a loud noise that can be heard when the Yacumama this game during the rainy season.

All sightings of these giant snakes have similar descriptions. Warner believes that the snakes that the natives call the Sachamama - mother earth - are the same as the Yacumama snakes. Have grown so large that they have become virtually immobile and therefore no longer feed on prey caught in the water. He extrapolates this hypothesis: "At this point we can release pheromones to attract snakes of the same species and so eat them This process can even restrict the population of this species in a given area.."

Perhaps Yacumama are real.They can even be a previously undiscovered species. They are also, without a doubt, some of the most dangerous and terrifying predators in the animal kingdom.