Livestock Mutilation: Traces of a Secret Biological Sampling Program

In 1974, many letters sent to the FBI from Colorado, Nebraska and other western states described the same scene. Cattle lay dead in open fields. The eyes, tongue, ears or reproductive organs were gone. The wound edges looked flat. Almost no blood remained around the missing tissue. The writers were not reporting one dead animal. They were reporting a chain of cases across several states, near military facilities, test sites and large ranches.

The FBI opened its Animal Mutilation file after ranchers, local police and lawmakers demanded an investigation. A federal agency receiving many letters and reports is a fact that happened. The unresolved question is whether the carcasses were only scavenged after natural death, or whether people removed tissue from some animals and left them in the fields. When the details are placed next to each other, one possibility becomes clear. A covert biological sampling program could have blended into the mixed group of incidents. Natural decay covered for the cases that involved human hands.