The chupacabra, Spanish for “goat sucker”, has rocketed up the ladder in cryptozoology fame. In less than twenty years since its first reported
attacks on farm animals, it has gone from an unknown to being on the same plateau of fame as such cryptids as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. It
is perhaps the first cryptid that credits its fame to the internet age and television. It was a favorite topic of early 90’s conspiracy theory show
“Sightings” and its status as an unknown in the world of cryptozoology has had many people intrigued ever since. The Chupacabra has been refered
to as the “Latin American Bigfoot” as it has attained that level of popularity and brand name. I am here to say it is the “Latin American
Bigfoot” in another manner. That it is a nonexistent creature crafted from mythology, hoaxes, and faulty eyewitnesses.
However, what real evidence is there for the chupacabra? Attacks that have been blamed on the chupacabra have been recorded from Puerto Rico to
Russia. In addition, samples of “evidence” have been collected, ranging from hair samples to the infamous Cuero,TX chupacabras. However, all of
the evidence has pointed to it coming from either a domestic dog or coyotes. In addition, there are the numerous photoshops that have always turn up
every few months on the cryptozoology board.
Eyewitness reports of the chupacabra present an even greater mystery. The ones reported in Puerto Rico describe it as like something of a love child
between the Greys and Reptilians. It is a small bipedal creature with large glowing eyes, and with reptilian skin and spikes. The more common
descripition that has occurred as of recently is that of a creature that resembles a hairless dog. It is a four legged animal with pronounced canines,
and a hairless, seemingly distorted skin. The second has been sighted most prevalently in Texas, and is the type that were presented as evidence in
Cuero.
The fossil record shows no records for such a creature like the one so often described in the Puerto Rican attacks. In fact, if such a creature were
discovered it would represent perhaps an entirely new Class or Family not previously known to science.
The Texas Chupacabra seems like a much more likely candidate as it may simply represent an unknown species or subspecies of canine. However, how
likely is it that such a beast would still remain undiscovered? In the over three hundred years since Europeans first colonized the North American
continent, the decimation of every apex predator has followed. The cougar has been exterminated east of the Mississippi River, save a small population
in south Florida. Wolves as a whole were gone from the lower forty eight states until reintroduction efforts put Gray Wolves in Yellowstone and Red
Wolves in North Carolina. The black bear has similarly been reduced to only being found in various national parks. What are the chances that a
creature that matches the description of the Texas Chupacabra would escape detection and as well suffer a similar fate as the animals mentioned
above?
In addition, the chupacabra’s own feeding method would lead to its potential downfall. If its feeding method is accurate, it lives on a type of
hematophagy. Apart from being what would be the second recorded mammal, besides the vampire bat, that uses this as its primary feeding method.
However, it would be inconceivable for an animal of this size to use it. It is simply to ineffective to gain the nourishment simply from draining the
blood of other animals. It would need to gain nourishment from the meat as well.
In short, the Chupacabra is nothing more than a mismashing of various cultural beliefs and superstitions. At best, the eyewitness reports record of
two creatures that would both be finds of the century, and at worst show how unreliable eyewitness reports really are. No real physical evidence has
ever turned up. This is no deep sea resident where it can resident in uncounted areas of unexplored territory. Chupacabras would seemingly inhabit
various territories that have been occupied by humans for several millennia. Yet no real local legends speak of such a creature, and in addition, it
seems to appear out of nowhere. The Puerto Rican variant has no fossil evidence, and the Texas variant should have turned up by now. Simply, the
Chupacabra was an overzealous explanation for attacks on stock animals that was taken too far.
My only question, in spite of all of this, outside of holding out hope, how can their be a reasonable belief the Chupacabra exists?
I feel most of the information I have presented would be common knowledge to the members of this message board besides the details of hematophagy so I
will post a link to several websites I felt helpful
en.wikipedia.org...
www.darkbanquet.com...
Challenge Match: americandingbat vs FSBlueApocalypse: "Mythbusters! Chupacabra Anyone?" , page 1
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reply posted on 26-10-2008 @ 07:59 PM by FSBlueApocalypse
First, I somehow had a mental lapse and forgot to give my proper respects in my opening statement. Thank you to americandingbat for accepting my
offer, as well as semperfortis for setting this up. Also, thank you to the judges for taking time to read and consider the arguments being presented.
The arguments with Hurricane Hugo seem as something of a post hoc ergo propter hoc, or “After this, therefore because of this” argument. This is a logical fallacy as there is no hard evidence to cobber ate the two. No evidence has shown up for a secret genetics research facility, whether run by the government or private enterprise.
In addition, eyewitness reports can easily be misinterpreted depending on the current mood and thoughts of the person seeing it. A party searching for a “Chupacabra” after one of the first attacks may come across a monkey or some other animal and be startled by it. Between it being at night and having a preset condition you are going to find a chupacabra would lead to distorting of facts.
