January 03, 2008

weirdest news stories of year 2007 - legend of chupacabra

ugly coyote chupacabra
CUERO, Texas, the United States of America, in July; Phylis Canion & some of her neighbors discovered the bodies of three strange animals outside her ranch 80 miles (128 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio. Canion believes they may have discovered the mythical, blood sucker chupacabra.

The animals weigh about 40-pound (18-kilogram) each, they are mammals having big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin. Canion suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that some of these "chupacabras" may have killed 26 of her chickens during the past couple of years.

Canion has been a hunter all her life, & lived four years in Africa, but she says these creatures are incomparable to anything she saw before: “I’ve seen a lot of nasty stuff. I’ve never seen anything like this;” although they look like ugly hairless coyotes, Canion believed they could be vampire like beasts as the chickens she lost weren't eaten or carried away but got all their blood drained from them. To clear this matter, the woman couldn't find better ways then to take some photos & put the head of one of the animals in her freezer for later dna tests.

what's initially a chupacabra?

the word chupacabra is composed of two spanish words, "chupar", meaning "to suck" & "cabra" which means "goat", the whole means "goat sucker" in English; it is supposed to be a creature leaving in some parts of the Americas. sightings of the creature are reported especially among Latin American communities, it's said that it attacks livestock, especially goats & drink their blood. Physical descriptions vary, it would be as big as a small bear & have a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of its tail. most experts agree that the creature is an urban legend, however it's not excluded it was originated from real events deformed later or wrongly interpreted.

so, what found canion?

DNA tests at the Texas State University-San Marcos were performed in November leaded to the result that the saved head had merely a coyote as owner.

similarly, in 2004, DNA tests on what was given the name the "Elmendorf Beast", determined it was also a coyote, the animal was a hairless dog-like creature killed by a rancher near San Antonio, USA, after attacking his livestock. Biologits said it was suffering from very severe cases of mange so were two other animals found dead few months later.


Sources: MSNBC, Wikipedia.

0 comments: