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Human flesh and hair have been discovered in the gut of a black bear shot and killed here.
The remains were probably of an elderly woman found the same day the bear was killed by a hunter, sources said June 13.
Authorities dispatched a posse of hunters after four bodies were found in the Towadaoyu district of Kazuno over the past few weeks. Their injuries all bore the hallmarks of a bear attack.
“I’ve never heard of bears attacking people within the prefecture and eating them,” said a source with the bear-hunting party. “It’s likely that there are other bears out there that attacked humans. We can’t close off the entire district, but we urge people to stay away.”
The Asian black bear was slain by the local hunting club June 10 near the spot where the body of one of the victims, a 74-year-old woman from neighboring Towada, Aomori Prefecture, was found the same day.
It was a female bear measuring 1.2 meters long and weighing about 70 kilograms.
Members of a special committee set up by the prefecture, the prefectural police and the city to deal with the bear rampage attended the necropsy June 13 to ascertain whether the animal had attacked the four people found dead in the area since late May.
The dissection of the bear revealed that it had mostly eaten bamboo shoots, but human flesh and hair were also found at the entrance of the stomach. Digestion had progressed in the intestines and there was little left to examine.
As human flesh was found in the upper part of the stomach, the bear likely attacked the woman, but there was no evidence to suggest it was responsible for the deaths of the three men found dead last month, sources said.
Fabric and other traces of clothing would have helped officials identify the person consumed by the bear, but none were found.
The authorities will be conducting further investigations.
(THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)
