Canis lupus hominis

Well, West Virginia really isn’t either.

But I mean come on! This is obviously a raccoon. Having caught a few raccoons in traps just like this one, they all make this growl! It’s almost diagnostic of a raccoon.

Of course, the hands give it away, and I’d like to know what state wildlife official deemed this thing a “canine.”  What breed of dog has hands?

Just watch this clip and try to keep your head from exploding. The stupid. It hurts.

I don’t care if this man has hunted raccoons with dogs for years. Raccoons don’t make that growl when dogs are chasing or killing them. That’s a threat growl they make when they are in cage traps.

Raccoons basically do look a lot like dogs with hands. When Miley first encountered one in a cage trap, she went into play bows in front of it.

It was less than impressed.

Chupacabras are just normal animals that are hairless for some reason. The most common chupacabra is a mangy fox or coyote.  Most of our native carnivorans are well-furred out, so when they lose their hair for some reason, most people are shocked at what their bodies actually look like underneath.

Raccoons really don’t look much like raccoons when they lose their hair.

But if you know that a raccoon is basically a dog-like animal with hands, I don’t think you’d be able to mistake it for anything.

But maybe I’m weird in that I’ve seen too many raccoons up-close that it’s hard for me to see how anyone could be so daft as to declare this poor animal a unique species.

However, this is the internet. And many people don’t go to the internet to find out things.  They go to the internet to believe.

So I bet as soon as a sane, qualified zoologist declares this chupacabras to be a raccoon, there will be all sorts of denials that there is no way this animal could be a raccoon– and, of course, there will be a conspiracy theory or two spun out of it.

(See the Montauk Monster debacle, if you don’t believe me!)