Cuero

Cuero Depiction of the cuero from Tomás Guevara's Psicolojia del Pueblo Araucano (1908). Category Lake monster Proposed scientific names Other names El bien peinado, cuerito, cuero unudo, hide, huecu, lafquén trilque, manta, trelque, trelquehuecufe, trelquehuecuve Country reported Argentina, Chile First reported 1810 Prominent investigators • Mark A. Hall • Austin Whittall

The cuero (Spanish: "hide") or trelque (Mapuche: "hide") is a lake monster reported from lakes in Argentina and Chile, including Lakes Lacar and Nahuel Huapi. It is described as a flattened animal resembling a piece of tanned cow-hide, but ringed with claws, and has been characterised as a cephalopod and a ray. Few sightings are on record, but a very similar cryptid, the xizi, is reported from China.

Attestations

The cuero is exclusively described by the Mapuche and Araucanized Tehuelche, in Araucanía and northern Patagonia. It does not appear in the folklore of southern Patagonia. Though referenced in Felipe Gómez de Vidaurre's Historia Geográfica (1789), it was first described in print by the Juan Ignacio Molina, who believed it to be a giant ray, in his Essay on the Natural History of Chile (1810). Molina described an "almost circular [animal], like an extended bovine hide. If it was so, it would come to be [a] species of Manta of a monstrous race". Molina seemed to have confused it with the nguruvilú.

It was not mentioned in print again for another hundred years, when accounts of it were collected by a number of authors in the early 20^th Century. The cuero is described in Tomás Guevara's Psicolojia del Pueblo Araucano (1908), Francisco J. Cavada's Chiloé y los Chilotes (1914), Vicuña Cifuentes's Estudios de Folklore Chileno (1915), and Ricardo Latcham's La Organización Social y las Creencias Religiosas de los Antiguos Araucanos (1924). Although reputed to have been far more numerous in the past, as of 1987, it was alleged to still exist in lakes and lagoons.

Description

In both size and shape, the cuero is compared to a piece of tanned cowhide or goat skin, a resemblance which gives it its Spanish and Mapuche names. The edges of its body are said to be ringed with sharp claws, nails, or hooks all around. Some later sources replace these claws with many small eyes, and add four larger eyes to the dorsal surface of the animal. Tomás Guevara and Francisco J. Cavada characterised it as an octopus. Norberta Garcés de Braese, who heard accounts of the cuero of Lake Futalaufquen, but never saw it for herself, compared it to a giant ray.

It lives in deep water at the bottom of lakes and inlets, but is sometimes said to be amphibious, coming out onto the shore to bask in the sun, and some sources describe it as partially marine. The cuero is regarded as aggressive and dangerous: it is alleged to have killed a number of people, and is reputed to drag children to the bottom of lakes. It supposedly grabs men and animals who are bathing or crossing the water, and kills them "by means of an irresistible contraction," folding upon itself to wrap its prey up with its claws to be constricted, then dragging it to the bottom to be devoured. It is alleged to be very strong, powerful enough to drag a horse into the water. Nevertheless, it can be hunted with nooses, or by throwing cactus chunks, on which it pierces itself, into the water.

In some folkloric stories, it is said to live in caves and decapitate its victims. cueros are said to live in Lakes Nahuel Huapi, Lacar (where a tiny but aggressive "cuertio" is alleged to exist), Rosario, Carrilaufquen, Yelcho, Quillen, Lolog, Paimun, Futalaufquen, and Ranco (which is "notorious for cuero sightings").

Physical evidence

Photographs

The 2014 Zuker photograph.

An alleged photograph of a ray in Lake Nahuel Huapi was taken in January 2014 by fisherman René Zuker. Austin Whittall suggests that the photograph may depict a species of velvet catfish (family Diplomystidae), a group of little-known freshwater fishes endemic to the Southern Cone, which appeared larger than it really was due to light refraction at the surface of the lake.

Sightings

Undated

In 1965, an old man named Ambrosio Meilivio recounted the story of a cuero attack which he heard of in his youth. According to Meilivio, a man named Ramil was killed by a cuero on the shore of Lake Carrilaufquen.

“

[...] his horse rolled and threw him along the shore of the lake [...] Ramil fell on top of something that resembled a hide that was lying by the edge of the water, that quickly rolled him up and took him with a rolling motion into the lake.

”

1974

Fisherman René Zuker claimed to have seen what he believed was a ray in Lake Nahuel Huapi, a few meters from the Limay River, about forty years prior to January 2014. He described it as "the size of my hand, almost just born, and it was being eaten by some bugs, and it drew my attention, it was half rotten".

