🦶 CRYPTID SIGHTING · EXP. Nº6501 ACTIVE

Colo Colo

Colo Colo is a cryptid — a creature whose existence is unconfirmed by science — with reported sightings near Chile (mapuche), CL. This file collects the accounts and folklore surrounding it.

Where and when was Colo Colo sighted?

Location: Chile (mapuche), CL
Date sighted: Unknown
Coordinates: -38.95, -72.33
Testimonies: 0
Last updated: 2026-08-31

LOCATION

What is Colo Colo?

The colo colo of Chilean folklore is a creature nobody has seen. That is not a turn of phrase: when the folklorist Julio Vicuña Cifuentes tallied his field reports gathered between Valparaíso and Concepción, the version that prevailed was the one from Coelemu, in which the colo colo is simply "a very bad animal that nobody has seen" whose cry sounds like its own name. What the versions do agree on is what it does. It nests near a house and drinks the saliva of sleeping people, or licks the plates and cups the family has eaten from; the victim wastes away, grows disfigured and dies. The informants named the illness themselves, and the name they used was tisis - consumption, tuberculosis. A note published in Ovalle in 1904 put it even more plainly: when a house is not healthy to live in, it is said to have colocolo. The famous detail, that the creature hatches from a tiny egg laid by an old rooster, does not originally belong to the colo colo at all. In Vicuña Cifuentes's own book it belongs to a separate entry, the Basilisco, which he called in his own words the child of the European basilisk. This file follows both threads back to the sources.

What is the history of Colo Colo?

The colo colo enters the written record twice over, under two different names, and the distance between those two records is the whole story. The name comes first, and it belongs to a real animal. In 1782 the exiled Chilean Jesuit Juan Ignacio Molina listed, among the wild beasts of Chile, "La Guigna, Felis Guigna, e il Colocolo, Felis Colocolo": two handsome small forest cats, slightly larger than a house cat, too small in his judgement to trouble people or livestock, whose whole fury was turned on field mice and birds and which, he wrote, sometimes came up to farmhouses to raid the hen coop. Molina took the name from the Mapuche, and the animal still carries it: the species he described remains an accepted taxon as Leopardus colocola (Molina, 1782). Rodolfo Lenz, in his etymological dictionary of Chilean words drawn from American indigenous languages (Santiago, 1904-1910), files colocolo at article 201 as the common name of a wildcat, deriving it from Mapudungun and citing Febrés for the wildcat forms colcod and colocolo, which Vicuña Cifuentes, quoting the same entry, transcribes as codcod o colocolo; Lenz notes in the same entry that Colo Colo is also the name of the famous Araucanían leader in Ercilla's epic La Araucana. Fray Félix José de Augusta's Diccionario araucano-español (1916) gives kodkod for the yellowish, black-spotted wildcat and wiña for the gato montés. The creature comes second. The ethnographer Tomás Guevara described it in his Historia de la civilización de Araucanía (Santiago, 1898-1902) and again, at greater length, in Psicolojía del pueblo araucano (Santiago, 1908, pp. 324-325). There the colocolo is a bloodthirsty animal of Araucanían myth born from a hen's stunted or very small egg, which both indigenous people and country people believe was laid by the rooster; incubated by the heat of the sun it forms a snake or lizard, and after a time it turns into a creature resembling a rat with feathers. It settles in caves not far from the houses and comes out to lick the sputum and the utensils the family has eaten from, and by that indirect route, on the principle of sympathetic magic, it produces consumption and death. Hence, Guevara writes, the precaution of burning the supposed rooster's egg. The footnote on that page of Psicolojía credits a named young Mapuche collaborator of the author, Manuel Lonquitde. The fullest field record is Julio Vicuña Cifuentes's. He published six versions in Estudios de folk-lore chileno. Primera serie: Mitos (Santiago, 1910, pp. 16-17) and reprinted them in the expanded Mitos y supersticiones recogidos de la tradición oral chilena (Santiago, 1915, pp. 35-36), each tagged with the place it came from: a lizard that sucks the blood of sleepers (La Serena); a very fierce little mouse that nests near dwellings, and whoever has his saliva drunk begins to waste and grow disfigured and ends by dying unless the creature is killed in time (Santiago and Talagante); a small black bird the size of a chercán whose saliva-drinking is fatal (Malloco); a fowl like a bat that enters rooms at night (Quella); a little mouse that sickens whoever's saliva it drinks or whose leftovers it eats (Coihueco de Chillán); and, from Coelemu, "a very bad animal that nobody has seen, and that when it cries says colo-colo", feared because whoever has his saliva drunk dies of fever, glossed by the informant as tisis. Vicuña Cifuentes adds that he held twenty-seven further reports gathered between Valparaíso and Concepción, five of which confirmed the Coelemu version entirely and twenty-two of which agreed in everything but the cry. His conclusion is careful and worth keeping: for most country people the colo colo is not a bird or a mammal of any particular shape at all, but simply an animal nobody has seen. Two more dated records close the file. On 19 February 1904 José Silvestre published a note on zoological mythology in the Ovalle newspaper El Obrero, reproduced by Vicuña Cifuentes on p. 334: the colocolo lives indoors like a mouse, cackles like a hen looking for somewhere to lay, feeds on spittle, and provokes salivation in people, who waste away and die prematurely -- "so that when a house is not healthy to live in, it is said to have Colocólo". And in August 1915 Ricardo E. Latcham read a paper on Chilean zoological myths to the folklore section of the Sociedad Chilena de Historia y Geografía; his version from Angostura de Paine gives the creature a pig's snout, four rows of teeth and bulging red eyes, and has it enter houses to suck the saliva of sleepers, after which the victim's mouth swells and fills with ulcers and he dies little by little of tisis.

