Florida Alligator
An alligator suns itself along the Anhinga Trail at Everglades National Park, Florida April 22, 2015. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

A 46-year-old New Zealand woman remains missing after she and a female friend went night swimming at Thornton Beach near Cairns on Sunday. Her body has not been found because of the possibility that it is inside the belly of a crocodile.

In the case of another reptile victim in the Everglades, South Florida police found two alligators eating a dead body. It is the corpse’s identity that the Davis cops have to establish, reports The Washington Post on Tuesday.

The Sun-Sentinel reports that the previous day, they received a call from fishermen about the gators possibly eating human remains on a canal bank in western Broward County. Upon arrival, the officers tried to scare off the alligators, but the two, although it retreated, were still lingering nearby.

Armed with AR-15 rifles, the officers – together with a dive team and an alligator trap from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission – managed to recover the mangled body by 10 pm. Carol Lyn Parrish, spokeswoman of the commission, confirmed it is a male body, but beyond the gender, authorities know little about the victim.

The county medical examiner will try to determine the cause of the man’s death. Authorities want to know if the man was a victim of homicide, took his own life or was a fisherman attacked by the alligators, says police Sgt Pablo Castaneda.

Castaneda says it is the first time he had seen gators eat a human. In March 2015, shocked British tourists witnessed a croc devour a human while they were at a Zimbabwe cruise.