When a photo of a chupacabra appears in the news , it tends to be a shriveled , hairless , eyetooth - look corpse . According to University of Michigan biologist Barry OConnor , these chupacabra corpse are simply coyotes with sarcoptic mange ( a.k.a . scabies ) .
The scabies touch is an irritation for humans and domesticated dog but can be devastating for wild dogs — the mites cause skin inflammation , hairlessness , and peel infections , which explains the chupacabras mottled coming into court and horrific torso odor . what is more , stock becomes a more attractive food source for the infected coyotes , as they do n’t have to expend as much energy chasing them down . Says OConnor :
Whenever you have a new horde - parasite association , it ’s pretty nasty [ … ] It does a lot of damage , and mortality can be relatively high because that host species has not had any evolutionary history with the sponge , so it has not been able to develop any defense force like we have [ … ] So they may be forced into attacking farm animal because it ’s easier than run down a hare or a cervid .
While this is n’t exactly surprising news program , it ’s always welcome to get word the science of the legendary goat - sucker . Now all we need is a intellectual account for the Mothman .
[ ViaDiscovery . Photo via Phylis Canion viaCryptomundo . ]
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