<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Puerto Rico is well known as the birth place of the Chupacabra legend. However, there are other fabled creatures said to roam its dense, tropical forests.

Comecogollos (roughly translated as one who eats the hearts of edible plants or tops of trees) is the term applied to a fabled, bipedal primate (similiar to Bigfoot) that is known to destroy banana crops in Puerto Rico by devouring the top portion of the tree, hence the name. Ironically, however, witnesses say that the creature is after the sap found in the trunk and not the bananas themselves. Witnesses have described this creature as hirsute, short, and bipedal with a quick step. It has been witnessed in areas of increased UFO activities such as the El Yunque National Rainforest.

This fabled cryptid is little known outside Puerto Rico and is scarcely reported within as well. Some researchers on the Internet have devoted space to discussing the Comecogollos but many of these entries are in Spanish.

An image floating around in cyberspace purports to show the "creature" standing higher than the surrounding vegetation in the El Yunque National Rainforest. However, this image is at odds with the dimensions described by witnesses, which is something on average of 4 or 5 feet tall. For this image to be true, this creature would have to stand between 40 and 60 feet tall. The vegetation covering these mountains is far from shrub-like. When compared to an image of the very well known, 60-foot-tall Mt. Britton Tower, which also stands out from the canopy of surrounding trees, we quickly see the scaling problems in the purported Comecogollos image. What is depicted in this picture is likely a trick of light and shadow.

Unfortunately, with so little documentation of the Comecogollos, and virtually no trace evidence, it is hard to accept the legend as anything more than a delightful folktale—one of many surrounding the mysterious El Yunque Rainforest.