Chupacabras are vicious.
Known for ripping out the throats of livestock and draining out their blood, these vampiric
goat suckers have been accused of running rampant across the farms of the Americas.
But the real scientific explanation of chupacabras might be even creepier than the legend.
Most of the monsters we talk about today are drawn from old legends, but the chupacabra
doesn't have very deep roots at all, despite its popularity.
“It's an interest that is sparked all over the world.
It amazes me."
Though an old New York Times article refers to strange livestock attacks that took place
in the 1970s, it wasn't until 1995 that supposed chupacabra sightings really became a thing,
and it all started in Puerto Rico.
"Madelyne Tolentino was woken from an early afternoon nap by her mother, who was talking
excitedly about seeing something strange."
Tolentino claims she looked out the window and saw a truly horrifying sight.
In an interview with Alibi, she described a ghastly creature that was three-feet tall,
bipedal, and humanoid.
It reportedly had long slender fingers, and no genitals.
"Greetings, I am a chupacabras.”
Tolentino's sighting made the local TV news, and the story went viral across Puerto Rico.
"This man says it was as tall as he was, with red eyes and four fangs."
According to Animal Planet, hundreds of livestock were slaughtered in the area.
The problem got so bad that Mayor Jose "Chemo" Soto spent the next year hunting for chupacabras
with an armed militia, week after week.
Spoiler alert: They never found anything.
Alleged chupacabra attacks and sightings migrated across the island, along with lots of mass-murdered
chickens, sheep, guinea pigs, and even a cat whose genitalia was removed.
The local issue soon spread to the mainland, and a new legend was born.
"In the last couple of months there have been numerous reportings of something attacking
pets and chasing people throughout the neighborhood.
Some residents believe it could be El Chupacabra."
Here's one particularly bizarre thing about the chupacabra: There are basically two versions,
and they both have a taste for blood.
[Chupacabra sounds]
Most of the early chupacabra sightings closely line up with Tolentino's description of a
humanoid reptilian.
Early believers tended to think of the chupacabra as an alien life-form, an abomination, maybe
even a demonic entity.
But these days, when you hear "chupacabra," you probably picture a lanky, sharp-toothed
canine, which tends to walk on four legs and is usually hairless, but not scaly.
"While cruising for troublemakers, the deputies come across what they think could be the legendary
chupacabra."
"I've been partroling these back roads for a long time and I've never run across anything
like this until that day."
As time went on, the idea of a humanoid reptile fell by the wayside, and more people came
to believe that the chupacabra was simply an as-yet undiscovered animal.
As BBC News explains, the concept of these dog-like chupacabras seems to have replaced
the original, bipedal creature sometime in the 2000s, probably right as the stories were
gaining more popularity.
"Well, it's something strange so I'm gonna get my rifle and shoot it and get a close
look, you know?"
Let's presume for a moment that the chupacabra is real, and not just some misidentified wild
animal.
If so, what is it?
Where did it come from?
Some of the theories about the chupacabra's origins are seriously wild.
According to the Center for Inquiry, one theory claims the chupacabra is an alien creature
dropped on Earth, while some people believe it's the result of some weird science experiment
by NASA.
Who knows why NASA would be genetically engineering bloodsucking monsters?
According to Animal Planet, the NASA notion grew popular enough that NASA spokesman Brian
Welch was forced to publicly deny the theory:
"Before this it was the face on Mars, and before that it was modifying the weather...."
The bizarre origin stories don't end there.
Some people claim that the Chilean military discovered chupacabra eggs, and chupacabra
expert Benjamin Radford has discussed how Hurricane Hugo is often tied to the goatsucker's
supposed escape.
Probably the weirdest theory, as described by ABC, is the belief that HIV and AIDS were
caused by the chupacabra's vampiric tendencies.
"Well sightings of the legendary beast have been reported across the globe, and the name
can literally be translated to ‘goat sucker’ in Spanish."
Say what?
You may not have known that the word "chupacabra" means "goat sucker" in Spanish, but it's one-hundred
percent true - and the term refers to the creature's supposed habit of sucking blood
out of livestock.
However, because the chupacabra wasn't even recognized as a creature, real or fake, until
the 1995 incidents in Puerto Rico, its name is a modern invention.
Oddly enough, the name "chupacabra" might have been coined by Puerto Rican comedian
Silverio Perez.
