Narrator: There are global phenomena
that science cannot explain
true stories that defy rational explanation.
Pilot Fred valentich and his plane
disappear from the bright blue skies of Southern Australia,
his last communication
seemingly an encounter with a menacing, unknown craft.
It's hovering! I - it's not an aircraft!
The ramblings of a disoriented pilot under stress?
It's just vanished!
Or could this be first contact?
I think he encountered a ufo.
Narrator: On the other side of the world,
livestock in Texas are drained of their blood
by an elusive predator.
Carter: What is th oh, man!
Narrator: Is the American Southwest
harboring a dangerous new species?
Hot damn! That thing is going fast!
Riedel: It wasn't a coyote, and it wasn't a wolf.
I've never seen anything like it.
Do you know what this is? Because I don't.
[ Woman screams ]
Narrator: New investigations question
unexplained happenings and otherworldly events.
Man: The eyes were gone. The tongue was gone.
Why is there no blood?
Who's doing this?
Narrator: Firsthand testimony and fresh evidence
build new possibilities.
Man: Never seen anything like that in my life.
And it just disappeared into thin air.
It wasn't from this planet.
My arms were just on fire.
Narrator: Rethink everything you think you know.
Captions by vitac www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by Discovery Communications, LLC.
Sync & Corrected by iscol
the southeast coast of Australia
is home to one of the great mysteries of aviation.
Pilot Fred valentich and his aircraft disappear
from the face of the earth, leaving no trace.
What happened that day?
How could an airplane simply vanish?
And what could explain Fred's terrifying final moments
captured by the control tower?
It's hovering! I-it's not an aircraft!
[ Static ]
I, every now and then, think about what could have happened,
and I still draw to the same concl
I just don't know.
Narrator: Fred valentich is 20 years old
and certified with a private pilot's license.
Richard: That was his whole passion, flying. He loved it.
The last years of his life, that's all he did.
He dedicated everything to flying.
Narrator: But could his relative lack of experience
have contributed to what he sees that fateful day?
October 21, 1978.
It's 6:20 P.M.
Fred climbs aboard a rented cessna 182 single-engine plane
for a routine cargo flight.
Today's task fly an hour away
and pick up an order of crayfish along the coast.
Conditions are good, visibility clear,
and the plane recently serviced.
His route will take him over the outskirts of Melbourne
past cape otway to king island in the bass strait.
It's a simple freight mission,
one of many that Melbourne flight officer Steve robey
will monitor that day.
Well, he just made a standard position report
over cape otway with an estimate for king island.
I think he said he was operating below 5,000, and that was it.
Narrator: But 47 minutes into the flight,
their conversation takes an unexpected turn.
Frederick said, "Melbourne, this is delta Sierra Juliet.
Is there any known traffic below 5,000?"
I said...
Delta Sierra Juliet, no known traffic.
It seems to me there's a large aircraft below 5,000.
I, uh, got him to describe the aircraft.
"It has four bright it seems to me like landing lights."
then he said, "The aircraft has just passed over me
at least 1,000 feet above."
he was describing it doing some fairly strange things.
Fred: Delta Sierra Juliet.
It seems to me that he's playing some sort of game.
"He's flying over me two, three times
at speeds I could not identify."
Frederick then said...
Delta Sierra Juliet. The engine is rough idling.
I've got it set at 23-24, and it's just coughing.
[ Engine sputters ]
Narrator: Rough idling means the engine has mechanical problems,
potentially fatal above the sea.
Just listening to him
I can still remember it distinctly
he definitely sounded as if he was under stress,
and I could just picture him sort of in the aircraft
looking around for this object in the sky.
Narrator: Moments later, Fred stops talking
and strange metallic noises crackle across the airwaves.
[ Static crackling ]
Before robey can ask Fred what they are,
the line goes dead.
Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne. Come in. Over.
Narrator: Fred never arrives at king island.
My mom come in, and she was crying,
and she said, "Fred's been in an accident."
narrator: A full-scale search-and-rescue mission
is launched.
Aircraft are deployed, authorities comb the shoreline,
and vessels crisscross the ocean.
Most of that day, I remember, the news reports
saying that they were searching for a pilot
that had ditched into the sea.