Timeline: the documented record of Colo Colo

1782 Juan Ignacio Molina publishes his Saggio sulla storia naturale del Chili in Bologna and lists the Guigna and the Colocolo, Felis Colocolo, as two small spotted forest cats that sometimes approach farmhouses to raid the hen coop. The name is taken from the Mapuche and the species remains an accepted taxon today as Leopardus colocola (Molina, 1782).
1884 Alejandro Guichot y Sierra publishes his monograph on the basilisk in volume III of the Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas, mapping the rooster's-egg belief across Portugal, France, Italy and Britain. His summary states that all the superstitions collected agree the basilisk comes from an egg laid by a seven-year-old rooster and kills by looking. The French material already records that hens sometimes lay a very small, round, hard-shelled egg believed to be the rooster's.
1898-1902 Tomás Guevara, in his Historia de la civilización de Araucanía, describes the colocolo as a subterranean lizard whose germ is found in the hen's degenerate or very small egg, which both the indigenous people and the country people believe comes from the rooster, and which extracts a person's saliva and causes his death. Quoted here as reproduced by Vicuña Cifuentes.
19 February 1904 José Silvestre publishes a note on zoological mythology in El Obrero of Ovalle: the colocolo lives indoors like a mouse, cackles like a hen looking for a nest, feeds on spittle and provokes salivation in people, who waste away and die prematurely, "so that when a house is not healthy to live in, it is said to have Colocolo". Vicuña Cifuentes reproduced the note in 1915.
1908 Guevara's Psicolojía del pueblo araucano (pp. 324-325) gives the fullest version: born of the supposed rooster's egg, incubated by the sun into a snake or lizard, metamorphosing into a creature like a feathered rat, lodging in caves near the houses and licking the family's sputum and eating utensils, causing consumption and death by sympathetic magic; hence the custom of burning the egg. The footnote on that page credits a young Mapuche collaborator of the author, Manuel Lonquitde.
1910 Vicuña Cifuentes publishes the first edition, Estudios de folk-lore chileno. Primera serie: Mitos, with the six localised colo colo versions at pp. 16-17. In the same volume, at p. 54, he closes his separate entry on the Chilean basilisk with a judgement in his own voice: the Chilean basilisk, child of the European one, resembles it in everything, as the majority of his reports show.
1904-1910 Rodolfo Lenz's etymological dictionary appears in instalments. Article 201 gives colocolo as the common name of a wildcat, from Mapudungun. The supplement adds a third sense, the fabulous animal, with versions from Melipilla, Maule and Ñuble and Los Ángeles, and Lenz's own bracketed explanation that the last egg a hen lays in a season is sometimes very small and hard-shelled, and that from this comes the fable of the rooster's egg.
1914 Francisco J. Cavada's Chiloé y los chilotes (pp. 104-105) records that in Chiloé the creature born of the small egg laid by red roosters grown old, which lodges in houses and feeds on the saliva and phlegm of the inhabitants so that they waste slowly away, is called not colo colo but Basilisco. Cavada frames it explicitly alongside the basilisk of classical fable and quotes the Spanish poet Villegas. His glossary also records the Chilote name athrathrao for the same animal, from Mapudungun achau, hen.
August 1915 Ricardo E. Latcham reads his paper Sobre algunos mitos zoológicos chilenos to the folklore section of the Sociedad Chilena de Historia y Geografía. His version from Angostura de Paine gives the colo colo a pig's snout, four rows of teeth and bulging red eyes; it enters houses while people sleep to suck their saliva, after which the victim's mouth swells and fills with ulcers and he dies little by little of tisis.
1915 The expanded Mitos y supersticiones appears. The colo colo is chapter VIII (pp. 35-36) and the basilisk is a separate chapter II; superstition no. 619 (p. 260) records that the rooster must be killed before it is seven, because at that age it lays the small egg from which the Basilisco is born, and Vicuña Cifuentes cross-refers it to Andalusian and Portuguese parallels. Appendix B (pp. 334-335) adds the Silvestre and Latcham versions.
1916 Fray Félix José de Augusta publishes his Diccionario araucano-español, which gives kodkod for the yellowish, black-spotted wildcat and wiña for the gato montés, noting that the Araucanían origin of the latter term is doubtful.

