Ucumar

The Ucumar, also spelled Ucu or Ukumar, is a hairy, bipedal hominid of Andean folklore reported across the cloud forests of northwestern Argentina and southern Bolivia, often described as South America's answer to Bigfoot. Quechua and Aymara oral tradition, recorded by folklorists in Salta and Jujuy since at least the early 20th century, describes a creature covered in dark reddish hair, standing well over two meters, with an unpleasant animal odor and a distinctive whistling cry heard at dusk in the yungas forest. A herder's account collected in the 1970s reads: "It walked upright like a man but bent forward, and when it whistled the dogs would not stop shaking until morning." Some tellings describe the Ucumar as timid and reclusive, fleeing human contact, while others hold it capable of raiding livestock corrals during harsh winters. Cryptozoologists have proposed a surviving population of an unrecognized primate or a folk memory of the giant ground sloth, extinct for roughly 10,000 years, as possible origins, though mainstream zoologists attribute sightings to Andean bears standing on their hind legs, an animal frequently mistaken for a humanoid figure at a distance in dim forest light.