Narrator: But after seven days,
no trace of Fred or his plane is recovered.
I cried for three days. I think I'd never stop crying.
It really it really gutted me that he disappeared, you know?
It was a big hole in my life.
Narrator: The unsettling circumstances of Fred's disappearance
shock his community,
triggering questions that continue to reverberate.
What caused the disappearance of the pilot and the aircraft?
And why is no debris of the aircraft ever found?
Investigator George Simpson
has harbored a lifelong obsession with the event
because of a chance sighting that day.
I've always felt that I was one of the last people
to see the plane in the air.
I was waiting for my girlfriend, who was coming over for dinner,
and it had just gone 6:00, and she was a little bit late,
and I'd just come out here to the post here to wait for her.
And I saw a plane flying over. It was a cessna.
I remember the angle it was on exactly,
and if you look at a map and you check that angle,
that's directly to cape otway.
I've thought for years that it's a mystery that needs solving.
Narrator: George is baffled by the many unexplained details
the odd noises, the absence of crash debris,
and, in particular, the bright lights of another craft.
Could these lights be the key
to the mystery of the plane's disappearance?
Four bright it seems to me like landing lights.
Several newspapers at the time
suggest that the lights Fred sees
are the reflection of his own cessna aircraft in the water
as he tumbles toward the sea upside down and disoriented.
The crash, it is claimed, is due to pilot error.
George has come to meet pilot Roger merridew.
Well, this is a cessna 182.
A veteran of the skies with more than 40 years of experience,
Roger has closely studied
the same type of airplane that Fred flew that day.
So, there have been theories
that have been put forward by various people
that Frederick might have become disoriented
and been flying upside down in the aircraft flying inverted.
How would that affect the running of the aircraft?
The tanks are up here in the wings just above our head.
Then, the fuel, of course, drains down into the fuel system
through pipes that run down the door frame.
In the case of the cessna,
if you go upside down, because of the gravity feed,
fuel-tank system just won't run upside down.
So the engine would stop within about 20 seconds.
20 seconds it'd stop?
Yeah. It would stop.
How long could he stay in the air after that if that's happened?
The airplane isn't a good glider upside down,
so I would say three minutes or so before he's in the water.
Narrator: The strange conversation
between Fred and flight service operator Steve robey
takes place over seven minutes
double the estimated time he could glide upside down
before hitting the water.
There's no way that he could have been flying inverted,
'cause the engine would have stopped,
the plane would have fallen out of the sky.
I don't even know if he ever hit the water.
So it's very difficult to get your head around it
other than he reported this unusual object
flying around him, and that was it.
He and his aircraft vanished without a trace.
Narrator: If not pilot error,
then what caused the bright lights
that led to Fred's disappearance?
The answer may lie in the unidentifiable sound
that pervades Fred's final moments.
Come in. Over. Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne.
[ Static crackling ]
Narrator: Investigator George Simpson
has spent 20 years analyzing the strange circumstances
surrounding the disappearance of Fred valentich.
It's certainly a great mystery in Australian aviation.
Narrator: George has ruled out pilot error
and turns to the next logical explanation.
Could Fred have orchestrated his disappearance deliberately?
Jones: G'day, George. How are you?
Pleased to meet you. Looking well.
Let's go for a walk. Let's go for a walk.
Brian Jones was the flight service officer
responsible for the airstrip on king island,
Fred's destination.
Several aspects of Fred's flight plan have long troubled Brian.
Well, it's very interesting, really, because I remember this
as though it happened yesterday.
And the whole flight
has got quite a few errors in it, for a start.
And you made a mention that he was going over
to get a bag or two of crayfish.
Well, he hadn't rung anybody
to see if there was any crayfish available.
Now, there was none available that day,
'cause I rang a few crayfishermen that said,
"Oh, we sold out this morning."
why did he decide to plan the king island flight
in such a shoddy manner?
He was going to land after dark.
Yep.
And he did not contact or let anybody know
that he wanted the runway lights on at king island airport.
I feel...
That he was possibly
on a spectacular type of suicide mission.
All the aspects point
that something like that could have happened.