Just to give you an idea of how credible eyewitness reports can be. I watched a show and they tested eyewitness testimony under the guise of a nature walk. About 2/3rds of the way, they passed by an area that has been pre-done to look like some kind of military accident. All that was there was yellow guard tape, a guard with a rifle, and some minor pieces of debris. When they gave their testimony a few weeks later, descriptions ranged from fairly accurate reproductions to saying there was a giant crash ship with bodies. In addition, I present to you this test of eyewitness reports. Watch the first video, then wait about 10 minutes to watch the second before making your choice.
www.psychology.iastate.edu...
The very source of the chupacrabra’s fame, the internet and television, also explains its sightings in places such as Russia or Chile. Say someone who reads about it on the web, then hears of a peculiar attack in their community? If accepting what he had just read as fact, they could make the conclusion that it must have been an attack by a chupacabra?
My questions are
1. According to Occam’s Razor, citing the lack of any physical evidence, shouldn’t the eyewitness reports than be dismissed as simply either lies or misinterpretations?
2. How can you explain the Chupacabra’s apparent rapid advancement in less than twenty years? It has gone from a small island nation to having sightings throughout the world?
The arguments with Hurricane Hugo seem as something of a post hoc ergo propter hoc, or “After this, therefore because of this” argument. This is a logical fallacy as there is no hard evidence to cobber ate the two. No evidence has shown up for a secret genetics research facility, whether run by the government or private enterprise.
In addition, eyewitness reports can easily be misinterpreted depending on the current mood and thoughts of the person seeing it. A party searching for a “Chupacabra” after one of the first attacks may come across a monkey or some other animal and be startled by it. Between it being at night and having a preset condition you are going to find a chupacabra would lead to distorting of facts.
Just to give you an idea of how credible eyewitness reports can be. I watched a show and they tested eyewitness testimony under the guise of a nature walk. About 2/3rds of the way, they passed by an area that has been pre-done to look like some kind of military accident. All that was there was yellow guard tape, a guard with a rifle, and some minor pieces of debris. When they gave their testimony a few weeks later, descriptions ranged from fairly accurate reproductions to saying there was a giant crash ship with bodies. In addition, I present to you this test of eyewitness reports. Watch the first video, then wait about 10 minutes to watch the second before making your choice.
www.psychology.iastate.edu...
The very source of the chupacrabra’s fame, the internet and television, also explains its sightings in places such as Russia or Chile. Say someone who reads about it on the web, then hears of a peculiar attack in their community? If accepting what he had just read as fact, they could make the conclusion that it must have been an attack by a chupacabra?
My questions are
1. According to Occam’s Razor, citing the lack of any physical evidence, shouldn’t the eyewitness reports than be dismissed as simply either lies or misinterpretations?
2. How can you explain the Chupacabra’s apparent rapid advancement in less than twenty years? It has gone from a small island nation to having sightings throughout the world?
reply posted on 29-10-2008 @ 08:27 PM by americandingbat
Second Round: The Chupacabra is Real
Since I missed my last post, I will begin by answering my opponent’s Socratic Questions from Round One:
Answer to Socratic Question 1.1
I often have difficulty wielding Occam’s Razor, so if this response is insufficiently direct I apologize. My answer is no, based both on my understanding of the philosophical principle and on real world experience.
First, we would have to evaluate each sighting individually to determine what the simplest explanation that accounts both for the observer’s belief that he or she saw something unfamiliar and for the apparent lack of physical evidence. The 1995 sighting in Puerto Rico, for example, left ample physical evidence in the form of exsanginated carcasses of chickens and goats. That they were not preserved for posterity is unfortunate, but does not render them dismissible.
That no further evidence of the beast itself has surfaced is as easily explained by its subsequent death or recapture as by its nonexistence, whereas its nonexistence leaves unexplained the experience of the witnesses.
Answer to Socratic Question 1.2
Indeed, the apparent spread of the Chupacabra throughout the Americas and even to Europe and Asia is impossible to explain – it simply has to have traveled through the airwaves and cables of television and Internet.
I agree with my opponent that it would be unlikely in the extreme for one animal, or even a small pack of animals, released on Puerto Rico in the early 1990s, to have spread to central Russia by 2007. Thus one of two things must be true: it has had human (or alien) help in its spread, or the animals described are not the same.
Questions Posed in Round 2
Although my opponent did not pose formal Socratic Questions in his second round response, I would like to address the questions he raised:
I think there are several possible answers to the question of where the chupacabras were before their fame spread. The first is that they have always been with us, but until the 1990s no connections were made between the sporadic reports of mysterious deaths among yard animals. It was not until the issue was raised on television and the beast given a name by a popular television personality that people could begin to identify their experience as a shared one.