Is there a rational explanation for Colo Colo?

The tradition names its own disease, and it names it twice. Vicuña Cifuentes's informant at Coelemu said the victim dies "de calentura", glossing the word himself as tisis; Latcham's informant at Angostura de Paine said the mouth swells, fills with ulcers, and the victim dies of tisis. Guevara's word is consunción. Tisis and consumption are the old names for pulmonary tuberculosis. Read as a description of tuberculosis, the myth is coherent to an uncomfortable degree. The illness is slow, wasting and disfiguring; it kills over months, not hours. It runs through a household rather than striking one person at random. It is bound up with sputum and with saliva, and the folk model of transmission is precisely a thing that consumes the sick person's spittle and licks the plates and cups the family has eaten from -- which is, in mechanism if not in agency, a fair account of how tuberculosis moves through a crowded dwelling. José Silvestre's note of 1904 makes the equation almost explicit and drops the animal altogether: when a house is not healthy to live in, it is said to have colocolo. That is not a bestiary entry. That is a diagnosis of a house. The rooster's egg is a real object, and this was pointed out at the time. Lenz, in the supplement to his dictionary, recorded the Los Ángeles version -- a creature shaped like a chick, from a very thick-shelled egg laid by roosters at a year old -- and appended his own explanation in brackets: sometimes the last egg a hen lays in a season is very small and hard-shelled, and from that will come the fable, common in many places, of the rooster's egg. The same observation had already been written down in Europe: among the French material collected in Alejandro Guichot y Sierra's monograph on the basilisk (1884) is the note that hens sometimes lay a very small, round, hard-shelled egg, and that it is generally believed in France to have been laid by a rooster. A small, round, misshapen egg in the nest box is an ordinary accident of the henhouse, not an omen. The call has a candidate too. Lenz reports, at second hand and with an honest admission that he cannot place the reference, Philippi's suggestion that colocolo was a name for a mouse with a throat ailment that breathes with difficulty and utters strange, characteristic cries. Whether or not that is the source of the Coelemu informant's "colo-colo", it is at least an animal that could be heard in a wall at night. Vicuña Cifuentes offered a further observation in a footnote on p. 335: the wildcats Molina had named colocolo had, he believed, long since vanished from the country, so popular imagination met no obstacle in attaching the strangest shapes to the surviving name. His premise was too pessimistic -- the species is still a valid taxon -- but his point about a name outliving its animal stands on its own. None of this proves anything about the colo colo, and it should not be dressed up as though it did. There is no specimen, no photograph and no captured animal in any of the sources above; there is not even a consistent shape, and Vicuña Cifuentes's own count makes the dominant version the one in which nobody has seen it at all. What the record supports is narrower and more interesting than a monster: a name borrowed from a small wild cat, attached across central and southern Chile to a household explanation for a wasting, contagious disease, in the century before anyone in those villages could have named the bacillus.

