It is a myth of the Amazon waters, assuming a serpent shape, huge and dark that swims as though it were a big trunk. It is able to morph in to a canoe, a sail boat, a transatlantic and more seldom in a woman. Its prestige is limited by its own voracity.

No one devotes any cult to it in the zone where the people believe in its sightings. Many myths have converged to the one of Boiúna such as those of the Phantom Boat and the one of the Mother of Water, event hough it does not have any beauty or sensual attractiveness. The Boiúna simply owns the river. For the Indians, killing Boiúna is worse than meeting the snake, because that means the doom and the own ruin as well as the one of all the tribe.

The myth would have derived form  the sucuri or sucuriju, a serpent from the Amazon waters that "hugs" small animals and even the cattle. There are reports in the Amazon of big serpents called jararacas that were found so fat in the middle of the forest because have they swallowed a whole person. In the Northern State of Patá, there's a common belief that when the Boiúna wakes up and swims to the sea, the city of Belém will disappear. When the Boiúna moves, the land always quakes.

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