Unveiling the Chupacabra: Mythical Beast or Startling Reality?

What is something that our cryptid friends have in common? We’re talking Bigfoot, Nessie, the Yeti and chums. I’d say that apart from the stories that have been passed down about these creatures, the whole otherworldly appeal of them is that there has never been much in the way of physical evidence proving their existence. No bodies, nothing useful like hair or poop, no good videos or even photos that can’t be explained as hoaxes.

Of course, lack of evidence doesn’t definitively prove anything but what if there was a cryptid with not just hundreds of verified victims to its name but also multiple sightings that have been caught on camera? Does it even count as a cryptid anymore? Let’s investigate the story of El Chupacabra.

History

A lot of the more well-known cryptids have become so popular because they are figures that have existed in our cultural and oral history for a long time. Large human-like apes such as Bigfoot pop up all over the world under various names, and stories of these creatures can be traced back sometimes many hundreds of years. The Loch Ness Monster was thought to potentially be a surviving plesiosaur, meaning its ancestry would have gone back for millions of years. That’s not the case for today’s subject though. While you may be familiar with the Latin American chupacabra and assume it’s a long-standing member of the gang, this fella is definitely the new kid on the monster block as it only came crashing into the public awareness in the mid 1990s. This means it’s younger than Jurassic Park, the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and even Simon Whistler.

So how did the legend of the chupacabra begin? Let’s start with the name. It is pretty good and is fun to say, especially if you’re using a scary voice.

Translated from Spanish, the verb “chupar” means “to suck” — so those little lollipops called “Chupa chups” mean “sucky suck.” Well, maybe they do, that’s my own translation. Anyway, “cabra” means “goat” so put it together and what do you have?

Goat sucker! And what is a goat sucker, you may be wondering? Well, according to many people starting in Puerto Rico and eventually hopping across to mainland America, both South and North, it’s an aggressive creepy looking monster that first came to the public’s attention after a series of brutal attacks on goats where the lifeblood was literally drained out of them.

While not solely a goat sucker, the chupacabra also attacked and killed a variety of other livestock, however, “chupapollo” — chicken sucker or “chupaganado” — cattle sucker — doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The credit for the catchy name has been given to Silverio Pérez, a comedian from Puerto Rico, who was commenting on the news reports on the animal attacks at the time.

In 1995, then, Puerto Rico was suffering from a barrage of strange attacks on farm animals and livestock, with an article in the Washington Post from December of that year stating that by some estimates, over 1000 animals had been killed and locals were terrified that attacks on humans wouldn’t be too far behind. People started seeing the creature behind the attacks, which was described by one witness, Misael Negron, as “three or four feet tall with skin like that of a dinosaur. It had bright red eyes the size of hen’s eggs, long fangs and multi-colored spikes down its head and back.”

Madelyne Tolentino saw the creature too and provided the description for what would become the best known eyewitness version of the creature. She said it was: “like a kangaroo without a tail” and, according to writer and investigator Benjamin Radford, “the beast she saw had dark eyes that went up the temples and spread around the sides; it was a biped approximately four-feet tall that had thin arms and legs with three fingers or toes at the end of each. It had no ears or nose but instead two small airholes and long spikes down its back.” Sounds cool.

While this may sound fantastical, the idea that a mystery animal or potentially extraterrestrial creature was feasting on Puerto Rican goats really got under some peoples’ skin. Even a vet who investigated some of the killings was perplexed by what he was seeing. Carlos Soto is quoted as saying: “In each case the cause of death were two deep puncture wounds under the right side of the neck. The wounds extended into the animals’ brains, killing them instantly.

The wounds were about the diameter of a drinking straw, and three to four inches in length. They weren’t compatible with the bite of a dog, a monkey or any animal I’ve ever studied.” Hmm, intriguing.

The attacks were affecting so many people in Puerto Rico’s rural communities that the Mayor, who was known as “Chemo Soto” — I don’t know if he was related to the vet or not — took a posse of 200 people including armed police, prison guards and normal members of the public into the forest on some sort of beast hunting safari using a goat in a cage as bait. Did they find the chupacabra? Luckily for the sacrificial goat, they did not but that didn’t stop Mayor Soto organizing more expeditions as time went on. He firmly believed that this thing was real, or at least that there was something out there that was behind all these animal deaths.