Can you visit Colo Colo?

There is no site to visit. The colo colo is a belief recorded across a wide stretch of Chile, not a creature attached to a cave, a lake or a roadside marker, and no museum in Chile exhibits it. What can be visited is the archive, and it is unusually accessible. Vicuña Cifuentes's Mitos y supersticiones (1915) is in the public domain and free to read at Memoria Chilena, the digital library of Chile's Biblioteca Nacional, which classifies it as patrimonio cultural común and states it may be freely used and reproduced; the whole 342-page volume downloads as a single PDF. The colo colo entry is chapter VIII, pp. 35-36, the separate basilisk entry is chapter II, and the two later versions are in appendix B, pp. 334-335. The first edition of 1910, Guevara's Psicolojía del pueblo araucano (1908), Lenz's dictionary (1904-1910), Cavada's Chiloé y los chilotes (1914), Augusta's Diccionario araucano-español (1916), Molina's Saggio of 1782 and Guichot y Sierra's basilisk monograph of 1884 are all scanned in full on the Internet Archive. Between them they cost nothing and settle most of what circulates online about this creature. Geographically, the tradition Vicuña Cifuentes documented runs from La Serena down through Santiago, Talagante and Malloco to Quella, Coihueco and Coelemu, with the bulk of his twenty-seven additional reports gathered between Valparaíso and Concepción. Cavada recorded the equivalent belief in Chiloé in 1914 under the name Basilisco. These are ordinary towns and farming districts, not attractions; there is nothing to see and nothing that welcomes visitors on this account, and the courteous thing is to treat living Mapuche and Chilote communities as neighbours rather than as folklore exhibits. The animal that lent the myth its name can be seen. The colocolo or Pampas cat, Leopardus colocola (Molina, 1782), is a small spotted wild cat of open country; Chilean zoos and conservation centres hold and display native felids, and the species is the subject of ongoing conservation work. It is worth saying plainly that this cat has never harmed anyone in the manner of the legend. One disambiguation, because it sends most of the traffic. Colo-Colo is by far the best known name in Chile as that of the Santiago football club, and before that as the name of the Araucanían leader in Alonso de Ercilla's epic La Araucana, a connection Lenz notes in the same dictionary entry that gives the wildcat. Neither the club nor the epic has anything to do with the saliva-drinking creature described here.

Sources consulted

Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content

📎 Source: Enigma Atlas

Colo Colo

Where and when was Colo Colo sighted?

What is Colo Colo?

What is the history of Colo Colo?

Timeline: the documented record of Colo Colo

Is there a rational explanation for Colo Colo?

Can you visit Colo Colo?

Sources consulted

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Colo Colo

Where and when was Colo Colo sighted?

What is Colo Colo?

What is the history of Colo Colo?

Timeline: the documented record of Colo Colo

Is there a rational explanation for Colo Colo?

Can you visit Colo Colo?

Sources consulted

💬 Field testimonies (0)

Add your testimony

🦶 Cryptids reported in Chile

📜 Legends from Chile