The Cattle Mutilation Panic of the 1970s

Strange lights and black helicopters in the night. Cattle found dead with blood or organs seemingly removed from strange incisions. Alien visitors in the heartland. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe take a skeptical look at the cattle mutilation phenomenon of the 1970s.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind? My name is Robert Man, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And hey, it's still October here on the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast. So we're going to be talking

(00:23):
about something weird. I mean, we often talk about things
that are weird, but I guess we get even weirder
this month. So, Rob today you picked out the topic
of the cattle mutilation panic, which I think is going
to tie into a very exciting weird house cinema movie
that we're gonna be uh doing an episode on tomorrow.
But this is something that I've been aware of my

(00:44):
whole life, but never actually properly looked into. It was
just kind of one of those things always in my
peripheral vision. Yeah, somewhere out there, this is a topic
people care about, but I don't know anything about it.
And uh it actually, you know what, It's gotten more
interesting the more I looked at it, not because it's
aliens or a government conspiracy, but uh, I don't know

(01:05):
the some of the smart takes you found about, like
the sociological phenomenon. Yeah, I think it was pretty much
in the same boat concerning this topic. I knew it
was something that comes up in conspiracy circles and among
UFO enthusiasts. I knew that it was the kind of
thing that might pop up on say, an episode of
The X Files here or there um, but I'd never
really look closely at it. And and I do wanna Yeah,

(01:28):
I do want to tell everybody out there. Yeah, there
will be maybe a few little mentions of the grizzly
details in this episode, but for the most part, the
really interesting stuff about this is not what was allegedly
done or not done to cattle, but yes, some of
these other things surrounding it, such as, you know, the
idea of cattle mutilation as a uh is a is

(01:48):
a is a panic or a mild panic, as a
as an idea, as a script for for some sort
of unexplained event, or is a script into which one
could poor ones anxieties and concerns, And so we're gonna
be getting into a lot of that. But yeah, I
think cattle mutilation is one of those topics that, despite
all of its grotesque and outrageous properties, is easy to

(02:10):
overlook and not to think about, especially for those of
us living outside of the times, and this is generally
like a mid uh, mid nineteen seventies kind of situation.
We'll get into the dates in a bit. Also, if
you if you live outside of the places where the
phenomenon resonates the strongest, namely American cattle country and again
the mid nineteen seventies, though of course, there are still

(02:33):
people who say that the cattle mutilation phenomenon continues to
this day, and it's kind of hard to know whether
to argue with that or not, because as the what
the social phenomenon, it does seem to have peaked very
much in the seventies, But of course there are still
like cattle carcasses that people find and sometimes they look strange,
and sometimes people try to categorize those along with whatever

(02:57):
was being discussed in this other phenomenon from the and
these yeah, yeah, uh so it seems to be the
case when you look at uphologists and conspiracy theory enthusiasts
out there, it seems like maybe they're more often drawn
into more human centric topics like UFO sightings, I saw something,
this person saw something. Alien abductions, in which you have

(03:19):
a personal testimony of of beings from the outside or
stuff like jfk assassination theories and various modern trends and
conspiracy circles. But yeah, I feel like for the rest
of us outside of those circles, outside of the world
of American cattle country in the mid seventies, it's easy
to just dismiss cattle mutilation as to the realm of
hoax and superstition without stopping to wonder like why it

(03:42):
emerged as an idea, Like hoaxes and superstitions do not
come about without, you know, some sort of reasoning, without
some sort of of of cause, Like they're interesting effects,
even in the creation of something that is objectively not true.
Because as if the alleged mutilations were not the result

(04:04):
of secret government experiments or alien visitations or the work
of strange cryptids eating on cows in the night, then
what were they the result of. If these are misinterpretations
of actual physical evidence, then what is being misinterpreted, Why
is it being misinterpreted, what is fueling the ensuing panic,

(04:25):
and what does it mean? So these are some of
the topics we're going to be exploring in this episode. Now,
a couple of key sources that I'll be referring to
in this episode, and and I think we're gonna throw
a couple other things in there as well. But one
is an excellent two thousand and eleven paper by Michael J.
Goldman that was published in Agricultural History titled Wave of Mutilation,

(04:48):
The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the nineteen seventies. And another
paper I was looking at, a paper titled Death by Folklore, Ostension,
Contemporary Legend and Murder by Bill Ellis published in Western
States Folklore Society. Now, I know we said we're not
going to dwell more than we need to on the
the specific grizzly details, though I guess we do need