Narrator: George meets with Fred's younger brother, Richard,
to present this possibility.
100%, there could not be a truth in that story.
It just doesn't jell, for him just to disappear that way.
There's easier ways to disappear
if you want to leave this and your family.
Because he had a girlfriend
that he loved and he wanted to be with.
I mean, my sisters were only 4 years old,
and he loved me sisters.
You know, he used to protect them fiercely.
So there's no truth at all in that theory.
Not to go that way.
Mm.
Narrator: George agrees the theory is weak.
Fred valentich had no history of depression
and left no suicide note.
He didn't have a life-insurance policy.
No one would gain financially from his death.
If Fred had deliberately crashed into the sea...
If you fly into the sea
at a high speed and high rate of descent,
I would say the impact would wreck it.
What sort of things might float to the surface?
Wing tips. Perhaps the rudder or the elevators.
They'd be fairly buoyant, I guess.
Well, they're quite large. They're very large.
And while there's air in them, they'll float.
Narrator: An aircraft of this model
would be expected to leave debris,
but the absence of wreckage continues to be unexplained.
With no leads to go on, George turns his attention
toward a different line of inquiry.
Did anyone actually see the aircraft crash that day?
His search leads him to an amateur photographer
on the outskirts of Melbourne.
On the evening that Fred made his final call,
Roy manifold was shooting photos of the sunset at cape otway,
Fred's last reported position.
When he developed the photographs,
he noticed something odd
an unidentified object in the upper right-hand corner.
I noticed this object which looked, to me,
as though it could have been a moth or an emulsion error.
Those are the first things that entered me head.
Was only until a month or so later I said,
"Hang on. I heard that plane that night.
This is a strange coincidence here."
it's probably the most mysterious photograph
that I've ever seen.
Yeah. It is.
'Cause it's something that's not later
it's not bilaterally symmetrical.
That's right. It's an unusual thing.
And it's just at the time when the pilot reported
that there was something chasing him.
I was standing, looking out,
and the plane went over, and that was a cessna.
There's no question, to my mind, that that was him.
That was the plane, yeah.
Narrator: When Roy realized
his photo was taken on the same day of Fred's encounter,
he sent it to ground saucer watch,
an Arizona-based group of scientists and laymen.
They examined the photograph using edge enhancement,
color contouring, digitizing, and filtering technology.
Their conclusion was that
with their examinations,
and they showed me what they had done,
and they proved that it was a solid object.
They said it was a solid object?
A solid object of unknown materials or whatever. Yeah.
And so what are you left now with thinking?
Well, yes, I have to believe now
if you're a nonbeliever or a believer
I believe that, yes, it's a ufo.
Narrator: 99% of ufo sightings
turn out to be hoaxes, classified military maneuvers,
or natural phenomena.
Around 1% remain unexplained.
Is it possible that the mysterious object
described in Fred's last conversation
is a part of this 1%?
Flight service office Steve robey
has no idea what Fred actually saw that day,
but he's convinced it was no standard airplane.
"As it's flying past, it's a long shape.
"Cannot identify more than that.
It has such speed."
"It seems like it's stationary.
"What I'm doing right now is orbiting,
and the thing is just orbiting on top of me."
delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne. Can you describe the aircraft?
Fred: It's got a green light, and it's sort of metallic-like
and all shiny on the outside.
He was definitely under stress.
Delta Sierra Juliet. It's just vanished!
Robey: Frederick then said, so, it had reappeared.
"That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again."
it's hovering! I-it's not an aircraft!
He didn't finish that communication.
There was, all of a sudden, a clicking sound...
[ Static crackling ]
Pulsing, sort of electronic.
After the clicking sound,
I called him numerous times and got no response.
Yeah.
Narrator: Is it possible Fred imagined the object?
As curious as Roy manifold's photo may be,
it doesn't match the description of the craft Fred described.
But in 1993, another witness stepped forward.
Conscious, however, of the stigma
surrounding what he saw that day,
he insisted his identity be kept secret.
Man: I looked up, and I saw this lime-green light
about 1,000 or 2,000 feet above the aircraft,
so we sat there and watched it for a few seconds,
and the green light got closer to the plane.
