Calgary Skeptic’s Society Blog

Cryptozoology is one of the more fun skeptical topics, not only because it’s a pretty easy one to debunk without an intense investigation, but also because of the wacky animals people dream up to hunt for.

We’ve all heard about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, and the people who hunt them. However, I thought I’d do a post about one mysterious animal that I didn’t know very much about – El Chupacabra.

El Chupacabra is a Spanish name which means “goat sucker” (it has a reputation of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock). It’s said to live in parts of the Americas, although sightings have been reported from Maine to Chile, as well as in parts of Russia. Curiously, Latin Americans report sightings more frequently than other ethnic groups. The animal is supposedly the size of a small bear, and its back is covered with spines. Some people claim it has greyish-green skin with scales, and alien-like eyes, whereas others report seeing a furry, mammalian creature. See the Wikipedia page for an enlightening picture of the beast.

Corpse of a coyote with mange - often mistaken for a Chupacabra.

The main difference between the search for El Chupacabra and the search for Bigfoot is that there have been very few hoax cases of the former – most of the time sightings are just a simple case of mistaken identity or a more-active-than-normal imagination. (On the other hand, most sightings of Bigfoot have ended like this.)

The first sighting of El Chupacabra was in Puerto Rico in March 1995. Since then, there have been reports of carcasses of the mysterious animal being found from as far away as Russia. According to UFO Magazine, by April 1996 there had been more than 2,000 reported cases of animal mutilations in Puerto Rico, thanks to the Chupacabra.

In Texas, a farmer found the bodies of three chupacabras on his land, but authorities reported the animals were common wolves with especially bad cases of mange (a parasitic infestation on the skin of animals causing hair loss).

Parts of a skeleton were found in Russia, and those who found it claimed it was a chupacabra whose “bones had been picked clean by vultures before experts could examine it”. Seems sketchy.

A woman in Texas (three years after the first Texan account) found the body of a chupacabra and went so far as to preserve its head in her freezer so experts could confirm it was indeed the Goat Sucker. I can’t imagine her disappointment when they reported it was a coyote with mange.

Chupacabra image from Wikipedia

Most other cases have been witness accounts from one or two people. They often see “a dog-like creature” attacking their livestock (most often chickens). Let’s open our skeptical toolbox and see what’s going on here. First, there’s confirmation bias – people remember the cases where the animal was never identified, and forget the times it was proven to be a coyote or wolf (similar to psychics’ customers remembering the hits and forgetting the misses). Ad ignorantium also plays a part here - “We don’t know that it isn’t the Chupacabra, therefore that’s what it is.”

Occam’s Razor comes in handy in cases like this. It states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible and postulate the fewest entities. If you are trying to decide between two explanations (for example, the animal attacking your chickens is a chupacabra, or it is a coyote), choose the one that is the simplest without adding any new variables (for example, an animal that is known versus an animal that’s never been found). Any rational, reasonable person who knew about this principle would agree that the best explanation for the mysterious livestock attacker would be that it is a coyote. El Chupacabra is an urban legend, and not a very believable one at that.

Information from Wikipedia page and the Skeptic’s Dictionary.