(05:08):
to begin by sort of describing what people are talking
about when they talk about cattle mutilation. That's right, Yeah.
Goldman in his in his paper points out that among
the ranchers that we are that are reporting these cases
beginning in earnest, he says, during nineteen seventy three, and
continuing through the end of the nineteen seventies, these are

(05:31):
a few of the the details we can generally tick
check off the list. First of all, the apparent removal
of an animal's eyes, ears utters anus and sex organs. Uh.
Not only removal, but reports that the parts are um
are are surgically removed, or the cuts have surgical like precision,

(05:51):
or that there was some sort of coring methodology to
their removal. Something that that at least to the either
to the eyes of the nous or in the retelling
of the event, does not seem in keeping with with
with the work of of say animals. Yeah, they lean
on this kind of detail a lot. That the stories

(06:12):
involve um injuries are alterations to livestock animal carcasses. Uh.
That Uh, that would that are not understood as like
the kind of ragged tearing one would expect to see
if say, a predator had had attacked an animal carcass,
but instead that they describe sort of clean cuts, surgical
precision incisions, or excisions as if made by a sharp

(06:35):
metal instrument. Yeah. And sometimes you also see it listed
that there was an apparent absence of footprints or tire tracks,
thus ruling out human interference. Also the apparent absence of
usual scavenger species, uh, playing into the argument, well, and
with the scavengers couldn't have done this, there's no sign
of the scavengers. Another one of the claims I've seen

(06:58):
emphasized pretty often by the the cattle mutologists is the
idea that there was not a single drop of blood
on the site. I watched one really stupid documentary about
cattle mutilation that heavily leaned on the alleged lack of blood,
both in the body and on the ground around the animal. Uh,

(07:18):
sort of trying to emphasize the idea that it is
impossible that, say, the soft tissue and the organs that
you described earlier could have been removed as they were
without spilling blood all over the place. So something is
defying the laws of physics here. Yeah. Now, Additionally, in
some cases, according to Goldman, and we'll get into some
of this in the bed, there were also reports of
aerial activity, um of aerial phenomena happening as well, uh,

(07:43):
such as strange objects seen in the sky for days
or weeks after the incident, or the sighting of unmarked
or black helicopters hovering over areas near known mutilations. And
those are common themes. But I would say it doesn't
stop there actually, Uh, just that cattle mutilations are often
paired with other weird observances that you know, might not

(08:08):
be like those things at all, like it might be, Oh,
there was a figure in a tree that had glowing
yellow eyes and it was staring at me. Now at
this point, regular listeners to stuff to blow your mind
might realize, hey, this is very similar to what we
just talked about in a couple of episodes on elf Shot.
And indeed there is a lot of unexpected synchronicity between

(08:28):
these topics. Uh. The idea, like one of the ideas
I brought up was, you know, you you go out
into the woods looking for star jelly, you will find
star jelly. You know, if if your your your your
curiosity is um is heightened, and your awareness is heightened
for the uncanny or verse signs of the uncanny, you
can probably find something that the mind will then interpret

(08:50):
as as the uncanny. Right now, I guess from here,
now that we've described what some of these reports are like,
it doesn't make a lot of sense to like quibble
over how accurate the observational reports of these animal carcasses are,
because probably in some cases they're not reported totally right,
But we should just I think, except for the sake
of argument, that basically there are cases in which some

(09:14):
or many or even all of these details have been
observed and and work from there. Right, like, assuming people
did at least in some cases fine livestock carcasses that
had these features. How to make sense of it? Now?
Of course, some people are going to go to, well,
it was aliens, or it's cryptids, it's the chipcabra, or
it's some kind of weird government conspiracy. It's a cover up,

(09:37):
they're doing biological weapons experiments, that the kind of things
you already mentioned. Um, but what what would the skeptical
side tend to come back on? Well, I mean, on
one level, what we're talking about here, like the most
logical path for understanding catle mutilation phenomenon or a cattle
mutilation panic is that you're talking about misinterpretation of the dead.

