Has the monster been discovered? ‘Blue dog spotted in Texas described as the ‘Chupacabra’

The mysterious goat-sucking chupacabras are considered mythical creatures by most animal experts, but Texas-based nutritionist Phylis Canion has the remains of a bizarre blue-skinned dog that may prove its existence. Canion picked up the unknown creature off the side of a road near her ranch in Cuero, Texas, back in 2007, at a time when she had been trying to figure out what was killing chickens on her ranch. “Each time we found a chicken dead, it was opened up … in its throat area,” she says on “The Unexplained Files,” a Science Channel series debuting Aug. 28. “It appeared that all the blood was out of it.” Twenty-eight chickens were lost before she found the dead carcass. It was unlike any animal she’d had ever seen before. It weighed about 40 pounds with steel blue eyes, a snout with an overbite, and strange skin closer to an elephant’s epidermis than the hair associated with canines like wolves or coyotes. Canion brought the remains to a taxidermist, and now keeps the remains on display at her home. “We know the animal that killed the chicken licked the blood,” Canion told The Huffington Post. “It opens the throat in the jugular. It seems to like the taste of blood, which is interesting because the only animal that is set up to suck blood is the bat.” Texas wildlife officials believe that the animal in question is a dog with mange. But Canion conducted extensive research to call that conclusion into question. Numerous DNA tests suggest the animal is a hybrid of a coyote on the maternal side and a Mexican wolf on the paternal side, but Canion says there are other factors that make that description inexact.