Parrot-snakes, snake-cicada: discussion of interspecifically shared properties in ethnozoologies and cosmologies of Amazonian indigenous and mestizo peoples

In this article, I present two examples of animals which, according to the Matsigenka and other native and mestizo Amazonians, share important properties with other, unre- lated (from the Western, or scientific point of view) animal species. The first example con- cerns the two-striped forest-pitviper (Bothrops bilineatus), which the Matsigenka and some other indigenous peoples associate with several species of parrots. According to the indig- enous view, there exist several „species” (ethnospecies) of the two-striped forest-pitviper, each of them sharing color patterns with particular parrot species. The second example concerns the lantern-fly (Fulgora laternaria, Fulgora spp.), an insect which in many parts of South America is considered a deadly, venomous snake in cicada-like form