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The nervelu was a cryptid bird reported from Argentina and Chile, in Patagonia. Austin Whittall suggests that a number of disparate stories of large, apparently flightless carnivorous birds in Patagonia are all connected.[1]
Attestations[]
A number of Patagonian myths refer to large predatory birds. One version of the Mapuche gold-eating bird alicanto describes it as "a big bird with a curved beak and long legs ending in big claws," and the Mapuche also believed in big forest birds which killed and ate people in the valleys. Kelenken, a gigantic black bird of prey in Aonikenk myth, gives its name to the giant Miocene phorusrhacid Kelenken guillermoi. The Aonikenk also believed in an evil "male" version of the rhea, which attacked and killed people under the command of the witch Kéenguenkon.[1]
Alonso de Ovalle's 1646 map of Chile, "Tabula Geográfica Regini Chile," depicts a man-sized, predatory-looking bipedal bird on the Patagonian steppe, between a guanaco and a rhea.[1] In 1898, Josef Siemiradski was told by the Mapuche of an evil spirit he called "nervelu" or "nurufilu," "a great bird with a beak and claws of steel". Robert Lehmann-Nitsche believed that this was simply an unreliable, garbled version of the guruvilu, with its name misspelt.[2]
In 1922, a report from Professor F. B. Loomis claimed that Patagonian gauchos "sometimes talk[ed] of great wingless birds," which Loomis thought were borne of alcoholic hallucinations.[3][1]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Whittall, Austin Flying Creatures - Strange Birds. Part 3 | Patagonian Monsters patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com (16 December 2009) [Accessed 26 August 2020]
- ↑ Whittall, Austin Guruvilu or Gurufilu the "Fox-Snake" Water Creature - Full Dossier | Patagonian Monsters patagoniamonsters.blogspot.com (28 January 2010) [Accessed 26 August 2020]
- ↑ "Seeing Things in Patagonia," The New York Times (11 March 1922)