(09:57):
Um and this this is certainly with this would not
be the first time in human history that such misinterpretations
played into folklore and superstition. We've talked about various examples
on the show before, for instance, the misinterpretation of drowned
bodies and the Japanese Kappa tales to uh oh, the
various misinterpretations of human decay that played into the vampire

(10:18):
legends of Europe, like casts gets open to reveal blood
bloated bodies supposedly, or fingernails that seem to have kept
growing after death. That sort of thing. Yeah, which are
actually just normal ways that a corpus might appear due
to the physical process of decomposition. But people not understanding
really what they were looking at that like, a swollen

(10:39):
corpse would be swollen because of it's it's decomposition state,
not because it has recently engorged itself on a meal
of blood. Right, but how often are you opening up caskets.
You're probably only opening up caskets of suspected vampires. So
and then when you open them up, this is what
you see, You've you probably don't have a lot to
compare it to. And therefore the super natural provides a

(11:00):
script by which to understand, uh, the the the strange,
and the uncanny. Robbie just threw the comparison to our
elf shot episodes. But I also think of the story
of the farmer who has a calf dropped dead and
then opens up the body and finds that it has
a hole in its heart or so, so the farmer thinks,
I mean, it's not said in that story, how much

(11:21):
experience the farmer had looking at calf hearts. I mean
maybe they had a lot, maybe they had none. I
don't know. But in any case, this is interpreted as
a fairy weapon because what else could explain it. Yeah,
Now this is probably good at time as any to
remind everybody when when we when we talk about um
phenomena like this, situations where they're they're they're very well,

(11:43):
maybe some sort of a moral panic or public panic
in place, and there's some sort of a uh, you know,
a paranormal angle. Uh. You know, it doesn't mean by
any by any stretch of the imagination that you have
just like dumb individuals falling for something that that you
know that this is just like stupid people making a
stupid mistake. Uh, It's it's a lot more complicated than that,

(12:06):
you know. And once you're you're you're in the middle
of of one of these situations, uh, you know, you
have you have various forces kind of steering your mind
towards the supernatural script and then the interpretation of reality
through that script. So I want to drive that home
because and and also it ultimately builds up from there
because one of the things that Goldman points out is

(12:28):
that ultimately multiple local and state law enforcement agencies open
investigations into cattle mutilation. This includes the cb I, the
Minnesota field office of the a t F, as well
as federally funded investigations directed by the Northern New Mexico
d d a's office. You had senators and congressmen raising
questions about the phenomenon, and Canadian reports were investigated by

(12:51):
the Mounties. So um, so yeah, we we we have
to be careful looking back at this, uh these events
in the nineteen seventies. Uh, um, with knowing what we
know now well and also being humble about what we
know now because while I think we can offer some
some very reasonable guesses that would explain many of these cases,

(13:13):
I mean, it's it's totally possible that there are some cases,
some reports of cattle mutilation phenomenon that in fact we
have no idea what the explanation is. That doesn't mean
you have warrant to jump to conclusions of aliens or
government conspiracies or whatever. But you know, we should be
humble about our you know, the limits of our ability
to explain things. Sometimes the cases are just underdetermined. We

(13:36):
don't have enough evidence. We don't know what happened. Yeah,
and of course I think today's audience certainly realizes the
role of the media can play in UM in presenting
like conspiracy ideas and um in even paranormal ideas about
what's going on in the world. And Yeah, at the time,
Goldman points out, it wasn't just fringe conspiracy reporting that

(13:57):
was fueling this um yet, even though cattle mutilation is
largely the domain of of these groups today. But at
the time, the Associated Press and Newsweek both covered cattle
mutilation phenomena. There there was even a regional Emmy Award
winning documentary in Night Uh, So you had that going

(14:18):
on as well to to fuel uh the paranoia. So
but while aliens and UFOs and ultimately I think cryptids
would play a part in the various interpretations and stories
about supposed cattle mutilations, the most pervasive version of the
cattle mutilation script during the nineteen seventies, the most pervasive

(14:39):
version that was being reported, reported to the media and
so forth, was that of a conspiracy theory concerning the
US government. And this is one of Goldman's key points
in his writings because while it's easy to dismiss cattle
mutilation is being just a part of the larger UFO
hysteria gripping the country at the time. Quote, it reveals

(15:01):
much about the socio economic condition of Midwestern ranchers. It
demonstrates the volatility of the cattle industry during the nineties
seventies and a growing distrust of the federal government among
many small scale ranchers who had limited holdings, worked their
ranch part time or relied on public land used to
sustain their cattle. I think Goldman makes a great point

(15:22):
that during the seventies especially, there were multiple factors sort
of working together at the same time, a sort of
disembodied conspiracy working to really, uh put the pressure on
on Western ranchers in the US. Yeah, especially the smaller
scale ranchers, which is something he touches on again and again.
The bigger ranchers they were not reporting these incidents, and

