AHUIZOTL
The Aztec emperor Ahuizotl was arguably pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica’s scariest badass. Between 1486 and 1502, he conquered
45 neighbouring territories, doubling his empire’s size. He also coldly
ordered 20,000 people to be sacrificed during renovations to the
capital city, Tenochtitlán. So of course this guy would name himself
after Aztec mythology’s squickiest monster.
With a name meaning ‘thorny aquatic one’, the ahuizotl looks like a
small dog with rubbery black fur that stands up in clumpy spikes,
and grabby little hands like those of a monkey or raccoon. According
to folklore, it lures you to the water’s edge by imitating a crying
baby, then uses the extra hand on its flexible tail to drag you to its
underwater cave home. There, the ahuizotl feasts on your teeth, eyes
and fingernails. The rest of your body floats to the surface in a few
days, otherwise untouched.
In a 1503 letter home to Spain, Christopher Columbus described
a vicious creature that attacked a wild boar with its hands and
prehensile tail. Was the ahuizotl real? Researchers suggest one
possible candidate: the otter. It has oily fur, dexterous paws, and
sometimes scavenges the soft meat from drowned bodies. But
‘Emperor Otter’ doesn’t sound quite so intimidating.
ASPIDOCHELONEBack when monks ran the publishing industry, the line between
real and mythological creatures could get pretty blurry. Christian
bestiaries were illustrated books that described animals to teach
moral lessons from the Bible. One of the earliest, the 2nd-century
Physiologus, describes the aspidochelone: a turtle or whale so gigantic
that unwitting sailors mistake it for an island and try to camp on it.To catch its prey, the massive beast employs some clever camouflage:
trees grow on its rocky back, which is fringed by sandy beaches.
When the mariners moor their boats and start fires to cook a meal,
the aspidochelone senses the heat and rapidly submerges, drowning
them. Sound familiar? Scholars believe the aspidochelone is an
allegory for Satan. He, too, is tricky and deceptive, and if you attach
your hopes to him, he’ll drag you to hell.The aspidochelone has other names, too. In the Irish legend of
St Brendan, the voyaging saint celebrates Easter on the living
island of Jasconius. Arabic writers tell of a vast sea-turtle named
Zaratan, whom Sinbad the Sailor encounters in the Arabian Nights
tales. And to the Inuit of Greenland, a shallow patch meant Imap
Umassoursa lurked below, ready to spill sailors to their icy deaths
in freezing water.061 SMITH JOURNAL