Media Goes Chupagaga

The Christian Science Monitor is running an article on the kind of routine stories coming out of Texas, which are being tied to cryptozoology, although they have little to do with the science. Here are some parts of it:

Chupacabra found in Texas: Is it a coyote?

The chupacabra found in Texas is no chupacabra, but probably a hairless coyote, according to one researcher.

By Stephen Kurczy, Correspondent / July 14, 2010

Boston

The chupacabra found in Texas this week and killed by an animal control officer appears to be yet another case of mistaken identity.

“It’s your typical mangy canid,” says Loren Coleman, who heads the International Cryptozoology Museum in Maine and has researched the legend of the chupacabra, which means “goat-sucker” in Spanish. “It’s probably a coyote with mange.”

In a video report this week, San Antontio-based WOAI.com reported that a Hood County rancher heard a growl come from his barn. When he looked inside, “he saw the ugliest creature he’s ever seen. An animal officer came out, pulled the trigger, killing what some believe is the mythical or mystical goat-sucker.”

“All I know is, it wasn’t normal,” Frank Hackett, the Hood County Animal Control officer who killed the beast, said in the TV report. “It was ugly, real ugly, and I’m not going to lie on that one.”

DNA tests are now being done on the animal.

The Hood County Animal Control office declined to take questions from the Monitor today, redirecting all queries to the office of Chief Deputy George “Biff” Temple, who did not return a phone call.

This was by no means the first chupacabra sighting in Texas. DNA tests on similar looking animals found on separated occasions in 2004 revealed them to be coyoties. In January, CBS News reported that several golf course workers found the corpse of a chupacabra.

But Mr. Coleman, author of more than 30 books on mythical creatures, including Cryptozoology A To Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature, says the most recent chupacabra sighting is only another case of media hype.

Most sightings, he says, turn out to be dogs, foxes, or coyotes with mange – the skin disease caused by parasitic mites.

“There is absolutely nothing complex, nothing unexplainable, nothing mysterious about them,” he says. “What is mysterious is that the media keeps writing about them.”

The paper continues later,

The latest supposed chupacabra sighting in Texas appears to be a coyote, says Coleman, reached by phone.

“A lot of people seem unaware of how strange coyotes look without hair,” he says. “Coyotes have a bushy coat and very pronounced nose. But as soon as they lose their hair they look extremely weird and strange to people.”

Loren Coleman 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.

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