Case file · Folklore / legend
Bates hears of the shape-shifting boto
In The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1863) Bates wrote that at Ega (today's Tefé) a boto, the pink river dolphin, was said to take the form of a beautiful woman, walk the streets at night and drag young men into the river.
1863 CE · -3.35, -64.71 · status: legend
The account
Bates noted that no Amazon animal had more fables told about it, and that fishermen refused to kill dolphins and believed their oil caused blindness. Later lore more often makes the boto a handsome man in white who seduces women at festivals.
The sceptical view
Bates thought the stories came from Portuguese colonists rather than Indigenous peoples; folklorists see a blend of both. The anthropologist Candace Slater studied the 'enchanted' dolphin in her 1994 book Dance of the Dolphin.