Chupacabra: urban legend or rural reality?

• Tuesday, 23 December 2008
• Ben Sneath
• 0 Comments

The chupacabra has been called the ‘Bigfoot of Latino culture’, which goes someway in explaining how big this unexplained phenomenon has become in the last years.

Since 1995 when eight sheep were found dead and completely drained of blood in Puerto Rico there have been similar incidents and sightings in nearly every country from Chile to the United States.

Reptile-like being
The sightings are always of a small reptile-like being with spines down its back, but with a dog-like face and sharp teeth and glowing eyes. It is this that South Americans have named the chupacabra, ‘goat sucker’ in English.

But no real evidence has been found about its existence and some sightings seem to identify an animal that could be a coyote or a wild dog with severe mange. Obviously the UFO-buffs say that there’s something extra-terrestrial about it and you do have to ask yourself: what kind of earthly animal can really suck the blood out of other animals?

As yet there have been no sightings over here and that’s how we want to keep it. You can keep your blood-sucking alien vampire dogs on the other side of the Atlantic, ok!