Not everyone was thrilled by the ghastly name, either.
UFO investigator Jorge Martin pushed for the creature to be renamed EBAS, a Spanish acronym
meaning "Alien Biological Entities."
Unfortunately, acronyms are never as catchy as a good horror movie-style label, so "chupacabra"
won the battle.
Rather amusingly, it seems like the name "chupacabra" actually predated the violent sightings.
ABC News says the term appeared in a 1960 episode of Bonanza, though it was used in
reference to a type of bird that supposedly sucked milk from nursing mama goats.
Not quite so creepy as the chupacabra everyone knows today.
In 2007, a Texas nutritionist named Phylis Canion was allegedly suffering from a serious
case of the chupacabras.
"Well, I have a bizarre animal that's on our ranch and we can't figure out what it is.
We have an idea."
Despite her best efforts, Canion's ranch kept getting raided by an unseen predator that
killed twenty-eight of her chickens, ripping out their throats.
Sound familiar?
One day, Canion stumbled upon a profoundly weird, dog-like corpse on the side of the
road.
"The first time that I saw it, I was very perplexed."
The dog's body had tough, hairless blue skin, steel blue eyes, only three toes on each foot,
and a pronounced overbite.
The Texas rancher was pretty sure she'd just discovered a chupacabra, so she brought this
"Texas Blue Dog" home, had it stuffed by a taxidermist, and now keeps it in her living
room.
She also tested it, and according to Canion, the so-called Blue Dog seemed to be the hybrid
of a coyote and a Mexican wolf.
An array of similar-looking Texas Blue Dogs starting popping up around the state.
"Sharp, savage teeth!
Hairless!!
Grey skin!
And a human-like fist!!"
"It was like a shaved weiner dog, with raccoon feet, opossum tail and opossum head."
"It had red eyes, big old fangs hanging down there, claws coming out, three inches long,
just as sharp as they could be."
"Big long pointy ears, long tail, had no skin, no fur rather, on it's skin you could see
splotches."
But not so fast.
A local Houston news station asked animal control expert Claude Griffin about the matter,
and Griffin said that people in the area were inbreeding different types of canine for the
sheer purpose of letting them go, catching them, and claiming they'd found a chupacabra.
"So they are practicing the perfection of inbreeding."
So yes, the Blue Dogs were real, and yes, they were canines.
But here's the interesting thing - just because these animals were canines, it doesn't mean
they weren't also "chupacabras."
Ever heard of scabies?
Also known as the "seven-year itch," it's caused by little flesh-eating mites.
It sucks to have scabies as a human being, but it's even worse for canines.
When the mites get under a dog or coyote's skin, they cause a condition called mange,
which is not only intensely itchy for the poor pups, but also causes severe hair loss
and eventually kills them.
Horrifying stuff.
And as if the scabies mites weren't horrible enough, research has determined they're also
most likely the real cause of all this chupacabra business.
"Biologists say the pictures are, well, something less than mythical.
Rather, a coyote with a bad case of mange."
That's right - it's extremely likely that these real-life "chupacabras" are coyotes
who suffered from severe cases of mange and started preying on livestock.
How is this confirmed?
Because anytime a dead chupacabra pops up after a rash of farm killings, tests show
that these weird-looking creatures are indeed canines with mange.
It's surprisingly depressing, but it makes a lot of sense.
But wait, why would coyotes want to rip out the throats of chickens and drink their blood?
"Mommy!"
Well, for one, all that vampire stuff is an exaggeration.
LiveScience explains that whenever chupacabra victims are autopsied, there's always plenty
of blood left in the body.
As for all of that throat-ripping, the Texas Natural Resources Server explains that the
attack isn't a particularly unusual behavior in predatory mammals.
So yeah, chupacabras are real.
They just aren't their own species.
We're sure it's really fun to sit around and share Bigfoot stories with your friends, but
those conversations probably get ruined by that one skeptic who asks: "If that creature
is real, why isn't there any solid evidence, dead bodies, stool samples?"
That's one thing that makes chupacabras so unique: Evidence pops up all the time.
Even though dead "chupacabras" invariably wind up being coyotes with mange, the sheer
regularity in which they appear - and are labeled as chupacabras - makes them unique.