After a while, these attacks died down and it seems that the Chupacabra migrated to mainland South America, with a spate of animal attacks and sightings of a strange creature across Chile in the spring of the year 2000. The creature was said to be hairy and humanoid with large glowing eyes. It was also described as reptilian, with some witnesses even saying it had wings.

Maybe this is some crazy cryptid crossover and what these people were seeing wasn’t the Chupacabra, but actually the Mothman! There’s an episode on the Mothman somewhere in the DTU back catalogue if you want to check that out. This made me want to catch up with the Mothcam which is a livestream of the Mothman statue to see what was going on in Mount Pleasant and after only 4 minutes, a group of 3 people were checking the statue out so I guess Mothy is still going strong.

Anyway, back to the Chupacabra.

Some of these sightings in Chile are quite hilarious, by the way, with one reported witness describing the creature they saw as “looking like a centaur without a nose, about 90 cm in height.” Aww, a little diddy noseless centaur! How cute! The chupacabra had also developed a liking for dogs at this point, as most of the reports detail seeing dead dogs or bloodless dogs nearby.

Also, interestingly, multiple witnesses began linking NASA to the situation. Side note — for some reason I thought “NASA” stood for “North American Space Agency” and I literally just found out that it stands for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” What!!!

I’ll just keep calling it NASA to avoid shaming myself further. Anyway, in May 2000, witnesses confirmed they saw three captured creatures, presumably Chupacabras, being loaded into containers that had been specially flown in. The containers were marked “NASA” on the sides.

It was also claimed that eggs had been found. A reporter from Chile’s EFE news agency called Marcial Campos Maza wrote: “Residents of Calama and nearby communities continued to blame NASA for the apparitions and attacks of the mysterious Chupacabras, which has killed many farm animals in the region and other parts of Chile… their bodies completely exsanguinated and undevoured by the mysterious predator. It was said that the captured animal was kept all day at the regiment’s barracks until NASA experts arrived to take it away.”

Chileans then started accusing NASA of having created the chupacabras through genetic experiments which eventually escalated to the point of NASA having to officially respond to the claims. You may be unsurprised to hear that they denied them.

Now the Chupacabra decided to pack its stuff into a little cloth and tie it on to the end of a stick and head off to pastures new — North America to be precise. It was falsely identified in 2003 when a photo went viral on the early internet, showing a man holding up a gross, weird looking decapitated creature head. I don’t know why this was ever attached to the Chupacabra as it looks more humanoid than animal but it did stoke rumours for a while, until the slightest amount of research proved that it was just part of an artist called Charlie White’s “In a Matter of Days” exhibit and the head itself was an artificial prop. The picture is called “Highland Park” if you want to look it up.

After lying low for a few years, the actual Chupacabra pops back up in 2004 and gets back to its bloodthirsty ways, attacking animals all over the place from Texas to Maine, however, it also seems to take on a totally new look. From here on out, the Chupacabra is described as walking or running on four legs, rather than the bipedal version from Puerto Rico. The glowing eyes don’t feature as prominently and wings don’t appear at all anymore. As for the back spikes, forget about it, this version is more dog or wolf-like, with sharp fangs and claws but usually isn’t hairy at all.

And here’s where the Chupacabra breaks from the pack of “do they exist?” cryptids to the “what the heck is that?” mainstream.

In 2007, Phylis Canion from Texas had been plagued by a series of deaths in her chicken coop. In total, she lost 28 chickens, all attacked at the throat but left where they fell. Then she found the corpse of a mysterious creature that looked like nothing she’d seen before. According to the Huffington Post, the strange beast “weighed about 40 pounds with steel blue eyes, a snout with an overbite, and strange skin closer to an elephant’s epidermis than the hair associated with canines like wolves or coyotes.” It only had three toes on each front paw and many fewer teats, marking it out as different from a typical canine. Because of the weird color of the skin and eyes, it garnered the nickname of “the Texas Blue Dog” and Canion had it taxidermied and put in her living room where I think it resides to this day.

