LOSPALOS, East Timor — The two scientists, crammed in the back of a sweltering car, had come a long way hoping to encounter what most people try to avoid: man-eating crocodiles.

Yusuke Fukuda and Sam Banks, biologists from Australia, traveled in March to East Timor, one of the world’s least developed countries, to investigate what has become a national mystery: Why are so many Timorese being killed by crocodiles?

Crocodile attacks here have increased 20-fold in the past decade, numbering at least one death a month in a country of 1.2 million people.

“We became concerned after many people were taken by crocodiles in East Timor,” said Mr. Fukuda, a Ph.D. candidate at Australian National University in Darwin, adding that it had taken years of bureaucratic wrangling between the researchers and the governments in both Australia and East Timor to be permitted to conduct research.