Perisuát is the hunter-hero of one of the great Munduruku narrative cycles, a mortal who becomes lost from the human world and journeys through the layered worlds of animals and spirits. His wanderings carry him among animal-peoples and supernatural beings, an itinerary that maps the Munduruku otherworld much as the shaman's soul is said to travel it. In an episode that survives in several tellings he transforms into a tapir to swim across the Tapajós, hunting alongside his nephew and instructing the boy to bite the tapir's ear when out of breath so that the animal will dive. The cycle was recorded among the Tapajós Munduruku by the missionary-ethnographer Albert Kruse; narrators give the hero's name in forms ranging from Perisuát to Peresoatpu.