The legend of the El Chupacabra is relatively recent, but has grown in popularity quickly, described by North Americans as ‘Southern equivalent of the Sasquatch’. Descriptions of the cryptid vary between the alien and the canine, they can be earless, or have pointed ears, be tailless or having abnormally long tails. General consensus presents something with large bulging eyes, glowing red with hunger, sunk deep in the face; they have long, bony legs and reach up to five foot – but can jump to twenty-three; they walk on four legs or upright and have large thin spikes running down their backs that are said to double as wings. Their grey-blue skin can be slimy, scaled, infested with warts or dotted with hair, their long-forked tongue slithers and hisses between their mighty protruding fangs that match their lengthy claws. Eye-witness accounts have dubbed them ‘a winged kangaroo’ or ‘goblin’, a ‘half-wolf, half-crocodile like creature’ with three toes, leaving a stink of sulphur behind them, and making a horrid hiss and screeching noise as it feeds.
The first sighting comes from Madelyn Tolentino from Canovanas, a village in Puerto Rico, in 1995. A great number of sheep and other livestock had been increasingly found with a bite in the neck, seemingly drained of blood, at the beginning of the decade but eventually, Tolentino saw the beast they considered responsible and it was quickly blamed for over 1000 killings across the country. A year after, it was seen in the US for the first time in Miami, which gives the general idea of how quickly the phenomenon of Chupacabra spread - the list of countries El Chupacabra have been said to roam now include Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Peru. Most recent sightings even go as far as Russia and the Philippines. Despite the earliest official sighting coming as recently as the 90’s, others have compared it to other accounts of monsters from ‘The Vampire of Moca’ in 1975, and potentially earlier. Its existence has also been subject to two separate FBI investigations.
Tolentino’s account, however, has been put down to the Sci-Fi thriller ‘Species’ that had been released in Puerto Rico that year, and that she herself has described as the monster of the movie having an uncanny likeness to the Chupacabra. However, Tolentino’s ex-husband, his co-worker and her mother all claim to have seen the beast with her – and there are over 30 sightings of Chupacabra in Canovanas at that time, saying it would swoop from the sky to take its prey and leap from tree to tree. Although the name comes from the Spanish ‘goat-sucker’ they will eat beloved pets and other livestock as big as cows and horses. One eye-witness account comes from a mother who saw the beast jump through the window of her house and rip open a teddy bear. Because…delicious? As well as draining blood, it is also said that Chupacabra will consume the ears, eyeballs, tongues and other organs of its prey. In these circumstances, they seem to be removed with an almost surgical precision, whereas the blood is drained from three puncture marks at the neck in the shape of an upside-down triangle.
(Monster from the film 'Species', 1995, said to have a striking resemblance to El Chupacabra)
Other accounts of the cryptid describe its red-eyed gaze being able to petrify or paralyse its prey so it can feed off them at its leisure. Chupacabra have been compared to the ‘Mosquito Man’ by tribes in the South American rainforest and by some are considered to be one and the same. It has also been compared to the Peuchen from Chile, a vampiric flying snake, which may explain how El Chupacabra apparently swooped down from the sky to attack its prey in so many sightings, and although ‘flying snake’ might not fit the image of a conventional descriptions of Chupacabra, The Peuchen has been said to shapeshift into an ‘animal form’ that is more fitting.
Unique to the myth of the Chupacabra is that the most common support for its existence comes from dead bodies locals have either found or shot themselves, the first corpse of a Chupacabra was supposedly being found in 2000. Extensive DNA testing, however, has named these as Coyotes, Dogs and Racoons, usually, with Mange, one alleged Chupacabra even turned out to be a fish. Phyllis Canion is one of the people claiming to have killed a Chupacabra. After failing to catch it on camera, she caught a dead Chupacabra that had been eating her chickens in 2007, and has since had her catch stuffed. She explains the contradictory DNA evidence by suggesting Chupacabra are a rare species of Coyote that live underground. Benjamin Redford describes Texas as a “Chupacabra Factory” and is another active researcher in the legend of El Chupacabra, but with a much less bias view, he spent five years investigating the beast and found simple explanations the most plausible, that the dead livestock can be held accountable to any given wild dog who doesn’t know how to hunt properly.
(Phyllis Canion's stuffed 'Chupacabra')
Some of the most famous pictures used as evidence, specifically the ‘Chupacabra head on a fence’ (seen below) are easily explained, in 2003 Charlie White took a series of photographs of ‘accidental encounters’ with monsters in urban settings to comment on the torment of society. Many of the mutilated livestock has also been put down to the work of satanic cults, given the surgical precision of the removed organs, eyeballs and tongues – it seems unlikely to be the work of animals. But c’mon, where’s the fun in plausible. Alternative explanations for El Chupacabra has suggested they are a result of secret US government genetic testing, or are extra-terrestrial, considering alien sightings are among the highest in Puerto Rico.
(Chupacabra head on a fence: Charlie White: 2003)
How do you kill it? Well, clearly there are plenty of Texans who think you can shoot it down like any other animal, but the Chupacabra has also fought Jackie Chan in the ‘Adventures of Jackie Chan’ where it is presented as a werewolf-like curse, with Chan’s friend turning into a Chupacabra on the night of the full moon. Admittedly, this might not be a complete oversimplification of the myth, as they do share some similarities. Werewolves have also been blamed for the death of livestock, drained blood and missing organs over the centuries, however, this applies to most mythical creatures. Other than the additional theory that Chupacabra can shapeshift, there is little other evidence that they could be sitting next to us on the bus.
