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Catch-all cryptids

Among the few things I’ve noticed while following the history of certain cryptids for many years is how the same supposed creature changes in description over time. Considering that no one has captured a cryptid to carefully document is, we don’t actually know the details of what they look like. Therefore, each telling of a story, or imaginative depiction, adds or subtracts a feature which can be carried on or dropped in the next iteration.

If you have not yet sensed a theme in the 12 days of cryptids, here it is: cryptids are creatures of culture, not so much of zoology. It is expected their descriptions will change in response to cultural trends and influences because stories are their flesh and blood.

No cryptid exhibits this better than the chupacabra. That’s where I’ll start with the idea of catch-all cryptids.

Chupacabras – the leader in catch-all cryptids

Head back to this first post in this series to get the story of Type 1 (spiky alien) and Type 2 (hairless dog) chupas. However, the chupa is still changing. Checking on the latest online art or objects for sale, chupas increasingly look like dogmen… or are confused with anything that kills livestock. The 2025 chupacabra is becoming a blend of the two originally unique types with a heaping addition of testosterone.

Or you can even make it cute to appeal to younger crowds. Cute cryptids are certainly marketable.

You can depict a chupacabra in almost any way you want because its features always remained unclear. It was never pinned down to one description possibly because the initial description was improbable. Or, because the only lifelike visuals showed it as a dog.

The term chupacabra moved rapidily from Spanish speaking areas to English speaking areas and, in doing so, became culturally valuable meaning “any weird-looking or mysterious creature”. It was applied to rotting carcasses, diseased animals, and real animals that couldn’t be readily identified by the average person. The use of a new strange term for a mystery animal revealed how little people knew about wildlife and the animals around them. It also carried a scent of controversy that invited online commentary, generating sharing and clicks, enhancing the growing trend in conspiracies and mysteries, and providing a signal that something weird and possibly dangerous was around.

Various depictions of a chupacabra in media where anything goes:

There are other catch-all cryptids or monsters. Two in particular are ambiguous “monster” legends native to Australia and New Zealand.

Bunyip

Another perfect example of a changeable, anything goes cryptid/monster is the Australian bunyip. It is a spirit being of Aboriginal lore. However, when white colonists came to the continent and saw all the unique and astounding wildlife, they assumed that the bunyip was just another of these oddities. According to Quirk (2023, Folklore, 134:1), The continent certainly was teeming with bizarre and dangerous creatures, why not another one! Everyone heard of a “bunyip”, but no one saw it. What did it even look like? Apparently, it could look like nothing or anything.

Derived from ‘banib’ of the Wemba Wemba language of the people of Western Victoria, the descriptions varied wildly. The creature could be huge or small, and included characteristics of starfish, emu, platypus, alligator, seal, water rat, dugong, and bittern.
Mostly associated with water (a medium most able to hide a big unknown creature), rumors of the beast spread.

The bunyip, like other indigenous cryptids, both exists and does not exist – it’s a matter of worldview. When Europeans encountered these concepts in the framework of The Dreaming – the Australian Aboriginal mythology of the world – they had no Western analog. Belief in layered ideas of reality was not well-received by the white westerners, so they removed the bunyip from its context as a spirit creature and imposed their status upon it. (The term and concept of cryptid did not yet exist, but they assumed it was a mysterious animal). Quirk’s explanation painted a picture of a rich, culturally meaningful entity that was reduced to just another animal that the colonists must capture.

The bunyip was said to be aggressive and was feared because it ate people. The stories included supernatural qualities for the creature – it could hurt you with just its roar, it could change the water levels or even hypnotize people. The bunyip was associated with the mulyawonk, another pre-European Aboriginal idea, that represented a creature that inhabited Ngarrindjeri Country. When drownings occurred, people might still say the mulyawonk got him.

Being a water being, it was vulnerable to drought. Eventually, it became a symbol of respecting the environment, especially areas where waters were naturally dangerous, especially to children. The Bunyip was used as an excuse to not exploit natural resources.

