07-16-2010, 03:48 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJuTVYw_f1M
For some residents of north Texas, the legend of the chupacabra (sometimes spelled "chupacabras") just grew a tad more fearsome. But for a Texas State University biologist who has tested alleged chupacabra DNA, the latest sightings of the mythical monsters is just more proof that "people are strange."
Mike Forstner has seen it all before. In 2007, he was called in to test the DNA of what had been termed the Cuero chupacabra, an odd carcass found out in the brush that had stirred fears of real-life monsters prowling the desert.
"Turned out to be a coyote," Forstner told Surge Desk. "Just like the tests on these new animals will find."
The new claims of chupacabra (the name roughly translates as "goat-sucker") in our midst come from Hood County, Texas, where two caninelike animals were killed this week and have been sent to a lab for DNA testing.
As reported by WOAI news, the physical appearance of the animals is enough to stir rumors of monsters.
"All I know is, it wasn't normal," Animal Control Officer Frank Hackett, who shot one of the animals in a local rancher's barn, told WOAI. "It was ugly, real ugly. I'm not going to lie on that one."
While Forstner doesn't argue with the aesthetic description of the animals shot in Hood County, his explanation is decidedly less mystical than some residents.
"We're either going to find out that they're a Mexican hairless dog species, and may have been someone's pet, or that they're coyotes," Forstner said.
According to Forstner, claims of chupacabra sightings are not uncommon in rural Texas, where poaching coyote and dog species are a part of daily life.
"There are people who are emotionally involved in these animals being something that they aren't, for whatever reason," Forstner said. "Jim Morrison had it right: People are strange."