GLEN VAUDREY: I'd go the Whole Wide World #5

Bolivia
Yet another land-locked South American country with a couple of claims to fame. It’s the country where revolutionary poster boy Ernesto "Che" Guevara met a sticky end, and the country shares part of Lake Titicaca with neighbouring Peru; however, the mystery animal we will be looking at is not found in its waters.

The cryptid that I would like to introduce you to today is the Mitla (sounds a bit like the name of naughty Austrian dictator).

This mystery animal was mentioned by the great lost explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett in his book Exploration Fawcett. He states the following while commenting on the creatures of Bolivia.

‘In the forest were various beasts still unfamiliar to zoologists, such as the mitla, which I have seen twice, a black doglike cat about the size of a foxhound’

It does sound very promising, doesn’t it, but what could the Mitla actually be? While Colonel Fawcett may have thought it was a cat the current feeling is that what he actually saw was a bush dog, while another promising canine candidate is the short-eared dog, an animal known for its feline-like movement. So perhaps the Mitla is less of the dog-like cat and more of the cat-like dog.

So where are we off to next? Well, we’re heading south across the border to Chile.