A similar looking beast was taxidermied in 2009, again in Texas. This time the body was found after someone left out poison after another run on a chicken house. Jerry Ayer, a taxidermist who is extremely familiar with dead coyotes, stuffing between 15 and 20 every year, is convinced this wasn’t your common or garden canine. “The footpads are different. They’re rather bulbous. And this has longer legs by a few inches.” he told the Los Angeles Times. “It has a little fuzz around the feet. Almost like little socks of fur. And there’s a little hair up the backbone. Very odd-looking.”

Another Chupacabra was photographed running off in 2019 near Houston in Texas again. I mean, this thing has been spotted in more places than Texas but these seem to be the best documented examples. A quick google search, however, brings up similar examples in Oklahoma, both Carolinas and Kansas. And in 2022, a weird figure was spotted outside the Amarillo Zoo, yes in Texas, leading some people to suggest it was the OG version of the Chupacabra back to reclaim its rightful spot.

So what’s going on? We have eyewitness accounts, we have videos, we have photographs, we even have actual bodies of things people think are chupacabras which is a million times more evidence than we have for any other cryptid. And yet Chupacabras are still counted in the list of mythical or pseudoscientific animals. Why is that? I guess it’s time to get on with some decoding.

Chupacabras are real! Kind of.

Here’s the main takeaway — Chupacabras are sort of real. And I don’t mean that in a “oh my god, they’ve finally admitted a legendary monster is real” kind of way, I mean it more in a “there are real creatures suckin’ on goats and they may look a bit weird but they ain’t actually supernatural” kind of way — sorry about that. Let’s go back to the start.

While I’m sure that wild animals have been preying on livestock for all time, why did this behaviour suddenly start spooking people in Puerto Rico so much that even a mayor was convinced that some sort of paranormal creature was involved? It’s really a combination of things. First, it was the large number of attacks on goats, chickens, cattle and dogs where the animals would be killed but not eaten. Then, the vet reported some weird injuries on the victims and this, coupled with a few sightings of a very strange sounding creature rang those alien alarm bells like nobody’s business.

In reality though, we can explain the panic in Puerto Rico as a mix of hysteria and exaggeration with a few animal deaths thrown in. Yes, farm animals and other livestock were being attacked but was it by a thing that looked like a spiky kangaroo with glowing eyes? No. This part of the story is actually pretty funny as it shows how far our memories can be influenced or tricked into conflating things or just misremembering or creating our own realities if we’re not sure what we’re seeing.

It also shows how urban legends are born.

So, the Chupacabra was on the loose in Puerto Rico in 1995. Do you know what other supernatural creature was on the loose across movie screens worldwide in 1995? Sil from Species. Let’s take a look at how the witness Madelyne Tolentino described her Chupacabra and compare it against the human-alien hybrid creature from the movie:

• “dark eyes that went up the temples and spread around the sides” — Check
• “thin arms and legs” — Check
• “no ears or nose but instead two small airholes and long spikes down its back” — well, Sil had ears in the alien form but apart from that, checkity check check.

So, could Madelyne have been, perchance, influenced by the creature she saw in the movie? And when confronted with a wild animal in the dark, mixed the two up in her mind a bit and came up with the first version of the Chupacabra? This is also me giving her the benefit of the doubt that she didn’t just blatantly make the whole sighting up and intentionally used Sil as her basis for the Chupacabra’s description. When interviewed she said she had indeed seen the film quite recently so one can only assume that the image was still near the forefront of her mind. It’s not exactly like the creature in the film, of course; Madelyne said her version only had three fingers or toes and was only about 4 feet tall but if you’re staring at an alien creature, would you really take the time to notice or count how many appendages they had? She also doesn’t give consistent descriptions of the Chupacabra. For example, when interviewed by Benjamin Radford, she described it as having “thin arms and legs” but in a piece by the Washington Post called “Mystery Creature Ravages Puerto Rican Livestock”, it says Tolentino “noted a web-like film hanging beneath its short, pudgy arms.” Keep your story straight, woman.