Various depictions of a bunyip:

The term ‘bunyip’ was applied to monsters said to be aquatic, amphibious, or known from near water. Some indigenous tribes identified the bunyip as an emu-like animal, and others described a large, bulky, quadrupedal mammal with thick limbs and a short or absent tail. (From Naish, Hunting Monsters). Infamous Australian natural mystery monger, Rex Gilroy represented them as big cats or reptiles.

One idea about the identity of the bunyip was that it represented the cultural memory of people who lived alongside diprotodon, that died out around 46,000 years ago. If indigenous people lived alongside diprotodon for thousands of years, could that have influenced the story? Maybe. There is no way to tell for sure.

The bunyip was also used as a bogeyman to keep children close by. It eventually featured in popular children’s literature and for conservation purposes.

Occasional sighting were recorded, usually in the form of a seal-dog, but any mystery animal could be a bunyip. Some websites still consider the bunyip to be a genuine cryptid, although a bizarre, shapeshifting one.

Healy and Cropper’s Out of the Shadows has a wonderful chapter on the bunyip. They describe how serious scientific interest peaked in 1847 when a ‘bunyip skull’ was discovered. Oh, the scientists were going to pin it down, now! Upon scientific examination, however, the skull was found to be that of a calf. After this, scientific interest cooled. The term ‘bunyip’ became synonymous with a hoax or fraud. And, subsequently, it was used in pejorative political discourse.

The bunyip is important as an aboriginal tradition that was embraced by non-aboriginal Australians. Weinstein & Koolmatrie (2025, Folklore, 136:2) noted that the stories surrounding the bunyip had changed so much that, with the loss of traditional knowledge, tribal lore of today incorporated modern depictions of the monsters. This goes to show that monsters like the bunyip dwell, change, adapt, and may disappear, as the worlds in which they exist and function change.

Taniwha

Sailing from Australia to New Zealand, we find the taniwha acts as a monster of many forms and supernatural powers. Also a water creature, it can take the form of a whale, share, eel, dolphin, dragon, or log and lived in the sea, lakes, rivers or caves. Taniwha (pronounced TAN-ee-FA) was a spirit guardian or protector of the Maori, though it could also be dangerous. People made offerings to their local taniwha. Its depiction could resemble our idea of a dragon.

Early cryptozoologists were eager to strip away the myth and figure it as a real animal. Some thought it was a cultural memory of large monitor lizards that existed previously. Eberhart (Mysterious Creatures) mentioned the idea that could be an undiscovered population of giant gecko. Others assumed it was folklore developed from rare crocodile attacks, or that it was a prehistoric survivor, like a mosasaur. Magin (2016, Time and Mind, 9:3) writes of the comparison to the Loch Ness monster. He cites an article from the New Zealand Evening Post in December 1933, which labeled Nessie (all the rage that year) as a ‘Scottish Taniwha’. Today, he clarifies, Nessie has overtaken that tale in popularity. Every lake creature is a version of local “Nessie”.

When a rotting carcass was hauled up in 1977 by the Zuiyo Maru fishing vessel off the coast of Christchurch, people not only thought it was a plesiosaur, but also a taniwha.

Modern usage continues to invoke the taniwha as a protector. Local Maori will utilize the legend against disturbance from development.

• In 2002, the Ngāti Naho hapū in Waikato objected to construction of a highway in a particular area, because it would destroy the lair of one of their taniwha, known as Karutahi. Eventually, Transit New Zealand agreed to partially reroute the highway.
• The building of a prison in Ngāwhā, Northland, was also opposed in 2001 because of belief in a taniwha, Takauere, in the form of a log. The prison was built over the objections.

The taniwha remains culturally valuable no matter what form it takes.

Mapinguary

Finally, the mapinguary is a highly confusing creature of the Brazilian rainforests. Often listed as a cryptid, it is historically described as a supernatural creature – a giant, one-eyed, monster with a mouth in its belly and its feet facing backwards. Like the taniwha, the bunyip, and even the Sasquatch, it was seen as a protector of its domain from those who seek to exploit it.

