Welcome to the Deep Dive. We take complex topics,
dig through the information, and pull out the
key insights for you. That's the mission. And
today, well, we're stepping into a pretty strained
world. Cryptozoology, folklore. And a bit of
forensic science too, actually. Yeah, we're tracking
a creature that basically exploded onto the scene,
became a global name almost overnight. The Chupacabra.
It really is like the ultimate modern cryptid,
isn't it? How so? Well, think about Bigfoot or
Loch Ness. Those stories are old. Lots of folklore,
blurry photos, right? Decades, centuries even.
The Chupacabra, though, it burst out in the mid
1990s and it spread entirely through, you know,
modern media. TV, news, eventually the internet.
It's terrifying if you're a farmer, obviously.
Absolutely. But for us, looking back, it's just
this perfect case study. How do these urban legends
actually start? How do they get shaped by collective
anxiety? And how does the media keep them going?
Exactly. It's all there. And the name itself
tells you a lot, right? Chupacabra. Or is it
Chupacabras? I hear both. Technically, Chupacabras
is plural in Spanish, which is where it comes
from. But honestly, both get used pretty interchangeably
now. Okay. And it means? It's dead literal. Chupa
that sucks in Spanish. Okay. And Cabra's goats.
The goat sucker. Yep. The goat sucker. And that
name, it just nails the core terrifying claim
of the whole legend. Oh, Jesus. That this thing
isn't just a predator killing livestock. It's
supposedly vampiric. It drains its victims completely
of blood. Right. Okay. So that's our mission
for this deep dive, then. We want to really get
into it, track it back to the very beginning,
those first weird livestock killings in the Caribbean.
Then look at the descriptions, because they're
all over the place, aren't they? Totally contradictory,
yeah. We need to unpack that. And then the big
part, apply to science. You know, forensics,
zoology, what does the evidence actually say?
Because that's what... ultimately unravels the
whole thing. Pretty much. By the end of this,
you'll have the full story. The complete picture
of the goat sucker legend. All right, let's start
at the beginning. But maybe not 1995. You mentioned
it goes back further. Yeah, to really get the
origin, you kind of have to rewind another 20
years. Before the name, before the hype. Where
are we going? Back to 1975. Mocha, Puerto Rico.
And a series of events they called El Vampiro
de Mocha. The Vampire of Mocha. Okay. This is
like the shadow precursor. The first hints of
this really specific, really bizarre pattern
of attacks on livestock. In Mocha, mid -70s.
Exactly. And the attacks were so strange, so
brutal, that people couldn't explain them normally.
They didn't think, oh, it's a wild dog or, you
know, a big cat. Yeah. What did they think? Their
first thought, interestingly, was much darker.
They suspected a satanic cult. Wow. Ritual sacrifice.
That was the theory, because of how the animals
were killed. Ah. Okay, so it wasn't just dead
animals. No. If, like, a coyote gets a sheep,
right, there's usually signs of a struggle, trauma,
maybe parts are eaten. Makes sense. But in Mocha,
and later across the island, the signature was
consistent. The animals were reportedly bled
dry. Completely dry. That was the claim. And
through these tiny, almost surgical -looking
circular holes, incisions. Not like bite marks.
Didn't look like a normal kill at all. Looked
precise, almost. Alien, not natural. And that
specific detail, the blood drain, the small holes,
that's what kept the mystery going. For two decades,
yeah. It was just this unexplained phenomenon
bubbling under the surface. Then boom. 1995,
it just exploded. The attacks ramped up. Dramatically.
And that's when the creature really got its identity.
So tell us about that. The official launch, you
could call it. Where and when did it become the
chupacabra story? March 1995. Again, Puerto Rico.
Different location this time. Eight sheep were
found dead. Okay. And again, very specific damage.
Not random wounds. Each one had three distinct
puncture wounds in the chest area. Three wounds.
And the claim, once again. Completely drained
of blood. So this wasn't just a few random deaths
anymore. It was a pattern and it was escalating.
Big time. It became a real crisis, especially
for farmers, for the agricultural community there.
And this is where the eyewitness comes in. The
one who gave it a face. Exactly. Fast forward
a few months to August 95. The attacks really
zeroed in on this town called Canovanus. And
the numbers were just staggering. Panic set in.
