Ahoy Comics new Project: Cryptid series has been digging deep for some obscure monsters, and we’re here for it. In issue #2, though, they revisited the classic chupacabra, and in their delightful “Chupahuahua” story by Alisa Kwitney and Mauricet, inadvertently revealed a strange truth about how the beast’s perception has changed. AIPT Science asked chupacabra expert Benjamin Radford to tell us more.
One of the strangest—and seemingly least explicable—aspects of the chupacabra phenomenon is how the supposed animal has changed form over the years, while the visages of most other prominent cryptozoological mysteries have remained more or less uniform. Though there are minor differences that vary by region, era, and eyewitness, for example, Bigfoot has always remained a huge, hirsute bipedal beast, and descriptions of Nessie haven’t changed much since the 1920s.
The chupacabra, by contrast, has undergone incredible—that is, literally unbelievable—physical transformations over the years. If, as cryptozoologists and monster believers often assert, eyewitness reports are even mostly accurate, this poses serious questions for a corporeal explanation for the chupacabra. You can’t have it both ways, insisting that all (or even most) of the myriad contradictory eyewitnesses are accurate, while also insisting that it’s a real animal (instead of, for example, some interdimensional shapeshifter).
No known animal gains or loses body parts from month to month, year to year, country to country, like a monstery Mr. Potato Head. Real biological animals don’t add or drop wings or spine spikes depending on when they’re spotted; nor are they bipedal on islands but quadrupeds on the mainland.
Changing face of the chupacabra
The very first chupacabra sighting took place in the small town of Barrio Campo Rico, in Canóvanas, Puerto Rico, a suburb of the capital, San Juan, at some point during the second week of August, 1995. A woman named Madelyne Tolentino says she saw a strange creature and described it as:
“about four feet [tall], more or less. At the time, it was walking like a human, on both legs. Its arms were drawn back in an ‘attack position,’ as though it were a [TV] monster. It had three, long, skinny fingers. The arms were also very long … Its legs were long and skinny, and I could see three separate toes … For a nose it had two little holes, and its mouth was a slash …. I noticed something odd on its lower back … They were like feathers, but flat on its back.”
This marks the first descriptions of the chupacabra, which were widely shared on the island and beyond. I later discovered that Tolentino described the creature based on the H.R. Giger-designed monster Sil in the sci-fi/horror film Species, which she’d recently seen.
Though Tolentino’s description was the first and most detailed, later writers put their own spin on the monster. Haden Blackman, for example, in his Field Guide to North American Monsters, states that the typical chupacabra is:
“covered in glossy matted hair and has a feral face. Its long limbs, which end in massive claws, can propel the monster across any terrain at amazing speeds, but it is the creature’s powerful bat-like wings that allow it to migrate huge distances … Goatsuckers are deceptively small, standing just three to four feet high.”
George Eberhart’s Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology offers another description:
“Height, four to five feet. Covered in short, gray fur. Said to have a chameleon-like ability to change color. Large, round head. Huge, lidless, fiery-red eyes run up to the temples and spread to the sides. Ears small or absent. Two small nostrils. Lipless mouth. Sharp, protruding fangs. Pointy spikes run from the head down the spine; these may double as wings. Thin arms with three webbed fingers. Muscular but thin hind legs. Three clawed toes. No tail.”
Scott Corrales, in his book Chupacabras and Other Mysteries lists dozens of wildly different eyewitness descriptions in his book, for example,
“the thing was generally humanoid in appearance, three to four feet tall, and had orange-yellow eyes;” “a round-headed creature with elongated black eyes, a fine jaw, and a small mouth, with chameleon-like pigmentation, alternating from purple to brown to yellow, while its face was a dark graying color;” “a gargoylesque creature;” “a creature between three and four feet tall, with the body and dense, black plumage of an eagle, a thick neck, piercing eyes, [and] a wolf-like muzzle instead of a beak …”
The huge disparity in chupacabra reports is one of the things that veteran cryptozoologist Loren Coleman finds most fascinating. “It is intriguing that a relatively small number of sightings of an upright gray, spiky haired primate in Puerto Rico morphed into a widespread misidentification of four-legged, usually black and brown dogs, foxes, coyotes, and other canids with or without mange, living or dead, as chupacabras,” he told me in an interview.
A body found! (kind of)
Though the chupacabra had been sighted many times since its first appearance in 1995, there were only unconfirmed rumors about the recovery of any actual chupacabra bodies. Just when it seemed that the creature would never be found—and therefore more or less be confirmed as a myth—a chupacabra was recovered, and that event forever changed the public image of the goatsucker.
It happened on a small farm in Nicaragua. In late August, 2000, farmer Jorge Talavera had suffered the loss of some of his livestock. Recently the animal killings had increased, along with an odd twist—many of the animals appeared to have been bled dry. “In fifteen days it sucked twenty-five sheep, and my neighbor lost thirty-five sheep in ten days,” Talavera said. “It was an average of five sheep and goats a night.” Exasperated at finding dead animals on his farm, Talavera resolved to kill whatever was draining his animals’ blood–and his livelihood.
