Chupacabra caught?

Math Is Hard

Or just a mangy fox?
http://www.khou.com/topstories/stori....cbe0f7fc.html

A rancher from the South Texas town of Cuero is telling a chupacabra tale and she say she has the evidence in her freezer.

Phylis Canion says the animal had been lurking around her ranch for years.

She said it first snatched cats, then chickens right through a wire cage. “(It) opened it reached in pulled the chicken head out, sucked all the blood out, left the chicken in the cage.”

Canion says two dozen chickens were sucked dry.

The meat, she says, was left on the bone.

G01

EL CHUPACABRA!!!!!!! (Runs for the hills)

Link-

Wow "El Chupacabra" that's damn old story. I remember that story, all started in Puerto Rico. is like bigfoot stories.

zoobyshoe

There's a show about El Chupacabra they air now and then on the History Channel. In some Latin American country a Chupacabra carcass was brought to a university to be analyzed and it turned out to be a dog. (The owner of the carcass accused the university of engaging in a cover up, of having switched the real carcass for a dog.)

I think most of the animals responsible for Chupacabra sightings are feral dogs of mixed breed, possibly even mutated ones.

Far Star

The stories that get me are people that say they found something and leave the evidence over yonder. " I got me a Bigfoot last week but the freezer wasn't big enough so I let the dogs have it." Hello?

That's not saying unusual things don't happen. They just don't seem to show up on Jim Fowlers doorstep. If I find a cross between a bat and a hyena you bet your boots CNN will be there.

Link-

That chupacabra story is just B.S. The funniest thing is that a major in Puerto Rico organized a hunting for el chupacabras, obviously was organized to make himself reelected and he was. The other part of the story is that people believed that this chupacabra was an ET.

K.J.Healey

From the pictures I've seen of the recently caught ones, as well as some testimony of a few scientists (don't remember which field) but they saw the Chupacabra when brought in and basically immediately said "Oh thats BLANK breed dog with a really bad skin mutation, causing it to be hairless." Then some other woman hit one with her car or something, and took it in and once again it showed to be a breed of dog.
But yes, its so much more believable that theres a cover up. Occam's razor guys, the easiest explanation (that they didn't know what it was and so switched the carcass for a dog, most likely so the government; hell lets say the US government; can experiment on it. Its probably not from earth anyway) is always the right one.

zoobyshoe

Quote by K.J.Healey

Occam's razor guys, the easiest explanation... ...is always the right one.

Occam's Razor doesn't assert that "the easiest explanation is always the right one":

a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionar...am's+razor

It doesn't give you the "right" answer, just guides you away from unnecessarily extravagant explanations. If, for example, your car seems to be missing, and two possible explanations occur to you: 1.)that you forgot where you parked it, or 2.)that it is being shielded from your sight by a freak wrinkle in the time-space continuum, Occam's Razor directs you to prefer the former explanation over the latter.

RogueSpidor

Occam's Razor, as Zoobyshoe put it, doesn't say that the simplest explanation is always right. It says that the simplest answer is often the best one. It in no way declares that the more complicated possibility is always wrong.

Interestingly, Occam developed the razor to help him to convince that there were no gods but The One True God ("entities should not be multiplied needlessly") by saying that any phenomenon that is unexplained need not have a brand new god named for it. Instead, The One True God can be said to be responsible for all unexplained phenomena. It was likely to be very upsetting to him when it was taken to the next logical step; if the phenomena becomes explained, it can no longer be attributed to a god. As more people sought explanations, fewer people looked to any deity at all for an explanation, and many people decided it was more supportive of disbelief in any deity at all; an explanation that is not known does not mean it cannot be known, simply that it is not yet known, and the simplest answer was that it needed to be researched and understood, but not that some self-creating Entity was responsible.