The next possibility is, of course, that the chupacabra is a new species, either arising naturally, genetically engineered, or of extraterrestrial origin. There was more than enough time for the government to clean up and cover up any evidence of a genetics lab between the time of Hurricane Hugo and the first identified sightings of chupacabras, so the lack of evidence of one is not sufficient argument against the possibility. My opponent claims that it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials would keep chupacabras as pets – I would ask why not? If the extraterrestrials are at least enough like humans to seek military assistance in screening their presence from the population at large, is it unimaginable that they would keep pets? And why not chupacabras – humans keep much stranger pets indeed.
Also, there is the possibility of a demonic origin for the chupacabras. The sighting of a creature engaged in similar attacks on livestock in Puerto Rico in 1976 was originally described as a demon. Perhaps that early witness was indeed correct and was witness to an extra-dimensional entity that occasionally invades our reality to spread fear and confusion.
Finally, I would like to address an issue raised by my opponent in his opening statement: the diet of the chupacabra. One of the hallmarks of a chupacabra attack is clearly the exsanguination of livestock, notably poultry and goats. He argues that it would be impossible for a creature the size of a chupacabra to derive all its nourishment from blood, therefore it must not exist. I counter: it would be impossible, therefore it must eat something else in addition.
The attacks that are attributed to the chupacabras may be only a small part of its diet; it may more frequently steal an entire chicken, hunt for wild animals, or even supplement its diet with fish or vegetables. Such meals would hardly be reported to the authorities, and if reported would be filed as theft of livestock with no attribution.
I will leave my presentation at that, having answered I believe all the questions raised by my opponent in his opening and first two rounds.
Socratic Questions
1. Is absence of evidence, evidence of absence?
2. Could there be two or more distinct cryptids (hitherto unidentified animals) going under the name chupacabra?
3. If you saw an animal in your yard in clear daylight, would you be able to tell whether it was a species you had seen before?
4. Do you believe the military engages in covering-up secret projects?
5. Have you ever heard of an animal of identified species attacking and exsanguinating yard animals?
Note on sources
Everything I have used in my argument comes from numerous sources; the sources on this topic have overlapping information and often seem to have been cribbed directly from one another. Among others, I have used:
www.tinwiki.org...
www.wikipedia.org...
www.cryptomundo.com...
[edit on 10/29/2008 by semperfortis]
Since I missed my last post, I will begin by answering my opponent’s Socratic Questions from Round One:
My questions are
1. According to Occam’s Razor, citing the lack of any physical evidence, shouldn’t the eyewitness reports than be dismissed as simply either lies or misinterpretations?
2. How can you explain the Chupacabra’s apparent rapid advancement in less than twenty years? It has gone from a small island nation to having sightings throughout the world?
Answer to Socratic Question 1.1
I often have difficulty wielding Occam’s Razor, so if this response is insufficiently direct I apologize. My answer is no, based both on my understanding of the philosophical principle and on real world experience.
First, we would have to evaluate each sighting individually to determine what the simplest explanation that accounts both for the observer’s belief that he or she saw something unfamiliar and for the apparent lack of physical evidence. The 1995 sighting in Puerto Rico, for example, left ample physical evidence in the form of exsanginated carcasses of chickens and goats. That they were not preserved for posterity is unfortunate, but does not render them dismissible.
That no further evidence of the beast itself has surfaced is as easily explained by its subsequent death or recapture as by its nonexistence, whereas its nonexistence leaves unexplained the experience of the witnesses.
Answer to Socratic Question 1.2
Indeed, the apparent spread of the Chupacabra throughout the Americas and even to Europe and Asia is impossible to explain – it simply has to have traveled through the airwaves and cables of television and Internet.
I agree with my opponent that it would be unlikely in the extreme for one animal, or even a small pack of animals, released on Puerto Rico in the early 1990s, to have spread to central Russia by 2007. Thus one of two things must be true: it has had human (or alien) help in its spread, or the animals described are not the same.
Questions Posed in Round 2
Although my opponent did not pose formal Socratic Questions in his second round response, I would like to address the questions he raised:
Additionally, where were these Chupacabras the entire time before their sudden arrival onto the scene in cryptozoology? There is no evidence of a destroyed genetics lab or animal center in the wake of a hurricane, and the extreme unlikelihood of these creatures being the pets of extraterrestrials would indicate that these are naturally originating animals or figments of our imagination. Are we to believe an animal that matches the description of the Puerto Rican chupacabra would not escape both local legend and a flurry of European explorers seeking the fame of its capture?
I think there are several possible answers to the question of where the chupacabras were before their fame spread. The first is that they have always been with us, but until the 1990s no connections were made between the sporadic reports of mysterious deaths among yard animals. It was not until the issue was raised on television and the beast given a name by a popular television personality that people could begin to identify their experience as a shared one.