Some reports claimed up to 150 farm animals and
pets were killed just in that one month. 150.
It's total mass hysteria. And right in the middle
of all that fear, the key eyewitness steps forward.
Madeline Tolentino. She saw it. She claims she
did. And her description. Well, that became the
legend. The reptilian creature, spines down its
back, hopping like a kangaroo. That visual cemented
it. It absolutely did. It took these terrifying
events, these dead animals, and gave them this
incredibly scary visual form. It pushed the whole
thing beyond just weird livestock killings into
sci -fi horror territory. Okay, so you got the
attacks, you got the visual, but it needed a
name, something catchy. It got one almost immediately,
and the credit for that bit of, well... Branding
genius. Who was it? A Puerto Rican comedian and
entrepreneur named Silverio Perez. A comedian?
Yeah, he was also a radio DJ in San Juan at the
time. And when these attacks were just dominating
the news in 95, he's the one who apparently coined
the term chupacabras on air. It was clever, right?
Descriptive, memorable, easy to say. Yeah, goat
sucker. It sticks. Totally. It became the perfect
cultural shorthand. People weren't talking about
those weird vampire killings anymore. They were
talking about the chupacabra. And what's really
wild, especially compared to older myths, is
how fast this thing spread. Oh, instantly. It
wasn't contained to Puerto Rico at all. And did
it travel so quickly? Well, international media
picked it up fast. And crucially, Spanish language
media connections across Latin America. So after
Puerto Rico. Reports just started flooding in.
Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Panama, the Dominican
Republic. You name it. So people elsewhere were
having similar experiences. Or they just heard
the story. Probably a bit of both. People hearing
the news reports, maybe they'd already had some
unexplained livestock deaths themselves. And
suddenly they had a name for it. Exactly. They
had a name, a description for their own local
mystery. The Chupacabra label just got slapped
onto it. And it moved north, too, into the U
.S. Oh, absolutely. It crossed the border big
time. The southwestern U .S. became a real hotspot
for sightings. Texas, Arizona, places like that.
Yep. Though, weirdly, reports have popped up
as far away as Maine. Maine. Seriously. Yeah.
And even crazier, the folklore, it went way beyond
the Americas. There were reports, alleged sightings,
related attacks. in Russia, the Philippines.
How does that even happen? It just shows you
the power of a really strong, simple narrative,
right? This idea of the vampire monster. It can
go global way faster than any real animal could
possibly migrate. OK, so it originates, gets
a name, spreads like wildfire. Yeah. But you
mentioned the descriptions are contradictory.
Massively so. And this is really key. If you
dig into all the reports, all the eyewitness
accounts, the chupacabra isn't one thing. It's
basically two completely different creatures.
Depends where you are. That variation is important.
It's crucial. It's actually the key to understanding
why the whole thing eventually gets, you know,
debunked scientifically. The descriptions just
don't match up. They split really neatly into
two dominant types. Mutually exclusive types,
really. All right. Let's break them down. Type
one first. That's the original, right? The Puerto
Rican one. Yeah. The one Madeline Tolentino described
back in 95. This is the reptilian or alien cryptid,
mostly reported in Puerto Rico and other parts
of Latin America. OK, what does that one look
like? It's definitely not a dog or anything familiar
like that. It's described as like. A heavy animal,
maybe the size of a small bear, standing three
to four feet tall. So about a meter, meter and
a half high? Roughly, yeah. And the really distinct
features are the skin and how it moves. Witnesses
talked about thick, leathery skin, or sometimes
scaly, often greenish gray, giving it that real
reptilian or even alien vibe. And the classic
feature, the thing everyone pictures. The spines.
Gotta be the spines. A big, obvious, scary row
of sharp... Quills or spines. Running all the
way from the neck or the back of the head down
to the base of the tail. Right. And movement
wise. It didn't walk on four legs. It was described
as standing upright. Moving with this kind of
hopping gait. Like a kangaroo. A spiky reptilian
kangaroo. Pretty much. And you see those specific
details pop up again in reports from places like
Chile and Argentina later on. That's the monster
that terrified the Caribbean. Okay. Hold on.
