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Chupacabra

All of the Mythical Creatures covered this week have been beast rooted in hundreds of years of legend and tradition. Such is not the case with today's creature. Chupacabras, the "Goat-Suckers," have only been around and popular since the mid-90s, which is when most of the incidents began.

Image from VirtueScience
What are these incidents? Well, on multiple occasion and in multiple locations across Latin America, livestock has been been found dead.... and completely drained of blood. Often there are no tracks around the corpses, and they have strange puncture marks. The first of these incidents was in Puerto Rico in 1995, where 8 sheep were found bloodless. A few other occurrences date to the 1970s, but those may not be linked, as the sightings and livestock killings happened in huge numbers post 1995. Most of these incidents have happened in Latin America, but some have been reported as far away as Oregon and Michigan.

Chupacabras are described in a wide manner of ways. They are dog like, yet lizard like. They have wings, they don't have wings. There are a handful of people who claim they've killed Chupacabras, but the animals they find always turn out to be something else (like a Coyote baby Raccoon!) So what could the Chupacabra be? Some think its related to the Vampire Bats, which are also found in Latin America. Some think it's a government experiment gone very, very wrong. Some point to Aliens. And others believe it's a pack of wild dogs doing all of the damage. No one knows for sure, and incidents and sightings keep happening. Awesome.

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