On a side note, I saw Species when it came out on video as I had a sleepover for my 15th birthday and went to our local video store to get two of the most lurid 15 rated films my friends and I could find. We didn’t even have a Blockbuster in my town, it was an Apollo video store. Anyway, we came back with Species and a film starring Helen Mirren called “The Hawk.” I don’t remember much about either but check out the cover image of The Hawk:

I don’t think this was the version we found but can you blame us for wanting to watch it? Also it’s currently rated 5.4 on IMDb so this picture is probably better than having to sit through the whole thing. I do recall that my mum kept coming into the living room during any rude bits in Species which was kind of embarrassing and then years later while poking around in our video cupboard which also now held DVDs, I found a copy of Species tucked away near the back which I can only assume was my dad’s. Luckily that was the only even slightly racy thing I ever found in that cupboard but at the time I remember thinking, “ewww, daaad!”

Anyway, back to the Chupacabra. There was another witness to the strange animal, saying it had multicolored spikes and large glowing red eyes but he’s been dropped from the main storyline as, for whatever reason, Madelyne Tolentino’s slightly different version got picked up and repeated by more media outlets. So, we’ve got a good explanation for how the alien creature entered the narrative but this also leaves us with a couple of questions, namely: what was actually causing the attacks and also, what did Madelyne Tolentino really see if anything?

I’m going to tackle the last question first. If Tolentino did see something strange that night and didn’t just make it up, it’s apparently possible that she might have seen an escaped monkey and her brain hadn’t been able to put it into context. Rhesus macaques or Rhesus monkeys were living in the wild in the Puerto Rican forests at the time.

While originally brought to the island for “research purposes” — I dread to think — decades before, some escaped and there is a wild population to this day. So maybe Tolentino saw one of these in the dark and made up the rest, consciously or unconsciously. This also helps us answer the first question of what was actually attacking all these animals.

While monkeys don’t usually prey on larger animals like goats and cattle, it’s possible that an individual or a group could potentially do this. Who knows what weird stuff they were subjected to in the labs? Other candidates include wild dogs and mongooses.

In fact, the mongoose is the prime suspect according to Jon Downes, a researcher for the “Centre for Fortean Zoology.” One of their mission statements is: “Investigate and research mystery animals around the world, with scientific rigour” which sounds like a bit of a waste of money but their research comes in handy for me in this case.

In Benjamin Radford’s book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore, Downes is interviewed and says that in the early 1990s, Puerto Rico was having rat issues and the population of the mongoose rose as there was so much prey around. When the mongooses ended up eating most of the rats, they didn’t have enough natural prey left to maintain their newly enlarged population so started attacking things like chickens and goats instead. As mongoose numbers eventually returned to normal, there have been no more attacks attributed to the Chupacabra. Puerto Rican zoologist Edwin Velasquez also concluded that mongooses and wild dogs were more than likely behind the chupacabra attacks. But what about the blood being sucked out of the poor dead animals? Well, that seems to have been a bit of good old fashioned sensationalism.

When tests and analyses of some of the dead animals were done, none were found to be drained of blood. If you see a dead animal lying on the ground with holes in its throat but no obvious blood around and you’ve heard there’s a vampiric alien on the loose, you’re probably just going to add another stroke to the tally. It’s not like people were going to autopsy every dead goat or chicken they found, farmers in Puerto Rico ain’t got the time or money for that.

I know that vet I mentioned, Carlos Soto, said that there were teeth marks like nothing he’d ever seen etc. but how many dead animals is he really going to study? Maybe he just had a couple that happened to have been killed by humans in a nasty way or maybe he was just making it up to add to the story. I couldn’t really find out much else about what he had to say but I think the rest of the evidence, or lack thereof, speaks for itself. Not one real example of an exsanguinated animal was brought forth so I think we can safely say that the Chupacabra of mid 90s Puerto Rico was just some other animals and a couple of peoples’ very vivid imaginations.

Moving on, let’s take a look at the Chilean examples in the year 2000. This is where it also went a bit conspiracy mad and NASA somehow got linked in with the story. The Chupacabra attacks here seemed mostly to be on dogs rather than livestock, with the creature being described as something more akin to the Mothman or Jersey Devil of other cryptid lore.

And again, autopsies aren’t usually done on every dead dog you find lying in the street so it’s not possible to confirm whether any had their blood sucked out or not. I think this is just another case of a spate of animal deaths being linked to something supernatural because you either buy into the current story going around or just do it for the lolz. The descriptions given of the so-called Chupacabra in Chile are pretty far outside of what was described in Puerto Rico so I don’t even know if it’s relevant to this episode.

The NASA connection is pretty funny, though. For one, what the heck has NASA got to do with anything in Chile? Even if the “NA” stood for “North American” as I foolishly thought, Chile is not in North America so what would they be doing flying Chupacabra eggs around in marked containers?

And what does an Aeronautical and Space administration have to do with a weird unidentifiable animal? Unless it really was an alien or, as some thought, an alien’s pet, maybe? Does NASA have any kind of jurisdiction over alien things going on in other countries?

I have no idea but I doubt it. They then started to be accused of carrying out genetic experiments on the Chupacabras or even having created them themselves. Again, I don’t think this is the sort of thing NASA does.

They’re pretty busy doing aviation and space stuff so probably don’t have time to branch off into genetically engineering vampiric noseless centaurs.

You may think this is laughable but it got so much attention that NASA had to issue an official statement about the claims. It seems that spokesman, Brian Welch, was pretty used to having to refute NASA’s involvement in suspicious events, saying: “Before this it was the face on Mars, and before that it was modifying the weather, before that we were beaming radiation from satellites to make people impotent. Before that they were saying we faked the moon landing.”

Ahh, a spokesperson for NASA’s job is never done. But isn’t that just a convenient way of covering up this latest thing as yet another crackpot conspiracy theory?

Welch then went on to say: “If you were persuaded to believe that sort of thing, you’d blame the last person you would go to for confirmation of it. I mean, people who believe this sort of thing certainly aren’t beating down the door to ask us about it.” I find this a bit confusing — is he saying people are blaming NASA because they aren’t going to go directly to them to ask about it? But they did and they have and here you are, Brian, talking directly about it but not really outright denying anything.

Hmmmmm. Suspicious!

OK, let’s move on to the North American version of the Chupacabra. Gone are the wings and standing on two legs, it’s now more like a weirdly coloured dog that definitely has a nose. And here’s where we can finally bust this myth wide open.

In North America at least, what people have come to refer to as a Chupacabra is basically…..a mangy old coyote. What! How disappointing!

Sorry, but it’s true. And if one you see isn’t a full-on coyote, it’s some crossbreed of coyote and wolf or similar. Here’s how we know.

There are multiple videos and photos of this iteration of the Chupacabra so most people can tell just by looking at it that it’s definitely a canine of some sort. So why doesn’t it have any fur or just tufts in random places? Well, unfortunately this poor old coyote is suffering from scabies which in canines means there are mites burrowing into its skin which causes its fur to fall out, its skin to look gross and will probably eventually kill it as the animal can’t hunt in its normal fashion.

The loss of hair and crusty skin is known as “mange” and in the wild, it’s coyotes and foxes that suffer from it the most.

This then leads on to the “goat sucking” part of the legend. A wild animal that’s infested with mites and then suffering from knock-on effects such as dehydration and infections can’t effectively hunt so it will go for easy targets such as goats, chickens and larger, slower prey that is easier to attack regardless of whether the coyote can actually eat it or not. The prey is not dragged away as the coyote doesn’t really have the strength anymore.

It’s also worth pointing out that coyotes, dogs etc. can’t actually suck blood out of anything. They could lap it up but think about your dog trying to suck something with its funny snout on the end of its face, it just can’t do it!

The taxidermied Texas Blue Dog was held up as an example of a real life Chupacabra, but really, the only person championing it was the woman who found it — Phylis Canion. Some of her chickens were attacked and when she later found the dead animal, she linked it to the Chupacabra with some pretty holey logic. Her brother worked with Hispanic farmhands and when she mentioned that her chickens had been bitten and then she’d found this weird creature, he offered up the theory of el Chupacabra as that was apparently something his Hispanic farmers talked about.

Canion has steadfastly claimed her chickens were drained of blood but there’s no evidence she had a necroscopy done which would confirm this. What is more likely is that she saw a chicken had been bitten and because it hadn’t bled much, she just assumed it had no blood left at all which I think is a common misconception with these attacks. If something’s had its throat savaged but the body has been left on the ground with no big pool of blood, people have leapt to the conclusion of “the body must be drained of blood!” rather than “Hmm, presumably there’s still a lot of blood inside the body that hasn’t leaked out of this small wound.”

