Internet’s First Cryptid: Chupacabras
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 7th, 2006
Let us celebrate the 11th anniversary of the first cryptid of the Internet Age: Chupacabras.
In August and September 1995, the chupacabras (Spanish for "goatsucker" – the singular and plural forms) seemed to erupt on the cryptozoological landscape. I’m not talking about the mangy dogs that have been mistaken for Chupacabras in recent years. No, I mean the sightings – as if out-of-the-blue – of large, upright, goat-sucking, spiked creatures that were seen in Puerto Rico in increasing numbers a mere eleven years ago.
Researchers such as Scott Corrales and Jorge Martin have since backtracked the critters through Indian lore to the 1970s and then further into the past. The year 1995, however, will be remembered as the official year of the "Chupacabras Explosion."
At first heavily discussed in local Latin American media, Chupacabras quickly became a major topic of chatter on the Internet, via emails and chatrooms. Before the end of the year, college campuses across the Americas experienced the first major use of websites to promote a new cryptozoological phenomenon: Chupacabras. Then in March 1996 a segment on Chupacabras appeared on the TV talk show "Christina," the Spanish-language Univision network’s popular counterpart to Oprah Winfrey. The show drew a tremendous response, and Chupacabras updates became a regular feature of the program, on the Internet, and around college campus chatrooms. Soon after, ABC News quoted me as saying (it now has become a classic line about the events): "What’s unique about the Chupacabras is it is crossing languages, which I think shows how small our world is becoming. It’s sort of like Jennifer Lopez, kind of cross-cultural."
While a few who seem to practice cryptoxenophobia caused the initial exclusion of Chupacabras from cryptozoology, forgetting perhaps that most creatures are fantastic and culturally-framed in the beginning of their introduction to cryptozoology, today almost everyone understands that Chupacabras are here to stay, firmly, as cryptids to be dealt with from year to year.
The legend of this livestock-slaughtering monster was born in small villages in Puerto Rico in 1995 and quickly spread to Mexico and Hispanic communities in the United States on its way to becoming a worldwide sensation like no unexplained creature since Bigfoot issued from the events of 1958 and 1967.
Chupacabras became important quickly. I deemed them so culturally significant by 1999 that I recognized them as one of the subjects in the world’s first handbook on cryptozoology and placed them in the text and honored them in the subtitle of my and Jerome Clark’s Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature, from Simon & Schuster.
On this 11th anniversary, I share one of the first cases, which occurred at the beginning of the cultural awareness of their appearances – even before some people were labeling them chupacabras:
September 7, 1995 – On this evening in Campo Rico, Canovanas, Puerto Rico a five-foot tall humanoid creature attacked a police officer’s chow chow dog. The officer fired his pistol at the creature, which doubled into a ball, bounced against a wall, and ran away at a high speed. A mutilated goat was found in the area the next day. On the same night Misael Negron observed a strange creature standing on his second story balcony for about ten minutes. He described the creature as about five feet tall, with dark skin, a round head and pointy chin, large red eyes, no ears and what appeared to be two long fangs coming out of its mouth. It had a thin neck and thin arms with three fingered hands that had sharp claws.
Source of this case: Albert Rosales, Humanoid Contact Database, cases 2299 & 2300, citing Jorge Martin, Evidencia OVNI, issue # 8.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Spot-on analysis. It is a creature spawned from the Internet. My only observation would be, where are all of the other cyber creatures that should already exist in cyber fable?
What strikes me about the drawing above is it’s resemblance to the ‘grey aliens’. Of course that could simply be a cultural icon influencing someone’s memory of what they saw.
The alien influence is in the drawings. But that has a contextual explanation. The first Hispanic investigators were not cryptozoologists mainly because there was not a foundation of cryptozoologists in Latin America before 1995. Instead, most of the early researchers of the P.R. reports were ufologists, and from that tradition, even though no ufos or spacecraft were ever seen, came the alien bias in the early sketches. However, today, cryptozoological links to cryptids in Asia and Africa have been firmly made, and more realistic, naturalistic illustrations have appeared.
I have always found it interesting that the reports only had one thing in common, really, livestock was killed by having their blood or innards sucked out thru their necks. Loren, are there any pics of the dead animals? I’m mostly interested in the bite marks. I’ve heard of 1 hole and then 2 holes. I’ve heard that only the blood was sucked dry, and then I heard that all the organs were missing (although depending on how long the animal was missing something in their ecological chain filling our opossum’s niche could have eaten the organs). Complete organs missing in the manner the legend claims could make way for something along the lines of a huge spider. Just the blood, well, that could go down many roads. The unfortunate thing here is that there isn’t any one or paralleling sightings. All the descriptions vary so much that it is difficult to know which way to start heading when actually looking for them.
Missing organs and small bite marks could be explained by bugs.
“Missing organs and small bite marks could be explained by bugs.”
HAW HAW HAW! That’s purty good one.
You’re kidding, right?
Cryptoxenophobia? Hmm, that’s a new word.
I still don’t like the thing as a real animal:
First, the decriptions are impossibly varied. Sasquatches vary in size and color, but they always look like sasquatches. Chupas look like… well, depending on the reports, they could be mammals, reptiles, furred, scaled, winged, hoofed, clawed, etc. That does not mean there’s no cryptid, but how do you judge the usefulness of a given report in a situation like that?
Sincerely yours,
Matt Bille
In the initial reports out of Puerto Rico, a veterinarian was shown working on a carcass allegedly done in by what is described as a chupacabra. He showed the fang holes and the path of the fangs inside the carcass. In reality, the description of the witnesses matches almost every time. Keep in mind that most witnesses of such a creature are first scared out of their wits and many not consider doing a detailed observation.
The resemblance to an “alien” is media hype as no one has ever seen an “alien” and the popular image accepted as an “alien” is a human construct. Early “alien” reports do not describe the popular modern image.
I’ve long wondered whether the traditional vampire might not be an animal native to the countryside which normally lives very quietly, drawing nourishment from the blood of rodents and other small animals, only rising to human consciousness during times of pestilential plague and/or extreme famine, when humans themselves become temporary prey.
Might not the chupacabras be such an animal?
I think we should look at the resemblance to the “Grays” again, it seem to me that we could be dealing with the same species. Once we remove the spines and trust our eyes we have a very similar looking creature to the abduction aliens, only more primitive? We have to consider the idea that these “things” are coming out of the same factory or are part of the same project. Just as it is with the grays, the chupacabra’s seem to need bodily fluids and organs for some purpose. The way they extract their desired materials from prey is another classic example of UFO folklore, with Linda Moulton Howe’s books offering an abundace of relative material. The deceiver it seems, takes many forms.
The reports of chupacabrases (los chupacabras) have fascinated me for many reasons.
For one, I have a real interest in UFOs and the evolution of thought about alien physiology, specifically the way a variety of alien body types have over time succumbed to or been obscured by the homogenous “grey” image. Interestingly, one of the areas where the American version of the “grey” hasn’t dominated accounts (or at the very least has been slower to dominate) is Latin America. The parallels between a diversity of reported types in supposed ETs and in chupacabrases is interesting, as we can actually observe, in real time, the homogenization of the image of los chupacabras (as well as variations). It’s also interesting because, in cases where mangy dogs HAVE been shot (such as near San Antonio) you have witnesses swearing that “this is what my grandma described to me as a chupacabras when I was a child” despite the fact the phenomenon is barely over a decade old.
These issues make the phenomenon intriguing to me, from a sociological standpoint, despite the veracity of the witnesses or their testimony.
Another question that the chupacabras phenomenon raises for me is “How would humans react in the face of a newly evolved species?”
Geology shows us that new and varied species have evolved and disappeared throughout earth’s history. Logic dictates (and historical and archaeological data would seem to verify) that any new species, when it first establishes itself, will consist of a small population of individuals who then, depending on their success, spread to new areas.
It seems natural that, confronted with a brand new species, many people would refuse to believe in something they themselves have yet to experience but that reports would continue to rise as the new creature established itself and became more succesful/increased its numbers.
