Authorities in South Florida are investigating, after two alligators were discovered devouring a dead body on the edge of the Everglades.
Davie police officers responded Monday to a call from fishermen about alligators eating possible human remains on a canal bank in Southwest Ranches, about 15 miles from Fort Lauderdale, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
“We want to identify who the victim is and possibly figure out what happened to them, how did they end up here,” police Sgt. Pablo Castaneda told reporters, according to the newspaper. “Could it be homicide? Could it be suicide? Could it have been natural – a fisherman?
“We don’t know.”
When officers arrived, they said they saw the two alligators – a large one and a small one – and tried to scare them away.
The Miami Herald reported that trappers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were called to assist authorities so that divers could try to recover the body and any other evidence from the water.
“The body has been in the water for a while,” police spokesman Dale Engle told the newspaper.
Castaneda told reporters that officers stood by armed with AR-15s “to make sure that our divers are safe once they’re in the water,” according to the Sun-Sentinel.
Carol Lyn Parrish, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told the newspaper that the corpse was a man, though authorities were not able to determine much else, including age or race.
The Broward County Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy to attempt to determine, among other things, the cause of death, according to reports.
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Amy Moore told the Sun-Sentinel that it was not immediately known whether the alligators killed the man, or whether they were just eating the remains.
“If we determine that an alligator was the cause,” she told the newspaper, “then we’ll go back and recover it.”
Castaneda, the police sergeant, told reporters on the scene he had never seen alligators consume human remains.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, “alligators are opportunistic feeders” whose diets “include prey species that are abundant and easily accessible. Juvenile alligators eat primarily insects, amphibians, small fish, and other invertebrates. Adult alligators eat . . . fish, snakes, turtles, small mammals, and birds.”
In addition, alligators have been known to feast on carrion – or dead animals - and even fellow alligators, according to the University of Florida.
