back to article Texan confronts the legendary chupacabras

A Texan taxidermist has earned himself some nice publicity for parading what he claims may be a chupacabras - the legendary goat-sucking hell beast first spotted in Puerto Rico in 1995 and which has since spooked fearful citizens across Central America: Well, it didn't take sceptics long to point out the similarity between …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    IT content...?

    the IT angle on this story is that the Brazilian term for "pen drive" is, you guessed it, "chupacabra".

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Chupacanine

    The supposed "chupacabras" bodies are always hairless feral dogs. This is a shame for two reasons; first, it both ignores and detracts from the original chupacabras legend (wings, red eyes, UFOs, secret government labs and so on), and second, there's an interesting population of bluish, hairless wild dogs running round the southern USA that aren't going to be studied because of their association with a legendary creature.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Dog

    Coyote mates with dog result: hysteria in Texas

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Yawn...

    ... Youtube and the web are full of these "legendary" creatures. All looking like decomposing dogs. They may have started out as red eyed winged government bred genetic devil monsters, but as all legends tend to change with time, in ten years they wil end up looking like mildly asthamic gerbils. And Texas will still be hysterical.

  5. Cameron Colley
    FAIL

    So the Chapacabra is just a medium-sized canine?

    Surely saying that either of these is the chupacambra is like saying the Loch Ness monster is a slightly large eel?

    Or are they really saying that a strange-shaped coyote (or whatever) is a deeply terrifying and supernatural thing in South America?

  6. Mitch Kent
    Coat

    @AC 11:46

    1) Coyote mates with dog

    2) Hysteria in Texas

    3) ???

    4) Profit!

  7. Kevin 6
    FAIL

    the 2nd video

    the canine kind of looked like a bull terrier mated with a coyote or something along those lines.

    and as AC #2 stated wheres the glowing red eyes and wings of legends? Because I doubt a feral dog (its head structure looks like a Carolina dog) that suffered from mange is what all the Latin American legends were based off.

  8. BlueGreen
    Coat

    curiously

    I'd take a stab at translating Xoloitzcuintli as monster dog. How apt.

    Ah, already? It's a kind of brown leather. Answers to the name of Coyolxauhqui.

  9. Coconino

    That is...

    That is a Peruvian Orchid dog, also known as Peruvian hairless dog (that's a breed mind you). Poor dog!

    http://www.todo-peru.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/perro_peruano_sin_pelos.jpg

  10. Tsu Dho Nimh

    JACWM: Just Another Coyote With Mange

    Just Another Coyote With Mange.

    Coyotes have long legs, big ears, and under the fur they are very slender. It's a coyote with severe sarcoptic mange.

    Here is a live one:

    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coyote_with_mange.jpg

    Here's another one, shot in Nebraska, that still has some of it's body fur:

    http://www.bjacked.net/LuvToHunt/hunt/Coyote%20with%20Mange.jpg

    And coyotes have long fangs:

    http://www.foxnews.com/images/369374/1_62_coyote_snarl.jpg

  11. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: JACWM: Just Another Coyote With Mange

    Yeah, whaddya know, people are drama-queen morons. You only need to see an urban fox with a bit of mange to be able to figure this one out. Or indeed those pics.

    But hey, we all need a bit of excitement in our lives, so far be it from me. Woo! Baldy mythic beasts! See the evidence! Wow!

    Sigh.

  12. Alan Esworthy
    Troll

    Truly frightening

    The only truly frightening thing in the Texas police video is that (*shudder*) haircut.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Funny thing

    Poor catholic countries believe in chupacabras. Lapsing Protestant countries see UFOs. Britain believes in spontaneous human combustion, France doesn't and put the matter to rest 20 years ago. Funny how what you believe has nothing to do with you and a lot more to do with the unchallenged belief system of those around you. Just saying.

  14. Richard 102
    Coat

    @Dog

    Coyote mates with dog results: Chelsea Clinton

    Mine's the one with Vince Foster's suicide note in the pocket.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @Mitch Kent

    1) Coyote mates with dog

    2) Hysteria in Texas

    3) ???===== (Sell lots of tee shirts, mugs and knick knacks to gullible Americans)

    4) Profit!

    I bet at this moment there are two red necks called Hank and Jim out trying to trap a Coyote, so they can shave it and charge $25 a pop to see it!

    Mines the one with the season ticket.

  16. exit...quit...bye...quitbye.ctrl-C..ctrlX.ctrl-alt-X...aarrrr*slam*
    Terminator

    So we have:

    One fat cop with a weird haircut.

    Another cop who insits on wearing a hat inside a building.

    one hairless dog.

    resulting in CNN report on a mythical monster.

    call in the machines, we don´t deserve to survive.

  17. Catspaw

    I live in Texas

    These things pop up about once a year here in Texas. There's always a big story about how it's a chupacabra, then they promise to send the DNA off for analysis, and then nothing. The very few followup stories have all said either dog or coyote.

    It's gotten to be so much of a joke that when strangers ask me what breed my dog is, I usually tell them he's a chupacabra.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Erhmmm

    This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    @Erhmmm

    Concealing the evidence? It's a secret government cover up!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I'm relieved.

    No, not like that.

    It's not a story about a bigfoot in the freezer.

  21. PerfectBlue

    Two seperate phenomona

    Anybody whose been paying attention to the chupacabra sighting over the years will will quickly notice that what we have here are two separate phenomena. There's the original legend of the chupacabra from Puerto Rico, and a completely separate set of sightings from the US. Mostly Texas.

    The reports from the US probably are just mass hysteria, and probably result form people getting fleeting glances of mange ridden wild animals and having one of their oh so common fear meltdowns. Desriptions vary wildly, and often barely resemble the Puerto Rico descriptions, and these sad carcasses that they keep finding in Texas certainly do not resemble a scaly bipedal creatures with spines and bulbous heads from the original legend.

    I'm not saying that there really is a chupacabra stalking goats in Puerto Rico, but the things that are reported in the US certainly are not the creature from the chupacabra legend. They are not even close. It's just another example of the US pilfering other people's legends and trying to make out that they are all American stories. We've already seen Eastern European legends turned into Hollywood Vampires Zombies, and Western European legends being appropriated into funky stories about werewolf and druids and Witches. Pretty much the only original US legend (Other than the native American ones) is the Gray alien. And even that now bares little resemblance to the ones that Betty and Barney Hill originally reported thanks to Hollywood and the X-Files. For starters, the original Grays wore clothes and didn't have a fixation with probing rednecks nether regions.

    I notice that YouTube has pulled the video, and as is typical has't explained itself.

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