Let me quote this phrase from Wolfgang:
"Each culture has its own myths, and the myths of a culture influence what people see when they perceive something which is not familar."

In the immensity of the Argentinean Pampas, popular culture is highly related to cattle breeding. You can imagine the panic of people when they saw their cows lying dead and horribly mutilated for apparently no reason. There were not only photographs, but real corpses of the poor cows showing perfect cuts which no known predator could cause. Other animals kept good distance from the dead bodies. No steps of predators, no signals of a fight. Neither the police or the expert breeders or veterinarians would find an explanation, and the phenomenon was rapidly associated to extraterrestrials, especially because tongues and genitals were missing from the bodies, as if someone was taking samples.

The University of Buenos Aires took intervention, they could see, touch and analyze the bodies (something you can't on UFOs or witches), put all pieces together, studied the cuts at the microscope, dedicated some open-minded scientists (they found some), and found the culprit: a super-population of a rare species of rats, attacking naturally dead animals, which had never showed such behaviour before. Not satisfied with the results, they left some bodies lying down in the field for a night in the same places, and could see a repetition ad nauseam of the phenomenon (another thing that you can't do with UFOs). You can guess what the UFO specialists say: that an extraterrestrial monster is killing the cows and the University scientists are covering-up the facts as part of some conspiracy involving the government, and (why not?) the CIA.

One resolved case does not explain the others, though. We are waiting for a UFO brought into the laboratories and then celebrate whatever we can discover.

Nice discussion, thanks to all who are participating. Un abrazo,
Andrés