On the evening of August 25, Talavera and a friend staked out his ranch to try and catch the mysterious predator. After several idle hours watching over his animals, Talavera heard the alarmed cry of a goat, and in the near-darkness saw two (or possibly three) unknown creatures among his flock. Talavera described them as having the head of a bull, rose-colored teeth, the hairless, leathery skin of a bat, and a bumpy, crocodile-like crest down its spine. The creatures—one or two black ones and a yellow one—reared up on their hind legs to attack the goats.
Talavera opened fire on the suspected chupacabras with a shotgun. “We shot at them in the distance,” he said. “We hit one and wounded it, but they both ran away before we could catch them, losing them in the darkness.” The next day Talavera searched for the strange creatures, but was unable to find any trace of them. Three days later while tending to chores, a ranch hand named Jairo Garcia noticed vultures circling in the distance. Curious, he followed the birds to the mouth of a small cave near the farm, where he discovered the near-skeletal remains of the putrid beast. Much of its body had been eaten, and the remains were in an advanced state of decomposition.
According to one account, “What Don Jairo found most startling was the lack of bodily hair and very small ears. Although the animal had been reduced to a skeleton after the vultures feasted upon it, it was shaped like a long, yellow-colored dog, given the pigmentation which could still be seen on part of its tail.” Convinced that “he found the animal his employer had shot two nights earlier and which was probably responsible for the deaths of so many sheep,” Garcia summoned Talavera to see for himself, and they concluded that they had made history by finally killing the elusive chupacabra.
Within days, Talavera’s find made national, then international news. Some believed the beast had escaped from a traveling circus; others said it might be a previously unknown creature from darkest Africa. A local veterinarian speculated that “the creature could be a hybrid of several species, created in a laboratory by means of genetic engineering.” Many believed it was an otherwise ordinary dog that had somehow developed a thirst for blood (and presumably the ability to suck it). One creative person speculated it might be a cross between a wolf and a crocodile.
On September 6, scientists at the local university concluded their examination, and zoologist Edmundo Torres stated what many had long suspected: “It’s a dog, without any room for doubt. This is a common dog. There are no fangs or anything that could suck blood.” If it appeared odd, it likely had mange or another skin disease.
Though its identity was in dispute—dog, chupacabra, or something in between—its morphology was not. The corpse widely claimed to be the monster (unlike, notably, Bigfoot) was there for all to see, and scientists to examine. It looked exactly like a canid, which was not surprising since that’s what the scientists found it to be. But that didn’t matter because in the public’s and news media’s mind, it was a chupacabra. And that is the precise moment when the chupacabra dramatically changed form.
The modern chupacabra
What was originally a very specific and fixed original sighting in late 1995 of a bipedal, spiky-backed alien grew wilder and more varied until 2000, when the first dead quadruped was found in rural Nicaragua. That became the standard chupacabra for years, and led directly to later chupacabra reports.
This is not to say, of course, that every single chupacabra sighting or report anywhere in the world after 2000 became completely uniform or canid. There would be the occasional wings or alien eyes, but the baseline template had moved, and the original, monster-like goatsucker remained popular in artistic depictions (for the obvious reason that images of mangy coyotes are more pathetic than interesting or scary).
In the past decade or so the chupacabra label—and that’s what it is—has become shorthand for any weird animal, alive or dead, that someone for whatever reason can’t immediately identify. Mangy raccoons, dried skates, desiccated sloths, and any number of other animals are lumped together by clickbait journalists and mystery-mongers.
We don’t have to ask why the chupacabra itself physically changed, since there’s no reason to think it did, and every reason to think it didn’t (for biological reasons if nothing else, including probably not existing). If we recognize that the real question is why the public believed or assumed it had changed form, it’s probably because almost no one (arguably, no one) sees the chupacabra themselves. Instead, they get their information about what it looks like from TV shows, movies, books, magazines, and YouTube videos, which relate other peoples’ alleged, invariably sensationalized sightings.
The chupacabra is a shapeshifter, changing its appearance and characteristics according to the time and place it’s seen, and according to the beliefs of those who see it. One folkloric approach to investigating paranormal phenomena involves examining their changing cultural depictions. Society’s conceptions of ghosts, for example, have changed significantly over the decades and centuries, as have descriptions and depictions of aliens, the Loch Ness Monster, and many other cultural phenomena. The chupacabra monster has also evolved—in folkloric form, if no other.
Phyllis Canion, The Texas Observer
Every February, to help celebrate Darwin Day, the Science section of AIPT cranks up the critical thinking for SKEPTICISM MONTH! Skepticism is an approach to evaluating claims that emphasizes evidence and applies the tools of science. All month we’ll be highlighting skepticism in pop culture, and skepticism *OF* pop culture.
AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.
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