A three to four foot tall, spiky, hopping reptile
alien. Yeah. That sounds absolutely nothing like
the creature people started reporting just a
few years later in, say, Texas. Exactly. That's
the point. As the legend moved north, especially
into northern Mexico and the U .S. southwest,
starting around the early 2000s, the description
just completely flipped. And to type two? And
to type two, the dog -like predator. And that
became the main image in North America. So when
someone in Arizona said they saw a chupacabra,
what were they seeing? Or describing. They were
describing something that looked kind of like
a dog or a coyote, but wrong. Horribly wrong.
Like some weird, mutated wild dog. How so? What
were the features? The key things here all point
towards, well, severe illness. It's described
as being mostly hairless. Hairless. Yeah, maybe
just some patches of fur. The skin is often described
as thickened, leathery, maybe crusty. Okay. It's
got a really pronounced spinal ridge. You can
see the vertebrae sticking up. The eye sockets
look unusually deep or pronounced. Big, visible
fangs and claws. So it looks sick. Yeah. Disease.
It looks like a biological horror, right? Much
more than some sci -fi monster from space. It
looks aggressive, mangy, just awful. Okay, so
two completely different creatures. One's an
alien kangaroo, one's a messed up dog. Yep. But
they're linked by this one single terrifying
thing. The way they attack. The ammo. The vampiric
ammo. That's the common thread. And that method
is what supposedly makes a chupacabra different
from any normal predator we know about. Right.
A normal predator kills to eat. Or maybe drags
the kill away. But with the chupacabra, the central
scary claim is it drains all the blood. All of
it. That's the story. Sometimes even takes organs,
but leaves the rest of the carcass basically
untouched. No signs of feeding on the meat. And
the wounds themselves. Always described as precise,
right? Almost surgical. Yeah, that gets emphasized
a lot. Usually one or two holes, or most famously,
three puncture wounds. The triangle. Often described
as being in a triangle pattern pointing downwards,
usually neck or chest. And that precision, plus
the lack of blood at the scene, plus no eating
the body. That's what cemented the idea. wasn't
just a dumb animal it was something intelligent
maybe doing something weird motivated purely
by blood that's the absolute core of the whole
legend okay this is where we need to bring in
the investigation the science put this whole
thing under the microscope right we've got two
monsters an alien one a diseased dog one both
supposedly vampires let's start with type one
the original the spiky hopping reptile the og
chupacabra yeah if we look at the work benjamin
radford did digging into this, that whole visual
description just kind of collapses, doesn't it?
It collapses spectacularly, yeah. Radford's investigation
is probably one of the best examples of how modern
folklore can actually be created. It's stunning,
really. What did he find? He basically concluded
that the entire visual description, the one from
the key eyewitness, Madeline Tolentino, wasn't
based on anything she actually saw in real life.
It was directly copied from a movie monster.
A movie? Which one? The sci -fi horror film Species.
Species. Didn't that come out in 1995? Exactly.
The very same year as the main Puerto Rican attacks
and Tolentino's sighting, the timing is perfect.
And the creature in that movie, Syl, wasn't it?
Yep, the alien Syl. And if you look at Syl's
design, bipedal, roughly human -sized but kind
of hunched, and crucially, that defining row
of spines down the back. It was almost identical
to Tolentino's description of the chupacabra.
The movie was brand new. It was out there in
the culture. Is there direct evidence linking
her sighting to the movie? Well, Radford uncovered
a reported statement from Tolentino herself that's
pretty damning. What did she say? She reportedly
said about what she saw, it was a creature that
looked like the chupacabra with spines on its
back and all. And then she added, The resemblance
to the chupacabra was really impressive. Wait,
she said the thing she saw resembled the chupacabra.
Isn't she the one who described the chupacabra
in the first place? That's the key point Radford
makes. It seems she saw the movie, Species, saw
the creature Syl, and then when she saw something,
or thought she saw something, during that period
of panic in Canovanas, her brain basically mapped
the movie monster onto the real world event.
She wasn't describing an unknown creature. She
was saying the unknown creature looked like the
monster she'd just seen on screen so the implication
is huge the iconic image the one that scared
people across continents it's basically fan art
right based on a movie it's more than that it's
like a powerful case of confirmation bias maybe
even misremembering radford found evidence suggesting
tolentino came to genuinely believe that the
events and the creature from species were actually
happening for real in puerto rico wow so yeah
When your main original eyewitness bases the
description on a Hollywood alien, it completely
undermines the idea of the reptilian chupacabra
being a real animal. The visual identity wasn't
born from zoology. It was born from cinema. Okay.
