"It’s a mammal with a long, rat-like snout, a rather high number of small incisors, closely spaced premolars with pointed cusps, and especially long, curved upper canines. Note that, unlike dogs, foxes and so on, it doesn’t have an obvious rhinarium (the area of dark, distinctly textured skin that surrounds the nostrils in such animals). These features all immediately screamed “opossum” to me. Partly this is because I’ve handled opossum skulls and am familiar with their surprisingly big upper canines and high number of incisors. Even the fur looks opossum-like (mammal carcasses typically slough fur after they’ve been decomposing in water for a while, and this explains the naked face). When you add all this to the fact that the Virginia opossum is a common, widespread mammal in California we have an obvious and uncontroversial identification." READ MORE

It's nice when your favorite artists make a new thing and it seems like they've tapped into your thoughts and found out exactly what you would have wanted them to make and were like, "Hey, Dave, I know you and the other folks at The Awl really love the legendary chupacabra (the mysterious, cryptid vampire that terrorizes livestock). And even though we all know that there's no way that the things actually exist, and it's just that people get freaked out when they see a dog with a skin disease, and that the whole thing is just the result of some lady with a vivid imagination seeing Natasha Henstridge in Species in 1995, we love you, and we want to do everything we can to make you happy. So it says here that chupacabra is real, and it's on that rah-rah."

"The legend of the so-called chupacabra started on June 1, when Prince Georges Hospital Center went smoke-free, forcing folks to come into the woods to have a cigarette." READ MORE

It has been a good two months since we've had a decent sighting of a chupacabra—the mysterious, cryptid vampire that terrorizes livestock—so thank God for this fellow in Texas, who had the presence of mind to actually snap a photo. He himself doubts the existence of the legendary goat-sucker, but what does he know? It says here: chupacabra is real, and he is coming for your animals.

"I was standing right there and it wasn't running from me. I almost ran from it. I thought it was a rat, but when it moves, it rises up and then it just walks like a dog." READ MORE

Five months to the day that a biologist attempted to disprove the existence of the chupacabra—the mysterious, cryptid vampire that terrorizes livestock—skeptic Benjamin Radford has put forth a theory as to the monster's terrifying origins. Turns out some lady from Puerto Rico had gone to the movies in the period leading up to the first-ever chupacabra sighting. READ MORE