...Believing in these creatures and following their trails in the forest is somewhat akin to an amusement park ride: They are safe ways of experiencing fear, said Jacqueline Woolley, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
People are still searching for evidence of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster, said to have first been spotted by Vikings in the sixth century. There have also been reported sightings of mermaids -- in Israel last year, for one -- and ghosts: For instance, there are still believers in La Llorona, "the crying woman" said to have killed the children she had with Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés.
Other cultures also have legendary folk monsters that have supposedly been sighted but haven't been proved to exist. The "chupacabra," roughly translated as "goat sucker" in Spanish, has been blamed for the deaths of goats in Mexico. The blood-drinking creature is said to look like a cross between a giant dog and a lizard, and it has fiery eyes. A coyote-like creature in Blanco, Texas, created a frenzy last year as some speculated it could be a chupacabra.
Humans are inherently interested in the blurred line between fantasy and reality, psychologists say. People also want to feel like heroes; stories such as David and Goliath help people see themselves as capable of tackling their own challenges, even if their "monster" happens to be their boss or in-law, she said.
Serious scientists have studied the evidence that hunters of Bigfoot and others collect but have never made a shocking discovery based upon them.
Disotell has conducted DNA analyses of more than 15 samples over the years of blood, feces, bone, hair and other remnants of supposed chupacabra or Bigfoot-like creatures. His samples have come from various places in the United States, Canada and as far as Nepal, where the Abominable Snowman or Yeti is said to reside.
"It stretches credibility just from the sense that you can't just have one or two of these beasts running around for tens of thousands of years; you need a population to be viable," he said.
The "evidence" he has examined was, in reality, material from bears, coyotes, humans, mountain goats,and inorganic sources. He ran analyses of their DNA with the same rigor as any other samples in his lab, which routinely does such tests to help classify species of primates from all over the world...