That deals a major blow to Type 1's appearance.
But what about the shared trait, the core of
the legend, the vampirism? Right. Even if the
alien look is out, we still have this claim.
Animals being bled dry. That needs evidence.
Forensic evidence. And did they find any? When
they actually examined the carcasses. This is
where pathology comes in. And the answer is pretty
definitive. That central claim, total blood drain,
exsanguination, it sounds dramatic, and it is
testable. Through a necropsy. Exactly. A necropsy,
an animal autopsy is the only way to know for
sure. You examine the blood vessels, the organs.
Is the blood volume actually close to zero? And
the reports of blood sucking were simply never
confirmed by necropsy. Not once. So when vets
actually looked inside... They didn't find animals
that had been magically drained dry. No known
predator does that. And no natural process makes
it happen after death like that. There was a
specific vet involved in Puerto Rico during the
panic, wasn't there? Dr. Dave Morales, yeah.
He worked for the Department of Agriculture and
actually examined a large number of the alleged
victims. Over 300 reported victims in Puerto
Rico. Okay, that's a significant sample size.
Absolutely. And his conclusion was clear. The
animals had not been bled dry. So what killed
them? He determined the cause of death was usually
things like internal bleeding from the wounds
or circulatory shock, normal trauma from an attack.
not some mysterious total blood extraction. So
the whole vampire angle was just sensationalism,
misinterpretation. It seems like it. A scary
narrative that fit the weirdness of the situation
but wasn't actually supported by the physical
evidence. Okay, so type one, alien look, comes
from a movie, blood draining isn't real. That
leaves type two, the dog -like one. The U .S.
Southwest Chupacabra. The mangy dog version.
This one at least looks like a real animal, albeit
a horrifying one. What's the scientific take
on that creature? This brings us neatly to the
mange hypothesis. And this is pretty much the
accepted scientific explanation for the vast
majority, if not all, of those U .S. sightings.
Mange, like... the skin disease dogs get exactly
specifically sarcoptic mange there's a biologist
barry o 'connor from the university of michigan
who studied this back in 2010 and his conclusion
his conclusion was that when people in texas
or arizona were reporting chupacabras what they
were actually seeing were coyotes or sometimes
domestic dogs but animals suffering from a really
really severe infection of this parasite The
mite sarcoptes scabia. That's the one. It causes
sarcoptic mange. What does that mite do to an
animal to make it look like that? Like the descriptions.
It's pretty horrific, especially when it gets
advanced. The mites burrow under the skin, causes
intense itching. The animal just scratches and
scratches itself raw. Leading to hair loss. Massive
hair loss. That explains the mostly hairless
look, which is so key to the type 2 description.
And it doesn't stop there. No. The skin itself
reacts. It thickens up dramatically, gets crusty,
scaly, often turns this sort of dark grayish
color. Matching the leathery or strange thick
skin. Perfectly. So all those monster features,
the deep set eyes, the visible spine, the weird
skin, they're just symptoms. They're all symptoms
of advanced mange. The hair loss makes the skeleton
underneath way more obvious. You see the spinal
ridge clearly. The bones of the skull around
the eyes look more prominent, more sunken. It
gives them that gaunt, almost demonic appearance.
Like something undead. Exactly. And add to that,
these severely infected animals often have secondary
skin infections, which can create a really foul
rank odor. So imagine seeing this hairless, bony,
weird skin, stinking creature. You can see why
someone might think they're seeing something
totally unnatural, a monster. Okay, the appearance
makes sense now. It's a sick coyote. But what
about the behavior? Why are these mangy coyotes
attacking livestock? And why the weird killing
pattern, killing but not eating? That also comes
back to the disease. Think about a healthy coyote.
It's fast. It's got stamina. It can hunt down
quick prey like rabbits or deer. Right. But an
animal with severe mane, it's incredibly weak.
It's probably in constant pain, dealing with
infections, just totally debilitated. It's struggling
just to survive. So it can't hunt properly. No
way. It can't chase down the usual wild prey.
