Episode Details

Cattle Mutilations in Australia and Beyond

On a tucked-away cattle station north-west of Mackay, Mick and Judy Cook keep finding their beasts dead in the grass. An udder gone. A tongue. An ear, cut clean. No blood, no tracks, and nothing in the bush will come near the carcass.

They are not the first. Seventy years earlier, on the dairy country behind Lismore, farmers walked their fences on the full moon with the shotguns loaded, watching for a killer the papers called the moonlight sadist. He was never caught.

This week on Strewth, we follow the cattle that have been dying strangely on Australian land since at least 1953, the graziers who paid a price for saying so out loud, and the plain scientific answer that covers nearly all of it. Nearly.

Content note: this episode describes injuries to livestock and may not suit every listener.

Sources:

• Georgia Noack, "Aliens 'only explanation' for mutilated cows found on Aussie farm, farmers say," NZ Herald, 3 April 2023. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/aliens-only-explanation-for-mutilated-cows-found-on-aussie-farm-farmers-say/2UKN2FVUGVCT7HMQ4NF6ETPZTA/

• Tara Cassidy, "Dead cows found in paddock with udders, ears and tongues removed," ABC News (Tropical North), 6 September 2018. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-06/mutilated-cows-found-dead-in-country-town/10190736

• Ross Coulthart, "The UFO Phenomenon: Australia's cattle mutilation mystery," 7NEWS Spotlight, 2021. https://7news.com.au/spotlight/the-ufo-phenomenon-australias-cattle-mutilation-mystery-c-3035029.amp

• Jessica Johnston, "Cattle mutilated in North Queensland the work of aliens or robots, owners say," 11 September 2018.

• Jason Costigan MP (Member for Whitsunday), record of proceedings, Queensland Parliament, 28 October 2014. https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/speeches/spk2014/Jason_Costigan-Whitsunday-20141028-238967456772.pdf

• "Lismore Cattle Mutilated," Townsville Daily Bulletin, 18 July 1953 (Brisbane dateline, 17 July 1953). Digitised, National Library of Australia, Trove.

• "The Nimble Junjudee From Jiggi," The Fortean, 21 July 2018. https://www.thefortean.com/2018/07/21/the-nimble-junjudee-from-jiggi/

• Michael J. Goleman, "Wave of Mutilation: The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the 1970s," Agricultural History, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 398–417. Agricultural History Society. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2011.85.3.398

• P. Nick Nation and Elisabeth S. Williams, "Maggots, mutilations and myth: Patterns of postmortem scavenging of the bovine carcass," Canadian Veterinary Journal, Vol. 30, September 1989, pp. 742–747.