CRYPTOLINK: 'Chupacabra' Might Be Subspecies of Coati

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

All of the local biologists are saying that what was found in Ratcliffe was a hairless raccoon; however, I believe the evidence points to a hairless white-nosed coati (Nasua narica) or a new, undiscovered subspecies. Even though we live in a developed country, there is a lot of land out there, especially in a state like Texas, for even megafauna to go relatively unnoticed; however, since we are in South Texas, which has one of the highest rates of biodiversity in the United States, finding weird and uncommon animals should not be a surprise.

In an April 7 article, Jackie Stock is quoted saying the animal "has a growl that's not like a raccoon, its eyes don't shine at night, and its feces is also not like a raccoon." Metaphorically speaking, if it sort of looks like a duck and doesn't quack like a duck, it's not a duck but perhaps a cousin of a duck.

Belonging to the same family as the raccoon and with a South American coati cousin, the white-nosed coati is an omnivore that commonly lives in wooded areas of mostly Central America and Mexico. The southern limit of its range stops in Columbia, while the northern limit extends or used to extend into southeastern Arizona, New Mexico, South Texas and the southern half of the Trans Pecos. The majority of the Texas populations most likely died out because of habit fragmentation and destruction from land use and land cover changes taking place over the last 100 to 200 years; however, the post oak savanna of northern South Texas and the current increasing conversion from post oak savanna to post oak woodland in the DeWitt County area to be more specific could have provided favorable conditions for an isolated population to survive and even thrive.

Read on...