New Chupacabra Revealed as a Montauk Monster
Submitted by Benjamin Radford
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ ... nster.html
posted: 20 January 2010 12:56 pm ET


Workers at a golf course in Runaway Bay, an hour north of Fort Worth, Texas, recently found what they thought might be the carcass of the vampire beast "el chupacabra." The strange dog-like animal was mostly hairless, with tan-brown skin. It didn't look like anything the men had ever seen before. Was it the legendary goat-sucker, the bloodthirsty Hispanic version of Bigfoot?

As it turns out, no. Jennifer Barrow, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, examined the carcass and noted that the teeth, skull, and feet all matched a raccoon. It's not clear why the animal lost its fur, though there are several diseases that can cause hair loss.

This is not the first time that a hairless raccoon has been (initially) misidentified as a monster. The so-called "Montauk Monster" was a strange creature that supposedly washed ashore on a beach in Montauk, New York, in July 2008. A photo of the odd animal circulated around the Web and became the subject of national media interest. Some thought it was a hoax; others believe that the photo depicted a pig, while others vaguely and cryptically suggest that the animal is somehow a result of "biological warfare."

Darren Naish, a British paleontologist, examined photos of the animal and concluded it was a raccoon: "The Montauk monster... owes its bizarre appearance to partial decomposition," Naish said. "The tendency for the soft tissues of the snout to be lost early on in decomposition immediately indicates that the 'beak' is just a defleshed snout region: we're actually seeing the naked premaxillary bones. The match for a raccoon is perfect once we compare the dentition and proportions. The Montauk animal has lost its upper canines and incisors (you can even see the empty sockets), and raccoons are actually surprisingly leggy (claims that the limb proportions of the Montauk carcass are unlike those of raccoons are not correct)."

It seems that a dead, hairless raccoon on Long Island will be called the Montauk Monster, while the same unfortunate beast in Texas will become the fearsome chupacabra. It is not surprising that people could not identify the dead animals, since most people have never seen a dead, hairless raccoon.

Once again science shows that ordinary decay can create extraordinary monsters.

Sorry, Siam, it is a hairless raccoon. Yep!

Chupacabra Debunked! It's a Hairless Raccoon: Biologist
By OMAR VILLAFRANCA
Updated 9:11 PM CST, Tue, Jan 19, 2010

Joe Duty/WiseCountyMessenger.com

A biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said Tuesday morning that the alleged Runaway Bay chupacabra is a hairless raccoon, the Wise County Messenger reports.

The chupacabra (Spanish translation: goat sucker), is a "mythical" animal that preys on goats and other livestock in the dark of night. Wildlife biologist Jennifer Barrow told the paper that "the feet, skull and dental formation all matched a raccoon."

Barrow didn't speculate as to how the animal lost its hair, since it did not appear to have the mange. She said the raccoon is simply “an anomaly.”

According to a previous story in the Wise County Messenger, a local veterinarian couldn't identify the balding, funky-snouted looking beast.

A video has also surfaced of the dead animal being prodded and examined by the folks who found it (hat tip to Barry Green's blog Liberally Lean from the Land of Dairy Queen for the video).

With unexplained chupacabra sightings becoming less and less rare, folks in Runaway Bay, and elsewhere, may not be so quick to accept the biologists findings.

The four-legged creature now believed to be a raccoon was found on a golf course over the weekend.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/weird/Hide-Your-Goats-Alleged-Chupacabra-Found-in-North-Texas-82001187.html

See this blog for pictures:

We got this little girl in the shelter. We stood around her not knowing what she was. I have never seen anything like her before. She reached her hand out to grab something that I was holding and her hand looked like a raccoon's hand. Then when we were transferring her into a different cage she growled, at that point I was pretty sure she was a hairless raccoon. Someone from Fish and Game came to pick her up and confirmed that she is a hairless raccoon. She has some genetic abnormality. She was taken to a sanctuary and when she is settled in I want to go and see her to get better pictures of her. The ones I got today are not that good because we could not handle her.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=241101600&blogId=412852683

What The...!

It's either a Kangaroo or a Wallaby. We had one get away from it's owner last summer, and it ran with the deer all summer. I would think in the fall a coyote got it, or a lynx. In any case it wouldn't have made the winter, too cold here.