So what does it do? It goes for the easiest possible
meal. Livestock, goats, sheep. Chickens, things
in pens. Exactly. They're relatively slow, contained,
easy to corner and kill compared to a healthy
deer. It explains why these attacks suddenly
focus on farms. It's desperation hunting. Okay,
that makes sense. But what about the puncture
wounds? The legend emphasizes those two or three
precise holes. How does a sick coyote explain
that? Well, two puncture holes. That's completely
standard for any canine attack. The teeth? Yep.
The upper and lower canine teeth. When a dog
or coyote bites down, especially on the neck
or throat, to subdue prey, that's the damage
you expect to see. Two distinct holes. But the
stories often mention three holes. We're talking
about how surgical it looks. The surgical precision
idea is likely psychological, you know. In a
stressful sighting, maybe you only register the
deepest runes, the canine punctures. And the
third hole. Could be anything. A scrape, another
bite mark from a different angle, damage from
dragging the animal, or maybe just misinterpretation
in the panic. The crucial thing is, when they've
actually recovered carcasses in the U .S. and
done DNA testing on saliva from bite wounds,
it consistently comes back as coyote or dog DNA,
not some unknown creature. Okay, one last piece
then. Why leave the carcass uneaten? If they're
so desperate for food, that fuels the they -only
-want -the -blood idea. That happens more often
than you'd think, even with healthy predators
sometimes. It's often called surplus killing,
or it could just be an interrupted attack. How
so? A sick, weak coyote might manage to attack
and injure, say, a goat. But then maybe it gets
spooked, a light comes on, a dog barks, a person
yells, it runs off immediately. Abandons the
kill. Right. Or maybe the animal is just so weak
from the mange, it literally doesn't have the
energy left to tear through the hide and start
feeding after the initial kill bite. So the prey
dies later. Yeah, the victim dies from the trauma,
the internal bleeding, the shock. But the body
is left looking mostly untouched, except for
those canine puncture wounds. It looks like it
was just killed for blood, but the explanation
is much more mundane. Wow. Okay. So the science
really does seem to dismantle both versions pretty
effectively. It provides very plausible evidence
-based explanations, yeah. The alien is a movie
mix -up. The dog is a sick coyote. But the whole
phenomenon, the idea of the chupacabra, feels
like it's about more than just... Mistaken identity,
right? There's a cultural anxiety there. Definitely.
And if you look at the environmental context,
especially for the start of the legend, the timing
is really suggestive. Remember the first big
wave, Puerto Rico, late 95, and then Mexico in
96 when reports really took off there. Both of
those periods either happened during or right
after major droughts in those regions. Ah, drought.
That puts pressure on everything. Everything.
Water dries up. Plants die. The animals that
eat plants, the usual prey for predators, they
die off or move away. Those predators get best
prey. Exactly. It creates this intense competition.
Hungry predators, like coyotes, are pushed out
of their normal areas, closer to humans, closer
to farms, looking for anything to eat, like livestock.
So the increase in attacks, the aggression. It
could just be ecological stress. It's a very
strong contributing factor. The chupacabra becomes
the sort of scary embodiment of that stress,
a name for the increased danger during a hard
time. And that need for a label, maybe that explains
the huge variety in descriptions we talked about
earlier. I think it does. Remember, thick skin,
thin skin, wings, no wings, bat -like, alien
dog -like. It's all over the place. Impossible
for one real creature. Completely. It strongly
suggests that Chupacabra just became this catch
-all term. For anything weird? Anything weird
and scary, especially if it involved livestock.
You hear about this monster, the Chupacabra,
on the news. Then you see some strange animal.
Maybe it's a monkey that escaped from somewhere.
Maybe it's a fox with mange. Maybe it's just
a dog you don't recognize acting aggressively.
And your brain just goes chupacabra. Exactly.
It's confirmation bias. You use the label you
already know to make sense of something frightening
and unknown. It gives a scary, chaotic event,
a story, a narrative. And this type of story,
the livestock killing vampire. It's not unique
to the Chupacabra, is it? You find similar ideas
elsewhere. Oh, yeah. The fear is pretty universal.
It taps into something deep, probably. In the
U .S., you've got legends like the Ozark Howler.
What's that? Supposedly a large, maybe bear -like
or cat -like creature in the Ozarks region shares
that element of being this feared, unknown predator.
And in South America, where the Chupacabra story
also took hold. In Chile, they have the Puchin.