Cryptozoologists like Heuvelmans and others stripped it of its more fantastical features and suggested it was a hairy anthropoid creature that just smelled bad, like a Bigfoot. You will find it categorized this way in cryptid media. More recently, however, Oren proposed it was an extant giant ground sloth based on the description of its size and large claws. Sloths don’t eat people, though. But, cryptozoologists will pick and choose their characteristics.

Making sense of ambiguous cryptids

Almost all cryptids can be extremely flexible in their definitions because they are unconfirmed. We can obviously see the wide variation of creatures that did not have what I might call an “anchoring” imagery -unlike the Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Surgeon’s photo. But even with these iconic touchstones, we see the framework spread to other varieties and evolve like the skunk ape, Momo, Yeti, etc. which eventually become their own things and continue to change with the times.

Why does this happen? To be frank, it’s because these are not real creatures. The descriptions are not converging over time, they are changing due to cultural trends.

For those who have an cryptid experience, they will attempt to make sense out what they see in terms of what they already know. If an experience defies immediate explanation, the brain will attempt to fill in the details based on existing experiences or cultural knowledge. Sometimes people know more about a legendary creature than biological creatures so the experience is said to be that of an encounter with Bigfoot, a dogman, a bunyip or a taniwha, depending upon where you are. Applying these categories make for easy references for the listener as well as the experiencer.

Ambiguous, catch-all cryptids are a problem for cryptozoology. But often they are made into opportunities to say there must be something going on here. The widespread belief is fallaciously assumed to represent a mysterious creature that will eventually be dragged out of the shadows and identified. However, the cryptid in the shadows has much more to do with human social interactions and our need for storytelling. We will always, therefore, have abundant mysterious monsters in the shadows.

This is part 11 of the 12 Days of Cryptids.

#12DaysOfCryptids #bunyip #chupacabra #mapinguary #taniwha

Chupacabra Rises and Evolves

Cryptids don’t become popular without important context and cultural influences that lift them up for all to see, and hold them there. The chupacabra (first known as El Chupacabras) is a complex mystery creature that has evolved and expanding in scope in response to social needs and cultural feedback. It has an amazing history that is still being written today.

The rise of El Chupacabras

Officially, the first cryptid that evolved on the Internet, the stories of El Chupacabras began in Puerto Rico in March 1995, when farmers noticed dead livestock, particularly chickens and goats. The prey was dead, apparently via neck bites, but were not consumed, leading to the idea that some vampiric beast had drained their blood. A previous vampire legend, known as the Moca Vampire, was prevalent in 1975. The same idea was applied to the new crisis, as blood sucking fiends were a cultural touchstone that people understood.

From the San Juan (Puerto Rico) Star (1996)

A couple of decade ago, the Moca monster was sucking blood of assorted animals around that small mountain town, while the garadiablo was a devilish looking creepy crawly from the lagoon seen in local swamplands. “This seems to be a very Caribbean phenomenon, especially of the Spanish-speaking islands,” said [Marvette Perez, curator of Hispanic history at the Smithsonian Institution’s American History Museum]. “It’s part of our folklore. It’s interesting that the chupacabras has not been found on the English-speaking islands, but has migrated only in places where people speak Spanish.

As with the Moca vampire, the subsequent El Chupacabras (or goat-sucker) beast was associated with alleged UFO sightings. The early speculation on the origins of the creature was not zoological, but supernatural, conspiratorial, cultural, and media-driven. The less dramatic and more likely explanation (that was put forward at the time, but ignored) was that the livestock was killed by feral dogs. The blood coagulates and pools inside the carcasses, leading people to think it was drained of blood. No mammal can suck blood. But the facts didn’t stand in the way of the evolution of a great story.

