A married couple from a small Russian village shared their excitement when they captured and killed what many thought was a mythical bloodsucking creature that had been slaughtering their chickens.

According to the Konstantinov family, who live in the village of Itkul, near the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, they came in close contact with a ferocious chupacabra and merged victorious.

The legendary beast, described as a lizard-like creature said to attack and drink the blood of livestock in Latin folklore, was believed by some to have visited Itkul’s residents and to blame for the theft of chickens.

Several reported seeing a strange, bald animal that had been ravaging several chicken coops but its reign of terror came to an end when the husband of Elena Konstantinova cornered the animal and beat it to death with a stick.

Elena claimed the beast had tried to hide and made strange hissing noises.

She added: “And it also jumped very high, jumping up two meters [six and a half feet].”

The scene was also reportedly witnessed by their 11-year-old daughter.

They then shared a pic of the vanquished monster with its skinny, almost alien-like appearance. Locals immediately recognised it as the mythical chupacabra, a never-before-filmed beast similar to either a jackal or a small kangaroo.

But the claims were dashed when the chief veterinary inspector of the Chulym region, Ravil Zhabarov, explained in an interview with local media that there is nothing mystical about this animal: it was simply a bald, sick dog.

Zhabarov said the animal hissed due to illness as a result of exhaustion, as it could no longer growl or bark.

In the face of locals continuing to refuse to accept the expert opinion, the animal was then shown to Novosibirsk veterinarian Anatoly Tselikov, who agreed the killed animal was just a dog suffering from an illness.

The vet continued: “Most likely, this is a raccoon dog, probably affected by sarcoptic mange (a parasitic disease caused by a scabies mite).

“My colleague, a man with an education, worked on the spot, so he understood what he was facing.

“I do not believe in chupacabra, I did not believe and I will never believe it.

“Look how many of these sarcoptic foxes and dogs are in South America and Africa and how they look when they are treated and then fed.

“As to the suggestion it had jumped two meters, I say fear has big eyes, and if I saw a man trying to hit me with a huge stick, I might well manage to jump the two-metre jumps mentioned in the description.”