It’s the easiest, laziest explanation for a cryptid sighting. It’s just some creature with mange! No matter what it might be, it’s just some critter with mange. The Oriental Yeti is a civet cat with mange. The chupacabra is a mangy dog. The other chupacabra is a bald raccoon. Whatever your monster, it’s just creature X with mange. While it’s a convenient excuse, it might also be true: mange is on the rise all around the world.
Mike Bowdenchuck, state director for Texas Wildlife Services, sees a lot of mangy critters. Mange is a parasitic skin infection caused by mites that results in sores and hairlessness. Here’s the key difference, and where global warming comes into play.
“Down here, animals don’t die of mange, because the temperatures are warm enough,” Bowdenchuck said. Mange is very common in colder areas, in fact wolves are getting it in Montana right now, and in North Dakota foxes get it. Up there it’s fatal, so you never see animals with the severe cases that we see in the southern climates, because they don’t live long enough for the mites to get that bad to cause the hair to fall off. They die of hypothermia first.”
I guess it’s time to change his name from Bigfoot to Mangefoot.
Tags: climate change, global warming, weather changes, mange, increase in mange, mangy animals mistaken for cryptids, yeti, bigfoot, chupacabra, cryptids, cryptozoology