I said, "That plane is coming down pretty steep,
almost on a 45-degree angle."
narrator: An event this dramatic
over the suburban skies of Melbourne
would likely have been seen by multiple people.
George sets out to find a witness
willing to speak freely on camera.
Newspaper reports lead Simpson to contractor mark laney.
Will his story support Fred's sighting?
This is where we were playing at the time.
We were down this end of the court.
I spotted it over in that direction
out of the southwest there. Just over there, yeah?
And it went very slowly from the southwest
right across to the northeast.
So, you've got a good, clear view of the sky here.
Yeah. It was a clear blue sky.
There was two tubular objects,
and it was parallel to each other
and joined together by two smaller tubes.
For a start, I thought it might have been
two planes flying close together.
Yeah, but it was on a slight angle
that you could see it was joined.
We stood there for a couple of minutes,
and people in the other end of the court did, too,
and it was like nothing we've seen before.
Sounds very much like what was described by the pilot,
seeing basically what you saw,
and then he disappeared without a trace.
Narrator: Steve robey also believes
that what Fred saw was not a typical aircraft.
It was not an airplane. It was some object.
Narrator: But what was this object?
And how would it have caused Fred
to completely disappear from the face of the earth?
Narrator: Pilot Fred valentich and his plane
mysterious disappear off the Australian coast
after he describes an encounter with an unidentified craft.
It's hovering! I-it's not an aircraft!
Investigator George Simpson is trying to determine
is there's any truth to Fred's claim.
Simpson: It's been said that Fred crashed into the sea,
but with the evidence that I've seen,
I think this case is stranger than that.
This is one of the best cases
that I've ever seen for a ufo encounter.
It does sound crazy, but it's pretty compelling.
Narrator: Even if you believe Fred stumbled across an alien craft,
one great mystery remains.
What happened to him then?
Richard Haines is an ex-NASA scientist
who worked with Apollo astronauts.
He now heads an organization called narcap
that studies unidentified aerial phenomena, or uaps,
reported by pilots.
I've been collecting uap reports from pilots
for, oh, over 25 years now from around the world
from the beginning of aviation.
And what makes the valentich case so interesting
is the multiple eyewitnesses along the coastline that night.
You add that he never came back,
and that makes it a pretty interesting case.
Narrator: Haines has researched thousands of uap sightings.
For him, the recording of Fred's final moments
is the key to the mystery.
The tape recording ends
with a very strange metallic sound.
[ Scraping, static crackling ]
So, the noises on the back of this tape
the metallic sounds
might possibly be the contact of a disk, let's say,
or a vehicle of some kind on his airplane.
[ Scraping ]
It's rather farfetched,
but we have to consider it as a possibility
that he was abducted by some other intelligence,
some race or species
that's capable of doing this sort of a thing.
Narrator: Fred's father also believed
this was a distinct possibility.
Richard: He probably never let go
of the theory that he could have been taken,
that maybe an outside influence like a spacecraft
come along and took him.
Like, he never he wouldn't say that specifically,
but I know that maybe, in the back of his mind,
he probably thought there could be a possibility.
Well, I only can think
that if it really being a ufo or whatever flying over,
that these people or whatever creature they are
are much more advanced than us,
and I could not possibly think they would destroy him.
Narrator: Guido valentich died in may 2000
without knowing what happened to his son.
Until the end, he clung to the dim hope
that if Fred was abducted,
he might still be alive somewhere.
After assessing the evidence,
George Simpson believes this is plausible.
It might be possible that he ended up
on board this strange craft that he was describing.
It could explain
why he and the plane disappeared without a trace.
Delta Sierra Juliet, come in. Over.
Narrator: Flight service officer Steve robey,
the last person to speak with Fred valentich,
is convinced that Fred did encounter
something extraordinary that evening.
Well, it wasn't another airplane.
Another airplane wouldn't have traveled
through the air like this thing did
at speed and changing direction so rapidly,
disappearing at one point,
orbiting on top of him while he was also orbiting.
Um...
I think he encountered a ufo.
Narrator: Australian air-crash investigators still consider
the cause of Fred's disappearance not determined.
They do not explain his final radio transmission.
