The Ahuizotl is an Aztec creature said to be half dog or half monkey (some say half human). It lives in the lakes and in watery caverns of central American. Said to protect the waters it snatches fishermen and unsuspecting humans along the waters edge with its claw like hand attached to the end of its tail. It was feared by the Aztecs because of its enjoyment of the crunchiest and most delicate of the human parts, the eyes, teeth, and nails. It did not consume the human flesh and instead allowed it to float on the waters after the victims demise.

Being a cunning animal it would lure victims with a human child like cry. When an unsuspecting victim would come near the water’s edge in search of the crying child it would meet, instead, the grasp of the Ahuizolt’s tail hand.

Dispirit to quell the attacks, fishing villages decided to offer a portion of their catch back to the Ahuizolt. There hope was that the creatures primary function in the world was to protect the fish in its home land. Offering the fish was said to diminish the number of human victims that the
Ahuizotl took, but it did not stop this creatures attacks.

The mythological creature of Aztec mythology is included within Book 11 of the Florentine Codex, which describes it as:

“…very like the teui, the small teui dog; small and smooth, shiny. It has small, pointed ears, just like a small dog. It is black, like rubber; smooth, slippery, very smooth, long tailed. And its tail is provided with a hand at the end; just like a human hand is the point of its tail. And its hands are
like a raccoon’s hands or like a monkey’s hands. It lives, it is a dweller in watery caverns, in watery depths. And if anyone arrives there at its entrance, or there in the water where it is, it then grabs him there. It is said that it sinks him, it plunges him into the water; it carries him to its home, it introduces him to the depths; so its tail goes holding him, so it goes seizing him …[When the body is retrieved] the one it has drowned no longer has his eyes, his teeth, and his nails; it has taken them all from him. But his body is completely unblemished, his skin uninjured.
Only his body comes out all slippery-wet; as if one had pounded it with a stone; as if it had inflicted small bruises … When it was annoyed - had caught no one, had drowned none of us commoners - then was heard as if a small child wept. And he who heard it thought perhaps a child wept, perhaps a baby, perhaps an abandoned one. Moved by this, he went there to look for it. So there he fell into the hands of the auítzotl [sic], there it drowned him…”

This is the closest to a written account of the mythological beast. Though there are many who do not believe such a beast was just a myth. There are some who believe that it was a type of otter, possibly extinct in our days. This would account for the beast, but not some of the stories
surrounding the creature (such as the drowning of, eating the teeth, nails, and eyes of it's victims, or the hand at the end of it’s tail).

Only one other thing to note about the Ahuizotl. An Aztec ruler, Ahuitzotl, took the beast to be his mascot, so to say and named himself after this beast. The kings rule began in 1482 and was marked with the military expansion of the Aztec empire. He also was known for expanding the Great Pyramid in Tenochtitlan. It is believed that he ordered the sacrifice of 20,000 people during the dedication of the Great Pyramid. He died in 1502, the Aztec people continued to believe in the Ahuizotl and the stories behind the beast.

While belief in this creature has greatly diminished there are a few that still believe that it is waiting there and will snatch those who mean to do harm to the creatures of the water.