Canion kept refuting that it could be a mangy coyote as it was apparently completely bald with no hair at all although she has also said it had a strip of hair down its back that could have looked like the spikes of the Puerto Rican version of the Chupacabra so her story just doesn’t stay straight. She also described it as having three toes but in photos of it, you can clearly see it has four. Canion apparently made some good money off her find and even had a merchandise website at one point although I wasn’t able to find it so it must have been taken down. Benjamin Radford mentioned it in his book, saying she sold things like “a two-tone, 14 karat gold and sterling silver chupacabra charm for $35 and up” as well as your bog standard t-shirts and hats.

In case you’re wondering, an actual DNA test was done on her Blue Dog and it came back as a coyote, so there you go. I guess Canion is just someone who doesn’t let the boring truth get in the way of a good story.

Conclusion

This whole thing is a very modern myth, crafted around real life events and with real life animals behind it. It just took on a supernatural spin that people ran with and now the chupacabra exists as a newly-minted cryptid with all the trappings that come with it. This includes a recent movie called Chupa about a baby chupacabra which is extremely floofy and has wings, so basically not conforming to either of the canonical chupacabras in its history, unless you count the Chilean one. I didn’t sit through it myself (5.5 on IMDb) but my son reported back that it was “really fun.” My daughter is a bit more discerning, however, and said “it was sucky, like the name.” Good one, girl.

So, after researching this cryptid, we can conclude that anything that looks kind of like a bald coyote is just that. I suppose it’s hard for people to immediately identify it as we’re used to seeing animals covered in fur so they’re much smaller and weirder looking without it. In a way, because of their condition and therefore the change in their appearance and normal patterns of behavior, these poor mange-ridden canines have basically become what are now called chupacabras — strange looking dog-like creatures that attack livestock.

As for whatever it was hanging around outside the Amarillo Zoo though, I have no idea, but if it’s the original Chupacabra come back to restake its claim, we should probably loop NASA into the situation as soon as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the name ‘Chupacabra’ mean?

The name ‘Chupacabra’ translates from Spanish to ‘goat sucker.’ ‘Chupar’ means ‘to suck,’ and ‘cabra’ means ‘goat.‘

When and where did the legend of the Chupacabra begin?

The legend of the Chupacabra began in Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s, with reports of brutal attacks on goats where the lifeblood was drained.

What were some of the early descriptions of the Chupacabra?

Early descriptions of the Chupacabra included a creature that was three or four feet tall with skin like a dinosaur, bright red eyes, long fangs, and multi-colored spikes down its head and back. Another witness described it as ‘like a kangaroo without a tail,’ with dark eyes, thin arms and legs, and no ears or nose.

What was the reaction of the Puerto Rican government to the Chupacabra sightings?

The Mayor of Puerto Rico, known as ‘Chemo Soto,’ organized expeditions with armed police, prison guards, and members of the public to hunt the Chupacabra using a goat in a cage as bait.

What is the most likely explanation for the Chupacabra sightings in Puerto Rico?

The most likely explanation for the Chupacabra sightings in Puerto Rico is that they were caused by mongooses or wild dogs, which were attacking livestock due to a lack of natural prey.

What is the connection between the Chupacabra and NASA?

In Chile, there were claims that NASA was involved in the Chupacabra sightings, with reports of captured creatures being loaded into containers marked ‘NASA.’ NASA officially denied these claims.

What is the North American version of the Chupacabra?

The North American version of the Chupacabra is believed to be a mangy coyote suffering from scabies, which causes hair loss and a crusty appearance.

What is the ‘Texas Blue Dog’?

The ‘Texas Blue Dog’ is a taxidermied creature found by Phylis Canion in Texas, which she believed to be a Chupacabra. However, DNA tests confirmed it was a coyote.

What is the conclusion about the Chupacabra?

The Chupacabra is a modern myth based on real-life events and animals. The creatures sighted are likely mangy coyotes or other canines suffering from mange, which causes them to attack livestock.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Unveiling the Chupacabra: Mythical Beast or Startling Reality?
• Hero image source by anogh / openverse, cc0.