The next possibility is, of course, that the chupacabra is a new species, either arising naturally, genetically engineered, or of extraterrestrial origin. There was more than enough time for the government to clean up and cover up any evidence of a genetics lab between the time of Hurricane Hugo and the first identified sightings of chupacabras, so the lack of evidence of one is not sufficient argument against the possibility. My opponent claims that it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials would keep chupacabras as pets – I would ask why not? If the extraterrestrials are at least enough like humans to seek military assistance in screening their presence from the population at large, is it unimaginable that they would keep pets? And why not chupacabras – humans keep much stranger pets indeed.
Also, there is the possibility of a demonic origin for the chupacabras. The sighting of a creature engaged in similar attacks on livestock in Puerto Rico in 1976 was originally described as a demon. Perhaps that early witness was indeed correct and was witness to an extra-dimensional entity that occasionally invades our reality to spread fear and confusion.
Finally, I would like to address an issue raised by my opponent in his opening statement: the diet of the chupacabra. One of the hallmarks of a chupacabra attack is clearly the exsanguination of livestock, notably poultry and goats. He argues that it would be impossible for a creature the size of a chupacabra to derive all its nourishment from blood, therefore it must not exist. I counter: it would be impossible, therefore it must eat something else in addition.
The attacks that are attributed to the chupacabras may be only a small part of its diet; it may more frequently steal an entire chicken, hunt for wild animals, or even supplement its diet with fish or vegetables. Such meals would hardly be reported to the authorities, and if reported would be filed as theft of livestock with no attribution.
I will leave my presentation at that, having answered I believe all the questions raised by my opponent in his opening and first two rounds.
Socratic Questions
1. Is absence of evidence, evidence of absence?
2. Could there be two or more distinct cryptids (hitherto unidentified animals) going under the name chupacabra?
3. If you saw an animal in your yard in clear daylight, would you be able to tell whether it was a species you had seen before?
4. Do you believe the military engages in covering-up secret projects?
5. Have you ever heard of an animal of identified species attacking and exsanguinating yard animals?
Note on sources
Everything I have used in my argument comes from numerous sources; the sources on this topic have overlapping information and often seem to have been cribbed directly from one another. Among others, I have used:
www.tinwiki.org...
www.wikipedia.org...
www.cryptomundo.com...
[edit on 10/29/2008 by semperfortis]
reply posted on 1-11-2008 @ 09:56 AM by americandingbat
Third Round: The Chupacabra is Real
In this round I will be focusing on two issues which have become important in this debate: the question of how to choose between or among different explanations of phenomena, and the reliability of eyewitness testimony.
I) Occam’s Razor
FSBlueApocalypse wrote in his last round:
My problem with this presentation is that I don’t agree with the either/or paradigm that my opponent has erected. To me the most unlikely assumption is that all the eyewitnesses are acting with the same motivation or have had the same experience.
In other words, I think it is most likely that a few people have seen something that has not been identified, a lot of people have been mistaken, and some people have lied.
Occam’s Razor is usually used to distinguish the more likely of two explanations. Given the two explanations that my opponent has presented, clearly it is more likely that everyone is mistaken that that a brand new beast has mysteriously appeared from central Russia to Michigan to Puerto Rico to Chile, looking different in each place and with no regard for the differences in climate, spent a couple months exsanguinating goats and chickens, and then disappeared for months or years, apparently without further need for nourishment.
But there is no need for this explanation. Real world situations seldom have only two possible explanations, and this is one with many. Occam’s razor must be applied over and over again, with reference to each sighting and each possibility, if we are not to overlook the truth.
By way of illustration, I will return to my opponent’s story about a woman walking home after a night of drinking and waking up the next morning with a bruised knee. He claims that the reasonable explanation is a stumble on the walk home rather than an alien abduction. Indeed if I were in that situation I would assume I had stumbled. But what if I then found that my bag was missing, with my cash inside it? It is still quite possible that I stumbled, and that I dropped the bag in the stumble. Or I could have forgotten the bag earlier, and stumbled on the way home. But another possibility begins to emerge also, and I don’t think it would be too unreasonable of me to wonder if I might have been mugged.
II) Eyewitness Testimony
There are two major types of eyewitness testimony involved in accounts of the chupacabra. The first and more obvious is that of people who believe that they have seen the beast itself. It is this testimony on which my opponent has focused his arguments about the unreliability of eyewitnesses and I will address this first.
