Man shoots dead 'chupacabra' in Kentucky

A man has shot dead a mysterious creature in Kentucky that some have claimed is a chupacabra.

Mark Cothren from Nelson County killed the unidentified animal on December 18 after it walked onto his front garden at 3pm, Wave News reports.

Cothren said: "I was like, 'Every animal has hair, especially this time of year!' What puzzled me is how something like that could survive through a winter with no hair.

"Everybody is getting very curious, you know. [The] phone is ringing off the hook. It's kind of a mystery right now."

When it was suggested that the large-eared, long-tailed creature with grayish, wrinkly skin and no fur could be a mythical chupacabra ("goat sucker"), Cothren said: "Everybody is leaning kind of toward that - it's the chupacabra! People have come up to me [saying] that's what the thing is."

However, Louisville Zoo's Sam Clites said: "It's hard to judge what an animal is from just a photograph [but] this is an animal that's native to our area, most likely that is suffering from some type [of] disease."

Last year, the body of a supposed chupacabra was found in Texas.