Chupifoka

**Habitat** | Various Forested Environments

The **Chupifoka** (unknown language for "big beetle") is a supposed man-sized beetle or beetle-like creature that is said to inhabit the jungles, swamps, forests, and open woodlands of Central America and southern North America (including Mexico and the southern regions of the United States). This creature has been sighted since around 8,000 years ago, when the native American people have reported huge, insects running and gliding in the forested areas. It is described as a human-sized, black beetle with strong mandibles adapted to hunt other animals such as rabbits, deer, and even humans. It has been claimed to be capable of traveling at a staggering 720 miles per hour (1160 km/h), thanks to its massive size.

The Chupifoka probably and most likely not exist in real life, not only because the sightings are so few and between or that these reports mostly only come from native accounts, nor do any physical evidence (dung, exoskeletons, etc) exist of this cryptid, but rather one major problem for this cryptid's existence; physiology. There are two major hurdles for any type of beetles to reach sizes reported for this cryptid.

* The first of these is respiration. Beetles, as in other insects, have spiracles on their exoskeletons to allow air to enter the trachea. Tracheal tubes primarily deliver oxygen directly into the insects' tissues. Yet the problems with this respiration is that neither one of them is particularly efficient for exchanging atmospheric gas when dialed up to large sizes. This limits the sizes attainable by terrestrial insects and arachnids. There may have been giant arthropods in the Carboniferous period, but there was far more oxygen in the atmosphere in those days, which could compensate for this inefficiency, and even then there were no giant beetles as claimed to be with the Chupifoka. This limitation of the respiratory system of beetles puts a cap on how big they can get, and the largest known beetles includes goliath beetles, Hercules beetles, and few others, but none of them reach the sizes as described for this cryptid.
* Assuming that the giant beetles of Central America and southern North America have somehow evolved a radical new type of respiratory system, and have transcended the size limitation imposed on other beetle (which is unlikely as is), there is a second, perhaps even more insurmountable obstacle to face; their exoskeleton. The problem with the exoskeleton is that it is heavy, which at smaller sizes is not really a problem, however, muscular strength is largely a function of the width of the muscle at its widest point. To put it simply, the weight of the exoskeleton is growing faster than the strength of the muscles that support and move it. What this means for the beetle us that the exoskeleton will at some point become too heavy for it to carry or for it to even move. This is a formidable challenge for any land arthropod to overcome if it was to become very large.

To be sure, there are quite huge arthropods on Earth that are well known, such as the Japanese spider crab, which can reach 3.8 meters from claw to claw, but these creatures will have the benefit of having been surrounded by water to help support all of that weight. There are indeed also enormous terrestrial arthropods in the form of the coconut crab, which can grow up to 1 meter length and weigh 4.1 kilograms, but this is quite possibly the largest physical size possible for a land-based creature with an exoskeleton living in modern times, and as anyone who has observed a coconut crab in action will notice that they move incredibly slowly. Considering all this, it is really hard to imagine a beetle with a 1.8 or 2 meter long body explosively darting out to capture prey or swiftly scurry about through the forests.

## Explanations

* The Chupifoka may be a giant species of beetle or similar insects that evolved to be human-sized, but as stated before, this is highly unlikely. Thankfully for the entomophobes, the Chupifoka is quite possibly the unlikeliest of all the American cryptids. Unless Earth returns to the highly oxygenated days of the Carboniferous period, there would be no giant beetles outside of tall tales anytime soon.
* The Chupifoka box may actually be a real life demon species/individual, sometimes reported to have supernatural powers.
* The entire sightings and stories of the Chupifoka may have been just myths made up by authors of the historical times as either practical jokes or for their fictional stories.