Cop catches mystery creature on dash cam

The first minute or so I was wondering why it was a big deal that a dog was running in front of a cop car…and then it turned its head. Musculature, body shape and everything looks canine, but the head isn’t like any dog that size that I know of. Its almost like they spliced a donkey’s head on a pit bull body or something. Anyway…what do you think?

Looks like a Coyote with a big head. Maybe its body is emaciated, and throws off the proportion, making the head appear larger? Like those hollywood women, who are so skinny that they appear to have huge alien heads.

There are also Coyote/Wolf hybrids that occur in the wild sometimes, as well as dog/wolf hybrids that are feral. Depending on the breed of dog that is mixed, the offspring can be pretty funky looking.

A scary, hairless appearance can also be caused by mange or other infections that plague wild or feral canines, or they can be hairless by a genetic quirk.

(not that I’m for gratuitous violence) but .....they were the police, they appeared to be out in the country, why didn’t they just shoot it so it could be biologically identified?

After seeing what can be done with graphics in the Starwars series and quite easily by anyone with a video camera, a computer and the right software, I’m very leery of any picture or video.

Occam

asanta, I was wondering to myself why they didn’t shoot it. Although I’m glad they didn’t. Let it be free - the strange mutant…coyote…thing…

As to the validity of the video, police dashboard cameras are pretty reliable as evidence, as we have seen recently with horrible and shameful police beatings caught on these same dashboard cameras. I’m sure the officers would have loved to alter THOSE videos! I believe the cameras are resistant to tampering.

I have seen this animal lumped in with the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster before, but maybe there is something to the tale.  I did a google search for chupacabra and found several images of other alleged animals, some dead, some clearly overhyped fictional drawings. 

It’s possible, great apes were believed to be fiction until @1900 I believe.  The problem here is that every loon is going to take this as proof that their favorite weird animal exists too. 

http://images.google.com/images?q=chupacabra&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7TSHB&um=1&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

I have to admit I suspected tampering with the video too. There’s just something not right about it when it turns its head. Whether its my eye catching something that I can’t put my finger on, or my brain just saying “WTF”, I don’t know.

In my opinion, the problem with it being any known animal with mange is that usually by the time mange progresses to the point that the animal would be hairless, the animal should be weakened and emaciated. This thing still looks to be in fairly good shape, and looks pretty bulky to me.

There was another of these same creatures killed in the same area last year. Around July, I believe. The story from then mentions that DNA tests would be performed, but I was unable to find any updates about the results of the tests.

I remember that case, the DNA testing concluded it was a coyote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21595838/