Unfortunately for my opponent, studies about the reliability of eyewitnesses tend to be concerned with identification of humans in a court of law, which makes their results very hard to apply to the case of identification of species of animal. There can be really no comparison between trying to identify which of several similarly-featured men one saw on a rooftop, and determining whether the animal in the yard is of a type one is familiar with or not. This was the point that I was trying to get across with my Socratic Question, and my opponent has answered:
He offers as a cautionary tale a story of the escape of bearcats in his hometown:
Again, the situation is not really the same. These people were not asked to describe an animal that they had seen clearly – in all likelihood, most of the calls were from people who had done no more than seen some motion in the woods and wanted to make sure the authorities checked it out. I would expect people under those circumstances to be calling in every strange noise or glimpsed stray.
What we have in the matter of the chupacabra is not only people who heard something, or saw something, and called for help. We have people who say they had an unimpeded view of a creature they had never before seen or heard of, in some cases stationary and in daylight. While it is possible that such identifications are mistakes, it is nowhere near as likely as when one has nothing to go on but a tail vanishing into bushes at midnight.
The second sort of eyewitness testimony is the accounts of people who found the victims of the chupacabras. While it would of course be more convincing to have the bodies of the animals killed to test in a laboratory, we cannot simply ignore the fact that hundreds of animals have been reported slaughtered, with the defining characteristics of the attacks being puncture wounds to the neck or head, exsanguination and occasional organ removal, and disinterest in the rest of the meat.
AVParanormal.com
My opponent has complained that the eyewitnesses were predisposed to see something unusual, and that this prejudice caused them to mistake a common animal for a chupacabra. But he is forgetting that they had already become eyewitnesses before they saw the beast – eyewitnesses to the abnormal slaughter of their animals. The reason they knew to look for something unusual was that they already had unusual evidence.
Detail from a screen capture from MonsterQuest: Chupacabra
With this in mind, let us turn to the show that FSBlueApocalypse cites, and look at it as a case study in eyewitness accounts of unusual livestock predation. Bear in mind that this is a case that has apparently been solved to everyone’s satisfaction, the predator in question having been captured in a cell phone photograph and identified as a cougar.
The story begins fifty years ago, with reports of farm animals and domestic dogs being killed by a beast that is never seen, but is capable of “crushing skulls and draining blood.” The beast is never found, and eventually the animal deaths end.
In 2007, over a 200-mile swath of territory in North Carolina, similar killings are reported. Livestock, including goats and sheep, and dogs – even healthy, stocky pit bulls – are killed with ease, their necks gouged or crushed, and sometimes gutted. There no references specifically to exsanguinations – the attention-grabbing name “the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro” is given to the unknown predator because of its resemblance to the 1950s terror.
No one can explain this new rash of killings. Another dog or a wild canine could possibly cause the injuries seen, but not without a struggle, and not without alerting neighboring dogs, and not over such a large area. And there are no other logical possibilities: as my opponent pointed out in his opening, the cougar is known to have been extinct east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida for decades.
Now, the show reports:
(MonsterQuest: Vampire Beast, at about 2 minutes into the segment)
Experts in wildlife, animal behavior, animal tracks, animal sounds, are all consulted. Trackers are hired and video cameras and traps are set to no avail. It is not until someone happens to catch sight of the predator and take a snapshot with his cell phone camera that the unexpected is accepted: the animal is a cougar.
Image source
Cougar Fact Sheet
So we have a situation in which there is a rash of frightening and seemingly inexplicable animal killings are followed by eyewitness descriptions of a beast that are more or less ignored as impossible. And in the end, those descriptions are remarkably accurate – a brown animal, cat-faced, with fangs and claws, about four and one-half feet in length.
Perhaps eyewitnesses are not so unreliable in these situations after all?
In this round I will be focusing on two issues which have become important in this debate: the question of how to choose between or among different explanations of phenomena, and the reliability of eyewitness testimony.
I) Occam’s Razor
FSBlueApocalypse wrote in his last round:
An answer to my opponents questions on Occam’s Razor. Occam’s Razor states that an explanation make as few assumptions as possible. For instance, if you go out drinking at a bar and walk home, if you wake up with a bruised and scraped knee, which requires more assumptions, that you fell in your drunken stupor or that you were abducted by aliens? It works the same way with the chupacabra. Either everyone ha s seen a creature totally new to science, which may or may not be an experiment of the government or extraterrestrial pet, or that people are simply lying to get on TV or mistaken. Which makes more assumptions?
My problem with this presentation is that I don’t agree with the either/or paradigm that my opponent has erected. To me the most unlikely assumption is that all the eyewitnesses are acting with the same motivation or have had the same experience.
In other words, I think it is most likely that a few people have seen something that has not been identified, a lot of people have been mistaken, and some people have lied.
Occam’s Razor is usually used to distinguish the more likely of two explanations. Given the two explanations that my opponent has presented, clearly it is more likely that everyone is mistaken that that a brand new beast has mysteriously appeared from central Russia to Michigan to Puerto Rico to Chile, looking different in each place and with no regard for the differences in climate, spent a couple months exsanguinating goats and chickens, and then disappeared for months or years, apparently without further need for nourishment.
