SCEPCOP Forum

personally i think it looks like an ugly coyote
but what do i know

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us ... ideosearch

I agree, that looks exactly like a hairless coyote, or maybe some other type of dog. Almost looks like a giant Chihuahua.

This is the problem with most of the paranormal, imo. A single term that is specific to a single thing gets rooted in the public consciousness and then applied to any sort of anomaly that falls anywhere within the general class of the specific thing. Chupacabras has become a catchall term for any critter with teeth that can't be immediately identified.

Unfortunately the vast majority of the media fall into that general public class of stupidity and make the problem worse, often being the originators of misuse of terms and outright fabrication of them, as witness the Kenneth Arnold report of crescent shaped aerial craft becoming "flying saucers" at the hands of the press.



Tiger

Excellent post there, Tiger.

um excuse the ignorant Brit - but what IS a chupacabras suppose to be then ?? - never heard of such a thing ( guess we don't have them here big black dogs and cats roaming the moors near here but chupawhatsits , nah ) - sounds vaguely Mexican or Spanish ??

enlightenment required please

ooops. Here's the Wikipedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra

The original reports of the chupacabras (means "goat sucker", after the reports of livestock victims drained of blood) are from Puerto Rico in the early 1990s. As always there are some variant descriptions, but the majority of the early reports described a more or less wallaby size critter with a sometimes upright stance, the satchel butt and heavy hind legs of a wallaby or 'roo, and often reported with dorsal spines. The dog-like descriptions didn't get applied until "bloodless" carcasses began being reported in the US.

How much of what is mythological bleedover and/or misapplication of the name is just about impossible to sort out, but the original Puerto Rican reports were fairly uniform in description.



Tiger

ah right - thanks guys