The Chupacabra is without a doubt one of the weirdest cryptid to surface in the past few decades. The creature supposedly feeds on the blood of goats and other farm animals. Hence its name, “Chupacabra” meaning “ goat sucker”. The origins of the mysterious Chupacabra are in Puerto Rico, but soon after it’s initial appearance it started to migrate from Puerto Rico alto other parts of Latin America and eventually the American southwest as well as Florida. Claimed origins for the creature are nearly as diverse as diverse as its descriptions and where it is sighted.
The creature was originally reported in Puerto Rico when livestock near the towns of Orocovis and Morovis in the central highlands of Puerto Rico began to show up dead, seemingly drained of all their blood. The animals had puncture wounds on their necks sparking rumors of vampires. There is of course debate as to where the name “Chupacabra” came from, but the comedian Silvero Perez claims to have coined the Phrase. Naturally with this sort of thing, there are competitors for the title of who coined the phrase, but when things sort of sprin up organically and take over like the Chupacabra has, it makes little difference who came up with the phrase.
Since the livestock showed up dead with puncture wounds on their necks and seemingly drained of blood, the rumors that ‘vampires’ were responsible went into overdrive. Benjamin Redford in his book “Tracking the Chupacabra” has a wonderful chapter on the history of vampires that very effectively outlines how vampire myths can
Be symbolic of larger trends and issues in societies all over the world. As Redford argues, the ‘vampire’ angle of the story may lend a clue to where some of the origin stories come from. Vampires are beasts that take life from often innocent beings. Many people argue that that the Chupacabra is not a natural animal, but the result of some sort of experiments by shadowy US Government figures on Puerto Rico. Radford argues, more effectively than me, that just as the United States is a colonizer of Puerto Rico that extracts wealth from the Island, the Chupacabra, perhaps a stand in for the United States, takes life. It’s kind of a stretch for some, but Radford makes the argument way better than I could and I encourage anyone to check it out.
So, where do we get the description of the infamous chupacabra? Well the first, and appearantly no out of fashion description comes from a woman named Madelyn Tolentino who claims to have seen the creature in September of 1995. From this sighting we get the famous description of a small creature, with spikes on its back, glowing eyes, kangaroo like legs, and all the other hallmarks of the beastly descriptions we get from the 1990s. Skeptic Benjamin Radford does however make note of how much the creature that Tolentino describes, which becomes he holotype description sort of (at least for a while) resembles the creature from the movies “Species” released in July of 1995,just a few months before Tolentino claims to have seen the creature and described something very similar. See for yourself.
It’s worth noting that there is historical precedent for this sort of thing, in the 1930s the initial rash of Loch Ness Monster sightings followed the release of the “Son of Kong” in Dec of 1933 where the heroes fight a creature very similar to a plesiosaur, the descriptions of the Loch Ness monster quickly sort of regulate and settle on a “plesiosaur’ type creature, especially after the so called “Surgeon’s photo” published in 1934. See below for examples.
Popular culture has a huge effect on how we perceive things, and if we are primed to see something that matches a description then we will see that thing, could the same phenomena be responsible for many so called Chupacabra sightings in Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America? Maybe.
The Chupacabra hysteria soon travelled beyond Puerto Rico to the mainland United States as well other parts of Latin America, and of course, western pop culture. There may also be a cultural disconnect. The Chupacabra quickly became the star of TV and movies in its own right, showing up in an episode of the X Files and eventually starring in movies of its own. Author Benjamin Radford makes this point as well “It is interesting to note”he writes “the only films that treat the Chupacabra as a joke or source of comedy are these from the creature’s supposed homeland, Latin America. North American films treat the Chupacabra as a genuine threat and object of fear and horror,while Spanish language films treat it as an object of mocking and humor. It seems that as with the Chupacabra in a larger context, it is mostly foreigners-not locals-who take the creature seriously.” (Tracking Chupacabra pg. 47) This observation is in keeping with a larger trend in Cryptozoology, whether its Ropen, Mokele Mbembe,and many other cryptids,we seldom see local people championing the existence of the creature, but instead foreigners inserting themselves into the story.
It seems that the sightings of the Chupacabra are not at all uniform. Once sightings of the creature are reported in other places outside of Latin America, chiefly the United States, they take on a completely different description altogether. The animals that get tied to chupacabra reports more often in the United States have a canid appearance, meaning they look like dogs,coyotes and wolves. People have even found bodies of such creatures. The bodies often resemble dogs or coyotes, but the skin and hair looks diseased or generally not healthy. These creatures have been tested and examined by experts and every instance I am aware of they have come back as coyotes or some other canid with mange. (See the below examples from Texas and Oklahoma of purported Chupacabras. They do not resemble the 1995 creature descriptions at all.)
The Chupacabra is fun, its an interesting and modern cryptid, but it is frankly a very unlikely creature. The initial descriptions, a bi pedal creature with kangaroo like legs with glowing eyes and spikes along its back that subsists on blood is the stuff of fantasy. This isn’t like a Bigfoot or a lake monster, that at least could resemble creatures we know existed at some point in history. The fantastical nature of the Chupacabra is one of the reasons why much more so than other cryptids the Chupacabra blurs the lines between cryptozoology, UFOs, the paranormal and conspiracy theory. What is the The Chupacabra? A genuine, flesh and blood animal? A demon? An alien? A government experiment gone wrong and unleashed on the territory of Puerto Rico? Probably not. Modern Chupacabra sighting reports have self corrected to a more realistic canid type animal, and the more fantastical descriptions have largely fallen by the wayside.
I tend to agree with the author Benjamin Radford, the Chupacabra is folklore, a cultural phenomenon and little more. This does not diminish what we can learn from it as a cultural phenomenon and why it captures the imaginations of so many.
***This article relies primarily on the research of Benjamin Radford as seen through his book “Tracking the Chupacabra” Which is available at Amazon and wherever fine books are sold. ****
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