Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'm a cryptozoologist, and I've spent the last six years researching Mesoamerican water cryptids. There's one case that keeps me up at night, and I need to tell you about it. Back in the early 1500s, around Lake Texcoco in what's now Mexico City, there was a creature the Aztecs called the ahuizotl. That translates roughly to 'thorny water dweller' or 'spiny aquatic thing.' The fishermen who worked those waters knew it well. Too well. I've read every primary source document I could find. The Florentine Codex, Book 11, describes it in detail. Written accounts from Aztec informants, recorded by Spanish friars in the 1500s. These weren't legends passed down through generations. These were contemporary reports from people who claimed to encounter this thing regularly.
So here's what they described. The ahuizotl was about the size of a small dog, maybe three feet long. Black fur, slick and waterproof. When it came out of the water, the fur would spike up, like a porcupine. Small pointed ears. Smooth body. But here's where it gets strange. The tail. The Florentine Codex is very specific about this. The creature had a long tail, and at the end of that tail was a hand. Not a paw. A hand. Quote, 'just like a human hand is the point of its tail.' Its regular hands, the ones on its arms, were described as being like a raccoon's hands or a monkey's hands. Dexterous. Capable of gripping things. I know how that sounds. But this description appears in multiple independent sources from that era. The codex also mentions it lived in deep pools, in watery caverns. Lake Texcoco had plenty of both.
The hunting method was what terrified the locals. The ahuizotl would lie in wait at the water's edge, completely submerged except maybe its snout. Fishermen, women washing clothes, kids playing near the shore. Anyone who got close enough. It would use that tail-hand to grab them. Wrap those fingers around an ankle, a wrist, whatever it could reach. Then it would pull them under and hold them there until they drowned. The struggle would churn up the water, fish and frogs jumping everywhere, but once you were in that thing's grip, you weren't getting away. hand on a tail sounds impossible - Marcus' Here's the disturbing part. After the victim drowned, the ahuizotl would use its sharp teeth to remove specific body parts. The eyes. The teeth. The fingernails. Just those three things. Then it would let the body float back to the surface a few days later.
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