Riverside has its own cryptid legend—the chupacabra. While skeptics point to mangy coyotes, eyewitnesses claim something larger and more menacing lurks in the shadows.
Riverside has its own cryptid legend—the chupacabra. While skeptics point to mangy coyotes, eyewitnesses claim something larger and more menacing lurks in the shadows.
Scotland has the Loch Ness monster, Tibet has the yeti, and the Pacific Northwest has Bigfoot. Cryptozoology is the study of such creatures—legendary animals which may or may not be real. Riverside has its own cryptozoological species: the chupacabra.
The Chupacabra
The origin of the chupacabra is younger than I am. Reports of mysteriously killed livestock with all of their blood drained, vampire-style, first occurred in Puerto Rico in 1995. More reports followed, combined with sightings of a red-eyed, huge-fanged, giant lizard with spikes along its backbone. The sightings spread rapidly through the island and then to other parts of Hispanic America. A Puerto Rican comic named this creature "chupacabra" (= "goat-sucker") after its blood-sucking habits. Tales of chupacabra sightings have since accumulated from throughout the Western Hemisphere, and even as far flung as the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, and Russia.
The chupacabra's notoriety inspired a 1997 episode of the TV show The X Files set in California and Mexico. (For fans, that's season 4, episode 11, "El Mundo Gira"). The show's description of the beast as a part of "ancient Mexican folklore" is erroneous in both chronology and geography.
The chupacabra of northwestern Mexico, California, and the American Southwest is considerably different from its Puerto Rican cousin. Roughly the size of a large German Shepherd, the western North American chupacabra is always reported to be doglike, but hairless (or largely hairless), with a tough pink or grey skin and typically erect triangular ears. It shares the red eyes and sharp fangs of its Puerto Rican cousin.
Such creatures appeared in the Inland Empire as early as 1996 in Fontana and Perris. In 2017, a local Riversider, Carl Shuker, described a chupacabra on his property in the Box Springs Mountains: "two feet longer or more than the biggest coyote you've ever seen," hairless and pink, with a rat-like tail, a toothy snout, and a gruesome growl.
Alternative explanations include the possibility that the North American chupacabras are dogs or coyotes with mange. Mange itself is a condition caused by scabies mite species. These parasites of dogs and coyotes cause intense itchiness, and consequently, partial or full hairlessness. Mangy canids are necessarily grumpy. Another explanation is that sightings involve Mexican hairless dogs. Thus far, the few successful attempts to verify dog-like chupacabras have ended up identifying mangy dogs or coyotes. Shuker and other eyewitnesses from the Box Springs Mountains area are all well-acquainted with coyotes and claim the chupacabra to be much larger and distinctive.
Suburban and Urban Coyotes
There's no question regarding the reality of coyotes (Canis latrans = "the barking dog") and dogs (Canis familiaris = "the familiar dog") in Riverside. (If the chupacabra had a Latin name, it might be Canis caprimulgus = "the goat-sucking dog"). It is not unusual for both coyotes and stray dogs to be seen wandering through Riverside neighborhoods or in nearby wildlands.
As opposed to wolves (Canis lupus = "the wolf dog") whose North American range has contracted dramatically with American settlement and the proliferation of dwellings, coyotes have actually expanded their range from the Mississippi eastward to the Atlantic and southward in Panama within the last two hundred years. That comparison is all the more surprising because wolves are extremely closely related to dogs; coyotes are more distant. Wolves and dogs are social (just visit a dog park). Wolves hunt cooperatively in large packs. Coyotes hunt typically as loners and live in simple family units of a breeding pair and their offspring. They are generally wary of humans. Yet coyotes have had little trouble developing a new niche in modern suburban and urban communities.
Recognition of this opportunistic niche shift has drawn attention from the scientific community. In particular, scientists have analyzed coyote scat to reconstruct their urban diet. A study in Southern California found that a considerable fraction of the urban coyote diet is human food—gleaned from trash cans, litter, fruit trees, gardens, etc. (Fruits are important. A friend of mine hung a banana on a string to attract orioles, but it attracted a young coyote instead!) Additionally, cats, ground squirrels, gophers, rabbits and birds make their way onto the coyote dinner plate. Rats and mice are infrequently present too. In suburban environments, rabbits and native rodents were consumed at higher frequency. Not surprisingly, urban coyotes enjoy higher survival rates compared to their rural and wildland counterparts. The primary source of urban coyote mortality is from unfortunate encounters with automobiles.
Clearly, humans pose a danger to coyotes, but how dangerous are coyotes to humans? Coyote attacks on people occur at the rate of a handful a year, more frequently than not to small children. The vast majority of attacks are NOT serious. Nonetheless, two fatalities have been confirmed over the last several decades. Also, the plurality of the reported attacks is from California, including two separate coyote attacks at the University of California at Riverside in 1995.
Coyote attacks on humans appear to be largely associated with individuals who have become acclimated to humans. For example, some folks regularly feed coyotes. Nonetheless, given the frequency and regularity of coyote encounters, only a tiny fraction end in an attack. Generally, yelling and waving one's arms suffices to scare away a coyote. For what it's worth, the rate of human mortality in the United States due to an attack by dogs is one hundred times that of mortality due to coyote attack. (And for completeness, I am not aware of any report of a chupacabra ever attacking a person!)
It is fair to conclude that humans are much more dangerous than coyotes are to humans. Nonetheless, as I discussed in my RG article on donkeys, wild animals are wild, not pets. In the case of coyotes and, even more so, large stray dogs, give them space and respect. If you live in a coyote-prone neighborhood, keep an eye on your small pets, particularly cats, and small children. Keep in mind that coyotes are particularly active at dusk, night, and dawn.
Epilogue
Mysterious animal deaths regularly occur at the University of California Riverside Botanic Gardens. Recently, two skunks were found eviscerated. Likewise, two large Koi fish, each over a foot long, simply vanished altogether from the small pond there. Several years ago, I stumbled upon a large and healthy-looking coyote corpse near the Gardens gate; the poor thing had its throat ripped out, apparently exsanguinated.
As a scientist, I am trained to be BOTH skeptical and open-minded. Overall, I am fascinated and a bit skeptical about cryptids, chupacabras included. Nonetheless, with regard to our Riverside chupacabra reports, some of the facts don't fit with the mangy coyote theory. The putative "chupies" are too big to be coyotes; the people reporting them already have had experience with coyotes; and no sickly, mangy coyote could have taken down the coyote I saw at the Gardens. What's the best answer?
Maybe some mysteries are simply meant to remain mysteries.
This article benefited from the contributions of Terry Fowler, Larissa Goble, Douglas Holt, Jodie Holt, and Connie Ransom. I also surveyed about two dozen friends and acquaintances (some from as far away as West Virginia) regarding whether or not they had heard of chupacabras. A surprisingly high fraction, circa 80%, answered affirmatively, not bad for a piece of modern folklore.
Selected References
Elbein, A. (2016). "Chasing the Chupacabra, a Lone Star State Legend." Texas Observer.
Elliott, E.E. et al. (2016). "Coexisting with coyotes (Canis latrans) in an urban environment." Urban Ecosystems, 19:1335-1350.
Larson, R.N. et al. (2020). "Effects of urbanization on resource use and individual specialization in coyotes (Canis latrans) in southern California." PLOS ONE.
Radford, B. (2011). Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore. University of New Mexico Press.
Norm Ellstrand is an emeritus Distinguished Professor of Genetics and former Director of the California Agriculture and Food Enterprise at the University of California Riverside.
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