The Mystery of the Chupacabras Revealed

Chupacabras are mysterious creatures that attack and drink the blood of livestock, especially goats, or at least this is what people believed until now.

Barry Oconnor, a biologist from the University of Michigan, says that the real monster is not the hairless, fanged animal that attacks goats, but rather a small eight-legged creature, that transforms animals into chupacabras.

The chupacabras were spotted in Latin America and in some areas of the US, but after scientists studied some of their carcasses, they realized that the 'monsters' actually were coyotes with a severe case of mange – a skin disease caused by mites getting under the skin.

OConnor studied these mites and found an explanation to why they affect coyotes so badly, that they turn them into monsters.

He explained that this mite is called Sarcoptes scabiei, and it's the same that also causes the itchy rash known as scabies in people.

Human scabies is not a serious health problem as our bodies are mainly hairless and also because on a given person, there only 20 or 30 mites.

Humans also developed defenses against scabies, so when they started domesticating wild animals, the Sarcoptes scabiei found new potential victims.

Evolution helped domestic dogs, just like humans, to develop the ability of fighting mange off but the other wild members of the dog family, like wolves, foxes and coyotes were not so lucky.

OConnor, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and also a curator in the U-M Museum of Zoology said that “whenever you have a new host-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 parasite, so it has not been able to evolve any defenses like we have.”

He adds that these animals develop a thicker skin because of the inflammation caused by the large number of mites under the skin, which leads to less blood supply for hair follicles and this is why they loose their fur.

If the case is really bad, bacteria causing secondary skin infections appears, which adds a foul odor to the picture.

When all this is put together, you get the legendary monster – the chupacabras.

The researcher also found an explanation to the goats' attacks; he said that “because these animals are greatly weakened, they're going to have a hard time hunting.

“So they may be forced into attacking livestock because it's easier than running down a rabbit or a deer.”