But there is no need for this explanation. Real world situations seldom have only two possible explanations, and this is one with many. Occam’s razor must be applied over and over again, with reference to each sighting and each possibility, if we are not to overlook the truth.
By way of illustration, I will return to my opponent’s story about a woman walking home after a night of drinking and waking up the next morning with a bruised knee. He claims that the reasonable explanation is a stumble on the walk home rather than an alien abduction. Indeed if I were in that situation I would assume I had stumbled. But what if I then found that my bag was missing, with my cash inside it? It is still quite possible that I stumbled, and that I dropped the bag in the stumble. Or I could have forgotten the bag earlier, and stumbled on the way home. But another possibility begins to emerge also, and I don’t think it would be too unreasonable of me to wonder if I might have been mugged.
II) Eyewitness Testimony
There are two major types of eyewitness testimony involved in accounts of the chupacabra. The first and more obvious is that of people who believe that they have seen the beast itself. It is this testimony on which my opponent has focused his arguments about the unreliability of eyewitnesses and I will address this first.
Unfortunately for my opponent, studies about the reliability of eyewitnesses tend to be concerned with identification of humans in a court of law, which makes their results very hard to apply to the case of identification of species of animal. There can be really no comparison between trying to identify which of several similarly-featured men one saw on a rooftop, and determining whether the animal in the yard is of a type one is familiar with or not. This was the point that I was trying to get across with my Socratic Question, and my opponent has answered:
So, if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, and I got a good look at the animal, yes I believe I would be able to identity it without hesitation.
He offers as a cautionary tale a story of the escape of bearcats in his hometown:
Hundreds of calls claiming sightings were phoned in. Know what 95% of those calls turned out to be? People misidentifying common animals such as raccoons for the bearcats.
Again, the situation is not really the same. These people were not asked to describe an animal that they had seen clearly – in all likelihood, most of the calls were from people who had done no more than seen some motion in the woods and wanted to make sure the authorities checked it out. I would expect people under those circumstances to be calling in every strange noise or glimpsed stray.
What we have in the matter of the chupacabra is not only people who heard something, or saw something, and called for help. We have people who say they had an unimpeded view of a creature they had never before seen or heard of, in some cases stationary and in daylight. While it is possible that such identifications are mistakes, it is nowhere near as likely as when one has nothing to go on but a tail vanishing into bushes at midnight.
The second sort of eyewitness testimony is the accounts of people who found the victims of the chupacabras. While it would of course be more convincing to have the bodies of the animals killed to test in a laboratory, we cannot simply ignore the fact that hundreds of animals have been reported slaughtered, with the defining characteristics of the attacks being puncture wounds to the neck or head, exsanguination and occasional organ removal, and disinterest in the rest of the meat.
Even though the physical description of the Chupacabra varies among eyewitnesses, what has been dubbed as "the hallmark" of this beast is its style of attack. The carcasses of its victims are left intact, except for one thing--the puncture wound.
…
The most disturbing fact in these attacks is the purpose of the wound. The wound is the way the beast sucks all the blood out of the animal.
AVParanormal.com
My opponent has complained that the eyewitnesses were predisposed to see something unusual, and that this prejudice caused them to mistake a common animal for a chupacabra. But he is forgetting that they had already become eyewitnesses before they saw the beast – eyewitnesses to the abnormal slaughter of their animals. The reason they knew to look for something unusual was that they already had unusual evidence.
Detail from a screen capture from MonsterQuest: Chupacabra
With this in mind, let us turn to the show that FSBlueApocalypse cites, and look at it as a case study in eyewitness accounts of unusual livestock predation. Bear in mind that this is a case that has apparently been solved to everyone’s satisfaction, the predator in question having been captured in a cell phone photograph and identified as a cougar.
The story begins fifty years ago, with reports of farm animals and domestic dogs being killed by a beast that is never seen, but is capable of “crushing skulls and draining blood.” The beast is never found, and eventually the animal deaths end.
In 2007, over a 200-mile swath of territory in North Carolina, similar killings are reported. Livestock, including goats and sheep, and dogs – even healthy, stocky pit bulls – are killed with ease, their necks gouged or crushed, and sometimes gutted. There no references specifically to exsanguinations – the attention-grabbing name “the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro” is given to the unknown predator because of its resemblance to the 1950s terror.
No one can explain this new rash of killings. Another dog or a wild canine could possibly cause the injuries seen, but not without a struggle, and not without alerting neighboring dogs, and not over such a large area. And there are no other logical possibilities: as my opponent pointed out in his opening, the cougar is known to have been extinct east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida for decades.
