Tracking The Chupacabra - The ParaPod Series 2, Episode 3 Review

In episode three of 'The ParaPod: Mysteries' it's the job of Barry Dodds to convince his co-host Ray Peacock of the legend of the chupacabra.

Barry begins by telling us about the chupacabra, which is apparently a "cryptid", that's an animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti.

The first sighting of the beast was in 1995 by a woman named Madeline Tolentino. She saw the creature outside of her home in Puerto Rico. Based on her description, Barry tells us, it's got big red eyes, spikes on its back, scaly skin, it's got paws like a kangaroo but with claws, a tail, and fangs. Plus it can jump really high.

Ray interrupts, "thus far you've just described something that a four-year-old would draw at school"

Barry goes on to explain that it likes goats, in fact "it sucks goats" and "chupacabra literally means goat sucker". Apparently goats were found in the area, "they were all dead, they all had these three puncture marks and all the blood had been sucked out of them," of course these deaths were attribute to Madeline's sighting of the chupacabra.

Barry has a few theories on what the chupacabra actually is:

1. The first theory is based around the fact that "people were seeing a lot of lights in the sky at the time". Barry speculates that people think it could be a alien's pet, he says "aliens came down to have a look, this thing got loose."

2. Barry then goes into his second explanation, a theory that the chupacabra was a manmade creature, the result of an experiment that the US government conducted in Latin America. He said, "it could be a genetic mutation, where they've got like a dog, and a cat, and a lizard, and they've spliced them. They've taken a bit of each of them, put it in an egg, grown it, and it's escaped." After Barry says there's also a kangaroo in the mix, Ray questions how these animals could be combined. Barry says the use the animals' DNA and then amazingly likens the process to that used by the scientists in Jurassic Park. Ray is forced to remind Barry that the movie is fictional, "Michael Crichton made it up and wrote it as a book."

3. The third theory is that the chupacabra is a weaponised fighting beast. Barry explains, "NASA were involved with the US government and they made a creature to fight the Japanese and the Viet... what are people from Vietnam called? The Vietnamese? It was to fight them in the war, did it go wrong? Did it get out of hand?"

Ray 3 - Barry 0.