Contrary to the imagination of many people, the culprit who used to suck blood and kill cattle in many countries around the world is just wild dogs with scabies, not fierce monsters.
The body of a stray dog with scabies. (Photo: Discovery).
Discovery said the mystical stories about chupacabras - meaning ' goat blood sucker ' in Spanish - started after people discovered sheep carcasses with three deep holes in the chest in Puerto Rico and Mexico in 1995. Those holes made the animals' blood run out.
Animal corpses with body holes continue to be found in parts of the Americas such as Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua and the United States. A similar phenomenon is even seen in countries outside the Americas such as Russia, Ukraine and Spain. Many claim that they see strange animals shaped like dogs, rats or reptiles - with long noses, large fangs, black or blue-gray fangs and an unpleasant smell.
The public opinion that these strange animals killed animals. Even many people in Latin America speculate that the chupacabra " beast " is an unintended product of a secret scientific work carried out in the forest of Puerto Rico. It is thought that they use their fangs to poke at their prey and suck blood.
Barry Oconnor , a biologist at the University of Michigan in the US, and colleagues have been studying chupacabra for years. After sequencing scientific evidence, he concluded that chupacabra was wild dogs with scabies. The perpetrators of dog scabies are ticks.
When the ticks land on wild dogs, they cause skin infections that make the dog's skin become thicker, and more sores appear on the skin of the dog. Inflammation causes blood to not reach the hair follicles, so the hair falls off. In severe cases, bacteria can enter the skin and cause secondary infection. Bacterial infections of bacteria create stench.
But why do stray dogs attack cattle?
' Because wild dogs suffer from scabies very weak, they have difficulty in hunting. Therefore, many children are forced to attack cattle because they are more vulnerable targets than rabbits or deer, 'Oconnor explained.
Wild dogs are not the only species with scabies. Many other animals, like squirrels, are also attacked. In the United States, squirrels often hang on the roads near the forest. Squirrels with scabies are so weak that they are often killed by cars because they cannot afford to escape whenever cars rush.
Watch videos of Chupacabra species