And the mystery of Fred's disappearance endures.
Richard: To me, I just wanted me brother back.
We all lived in hope that maybe, one day, we can find him,
but as time goes past, you start to realize
that he's probably never gonna come back.
Narrator: Across our planet, extraordinary happenings
tease the boundary of what we believe to be possible.
9,000 Miles away in Cuero, Texas....
Carter: What is th oh, man!
Narrator: ...Mutilated animals drained of their blood
are found across the state.
And then this new predator turns up dead.
Do you know what this is? Because I don't.
Narrator: On a sprawling ranch in a small Texas town,
Dr. Phylis Canion wakes up to find a brood of her chickens
has been mutilated and drained of their blood.
It is unclear who or what is behind the attacks.
Why would the birds be destroyed in such an unconventional way?
Canion: What was the most unusual
is that each time we found a chicken dead,
it was opened up anywhere in this throat area
and it appeared that all the blood was out of it.
I actually lost 28,
all of them killed over months in the exact same fashion.
I just did not know what it was. I had no clue.
Narrator: From her years as a rancher and hunter,
she knows this was not the work of a common Texas predator.
Canion: I had told all the neighbors,
"You know, if you ever see this animal,
"Call me and let me know, because I want to see it.
"I don't want to shoot it.
We just really want to find out what it is."
narrator: Three years pass before the animal is seen again.
25 Miles away,
deputy sheriff Brandon riedel and his partner
are on a routine patrol near the ranchlands.
Riedel: We come down here, and we turn a corner,
and as soon as we turn this corner
looking for the downed fence, we see something over here
just standing in the middle of the road
and just didn't know what it was.
The lady that I was training,
she just goes, "Oh, my God. What is that? What is that?"
Carter: What is th oh, man!
Riedel: We're just sitting there watching it just run, run, run.
And it was just the strangest thing.
He looks up and looks back at us.
Narrator: The creature had an unusually large muzzle,
long, protruding canine teeth, and bright blue eyes.
Riedel: We started to come up this hill here,
and it just takes off and then came back up,
and it ran up the road.
It was just strange. It was just weird-looking.
Carter: How crazy is that?
Riedel: I've patrolled these back roads
here in DeWitt county for about 8 1/2 years,
and that's the first time
I ever seen anything that looked like that.
Narrator: It's uncertain what the odd-looking animal is.
Could it simply be a deformed dog or a coyote
a lone mutant that poses little risk?
Is it the same animal
that killed the fowl on phylis Canion's ranch?
And are there others?
Then a neighbor calls with some news.
Something strange has been found dead
along the road a few Miles away.
Canion: As I was driving,
I could see a carcass laying in the center of the highway,
so I just pulled off to the side
and walked over and looked at it.
I was a little apprehensive,
because I had never seen anything that looked like that.
This animal had brilliant blue eyes.
The hide looked like elephant hide.
There is an enormous amount of excess skin
that was between the ears.
Like, enough that I could pull it up with my hand
and pull up about two inches of just skin.
It was a very ugly animal.
Narrator: Phylis calls the Texas parks & Wildlife department
and finds that other people have reported
seeing similar creatures.
Agency officials, however,
don't share Canion's belief that this is a new species.
Cox: Every time someone has some unidentified animal,
the postmortem analysis of it has proven to be
it's a mangy coyote or sometimes a mangy fox.
Man: Whoa. Look at him! Oh, wow!
Narrator: Mange is caused by a debilitating parasite
and is common in canines.
As the animal grows sicker,
it can lose almost all of its hair and break out in sores.
Man: Geez. He looks, uh, sickly.
Narrator: Untreated, paralysis and death swiftly follow.
Texan rancher Harvey Hayek
has seen many mangy coyotes in his time.
When they're mangy,
they're all just kind of slow-poking around,
and you could see where they were scratching that mange,
and there would be blood exposed and raw skin
anywhere they could get with their claw,
even where they would bite.
Narrator: Hayek also saw the dead animal that Dr. Canion found.
He believes it is not a victim of mange.
It looks similar to a hairless creature
he and his son encounter on their own.
Deric: We spotted him.