(15:45):
they were they seemed largely skeptical of these reports. It
was the smaller scale ranchers that that were reporting these Now,
this period economically is often reported referred to as the
Great Stagflation, a time to find by high inflation, high unemployment,
and economic stagnation and heap onto that high food prices,

(16:07):
a global food shortage, and UH and so forth. Goldman
provides a great deal more insight on the economic and
policy details here, but one of the key details concerns
what's known in um in in the cattle business and
UH agricultural history of the time as and also in
the reporting of the time as the wreck in three now. Again,
this is just the brief version. Goldman goes into a

(16:29):
lot more detail, but basically, President Nixon institutes a ninety
day price freeze on certain meats to halt inflation. Then
the freeze is lifted on everything except cattle. So cattle
ranchers they hold off on slaughtering their cattle till the
freeze lifts. They know the freeze is gonna lift, so
why why slaughter and cell now when they can wait

(16:50):
until the prices go back up. But this ends up
impacting the meat packing industry, putting people out of jobs,
and this results also in a nationwide beef shortage. I
think Goldman also makes the point that the ranchers were
sort of in a bind because so there was a
temporary freeze on the price of beef, but there was
but Meanwhile, inflation was still affecting, say, the price of

(17:12):
the grains that they would be using for feed and
stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, so they weren't completely insulated
from from everything either. They were still filling the you know,
the tough socio economic pressure as well. So Goldman argues
that the distrust ranchers held towards the federal government during
this time, coupled with the turbulent economic conditions and government
interference in the cattle industry, fed and helped sustained cattle

(17:36):
mutilation phenomena. The script of cattle mutilation gave them a
means of understanding certain cattle deaths, but also a way
to project their fears and insecurities into this uh conspiracy.
Goldman also links this atmosphere of hostility to the sage
Brush Rebellion, in which Western state lawmakers attempted to reclaim

(17:58):
federally protected public land for ranchers and miners, and the
libertarian movement of the sixties and seventies, and and also
hostility towards nineteen seventies environmental regulations that had come online. So,
if I'm understanding Goldman's interpretation right, and and if he's correct,
what he's saying is that they're essentially were all these
real conditions that were making life very hard for for

(18:21):
ranchers in the seventies, and some of those real conditions
at least were perceived to be due to to to
government influence. And then you pair that with Okay, maybe
maybe you have some random cattle die offs that are
due to a number of different causes, perhaps and you
sort of project this, this frustration and this unease onto

(18:44):
the deaths of those cattle, and imagine that the deaths
of the cattle is actually caused by the government, like
directly in a violent way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, again, an
anxious situation, very tense, especially among these smaller scale ranches,
and you already have a a very low opinion of
the government, of the federal government at the time, and

(19:05):
then cattle mutilation provides a means of unleashing all of
these feelings onto an even more diabolical vision of the
US federal government, one that isn't just restricting your freedoms
or hurting your livelihood, but who is actively and physically
visiting your livestock and mutilating them with bizarre methods for
unfathomable ends. So the you know, in this strip, the

(19:28):
agents of the government become virtually identical to imagine, which is,
and wizards at black masses, you know, engaging in bloody
acts to a dark forces, and the dead body of
the cow becomes a kind of physical evidence to back
up one's view of of the federal government. So Goldman
explains that in seventy three, in the aftermath of the wreck,

(19:48):
ranchers in Kansas and Nebraska began to report cattle mutilations,
and some also reported strange lights in the sky. And
the way Goldman describes it, uphologists are UFO enthusiasts, were
We're quick to jump in and offer their favorite explanation
for the lights especially, but also the mutilations. And apparently
some ranchers described what they saw in those terms, but

(20:08):
others were more vague about it. They might say, well,
there's a big ball of fire in the sky. But
Goldman rights that quote. Many more reported seeing strange, unmarked helicopters.
So again, for the most part, it doesn't seem like
like the individuals that were reporting these in the seventies
we're talking about UFOs, most of them were drawing in
these ideas that some sort of strange helicopters were seen nearby, Uh,

(20:31):
strange helicopters that might well be the work of the government. Now,
there were other initial explanations for the helicopters. There was talk, well,
maybe it's cattle wrestlers. But then, you know, why would
cattle wrestlers kill a cow and only take like the
eyeballs and the other strange parts. Um. You know. Then
there was also the idea that was some sort of
military operation based out of Fort Riley in Kansas, or