Now, the show reports:
Witnesses have described a dark brown beast, four and a half feet long, with a face like a cat, claws like a dog, and teeth like a vampire.
(MonsterQuest: Vampire Beast, at about 2 minutes into the segment)
Experts in wildlife, animal behavior, animal tracks, animal sounds, are all consulted. Trackers are hired and video cameras and traps are set to no avail. It is not until someone happens to catch sight of the predator and take a snapshot with his cell phone camera that the unexpected is accepted: the animal is a cougar.
Image source
An adult cougar can range in length from 42 to 54 inches, with a 3-foot-long tail. Adult males weigh up to 200 pounds, and adult females up to 120 pounds.
Like all members of the cat family, cougars have five digits on the forepaw and four on the hindpaw. Each digit is equipped with a claw, which the cougar sheathes while walking, but which it uses with deadly effectiveness when grasping its prey.
Cougar Fact Sheet
So we have a situation in which there is a rash of frightening and seemingly inexplicable animal killings are followed by eyewitness descriptions of a beast that are more or less ignored as impossible. And in the end, those descriptions are remarkably accurate – a brown animal, cat-faced, with fangs and claws, about four and one-half feet in length.
Perhaps eyewitnesses are not so unreliable in these situations after all?
reply posted on 2-11-2008 @ 05:00 AM by americandingbat
The Chupacabra is Real: Closing Statement
It seems my opponent and I will each leave this debate somewhat unsatisfied. For my part, I sincerely regret missing the first round of the debate and having had to narrow my focus on that account.
I also regret that my opponent and I seem to be talking at cross-purposes about both philosophical and psychological principles.
Throughout this debate, FSBlueApocalypse has appealed to the principle of Occam’s Razor, alleging that it directly supports his theory that all the reported sightings of the chupacaba were actually lies or cases of the mistaken identification of a common animal. Now he objects to my assertion that “Occam’s Razor is usually used to distinguish the more likely of two explanations,” saying:
Note that I did not deny that it could be used to determine the best among many, but merely was drawing attention to the fact that, at least as used by my opponent, it requires serial applications, somewhat like an eye exam: “Is this better, or that? Okay, that or this? B or D?” and so on. I do not want to waste too much space in this closing on this question; rather, I would beg the reader’s forgiveness for the abuse the principle has taken in this debate and summarize its application here thusly:
My opponent claims that because in the few cases in which physical evidence has been collected and examined (note that these mainly consist of the Texan mangy-dog/coyote/wolf “chupacabras”) it has not supported the identification of the beast in that instance as a new or unknown creature, it is most reasonable to conclude that this would be the case in all the thousands of other sightings and killings.
All I can really answer is, how do you figure that? Without calling on medieval philosophy, but only on common sense, how can you argue that the lack of evidence in one place has any bearing on the existence or non-existence of a creature described very differently in a geographically distinct area?
The second topic on which we seem to be at cross-purposes in this debate is of course in the matter of the eyewitness testimony. My opponent seems to have missed entirely my point in my last response, which was that we should look at why the eyewitnesses went out in the expectation of finding an unusual creature: they already knew they had an unusual situation on their hands from the unusual circumstances of the animal deaths.
Moreover, I have offered the example of the North Carolina cougar attacks as a gauge on how badly affected eyewitness testimony was in a very similar situation to what occurred in Puerto Rico in 1995. The answer was, hardly at all: witnesses described a cat-like beast about four and one-half feet long, brown, with fangs and claws. The perpetrator was indeed a large cat, about four and one-half feet long, brown, with fangs and claws.
We have really not had a chance to get into the most interesting parts of the chupacabra phenomena, which are the reports of captures of chupacabra by government officials in Puerto Rico and in Chile, and the subsequent denial of such captures; reports of UFO activity over Puerto Rico before the rash of sightings in the mid-1990s; and similar reports of creatures distant in both space and time – from the early years of this century in Russia, to Aztec and Mayan carvings of vampire-like beasts – which raise the question of whether the chupacabra could be the latest appearance of a sort of demon that has been seen for centuries.
In short, my opponent has left us without a credible alternative explanation for the facts: thousands of slaughtered and exsanguinated animals on an island in 1995, and hundreds of sightings of a strange beast – including that of Madeline Tolentino and her neighbors in Campo Rico (recounted in many sources, including www.geocities.com...[/url" target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">here), who saw the creature in the middle of the street at about 3 P.M. and got a good look at it before it ran away at great speed.
Whether credible evidence has been turned in to reputable modern laboratories or not, no one seems to doubt that thousands of animals died. Yet my opponent, for all his love of reasonable explanations, has not offered a single counter-explanation to the chupacabra.
I finish my closing where I finished my opening: something out of the ordinary occurred that demands an explanation. The only explanation we have seen in this debate is the chupacabra – the strange beast described by many residents of Puerto Rico in that year.