We have a big hog hunt so we can kind of control the population,
and that's when I saw it.
Narrator: Deric and his friends
take up shooting positions around the creek
and wait for the hogs to come through.
Suddenly, something bursts from the bush.
It's not a hog, but something they've never seen before.
It was pretty close. I mean, I had him right in front of me.
Told the guys on the walkie-talkie, "Don't shoot him."
and we started chasing him.
He got down in our creek bottom.
And he's running through the trees,
and then he came up the hill into an open field.
So I just floored it to possibly try to catch him.
I mean, that's really what we were trying to do.
Hot damn! That thing is going fast!
Narrator: In 2008, sheriffs on patrol in the Texas backwoods
capture a strange animal on their dashboard camera.
Carter: What is th oh, man!
Narrator: The creature is suspected of multiple attacks on livestock.
Canion: Something is killing my chickens but not eating them.
Narrator: Local wildlife authorities
suspect it's a coyote with mange,
but rancher deric Hayek's encounter
challenges that theory.
How could a sick and dying animal
outrun a speeding pickup truck?
Harvey: The animal's loping along there,
and deric gaining on it a little bit,
but it always keeps staying ahead of him.
And that animal just left him like he never stood a chance.
Hot damn! That thing is going fast!
Narrator: The creature hits speeds of over 45 Miles an hour.
That's faster than a coyote in its prime.
We were scared to death
driving as fast as we were through this open field.
And there's hog roots and armadillo holes and tree holes.
If we would've hit one of them, we would've killed ourselves.
Couldn't get any closer. He wouldn't let us.
Narrator: The animal escapes into the woods.
Multiple firsthand witnesses of the creature
attest that this is not a dog with mange.
The mystery intensifies. What could this be?
In nearby DeWitt county,
deputy sheriff riedel and officer Ellie Carter
have screened their dashboard footage for a better look.
Carter: I'm seeing it, but I don't believe it.
It's in the daytime.
Narrator: Originally from central America,
officer Carter believes she is looking
at a mythical creature the chupacabra.
All of a sudden, she goes, "Oh, my God. It's the chupacabra."
and I'm like, "Oh, no. This is
this ain't this isn't happening. No way".
Narrator: Chupacabras were first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995.
Since then, unconfirmed sightings
have spread all over Latin America.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Narrator: Not much is known about the origins
of these feral animals not even its name.
Because they feed almost solely on blood,
they were christened "Chupacabra,"
Spanish for "Goat sucker."
could this be the same animal
that has been spotted thousands of Miles north in Texas?
Jorge ayala and his family
live on the same block this home video was shot.
He comes from El Salvador,
where the chupacabra has a sinister reputation.
Ayala: [ Speaking Spanish ]
Narrator: Eyewitness accounts mount,
but none can solve the riddle.
Has this myth become a reality, and should it be feared?
Texas authorities retain a tempered reaction.
Texas has 180 mammals,
but not one of them is a chupacabra.
Narrator: If not a mange-ridden coyote, then what is it?
Dr. Canion remains convinced
the animal is a new and invasive species.
She sends out a specimen for analysis.
Canion: They wanted to actually take the animal to Austin
and do their own research on it,
and I'm like, "Well, you really don't need the entire animal,"
because there are other people
that had an animal similar to mine and had given it to them,
and they never got it back.
Narrator: Canion reaches out to her own professional connections.
When she gets DNA results back,
instead of clearing up the mystery, it deepens it.
The DNA doesn't match any known species.
Canion: They said, "We're telling you
the DNA does not match anything."
I was thrilled. The results were black-and-white.
It was phenomenal.
Narrator: A strange, new predator has been stalking Texas.
In 2005, Dr. Phylis Canion finds one dead by the highway.
She takes the carcass home and sends out a specimen
for analysis with two goals in mind
is the animal a known breed, and where did it come from?
Canion: The DNA actually surprised us,
because when they contacted us and said,
"We have the DNA on your species,"
they actually called and said,
"We just wanted to share with you,
'cause it's pretty bizarre."
I've got the DNA here.
Narrator: The DNA doesn't match any known species.
The closest is a Mexican wolf mixed with a coyote,
but these animals are not known to mate.
