Cattle mutilation is one of those divisive, mysterious issues that has fringe theorists explaining it with everything from aliens to cults to government experimentation. There have been documentaries and articles through the years that have attempted to find the most reasonable explanation behind these sickening mutilations, but no one has any definitive answer for them. The connecting features from case to case are a lack of blood, almost as if it had been drained; an almost cauterized appearance to the flesh; and the removal of certain areas of flesh and organs – the flesh of the face removed down to the skull, the genital organs, the rectum – while the rest of the animal remains intact. While the mysteriousness of these animal mutilations means they are often dismissed as naturally caused – and anyone who says otherwise is labeled as a conspiracy theorist – the reality is that the U.S. government put time and money into investigating them, and the FBI has a whole Animal Mutilation section on their website where you can download correspondence and newspaper articles detailing their involvement in the mid 1970s. What’s interesting is that the FBI did not begin its formal investigation, entitled “Operation Animal Mutilation” and led by FBI agent Kenneth Rommel, until 1979, but the documents available on their website are from between 1974 and 1978, so their official investigation and report are not readily available to the public, unless you want to go through the bureaucratic mess of a FOIA request. The official investigation was conducted with a grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), an agency of the DOJ that allocated funds to various law enforcement undertakings. The apparent results of the investigation are that while many of the mutilations could be explained by natural occurrences, such as certain scavengers/predators, Rommel did conclude that there were elements for which no reasonable explanation could be found (source). What I’ve compiled below is a selection of the documents the FBI has made available to the public, and it’s interesting to read the FBI correspondence with Senators and law enforcement from Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico (where they eventually agreed to investigate the reports), as well as documentation of the actual reports compiled by the FBI. Interspersed are really gross photos of alleged cattle mutilation. Enjoy! Just make sure you aren’t having a burger for lunch…