Puchin. Different look. Very different look,
often described as a winged snake, but the habit
is strikingly similar. It attacks livestock associated
with draining blood or life force. Winged snake.
Where might that come from? Well, one theory
connects it to the vampire bat, which is native
to that region and does feed on livestock blood.
So you can see how maybe a real animal gets exaggerated
into this terrifying mythical creature over time.
A biological basis twisted by folklore. Could
be. And you see similar figures even further
away. Like where? The sigbin in the Philippines
shares a lot of the chupacabra's reported traits,
functions as this scary livestock predator in
their folklore. So this isn't just a 90s phenomena?
Not at all. And we see the same cycle playing
out even now. Really? Where recently? There was
a case in Manipur, India back in 2018. A whole
series of mysterious attacks on farm animals,
poultry. Caused a panic. people thought chupacabra
sparked local fear yeah yeah the idea of some
unknown cryptid came up but then forensic experts
got involved they examined the remains the attack
patterns conclusion it was local street dogs
probably feral or semi -feral packs driven by
hunger same story different continents desperate
canids attack Fear labels it a monster. It just
repeats, which shows how the Chupacabra idea
has really gone beyond its specific origins.
It's become this global shorthand, hasn't it,
for that kind of inexplicable threat to our safe
domestic world. And pop culture definitely picked
up on that shorthand. That immediately. Once
a monster gets a cool name and a scary look,
it's guaranteed a spot in the modern monster
pantheon. I remember it showing up pretty early
on TV. Didn't the X -Files do an episode? Yep,
1997. El Mundo Jira, classic. It just became
this known cultural reference point you could
use for horror or even comedy. Like the South
Park episode. Chupacabra, yeah, from 2012. That
shows the legend is so baked into culture, you
can use it for satire. And then you get things
like that Netflix movie from 2023, Chupa. Right,
where it was suddenly kind of cute. Totally reinvented.
Made it this sympathetic creature needing protection,
so the image keeps evolving in pop culture. Comics,
video games, cartoons, it's everywhere. it's
a known thing even though as we've discussed
the actual basis for it is well shaky at best
based on misidentification and misinterpretation
yeah okay let's try and pull this all together
then synthesize it for everyone listening right
so the chupacabra when you break it down it's
really this fascinating kind of unique dual phenomenon.
It's not one single monster. No, it's a story
that basically split in two. Exactly. Two separate
narratives. And each one has its own logical
but still pretty compellingly scary explanation
behind it. So type one. The original, the spiky
reptilian one from Puerto Rico. That's your perfect
storm of media influence and maybe suggestibility.
You've got real anxiety about livestock attacks
mixing with the imagery from a specific horror
movie species released at just the right time.
And the alleged vampirism. Medically unconfirmed.
Never verified by forensics, no. Then you have
type 2, the hairless, scary dog -like creature
seen more in the U .S. And that one is biological,
but it's not a new species. It's almost certainly
a familiar animal, a coyote, maybe a dog suffering
from a really severe case of sarcoptic mange.
And the mange explains the horrifying appearance.
And the weakness from the disease explains the
behavior, why it attacks easy livestock, why
it might kill without eating. It all fits the
mange hypothesis. So ultimately, the chupacabra
isn't really out there in the woods or deserts.
It... persists for other reasons. It persists
because it taps into something psychological,
I think. It's become this really potent cultural
symbol, a shorthand for the scary, violent unknown,
especially when things feel unstable. Like during
environmental stress, like those droughts you
mentioned, when the boundary between our world
and the wild feels threatened. Exactly. That's
when these stories seem to gain the most power.
Which leads us to a final thought, something
for you, the listener, to maybe chew on. Yeah.
Think about the sheer resilience of this modern
legend. We've just walked through how the chupacabra's
origins are pretty well documented right uh -huh
the movie link for one type the mange explanation
for the other it's been investigated scientifically
explained the facts are out there and yet yeah
the chupacabra itself as an idea as a figure
it's still totally out there it's arguably a
permanent fixture in global folklore now Why?
Maybe just because a really good story, especially
one that plugs into our fears, maybe has a bit
of that Hollywood flair is often just way more
powerful, way more memorable than the plain scientific
truth. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive
into the legend of the goat sucker. We'll see
you next time.