Reports stemming from Panama are describing the discovery of a strange new creature, said to have been witnessed by a group of teenagers near the Blue Hill Water Spurt. After being linked to Coast to Coast AM’s website early this morning, the initial site hosting the images is down. However, a second site exists; below is a general translation of the information posted at the alternative site, Canal 13:

Discovery of a strange “Blue Hill Creature” has stirred up controversy among the population, because while some are certain that it is a being of another planet, others simply suggest that it is an animal.

Four adolescents between 14 and 16 years old were playing together in the Blue Hill Spurt this past Saturday.

According to their story, one of them suddenly saw that the creature as it left a cave located behind the water spurt. When it noticed the teenagers, the creature began to climb on stones towards one of them. Badly frightened, he began to throw stones and at it. After killing the animal, they left it by the water and fled the area.

The circumstances surrounding the story are classics of abduction lore; children allegedly see a strange creature emerge from a cave, and as it approaches them, they kill it, and flee the scene with a few photographs that carelessly (or purposely) capture only the parts of the anatomy that give the unsettling, “otherworldly” appearance: in this case, the upper extremities. I’ll tell you this: I’m not convinced this is any alien, and I’m even less convinced it’s anything we aren’t already aware of. Have a look at this series of photographs and you’ll see what I mean:

“Blue Hill Creature?”

If we were to consider that this creature is something already known to animals in the region, what kinds of critters, even sans-fur, might look like the one in the photographs from Panama? A simple search for “animals living near Panama” brings up an excellent WikiAnswers info site that gives us the following relevant information:

Panama’s Darién jungle is the largest tropical rain forest in the Western Hemisphere outside the Amazon Basin. The entire north coast of Panama is densely forested and contains more than 2,000 species of tropical plants. This habitat also supports a wide array of animals common to Central and South America, including ocelots, sloths, armadillos, pumas, anteaters, spider and howler monkeys, deer, caimans, crocodiles, and many snakes. It has one of the most diverse populations of birds in the world, ranging from colorful tropical species to long-distance migrating birds. Due to its unique location, Panama has several animal species found nowhere else, such as the golden tree frog and giant tree sloth. In populated areas, however, most of the native animals have been hunted or driven.

Did any of these animals catch your eye? They certainly caught mine. Read on, dear seekers of truth…

Looking back at the photos of the animal (be sure and reference the above link to the photos occasionally, since Copyright laws may prevent me from linking high-quality images for you here), there are several interesting aspects to consider here. For one, the image in the upper left hand corner seems to depict a portion of the animal’s hand (look just to the right of the creature’s head in the image). As its arm extends down the rock face where it lays, apparently the continuation of the appendage shows a single, long talon or claw. This same “claw” is visible in the image directly below (bottom left corner image), this time looking to the immediate left of the head. Does this “claw” look familiar to any known animals yet?

Another striking–and potentially revealing–visible aspect this creature bears is what looks like hair on its lower stomach (conveniently falling outside the frame of the images). Take another look at the photo in the upper left hand corner, at the top left corner of the image itself. Can we see course gray hair on the animal’s lower belly? This too looks familiar…

Finally, compare the face to this cuddly-looking tree dweller. The placement of the eyes, nose, and mouth all seem to match:

Hopefully, the part of the story about the little fella being beaten and stoned to death is merely a back-story to make the end result sound more anomalous. Sloths are awful damned cute; could you beat this little fella with a stick?

After coming to this conclusion, I did a general search for “sloth without hair”, which led me to the notion that others on the Web are coming to similar conclusions:

Above Top Secret: Something Strange (pic)

So the general consensus seems to be that, indeed, this poor little fella was actually a sloth… but who knows; what if the body is retrieved and we find that the critter has eight spindly spider’s legs? That would be a hoot… one more reason for folks to learn how to properly frame an image, so that future analysis doesn’t have to involve so much guess-work. At very least, this could be said of one other “cryptid” that drew speculation as to its identity.

“Claw” and “Fur” images courtesy of Christian Mehlführer.