List of miscellaneous cryptids

An unidentified bulky, single-horned animal is depicted in a pre-Columbian petroglyph from Cueva De Las Manos.

There are reports of gigantic toads inhabiting the river valleys of northern Chile and southern Peru called sapo de loma.

Chilean missionary Thomas Bridges wrote of an animal the local Indigenous people called the saapaim in Tierra Del Fuego, which was a sheep-sized, shaggy, arboreal animal with powerful claws and front teeth. It lives deep in the woods and eats leaves, mushrooms and sap. He speculated it may be some kind of sloth or otter, but his son disagreed, and claimed it was an unknown species of giant coypu.

The Alakaluf tribe of Tierra Del Fuego believes in a true giant they call kawtcho. It’s described as a giant, foul-smelling humanoid covered in bristly hairs. It lives in caves but would prowl the beaches at night in search of prey, which can include humans, that it kills by using its long “claws” or fingernails to gouge people’s eyes out. The Alakaluf people refrain from starting fires out in the open on beaches to avoid encountering a kawtcho.

In a book written by 17th-century Dutch explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a strange creature is illustrated alongside other drawings of the native people. It depicts an unusual walrus-like animal with flippers and a long scaly tail. It is labelled “animal of the strait of Magellan”. Argentine cryptozoologist Austin Whittal speculates it may depict an Odobenocetops, a strange genus of whale that convergently evolved a very walrus-like face, tusks and all, although they went extinct about 500,000 years ago.

There may have been a spectacled bear population in central Chile as recently as the 1820s, despite that no known spectacled bears, or any bears for that matter, exist in Chile. French naturalist George Cuvier wrote in 1825 that not only were spectacled bears “typical” in the cordilleras of Chile, but he actually obtained a specimen at one point. The Mapuche, who inhabit northern Patagonia, including Chile, have legends of spectacled bears, or osse.

On February 4th, 1968, Sir Peter Scott observed two, small, unidentified dolphins with brown underparts and a white belly swimming with a school of Commerson’s dolphins south of Cape Horn. 

There were reports of wolves in the news dispatches during the Falkland’s War. They may have been accounts of late-surviving Falkland Islands wolves.