Today, it is, again as Zoobyshoe stated, a guideline for critical thinking. In the case of the chupacabra, the simplest answer is not that the creature was a spooky, alien, or supernatural entity. The one that was caught in Texas was determined by state mammalogist James Young to be a gray fox with a severe case of mange.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupaca...rted_sightings
http://www.kvue.com/news/top/stories....cc11e691.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...gray+fox+mange

zoobyshoe

Quote by RogueSpidor

Interestingly, Occam developed the razor to help him to convince that there were no gods but The One True God ("entities should not be multiplied needlessly") by saying that any phenomenon that is unexplained need not have a brand new god named for it. Instead, The One True God can be said to be responsible for all unexplained phenomena. It was likely to be very upsetting to him when it was taken to the next logical step; if the phenomena becomes explained, it can no longer be attributed to a god. As more people sought explanations, fewer people looked to any deity at all for an explanation, and many people decided it was more supportive of disbelief in any deity at all; an explanation that is not known does not mean it cannot be known, simply that it is not yet known, and the simplest answer was that it needed to be researched and understood, but not that some self-creating Entity was responsible.

Very interesting history. Any idea why it's called a "razor" instead of "guide" or "rule"?

RogueSpidor

The following is from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor There's more, but this answers your question, with a citation; something which I prefer to include when I can.

William Ockham (c. 1285–1349) … is remembered as an influential nominalist, but his popular fame as a great logician rests chiefly on the maxim known as Occam's razor Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation. No doubt this represents correctly the general tendency of his philosophy, but it has not so far been found in any of his writings. His nearest pronouncement seems to be Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, which occurs in his theological work on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (ed. Lugd., 1495), i, dist. 27, qu. 2, K). In his Summa Totius Logicae, i. 12, Ockham cites the principle of economy, Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.

– Thorburn, 1918, pp. 352-3; Kneale and Kneale, 1962, p. 243.

arildno

Quote by zoobyshoe

Very interesting history. Any idea why it's called a "razor" instead of "guide" or "rule"?

Well, to cut away needless assumptions will be quite painful to the person cherishing precisely those assumptions..

zoobyshoe

Quote by RogueSpidor

The following is from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor There's more, but this answers your question, with a citation; something which I prefer to include when I can.

William Ockham (c. 1285–1349) … is remembered as an influential nominalist, but his popular fame as a great logician rests chiefly on the maxim known as Occam's razor Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation. No doubt this represents correctly the general tendency of his philosophy, but it has not so far been found in any of his writings. His nearest pronouncement seems to be Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, which occurs in his theological work on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (ed. Lugd., 1495), i, dist. 27, qu. 2, K). In his Summa Totius Logicae, i. 12, Ockham cites the principle of economy, Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.

– Thorburn, 1918, pp. 352-3; Kneale and Kneale, 1962, p. 243.

The next section from the Wikipedia is also very interesting:

The origins of what has come to be known as Occam's razor are traceable to the works of earlier philosophers such as John Duns Scotus (1265–1308), Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), Alhacen (965-1039), and even Aristotle (384–322 BC) (Charlesworth 1956). The term "Ockham's razor" first appeared in 1852 in the works of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865), long after Ockham's death circa 1349. Ockham did not invent this "razor," so its association with him may be due to the frequency and effectiveness with which he used it (Ariew 1976). Though Ockham stated the principle in various ways, the most popular version was written not by himself but by John Ponce of Cork in 1639 (Thorburn 1918).

The most-cited version of the Razor to be found in Ockham's work is Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate or Plurality ought never be posed without necessity.

"Occam's Razor "seems to be a term coined by this man:

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~.../Hamilton.html

It would be nice to find the exact place in his writings where he did this.

baywax

Quote by Math Is Hard

Or just a mangy fox?
http://www.khou.com/topstories/stori....cbe0f7fc.html

Good story for Halloween!

I don't know what it is for sure. Could be a mangy fox. On the other hand, I'll belive the people living in South Texas. Its definitely a "South Texas Taz Devil". Right on.

You do realize they "free pour" they're tequilla down thar!?

Ivan Seeking

... In the end, DNA results show that the mystery animal is a coyote

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/met...1cc40a72d.html

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G01 Recognitions: Gold Member Homework Help	EL CHUPACABRA!!!!!!! (Runs for the hills)

Link-	Wow "El Chupacabra" that's damn old story. I remember that story, all started in Puerto Rico. is like bigfoot stories.

Far Star	The stories that get me are people that say they found something and leave the evidence over yonder. " I got me a Bigfoot last week but the freezer wasn't big enough so I let the dogs have it." Hello? That's not saying unusual things don't happen. They just don't seem to show up on Jim Fowlers doorstep. If I find a cross between a bat and a hyena you bet your boots CNN will be there.