The Varginha UFO

[john.phil]

there are monkeys that reach up to almost 1,5 meter in Brazil (Muriqui do Norte)

That's the length in all fours and including the tail, not the height in a squatting position. The country lacks a monkey or ape that would fit the accounts, hence the suggestion of an imported species.

They can reach 4.3 feet or 1.3 metres long

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_muriqui

 

[JMartJr]

Oh, and the awful smell could not have come from a human being (based on the descriptions).

Two thoughts occur:

A smell need not be coming from the thing you are looking at while smelling it.

and

You may have been more fortunate than I gave been, in not being around some surprisingly stinky people. In addition to the variety of smells we can produce on our own, we can of course get any number if stinky substances on ourselves.

 

[john.phil]

A smell need not be coming from the thing you are looking at while smelling it

The location was an abandoned lot, a place where you would expect people to relieve themselves (probably mostly men urinating on the wall), and where dead creatures such as rats, cats, birds, and other small animals might be found, releasing one of the most pungent smells known to man, especially in the heat. The rain later that day would probably wash most of it away.

 

[Andreas]

All this talk about how flawed the human memory, perception, etc. are is BS and nonsense, because it assumes our experience in 100% of cases need to be discarded

Human memory isn't "flawed", and I don't think anyone is claiming such a thing. What actual memory science shows (decades of research, Elizabeth Loftus and others) is that memory isn't a video recording—it doesn't passively store events like a tape or camera for perfect playback. It's reconstructive: we rebuild the scene each time we recall it, pulling from fragments, expectations, emotions, and sometimes later information. That's not a bug; it's how the system evolved to help us survive and make sense of the world. The result? Memories can be vivid, confident, and mostly accurate… yet still contain real distortions without anyone lying or being "flawed." Dismissing that basic fact doesn't make unreliable reports more reliable—it just ignores how brains actually work.

 

[Ann K]

What is unlikely is that a human was what they saw.

From their own words, your quote:

To me, looking at it, it wasn't something normal. But it had arms, legs, a head. "We couldn't really make out details".

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/the-varginha-ufo.12725/post-363788

You cannot quote that and then place all your faith on the "details" they couldn't make out.

Next followed the stunning non sequitur:

38s:
"Wasn't it a human being?" (the reporter asks)
40s:
"No. It wasn't, because it looked at us."

Unless something major is lost in translation, I have no idea what she meant by that.

 

[deirdre]

You cannot quote that and then place all your faith on the "details" they couldn't make out.

you are picking and choosing which memory to believe, the same as @Perene is doing.

 

[deirdre]

- Oh, and the awful smell could not have come from a human being (based on the descriptions).

you only think that because you never experienced my brother's sneakers when he took them off. <sounds like im joking, but i'm not. nearby skunk is the only thing ive experienced that even comes close.