For example, there was this news report from Mississippi in 2013:
“Hewharrel says he shot the mysterious creature in a chicken coop last night, says he saw
glowing red eyes in the hay and then it moved in to attack…"
And this there's this 2010 story from Texas:
"A hairless dead animal with odd limbs and feet and sharp teeth… could this be the
legendary chupacabra?"
Here's another one, also from 2010 and also in Texas:
"Twenty dead chickens one morning, ten more the next day, and not a drop of blood anywhere
in Robert Garcia's chicken coop."
Finally, this 2011 story, also from Texas:
"It's a certified chupacabra, all the way.
That's good enough for me."
There are dozens of authentic news stories about these mysterious creatures.
These days, canines with mange are often just reflexively referred to as chupacabras, sort
of like how "Google" and "Xerox" became verbs, or how some people just call all tablets "iPads."
But in all this modern chupacabra hoopla, there's just one piece of the puzzle that's
unresolved: Whatever happened to the original reptilian, bipedal chupacabra?
The world will never know if the original chupacabra sightings were real, but if they
were, that three-foot humanoid creature with the spines and red eyes probably wasn't a
canine.
What could it have been?
Speaking to National Geographic, famed cryptozoologist Loren Coleman points out that the reptilian,
spiny-backed descriptions from those early sightings sound eerily similar to the monster
in Species, that sci-fi/horror film starring Natasha Henstridge as a sex-crazed alien.
What makes this significant is that Species opened in Puerto Rico right before the chupacabra
incidents started, and could have easily informed people's imagination.
But what if Madelyne Tolentino really did see some ominous red-eyed creature out there
in the great beyond?
Coleman has an explanation for that, too, claiming that a number of rhesus monkeys were
being experimented on in Puerto Rico at that time.
Perhaps a few of them escaped.
It sounds weird, but if you close your eyes and imagine one of these monkeys scampering
around at night… it kind of makes sense, right?
Whether you believe in the original chupacabra or not, some of the more recent sightings
have resembled the old-school monster more than the canine version.
For example, various media outlets shared a purported video of a bipedal "chupacabra"
walking through Portugal… so perhaps don't give up hope on this horrific, shambling monstrosity
just yet.
"Couple claims they've captured the elusive chupacabra."
In 2014, the Independent reported that Bubba and Jackie Stock of Ratcliffe, Texas, had
captured what they described as a "baby Chupacabra" walking through their yard, and they were
keeping it on their property in a cage, supplying food and water.
"He called me to come and look and I said, 'Bubba, that looks like a baby chupacabra.’”
Their neighbor, Arlen Parma, concurred with the couple's assessment.
"Twenty years with dogs and all that, and I ain't never seen nothin’ that looks like
that right there."
To answer your first question: Yes, the animal was real, as photo/video evidence proves.
As for your second question, no, it wasn't some mythical beast.
According to the experts, this was once again a case of a fox, dog, or coyote afflicted
with severe mange.
Anyhow, the couple wasn't sure what to do with the animal - but they did name it "Chupie."
Eventually, animal rights groups began protesting their decision to keep it in a cage.
Sadly, the Independent followed up on the story a few days later to report that Chupie's
painful, scabious condition had greatly worsened to the point where the Stock couple had decided
to euthanize the poor animal based on the advice of a local game warden.
Just as the urban legend of the chupacabra was probably influenced by science fiction
and horror films, the creature itself has gone on to inspire its own wave of films and
TV shows.
For example, there have been a number of schlocky B-movies featuring the infamous goat sucker,
including the unfortunate 2005 film Chupacabra Terror.
[Chupacabra attack]
And there's the equally unwatchable Chupacabra vs. the Alamo, a 2013 cinematic calamity that
features a pack of badly-animated CGI chupacabras swarming a bunch of people holed up in the
Alamo.
The X-Files, of course, tackled the myth in their own way.
"Turn around like a man!"
"No!
I am not a man!
I am the Chupacabra!"
South Park spoofed the myth of the chupacabra, as did Scooby Doo:
If you ever visit Asheville, North Carolina, you can stop by a Latin café named Chupacabra.
There isn't any goat blood on the menu, but they do serve goat cheese.
Because of all the media attention, the chupacabra has become almost as recognized by the general
public as old standbys like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, which is no easy feat.
GREAT JOB, CHUPACABRA!
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