A viral photo and message going around is saying that a “chupacabra” was found in Edmond, Okla., last week.
A local man, Evan Brown, told NewsChannel 4 that he shot and killed the beast, translated literally as “goat sucker.”
There’s been numerous reports of chupacabra sightings over the past few decades.
“We saw the video today and it looks like a coyote with a case of mange, unfortunately. We have lots of folks who say they’ve seen one but we haven’t seen one yet. It’s just a legend,” Micah Holmes, with the Okla. Dept. of Wildlife, later clarified a week ago to NewsChannel 5.
Many of the chupacabra sightings are just coyotes affected by disease, National Geographic. The magazine did a report in 2010 that “in almost all these cases [of sightings or captures], the monsters have turned out to be coyotes suffering from very severe cases of mange, a painful, potentially fatal skin disease that can cause the animals’ hair to fall out and skin to shrivel, among other symptoms.”
“It still looks like a coyote, just a really sorry excuse for a coyote,” Keel, of the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia, told National Geographic of one specimen.
According to reports two weeks ago, there’s been a spate of “chupacabra” sightings in Texas. Animal experts told KPRC that locals are breeding coyotes with domesticated dogs.
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