Everyone knows that the Chupacabra, or goatsucker, is a terrifying bipedal livestock vampire who lives in Puerto Rico. But what if... the Chupacabra wasn't real? And what if... it were actually Natasha Henstridge from the 1995 sci-fi horror movie Species?

Not, actually, literally, Natasha Henstridge, obviously, as hilarious and frightening as that would be. But writer and skeptic Benjamin Radford thinks that Henstridge's character, the killer, boob-having alien Sil, inspired the classic depiction of the Chupacabra ("a bipedal creature, 4 to 5 feet tall with spikes down its back, long, thin arms and legs, and an alienlike oblong head with red or black eyes"), first given to a Puerto Rican newspaper by a woman named Madelyne Tolentino:

The creature, Radford noticed, shared a strong resemblance to the alien/human hybrid in the 1995 sci-fi thriller Species. When he spoke to Tolentino, he asked her if the thing that she saw could have been inspired by the film. Indeed, she had seen the movie in the weeks prior to making her description.

"You can make a direct connection between the film hitting theaters, her seeing the creature in the film, seeing it in the street, making the report and entering the public conscious," Radford said.

Obviously, this doesn't mean the Chupacabra is conclusively made-up. Just that it was designed by the same guy who designed the alien in Species! God.

[LiveScience]