The Chupacabra seems to be found mainly in Puerto Rico. In both of the articles, it talks about how the chupacabra is an animal that can be seen as a dog or a coyote. It is also known that this creature is a bloodsucker. When we are afraid of something that we aren’t sure if it is real or not, our subconscious heightens our fears. We become so focused on what may be fake that our brains don’t know what to think. It seems to me that the chupacabra is just a craze that will eventually die on when people find actual proof.
In Monsters and Messiahs, Mike Davis acknowledges, “Too often we equate wilderness with the urban disorder, and wild animals end up as the symbolic equivalents of street criminals… The Otherness of wild animals is the gestalt that we constantly refashion in the image of our own urban misunderstanding and alienation.” (46) Our mind helps us fabricate the truth. When we become afraid of the unknown our brains tend to over exaggerate the truth. According to Benjamin Radford, in Tracking the Chupacabra, “Despite searching in one of the most likely spots in the world to find chupacabras, there seemed to be no evidence of them. No sightings, no tracks, no reports of their signature style of predation” (74). There is no evidence leading to the existence of the chupacabra. It isn’t for sure if there is even an animal with the same description. If they were looking for the spots that it was most likely seen, there should have been a little bit of actual evidence.
In both of the readings, it briefly talks about how the form of the chupacabra can be seen in different ways. For me, it is hard to believe in something that you don’t have physical evidence for.
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