Things REALLY ramped up in Puerto Rico in August of 1995 when witness, Madelyne Tolentino said she saw a bizarre, reptilian, bipedal animal with spiky protrusions on its back, and big eyes. The account was linked to the livestock deaths and the “chupacabras” label, resulting in local panic and an explosion in media coverage. In January 1996, the story of the sightings was covered in the New York Times, kicking off chupa-mania.

The beast jumps to the mainland and changes form

Reports of strange animals surfaced in Mexico, Texas, and Florida – areas with Latino populations that had knowledge of the modern legend. Some cattle deaths that were previously linked to UFOs shifted to being ascribed to the mystery killer. But the move of the chupacabra (now with the shortened name) into the US also came with a change in its description. The original demonic, kangaroo-like, hopping, two legged monster (Type 1) transformed into “any weird strange looking animal”, most often a hairless quadruped (dog, coyote, raccoon, etc.) (Type 2). Over the next several years in the Fortean-zoology community, Type 2 creatures became known as the Texas Blue Dogs based on speculation that these animals may represent a hybrid or new species of canid.

It’s fitting that the original livestock deaths were attributed to dogs, and then the alien-like El Chupacabras description morphed into a strange-looking dog. Shortly, the Type 2 chupa provided something extremely rare in cryptozoology – actual specimens. Ranchers were able to spot and/or kill several of these animals, providing evidence as to what they actually were. The following are some of the most famous incidents:

• 2004. Elmendorf Beast. Caught in Elmendorf Texas by D. McAnally, the skin of the animal was bluish gray, hairless, and it had a severe overbite. Conclusion: a canid with mange, either a dog or coyote – the DNA was too degraded to be conclusive.
• 2006. Blanco Chupacabra. The unusual-looking animal shot in Blanco, Texas was taxidermied. It also had hairless dark gray skin. The mount later was displayed in oddities museums, including a Creationist museum for a while. DNA test results were not revealed, suggesting it likely came back as coyote, as expected.
• 2007. Cuero beast. Phyllis Canion had seen the live animal that later turned up dead near her property. She had it taxidermied and the DNA tested, twice. The first results showed it was a coyote but she did not agree. The second test also returned “coyote” but with a possible trace of Mexican red wolf. Focusing on that hybridity, she still calls it a “chupacabras” and points out its strange tail glands and other odd features.
• 2008. The Sheriff in Dewitt County, Texas shot a dashcam video of a hairless, gray canid running on road. The animal has a severe overbite and it didn’t look like a usual coyote. This led to news media promoting the animal in terms of the chupacabras legend.
• 2015. The Rockdale, Texas creature was killed by Philip Oliveira’s dogs. The verdict was mangey coyote. The pattern was now well established.

The non-controversial zoological explanation is that these animals are coyotes or coy-dog hybrids, maybe some are Mexican hairless dogs. The hairlessness in many cases is caused by mange. Note the overbite mentioned frequently. This is a genetic defect of the jaw, making the snout look abnormal and resulting in the unfortunate animals having a harder time killing and consuming prey. Ultimately, this would lead to its weakened state, with the animal more susceptible to disease (mange), and perhaps a penchant to go for livestock as an easier meal.

Pop culture chupacabra

There is complex cultural context to the rise and evolution of the chupacabra. The definitive book on the subject is Benjamin Radford’s Tracking the Chupacabra (2010). But since that book was written, the cryptid has increased in popularity to a greater degree and their form and description continues to transform and expand.

The horror movies began in 1996 and have continued, depicting the creature mostly as a bloodthirsty monster. But not always. More importantly, the word “chupacabra” became the top catch-all cryptid. Any weird creature that wasn’t immediately identifiable was labeled “chupacabra” no matter what animal family it resembled. The media reporting was credulous, not investigative, and simply repeated the tropes.

Meanwhile, the original outbreak in Puerto Rico was its own study in the effects of cultural influences. Wild explanations circulated about the Type 1 hairless hopping demon version.

