Beaver kills man! That's not something you hear every day. But it happened. A Belarus fisherman was killed by a beaver after he got a little too close.
The 60-year-old man was on a fishing trip in Belarus when he tried to get close to the beaver to take a photo with it. The animal was not too happy about this and attacked the man. It bit him twice and severed an artery in his thigh.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the friends of the unidentified man "tried to bandage him and find a doctor in a nearby village." However it was too late. The man died from blood loss before help could get to him.
Sergei Shilinchuk, deputy head of Brest's environmental protection committee, said he never heard of someone dying from a beaver attack.
"People have lost fingers - that's the worst I've come across," Shilinchuk told The Telegraph. "The beaver is not normally aggressive, but it does have big teeth and immensely powerful jaws; it can cut down a tree three feet wide."
He thinks the beaver may have been rabid or it may have been a young beaver that was seeking new territory.
The beaver population has grown significantly in Belarus. Over the past five years, the population has doubled and there are believed to be 80,000 beavers in the country.
"We're making efforts to stimulate commercial use of beaver meat but that hasn't taken off yet," said Shilinchuk. Beavers are becoming a more common sight in the country.
This isn't the first time a beaver attacked a man. In September, an 83-year-old woman was attacked by a beaver when she went swimming in a lake. The rabid animal latched on to her leg. The woman and a friend had to fight off the animal with sticks, their hands and even canoe paddles before it let go after 20 minutes. It took a chunk of the woman's leg, almost severed her thumb and left other puncture wounds in her arms and legs.
In August, a Boy Scout leader was swimming in upstate New York when a beaver latched onto the man's chest.
Here is a video of a beaver attacking a man in Russia.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
