UNKNOWN CREATURE FOUND IN FOREST

The story and the photographs circulated the Internet, including various cryptozoology blogs, with a great amount of speculation about possible explanations. A video showing the original photographs, as well as some footage of the further decomposed corpse, became very popular on the web, being one of the most viewed videos over the course of a day. In addition to its prevalence on the Internet, the story was covered on television and radio.Comparisons were drawn to the Montauk Monster found in Montauk, New York in June 2008. A popular theory was that the Panama Creature was a sloth (perhaps an albino) that had somehow became hairless; proponents of the hypothesis cited the hooked claw visible in one of the photographs.Science author Darren Naish, writing for ScienceBlogs, supported the sloth hypothesis, but had a "difficult time" explaining the creature's hairlessness. The sloth theory was generally considered most credible; in 1996, similar photographs were taken of a creature found on the coast between Panama and Costa Rica that was later confirmed to be a sloth that had started to decay. Further Internet speculation led to some proposing that it was in fact a dolphin or a pit bull terrier, an example of a species previously unknown to science, or some sort of genetic mutation. Some Panamanian zoologists said that it appeared to be a fetus of some kind. In addition to naturalistic explanations, Billy Booth of About.com reported that "there has been speculation that it is alien, and thereby the connection to UFOs, undersea bases, the whole ball of wax".