It remains an open question what exactly that beast is – whether it is a recurrence of the monster that plagued the island in the mid-1970s, a new natural species, a genetic mutant, engineered or accidental, a creature of extra-terrestrial origin, or a demon.
To each person reading this, depending on their own experiences, some of those will sound credible and some incredible. But the fact remains that each is at least an explanation.
And even in the least dexterous hands, Occam’s Razor is usually used to decide between or among explanations, not between an explanation and no explanation at all.
As far as we have seen, the only reasonable explanation is, the Chupacabra is real.
It seems my opponent and I will each leave this debate somewhat unsatisfied. For my part, I sincerely regret missing the first round of the debate and having had to narrow my focus on that account.
I also regret that my opponent and I seem to be talking at cross-purposes about both philosophical and psychological principles.
Throughout this debate, FSBlueApocalypse has appealed to the principle of Occam’s Razor, alleging that it directly supports his theory that all the reported sightings of the chupacaba were actually lies or cases of the mistaken identification of a common animal. Now he objects to my assertion that “Occam’s Razor is usually used to distinguish the more likely of two explanations,” saying:
First, Occam’s Razor can be used to determine any number of possible answers, not just one or another. It does not matter if there are two explanations or one billion, Occam’s Razor applies to every case. The answer that makes the fewest assumptions and highest probability is best.
Note that I did not deny that it could be used to determine the best among many, but merely was drawing attention to the fact that, at least as used by my opponent, it requires serial applications, somewhat like an eye exam: “Is this better, or that? Okay, that or this? B or D?” and so on. I do not want to waste too much space in this closing on this question; rather, I would beg the reader’s forgiveness for the abuse the principle has taken in this debate and summarize its application here thusly:
My opponent claims that because in the few cases in which physical evidence has been collected and examined (note that these mainly consist of the Texan mangy-dog/coyote/wolf “chupacabras”) it has not supported the identification of the beast in that instance as a new or unknown creature, it is most reasonable to conclude that this would be the case in all the thousands of other sightings and killings.
All I can really answer is, how do you figure that? Without calling on medieval philosophy, but only on common sense, how can you argue that the lack of evidence in one place has any bearing on the existence or non-existence of a creature described very differently in a geographically distinct area?
The second topic on which we seem to be at cross-purposes in this debate is of course in the matter of the eyewitness testimony. My opponent seems to have missed entirely my point in my last response, which was that we should look at why the eyewitnesses went out in the expectation of finding an unusual creature: they already knew they had an unusual situation on their hands from the unusual circumstances of the animal deaths.
Moreover, I have offered the example of the North Carolina cougar attacks as a gauge on how badly affected eyewitness testimony was in a very similar situation to what occurred in Puerto Rico in 1995. The answer was, hardly at all: witnesses described a cat-like beast about four and one-half feet long, brown, with fangs and claws. The perpetrator was indeed a large cat, about four and one-half feet long, brown, with fangs and claws.
We have really not had a chance to get into the most interesting parts of the chupacabra phenomena, which are the reports of captures of chupacabra by government officials in Puerto Rico and in Chile, and the subsequent denial of such captures; reports of UFO activity over Puerto Rico before the rash of sightings in the mid-1990s; and similar reports of creatures distant in both space and time – from the early years of this century in Russia, to Aztec and Mayan carvings of vampire-like beasts – which raise the question of whether the chupacabra could be the latest appearance of a sort of demon that has been seen for centuries.
In short, my opponent has left us without a credible alternative explanation for the facts: thousands of slaughtered and exsanguinated animals on an island in 1995, and hundreds of sightings of a strange beast – including that of Madeline Tolentino and her neighbors in Campo Rico (recounted in many sources, including www.geocities.com...[/url" target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">here), who saw the creature in the middle of the street at about 3 P.M. and got a good look at it before it ran away at great speed.
Whether credible evidence has been turned in to reputable modern laboratories or not, no one seems to doubt that thousands of animals died. Yet my opponent, for all his love of reasonable explanations, has not offered a single counter-explanation to the chupacabra.
I finish my closing where I finished my opening: something out of the ordinary occurred that demands an explanation. The only explanation we have seen in this debate is the chupacabra – the strange beast described by many residents of Puerto Rico in that year.
It remains an open question what exactly that beast is – whether it is a recurrence of the monster that plagued the island in the mid-1970s, a new natural species, a genetic mutant, engineered or accidental, a creature of extra-terrestrial origin, or a demon.
To each person reading this, depending on their own experiences, some of those will sound credible and some incredible. But the fact remains that each is at least an explanation.
And even in the least dexterous hands, Occam’s Razor is usually used to decide between or among explanations, not between an explanation and no explanation at all.
As far as we have seen, the only reasonable explanation is, the Chupacabra is real.
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