“A hulking, fur-covered man-bear of the high Andes whose huge upright footprints turn up far above the treeline.”
Where Bolivia's cloud forest frays into bare high puna, herders and hunters describe the Jucumari: a heavy, dark-furred figure that walks upright like a man, drops to all fours when it wants speed, and calls into the night with a hollow 'uhu, uhu, uhu'. The name is simply the Quechua word for bear — and that is exactly the problem, because nobody agrees where the animal stops and the wildman begins.
The lore runs the length of the cordillera, through Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile, wherever the spectacled bear ranges and a little beyond it. Reports describe something five to seven feet tall with massive limbs and small eyes, keeping to remote gullies and caves and leaving huge human-like footprints at altitudes where almost nothing lives. It is South America's answer to the sasquatch, wearing a bear's borrowed name.
The Legend
Andean tradition makes the ukumari more than an animal. In the old tales the bear-man carries people off to its cave and fathers children on them — half-bear offspring of terrible strength. Folklorists note that this bear-paramour story is not strictly indigenous: the Spanish appear to have carried it over from Europe's own bear legends and grafted it onto the Andes' only bear, where it took root in Quechua-speaking country from Bolivia south into Salta and Jujuy.
In the Argentine northwest the creature acquired a darker surname: ukumar-zupai, yoking the bear to Supay, the Andean lord of the underworld. There it is a thing of caves and gully-bottoms, blamed for uncanny howls out of the mountains and glimpsed at forest edges — big, hairy, dark, sometimes red-eyed, always gone before anyone gets close. It is feared less as a predator than as something that should not be walking on two legs.
Documented Sightings
In 1956 the geologist Audio L. Pich reported seventeen-inch human-like footprints on the Argentine side of the Andes at over sixteen thousand feet, and similar tracks turned up in Salta province the following year. In 1957 residents of Tolor Grande reported eerie nightly howls from the Curu-Curu mountains, and in May 1958 campers near Rengo, Chile described an 'ape-man' whose cries brought a police investigation that found no tracks.
Reports never quite stopped. A Salta farmer described a hairy, dark creature nearly two meters tall with red eyes standing in his cornfield, and on the night of April 12, 2022, a countryman at Pasteadero Chico near Metán, in the south of Salta province, reported an encounter that drew local media attention. Cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson catalogued the earlier cases; no expedition has produced hair, bone or a clear photograph.
The Lore
The skeptics' candidate has always been the spectacled bear, Tremarctos ornatus — South America's only bear, a shy climber of cloud forest that will occasionally stand upright. The identification explains the name, the range and the silhouette. Believers answer that bears do not sustain a two-legged stride across open ground, and that the wailing 'uhu, uhu' reported for generations sounds like no bear anyone has recorded.
The confusion is ancient and probably permanent, because the word itself refuses to choose: ukumari, jukumari, ukuku — across the Andes the names for the bear and the names for the bear-man are the same names. Viral footage from Argentina periodically revives the legend in the press, and in highland Bolivia the Jucumari remains what it has always been: the shape a bear takes when the mountains want to remind you they are not fully mapped.
Field Notes
- ✦ Quechua 'ukumari' simply means bear — the legend lives in the blur between animal and wildman.
- ✦ Seventeen-inch human-like prints were reported by geologist Audio L. Pich in 1956, above 16,000 feet in the Andes.
- ✦ Its range in lore spans the cordillera through Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
- ✦ The Salta name ukumar-zupai splices the bear with Supay, the Andean lord of the underworld.
- ✦ Skeptics point to the spectacled bear; witnesses insist bears neither stride upright nor cry 'uhu, uhu' in the night.
Case File
- Classification
- Andean wildman / bear-man
- Category
- Humanoid/Wildman
- Territory
- Andean highlands and cloud forest
- First Sighted
- Pre-Columbian (Andean tradition); modern reports 20th c.
- Habitat
- High mountains, cloud forest, and remote valleys
- Reported Size
- ~1.5-2 m (5-7 ft)
- Also Known As
- Ucumar · Ukumari · Bear-Man