"I've got an idea...instead of capturing it let's beat it to death with sticks" *brilliant*

Yep - he looks dead, but where's "the precious?"

Hairless sloth. I'd bet on it.

Good god, that thing's scary looking. I'd probably beat it with sticks too if I saw it lurching out of a cave.

I just saw this as yet more reason why if there is other life in outer space, they aren't going to let us earthlings know about it. Our compulsion to kill whatever we don't understand is just too strong.

Oh thats so sad. It does look like a sloth..poor thing. Those things move slow so I don't imagine it was a real threat. Just looked odd to them. Stupid people suck.

Eraserhead!!!

Not any kind of threat, except for the probable sarcoptic mange that made it lose its hair. What is it about us mammals, and our reactions to other mammals with much less or more of the expected amount of body hair?

Anyone who's ever had to shave down a longhaired cat and reintroduce it to its former group has seen these fireworks.

If it makes those who (I think rightly) are a tad appalled at the idea of beating a creature to death with such callous disregard for how likely a threat it actually is feel a little better...

--after all, this thing does look like a dead, hairless sloth (other images of the creature clearly show the curved claws typical of such an animal) almost to the point where it's beyond debatable anymore...and sloths aren't exactly threatening, by any means--

...several people who have weighed in on the subject on other sites have brought up the point that, for a creature to lose its fur like this, and look all rubbery and bloated in appearance, it would have to have been floating in water for a good long time; meaning the kids' story is probably rubbish. They very possibly could have just happened upon the carcass, washed up into some rocky channel from a larger body of water, and just made up the story to make the photos they took seem all the more eerie.

I agree mostly, but -- imagining most of those people have never encountered an animal with a severe sarcoptes infection. So-infected mammals look alien to us (and their contemporaries), and we reject them probably due to some evolutionary impulse to keep the herd free from death and disease.

The same reason poop and dead bodies smell bad to us. Its "rubbery and bloated" appearance is likely a process of natural decay/distension. There's a point in all our lives when we will likely look "rubbery and bloated," no matter what actions the coroner takes.