'It's a Predator. I'm Not Saying It's Extraterrestrial': The Pale Creature Blamed for Dead Chickens in the Valle de Juárez

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico (Oct. 22, 2026): The Valle de Juárez runs southeast from the city along the Rio Grande, a strip of farms, cotton fields and small towns with Texas on the other bank. Out there, chickens live in backyard coops and rabbits in hutches, and in mid-October, according to Mexico’s best-known UFO investigator, something has been getting into them.

Where it started

The original social media post

1. @R2_Noticias on X

   Oct 18, 2026

   Andan buscando a #Maussan Me enviaron este video donde comentan que supuestamente andaba una criatura comiéndose animales y le realizaron dos disparos en el poblado de Benito Juárez

   ▶ A 23 second night video

   Our translation They're looking for #Maussan. They sent me this video saying a creature was supposedly going around eating animals and they fired two shots at it in the town of Benito Juárez.

   The first viral clip we found in this week's window. It is a separate video from Maussan's trail camera images.

   193 likes · 21,113 views as of Oct 24, 2026

   View original on X (opens in new tab) Load the post here

   From the conversation

   • @netonh3la (reply on X, opens in new tab) Oct 20, 2026

     @R2_Noticias Psss si eso que se escucha es un toro bramando

     Our translation Well, what you hear in it is a bull bellowing.

   • @DagoNascimento (reply on X, opens in new tab) Oct 18, 2026

     @R2_Noticias Habiendo lámparas chidas, celulares que graban en 4K, siguen enviando este tipo de videos como de los 90.

     Our translation With good flashlights around and phones that shoot in 4K, they keep sending videos like it's the 90s.

   • @ATH1NV4D3R (reply on X, opens in new tab) Oct 18, 2026

     @R2_Noticias Mejor que traigan a Facundo ese wey si grabó al chupacabras 🤣

     Our translation Better bring in Facundo, that guy actually filmed the chupacabras.

   See the full thread on X → (opens in new tab)

Posts shown as originally published; we don’t verify individual comments. Translations are ours. Retrieved Oct 24, 2026. “Load the post here” fetches the original from X, which may set cookies.

Jaime Maussan and his team say a trail camera in the valley caught it. The images, as El Heraldo de México described them on Oct. 22, show a hairless figure with pink, wrinkled skin and long claws, caught on camera in mid-October.

? What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

• What it is. Maussan doesn’t say. “Es un depredador. No estoy diciendo que sea extraterrestre, pero es algo aterrador,” he told reporters, in El Heraldo’s account. “It’s a predator. I’m not saying it’s extraterrestrial, but it’s terrifying. Its intelligence and agility are truly terrifying. I don’t think it attacks people, but it is affecting the interests of those who live in the so-called Valle de Juárez.”
• What it does. He says it has killed as many as thirty birds in a single night. El Heraldo reports that it climbs walls and stands partly upright on two legs.
• A boy and a chicken. In an English language account of the case shared on X and embedded by El Heraldo, a boy saw the creature grab a chicken by the head and climb a tree. The boy hasn’t been named or quoted directly.
• A comparison. Maussan links it to an earlier creature case in Metepec, State of Mexico, saying that one was a juvenile and this one is older.

✓ What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

• The size doesn’t agree. El Heraldo gives an estimated length of about 70 centimeters, a bit over 2 feet. An X post embedded in the same article puts it at “casi 1.80 mts de la cabeza a la cola,” almost 1.8 meters, close to 6 feet, from head to tail. An English relay on X put it at “about 2 feet tall.” Those can’t all be the same measurement, and none of them is from someone who measured anything.
• Officials have nothing on file. The El Paso Times, in a report by Daniel Borunda summarized by the British site KASE Paranormal, found that Juárez Civil Protection had received no abnormal reports. A spokesperson for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said the relevant patrol station had no reports of strange creatures or unusual livestock deaths.
• Scientists have seen this before. El Heraldo notes that in earlier cases, supposedly alien-looking animals turned out to be coyotes or feral dogs with severe mange, which can strip an animal of its fur and leave its skin swollen and wrinkled.
• A second video. Separately, on Oct. 18, the X account R2_Noticias posted a short night clip it said came from the town of Benito Juárez in the valley, where people said a creature had been eating animals and “they fired two shots at it.” The clip is dark. What’s in it isn’t clear.

The mange question

Mange is the explanation that keeps coming back, and for good reason. Sarcoptic mange is caused by a mite that burrows into the skin. In bad cases, coyotes and foxes lose almost all their hair. Their skin turns gray or pink and folds into thick wrinkles, their tails look long and rat-like, and they get thin and desperate enough to raid coops in places they’d normally avoid. Hairless, pinkish, wrinkled, long-tailed and going after chickens is close to a field guide description.

That isn’t proof. Nobody has caught the animal, and nobody has published a vet’s look at the bodies of the birds. But it’s the suspect that has to be ruled out first.

What readers said

On X, the R2_Noticias clip drew more jokes than gasps. “Well, what you hear in it is a bull bellowing,” wrote @netonh3la. @DagoNascimento was tired of the video quality: “With good flashlights around and phones that shoot in 4K, they keep sending videos like it’s the 90s.” And @ATH1NV4D3R wanted a specialist: “Better bring in Facundo, that guy actually filmed the chupacabras.”

What’s next

What the case needs is the people who lost the animals: what they saw themselves, what the wounds looked like and whether anyone found tracks. Until one of them speaks for themselves, the Valle de Juárez creature is a set of trail camera images and an investigator’s description of other people’s experiences. If an owner or a vet comes forward, we’ll update this story.

Update, October 31, 2026

Spanish-language coverage through late October keeps the split on the record: officials say they have no case; Maussan says he has trail-cam footage and farm attacks.

• Protección Civil (Oct. 14). Sergio Rodríguez, director of Ciudad Juárez’s Protección Civil, told local outlets including La Opción (opens in new tab) that the city had no official reports and no evidence of an unknown creature attacking animals in the Valle de Juárez. Recent city work there, he said, was about rain damage, not predator calls.
• Diario Puntual (Oct. 27). A Puntual write-up (opens in new tab) restates that municipal denial, notes Maussan’s later social posts of trail-cam clips (including a figure he tied to Oct. 14), and underlines that past “chupacabras” exhibits have often been coyotes or dogs with severe mange. It also notes the Oct. 14 statement came before several of the later clips circulated, so it is not a frame-by-frame judgment of those videos.
• Still missing. No public veterinary necropsy tying dead chickens, rabbits or horses to the filmed figure. No independent zoological ID. Mange in coyotes and dogs remains the leading mundane hypothesis for a hairless, wrinkled, long-tailed coop raider; that is a prior, not a lab result on this specific animal.

We are not relaunching this as a new lead. The Updated badge marks the officials-versus-Maussan dispute and the still-open mange question.