1976

In 1976, "giant freshwater rays" were allegedly seen in a lake in Argentina's Rio Negro Province. Fabio Picasso places the sighting in Lago Gutiérrez, Sebastián Jarré in Lake Moreno: both lakes flow into Lake Nahuel Huapi. According to Jarré, a team of divers, sent to look for a tourist bus which had fallen into the lake from a cliff, saw some large rays on the bottom of the lake. The story was supposedly confirmed by Walter Hormastorfer, Chief of the Prefectura Naval.

1996

On 17 January 1996, a number of people saw "a moving object resembling a stone" in Lago Lolog, in Argentina's Neuquén Province, a lake in which a cuero is alleged to live.

2014

In January 2014, René Zuker claimed to have seen and photographed a small freshwater stingray at the bottom of Lake Nahuel Huapi. He said that he spotted the fish at a depth of around six meters while standing on the pier.

Theories

See also: Xizi§Theories

The largest known South American freshwater ray, the short-tailed river stingray (Potamotrygon brachyura), is found in northern Argentina.

Mark A. Hall theorises that the cuero is a latter-day eurypterid, perhaps similar to Megarachne of Late Carboniferous Argentina (Source).

Karl Shuker suggests a connection with a jellyfish such as the moon jelly (Aurelia aurita; Source).

The cuero has been described as a freshwater octopus. Ricardo Latcham believed it was based on a large marine cephalopod such as the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas), citing that squid's large size, its suckers, and its "skin sheath called manto, joined on its dorsal side and free on the ventral". Karl Shuker finds it highly unlikely that the hide is any form of cephalopod, given the fact that its arms have never been described.

Austin Whittall notes that the cuero is very reminiscent of a freshwater ray, which exist in the river systems of northern South America, as far south as the Paraná Basin: the largest South American species, short-tailed river stingray (Potamotrygon brachyura), is found in the Río de la Plata Basin in northern Argentina. Although several sea rays are known from Chile, no freshwater species are known. However, marine whiptail stingrays of the family Dasyatidae, one species of which is found off the Chilean coast, are known to venture into fresh water in Africa, Asia, and Australia. Whittall suggests that rays could have entered the Andean regions in prehistory through a connection between the Colorado River and the Paraná Basin, never moving into the southern regions (and thus never entering into the stories of more southern races) due to the colder climate. However, Whittall believes that these rays probably could not survive for long if they did somehow manage to enter the cold water of the Patagonian lakes, even in the more temperate north, and alternatively suggests that the cuero is a myth based on sightings of beached manta rays.

Mark A. Hall theorised that both the cuero, alongside another Patagonian lake monster and some freshwater octopuses, could be an evolved eurypterid, or sea scorpion, which had six pairs of limbs around their thoraxes. Despite their common name, some of the largest and latest eurypterids inhabited brackish and fresh water. The last known remains, belonging to a giant Russian species of Campylocephalus, are dated to just before the Permian—Triassic boundary (~252 MYA), suggesting it was wiped out in the mass extinction occurring at that time. They had already been in decline for many millions of years, and the last species were sluggish, amphibious sediment-rakers, not the famous free-swimming predators of earlier periods. No fossil remains are known from the Mesozoic or the Cenozoic. Shuker finds this identity, and the idea of post-Permian eurypterid survival in general, extremely unlikely, arguing that the cuero does not really resemble an arthropod at all.

Shuker suggests that the alleged marine version of the cuero could be explained by a deep-sea jellyfish, known or unknown, similar to one seen in the South Pacific in 1953. He argues that the many eyes ringing its body may be eyespots or ocelli, which many jellyfish possess, and that the four large eyes could be eye-like gastric pouches, as in the common moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). As the true jellyfishes are exclusively marine, Shuker suggests that the lacustrine cuero may be a myth inspired by the oceanic one.

Similar cryptids

The Chinese xizi, reported from the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean, is highly reminiscent of the cuero: it is often speculated to be either a giant freshwater ray, or a freshwater cephalopod. Borges characterised the cuero as a freshwater octopus, cryptids reported in their own right from the United States. Hall speculated that these octopuses, as well as Specs, are also evolved eurypterids. Giant jellyfish have also been reported from the Pacific, and Shuker notes that the jellyfish interpretation of the cuero is very similar to a creature encountered in the South Pacific in 1953, which was described as "an immense, dull-brown, shapeless mass rose up out of the chasm, pulsating sluggishly, and flat in general outline with ragged edges"