Fishermen sailing off the eastern Russian coast were shocked to discover the preserved corpse of a tiger floating in the sea.
Disturbing footage taken from the boat in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Vladivostok on Sunday shows the rare adult Amur tiger floating past their vessel.
The big cat showed no signs of injury, but the baffling find has prompted the city prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the mysterious discovery.
Police confirmed that the dead animal was an Amur, or Siberian, tiger, a critically endangered species that typically inhabits the forests of Russia’s Far East.
City prosecutors said: ‘All circumstances of the incident, including the reasons for the animal’s death, will be established.’
The regional hunting supervision service said they are trying to verify the sighting and locate the tiger’s body to find out how it died.
A spokesperson said: ‘Specialists are carrying out urgent measures to search for and recover the predator’s body from the water.’
The clip of the floating tiger was shared on social media platform Telegram and has gone viral.
Fishermen sailing off the eastern Russian coast were shocked to discover the preserved corpse of a tiger floating in the sea
The disturbing discovery was made in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Vladivostok on Sunday
Police are currently investigating where the big cat came from and why it ended up floating in the water
There is currently a population of 750 Amur tigers in Russia, according to Nature.com.
The mysterious find comes five years after a beheaded tiger was discovered among several other animal corpses during a wildlife trafficking raid at a private zoo in Thailand.
Thai wildlife officials made the shocking discovery at the Mukda Tiger Park and Farm in the northeastern province of Mukdahan in December 2020.
They found a severed tiger head and other tiger carcasses, including body parts, in a crackdown on suspected wildlife trafficking.
Five live tiger cubs suspected of being illegally smuggled into the zoo were also seized during the raid.
The five tigers had been declared as having been born at the facility, but DNA tests showed that three of them – one female and two males – were not related to any tigers in the park, suggesting they had been smuggled in, officials said.
Authorities removed the two other tigers for further forensics testing and are currently investigating the discovery of the tiger’s head at the zoo.
The results of DNA tests on a further 20 tigers, including two cubs, will be released in December, according to the Bangkok Post.
