Capelobo

The Capelobo is a therianthropic creature from Brazilian mythology, with an elongated snout of a pig, dog, or a giant anteater, depending on region, as the legend is locally told in the states of Pará or Maranhão.^[1][2]

Capelobo

An illustration of a Capelobo
Creature information
Grouping	Monster
Similar entities	Vampires, Werewolves
Origin
Country	Brazil
Habitat	Floodplains

It is either beast-like, or humanoid like a Mapinguari, and stumpy-footed as well, though lacking a giant mouth. It is feared as a man-eater, more specifically a blood-sucker and brain-eater. It is known for its screaming. Its only vulnerable spot is at the navel.

Etymology

The name Capelobo is a fusion of Guarani capê meaning "broken boned", "crooked", "crook-legged", or "lame" and the Portuguese word lobo, meaning wolf.^[3][4]

Legend

The legend is locally told in the states of Pará or Maranhão, but scarcely heard of from the Amazon, and known mostly to the so-called "tame" indío population, and not known among the mixed-race people.^[1]

Description

In the version which is widely popular in the Xingu River basin, Pará, the Capelobo has two forms, an animal form and a humanoid form. In its animal form, it resembles a long, black haired and dog- or pig-snouted tapir [pt] with round paws.^[1][2] As for its humanoid form, there is an underlying belief that every índio of great age will transform into this monster,^[2] and the storytellers specifically describe the Capelobo as resembling a Mapinguari (monster into which very old índio men were feared to transform into^[6][7]) or a Quibungo (monster which old black men turned into^[9]) but without their anomalous gaping mouths that run from nose to stomach.^[10]

The version in Maranhão (apparently surviving in the forests of the Pindaré River basin if nowhere else^[11][12]), is called Cupelobo (cupélobo^[13]), and reputed to have the snout of a giant anteater.^[2][1] There is a difference of opinion about the anteater-headed version, whether it has a shaggy manlike body or a (shaggy) tapir-like body.^[2] The anteater-headed, shaggy human bodied one also had round feet like the "bottom of a bottle" which left foot-tracks of such round shape.^[15] Thus it has been confounded with the Pé de Garrafa (lit. "bottle-leg"; a mythic round-footed creature which in some accounts is one-legged^[16]).^[12][a]

The Capelobo is described as a hematophage, i.e., blood-sucker and likened to the werewolf Lobisomem^[1] (or considered a sub-variant thereof^[13]). It is also known to snatch away newborn puppies and kittens from people's huts or encampments ensconced in the forest, roaming in the dead of night, like a Lobisomen.^[1][12] It reputedly "crushes [the victim] with a deadly embrace"^[17][18][2] or otherwise breaks open the carotid artery to drink the victim's blood,^[1][12][18] or inserts its snout or trunk into the embraced victim's head and sucks out the brain,^[19][1] its favorite food.^[2]

The only way to defeat it is by shooting it in the navel,^[12] which is covered in long strands of fur, and the natives hesitate to take arrow shots at it.^{[19][2][20][12]}

The Capelobo does a lot of screaming to announce its presence, like the Mapinguari and the Pé de Garrafa,^[1]

The lore of the cupélobo is also known to the Guajajáras people.^[19]

See also

• List of vampiric creatures in folklore
• Cumacanga [pt] - flame-headed monster, equatable to capelobo^[21]

Explanatory notes

1. In Abreu's account the native informants never explicitly reported the creature as one-legged. Nevertheless, Casudo's Geografica (1983) [1952] interpreted Cupelobo to be a one-legged ("unipedal") creature in this account. But Cascudo's later work, Dicionário (1983) [1954] merely draws comparison with Pé de Garrafa, which will be followed here. Franchini also assumed Cupelobo to be one-legged, and compared it to the saci.^[2]