• A biomedical lab experiment that escaped
• Alien, alien hybrid, or alien pet (recall the UFO associations)
• Created by the FBI or CIA as a hybrid human-dog or human-monkey
  (Rhesus monkeys did escape from US bio-med labs from the 1950s)
• A metaphor for US capitalistic policies sucking their “blood”
• A reflection of the HIV/AIDS problem, that the cynical believed was created to kill minorities.

However, the first visual of the monster, from Tolentino, whose sighting set off the local panic, was discredited. Radford’s field work in the country and, particularly, his interview with Tolentino, conclusively showed that she was heavily influenced by the movie Species in describing what she said she saw prowling her street. The image and stories that circulated were so novel and interesting that people remembered it and it stuck. But it was imaginary.

Many people connected the legend of the Moca vampire to the chupacabra 20 years later. The difference in names strongly suggests this is not the same phenomenon, though it has some similarities. There is no mention of “El Chupacabras” prior to 1995 so we can consider it its own cultural phenomenon. Perhaps the two incidents had the same source – feral dogs killing the livestock combined with cultural priming.

The term “goat sucker” was associated in medieval times to the myth of nightjars (whip-poor-will) that described the birds’ behavior of flying into goat pens at night to suck milk from goats, leaving them dry and blind. This was untrue, but still a fun fact of etymological history.

The move from “El Chupacabras” as the cryptid label to “chupacabra” annoyed some early cryptid commentators as incorrect grammar. Attempts to gatekeep language most often fails in cryptozoology, as words and creature labels develop and change in response to a social need. When a creature is never found but still “seen”, the descriptions and meaning will drift with each telling. When the stories of the Puerto Rican monster went international, the label transitioned into a word that everyone adopted and ultimately understood.

As with other cryptids, the chupacabra was used to cast doubt on the scientific community and their credibility. John Adolfi exhibited the Blanco beast as an example of the fallibility of science. His Lost World Museum featured exhibits that aimed to show what he believed is proof that scientists don’t have all the answers. Adolfi is a Young Earth Creationist who irrationally thinks that by showing that scientists haven’t figured out the chupacabra, they could also be wrong about evolution and the age of the Earth. This simply doesn’t logically follow, but the same idea turns up with other cryptid themes.

We have our answer

Many still wish to believe that the chupacabra is something more mysterious than a social panic from Puerto Rico, or diseased canids in North America, even though we have strong evidence to explain most incidents. Weird animals were seen, identified, killed and tested. We have our answer. But the answer is not really what the audience wanted. The legendary themes hint at an underlying and more tricky sociocultural problem – loss of livestock and economic hardships, cultural fear of vampires, a precarious sense of the future, and distrust in authority that leads to conspiracy ideas.

In conclusion, the chupacabra has a fascinating history that is only mildly zoological and heavily cultural. The legend was super-charged by the rising World Wide Web, our ever-decreasing familiarity with nature, sensationalist media coverage, and a need for dramatic story-telling in a frightening world. Yet, there still remains some scientific questions as to why we are seeing “blue dogs”. And, there is a recent discovery of the genetic history of the “weird looking” Galveston coyotes. In these ways and more, the chupacabra chronicles lead us out of the mysterious and towards discovery.

This post is part 1 of the 12 days of Cryptids.

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Why would you drop m— ..oh I see now

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Dnes byla vydána třetí část 5. kapitoly Nových Lovců kryptidů! Ve staré základně původního týmu naleznou naši noví hrdinové vodítka k odpovědi na otázku, proč bájní Lovci kryptidů zmizeli!

#story #fiction #horror #chupacabra #creature #cryptid

https://blogorgonopsid.blogspot.com/2025/08/novi-lovci-kryptidu-stara-zakladna-33.html

Part 3 of Chapter 5 of The New Cryptid Hunters was released today! In the old HQ of the original team, our new heroes discover terrifying clues as to why the fabled Cryptid Hunters disappeared!

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https://blogorgonopsid.blogspot.com/2025/08/novi-lovci-kryptidu-stara-zakladna-33.html