I’m not saying that los chupacabras represent this type of “new” creature, but the study of the phenomenon does naturally lead to such questions for myself, especially when one considers their rather recent eruption onto the scene with rather limited historical antecedents (that is, antecedents outside the realm of stories largely regarded as folklore).
I think the Chupacabras’ origin is a lot more complicated than what most people think, and I will explain why. In 1995, a horror movie had just come out in theaters, and this film is probably behind the sightings of the alien-like creatures, as Benjamin Radford correctly pointed out a few years back. However, this cannot explain the dead animals.
My opinion is that the animals most likely died from mundane reasons, such as disease. I do think that Chupacabras are real animals. However, I do not think that they are responsible for the dead and mutilated corpses that were found.
What do I think the Chupacabra is? I do not think it is a dog, and I also don’t think it’s an alien, a shapeshifter from another dimension, or any of that stuff. Instead, I have come up with an idea that, in my opinion, neatly explains the sightings. I am inclined to think that the Chupacabra sightings are most likely caused by an undiscovered species of bird-like reptile.
Reports and references to animals resembling the Chupacabras have been around since long before 1995. In the 1970’s, sightings of an animal resembling a large bipedal reptile were reported by farmers. And the ancient Native American civilizations which lived in Latin America many centuries ago have legends of creatures similar to those sighted nowadays.
There were also many legends about feathered serpents.
I think that a Troodon or one of its relatives managed to survive the Mass Extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, and evolved into a Chupacabra. I am aware that this idea may sound very far-fetched, and that many people will probably disagree with me. However, I will now explain why I think so.
Back in the mid-1990’s, 2 distinct types of Chupacabras were most-commonly sighted by eyewitnesses. One of them was the alien-like creature, which I think was probably misidentification on the witnesses’ part, caused by seeing that sci-fi movie.
However, the other type of sighting was of a bipedal creature with sharp fangs, sharp claws on its hands and feet, large, egg-shaped eyes, and feathers. This creature was often sighted at night, which means it is probably nocturnal. When all of these characteristics are put together, it reminds me of a certain genus of dinosaur, which lived at the end of the Cretaceous period: Troodon.
Troodons were likely nocturnal, and they also had large eyes, sharp claws and teeth. They are now also believed to have been covered in feathers, since they were closely-related to birds. Also, of all the dinosaurs besides birds that were living at the time, Troodons were probably the most likely (or the least unlikely!) to survive the K-T extinction event. This is for several reasons; It is now widely believed that an asteroid hitting the Earth was the cause of the Extinction. When this asteroid struck, it caused particles of dust to go into the air, and surround the Earth. When this happened, sunlight could not reach through, so the entire planet became cold and dark. Most of the dinosaurs could not adapt to these new conditions, so they died out.
However, Troodon was different. First of all, it wasn’t very large, compared to the other dinosaurs. And most of the animals which survived the extinction were small to medium-sized. Second of all, it had large eyes, and it was nocturnal, which meant that it could probably live well in the dark. Third of all, it was well-adapted to surviving in cold climates. This is because it was warm-blooded, and had feathers for insulation against the cold. Also, fossils of Troodon have been found in Alaska, and paleontologists have evidence that they probably lived there year-round, which means that they had no problem surviving the tough Alaskan winters. Fourth, it was a very adaptable dinosaur. Dinosaurs similar to Troodon survived for 20 million years, and they lived from Alaska all the way down South to Mexico. Troodons were also omnivores, which meant that they were not picky eaters. Therefore, if they could find no prey, they probably could have survived on plants, and vice versa.
So if a small population of Troodons had survived the extinction, and survived until now in remote areas where fossilization was unlikely, I guess it isn’t really that far-fetched to extrapolate that they might still be alive now, and that they might be responsible for at least some of the Chupacabra sightings.
Also, several eyewitnesses have reported seeing spikes that stick up on the creature’s back. Troodon might be able to make its feathers erect, and stand up stiff. To an inexperienced witness, if viewed from far away, these could probably be easily mistaken for spikes, on its back.
So, this is my hypothesis. I realize that it isn’t perfect, and I am not certain that it is true, of course. However, I think that it does a pretty good job, overall, of explaining the Chupacabras phenomenon. So, what does everyone else think about my idea?