Mothman Spotted in Argentina and Ahool Seen in Portugal

It’s a week for flying cryptids – or at least for reporting on them – as word is hitting the Internet of a Mothman sighting in Argentina and the extremely rare Ahool making an appearance in Portugal. Have they already flown south for the winter?

The Mothman sighting appears to have occurred in October, 2014, in what is described as the small town of Quilino, Argentina, which has a population of 5,000. That includes the people who may have left town after seeing a winged humanoid creature appear suddenly in the middle of the night and just as suddenly disappear.

The Quilino police were notified and officially found nothing. However, fireman Carlos Sanchez and a friend who is a police officer claim to have seen a black hooded figure that matched the reports, except for the fact that it walked rather than flew. They followed it, lost it, then spotted it again, at which point it spread its wings and flew off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz-PLx8Brwo

The video accompanying the story seems to be an introduction to Mothman (in Spanish) and contains numerous images of the creature but it’s unclear if any are from the Argentine sighting. No other sightings have been reported there and no tragedies or disasters that could be attributed to this Mothman appearance have occurred.

While Mothman gets all of the publicity, a student in southern Portugal claims the large, winged creature he saw was an Ahool, which are usually described as a 4-foot tall giant bat or winged primate.

These creatures are most often seen in Indonesia, so the sighting by Pedro Roque in August in Almada, Portugal, is extremely unusual, although the Ahool is a fish eater and Almada is on the Targus River. Pedro and three friends say they heard a noise in the forest and looked up to see the flying Ahool pass over briefly and disappear. There were no other reported sightings.

If the sightings are true, the Mothman in Argentina and the Ahool in Portugal were far from their usual habitats. Is climate change causing cryptids to look for new homes?