The puzzle is compounded by the knowledge
that most mutant strains are sterile,
so why are these half-breeds not dying out?
By 2013, there are over 100 sightings
in a sprawling 160,000-square-mile area
of east Texas,
and the animals have become more dangerous.
Gerhard: In 2010, a woman near Dallas, Texas,
was actually bitten by one of these creatures when she approached it.
In my mind, it's very important
that we find out exactly what these things are.
I mean, particularly if they're being seen close to urban areas
and they're being accused of attacking people,
we need to figure out exactly what we're dealing with here.
Narrator: After nearly 10 years of isolated sightings,
cryptozoologist Ken gerhard is investigating
an eyewitness report that may answer the question
"Are these animals breeding?"
deric: This is a photo that I got.
Gerhard: When was this taken?
It was the latter part of deer season
end of December. Yeah.
Narrator: Deric and his father, Harvey,
believe they have evidence that a breeding female
could be living on their land.
I saw a mama with two babies.
Wow.
I mean, I sat there for a good 20 minutes or so,
and then she and those pups walked on off.
But you thought there might be more.
I thought there might have been more in there.
Finding a mother and her litter may help reveal
if these animals are growing in numbers and how quickly.
All right, deric.
This is the spot, huh? Yeah.
Show me what you found, man.
Yeah, it's over on this left bank.
See the dirt? See the green bushes right there?
That kind of orange-ish dirt right there?
That little orange patch over there?
That's, like, fresh dirt that's been kind of dug out, huh?
Yeah.
Wow.
Narrator: Harvey and deric suspect
the mother and pups are living right here under their feet.
Ken plans to send a snorkel camera deep into the burrow.
The light is on on the camera.
Do what you have to do.
Okay. Here we go.
Looks like whatever dug this hole
has figured out how to maneuver right, left, right
so that it's harder for anything else to get in there.
We're caving it in a little bit.
Yeah.
Geez.
If there's anything in the hole, we're definitely making it mad.
I'm telling you, we've already made the hard turn,
but there's some more.
Gerhard: I would say that we're probably
about seven or eight feet down into this burrow,
but it is just it's so winding.
I mean, it's got a kind of there's a left turn,
there's s right turn, there's a down turn.
Whatever dug this hole is actually being very strategic
in terms of making it very difficult
for us to get down here.
Oh, come on. Get in there.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What was that?
You see something?
I thought so.
What is that?
Ah, something moved in there. I saw it.
Really?
[Chuckling ] Yeah.
Did you see it crawling?
No.
It was crawling right here.
You're right.
Look, look, look.
There it is. There's something in there.
There's a baby something in there.
Did you see that little thing?
It went right down in this hole,
and it bends down again right here,
and he went straight down in there.
Narrator: Whatever the creature is,
it disappears too quickly for a positive identification.
As they try to follow,
the camera starts to collapse the tunnel wall.
You don't think we're gonna cave it in on him, do you?
I hope not.
Man, we're just not gonna get to go any further.
Deric is certain a mother and pups are down there.
But is it a breed unknown to science?
The Texas parks & Wildlife department remains unconvinced.
Cox: Most texans like a good story,
and the chupacabra is the one we get the most calls on.
We also get calls about bigfoot in east Texas.
I don't believe in them.
They exist only in the imagination of fertile minds.
Narrator: Dr. Canion maintains that this is a new species,
and she's just waiting for the authorities to catch up.
Canion: This is the animal. It's bizarre.
We've been all over the world
and seen animals for all over the world.
Never seen anything like this.
You know, it doesn't have any hair on it,
but the whole body is covered with this slight layer of fuzz.
And two nipples.
Most canines have four nipples.
And, of course, what amazed us absolutely the most
are these nodules.
These are not indigenous to either species
either a coyote or a wolf.
And they say, "There's no such thing. It doesn't exist."
and it's right here.
Narrator: What this creature is remains unknown,
but Dr. Canion is convinced they will only grow in numbers.
Canion: Is this the end? Now way.
This is only the start.
Child: I got him on zoom.
Woman: What is it?
I don't know!
It looked straight at us. It's weird-looking.
Woman: What is it?