(20:53):
that it was indeed the work of some government secret
government agency, and the mutation the mutilations were the result
of some sort of biological weapons test program. And these
ultimately become the more um widely circulated ideas. And I
think it is totally worth noting that while I think
you and I agree that government conspiracies do not seem

(21:15):
like a very good explanation for the alleged cattle mutilation phenomenon,
they're actually almost certainly were some government conspiracies at least
one we know of that did lead to dead livestock
in the years just before this, uh, the the so
called doug Way sheep incident or the doug Way Sheep massacre. Uh,

(21:35):
though I think there's some very important differences I want
to mention, But like that that does appear, I think
due to some document disclosures now to be pretty clearly
the fault of some government weapons testing. Yeah, this was
night the doug Way sheep incident, in which I think
Goldman sites hundred sheep, but I've seen I've seen six

(21:56):
thousand sided elsewhere, so I'm gonna go with gold It
on this one. But perhaps the number has shifted. Um.
At any rate, that's a lot of sheep. Thousands of
sheep were killed on ranches near the U. S. Armies
dug Way proven Ground in Utah, and accusations were made
at the time against the army, saying, you guys did this,
You did something with your weapons tests and you killed

(22:17):
all these sheep, and the Army said, no, no, that's
not true, we didn't do that. And then these incidents
were revealed to have been caused by tests apparently of
the nerve agent VX. So Goldman quote points out that, Yeah,
the Dugway sheep incident could have also contributed to the
cattle mutilation script involving you know, clandestine US military testing

(22:39):
and certainly made it seemed more possible, uh, like like
here's this other incident, Like you can't argue with all
the thousands of dead sheep, we think the government had
something to do with that. So perhaps it's also they
also had something to do with this cow that was
found on your land, or that this cow that was
found on a neighbor's ranch. Though I think there are
some very important differences, one of which being that I

(23:00):
think in the Dugway incident, there was some there was
some additional evidence to confirm that the government testing of
nerve agents intended as weapons had possibly been involved, Like
like there were some lab tests that that showed the
presence of VX and some of these sheep. Am I
right about that? Yeah, that's my understanding that there were
clear signs that a nerve agent of some sort have

(23:22):
been used. Uh. And there were, of course no signs
of mutilation. These were just sheep. They were uh, they
were dying or dead and all of a sudden. The
other thing I would say is that while I think
it's always important to be modest about trying to uh
to reason out, how you know, reason out what would
have made sense to happen, because sometimes they're just situations

(23:43):
where you know, you don't know why something would have happened.
But but given that caveat, the alleged chain of events
that happened to Dugway makes sense. So this is a
weapons testing grounds. Uh, they're testing secret weapons programs. They're
testing nerve gas. There's a malfunction. It releases gas into
a ranch populated area nearby and poisons and kills a

(24:06):
bunch of sheep and I think also possibly affected some
humans living there as well. And while this could just
be a failure of imagination, again to be humble about that,
I have a hard time coming up with an equally
logical chain of events leading to a government conspiracy to
mutilate random cows and horses on people's ranch land and

(24:26):
then cover it up. Like if men in secret black
helicopters needed cow organs, this is often what is supposed that, Like,
they're doing biological experiments and they need cow organs for them. Uh,
it seems like a really weird choice to source them
by attacking other people's privately owned cattle herds in the

(24:47):
night and trying to keep it a secret. Like again,
you can't say that's impossible, but I'm just trying to
think why they would go that route instead of just
like buying or raising their own stocks of cattle to
run the tests. Yeah, especially since the testing question are
supposed to be secret. You know, Um, how are you
going to maintain secrecy by by by conducting your experiments

(25:09):
on on on the land of of others and then
running away from and just leaving all the evidence there?
I mean, running a secret helicopter operation. That's got to
actually be expensive. It's hard for I'm not an expert
on the you know, agricultural pricing, but I would think
you could actually get the cows cheaper than like running
a helicopter program. This is going to be mostly a discussion,

(25:31):
will say, for this week's Weird House, but I feel
like the Alan Rudolph film Endangered Species, uh, which is
not the main film we're gonna be talking about this Friday,
but it is a cattle mutilation film that involved It
takes the conspiracy thriller route and has a government conspiracy
at the heart of things. This movie probably does as

(25:52):
logical and a good job as you could possibly do
to to to bring that to life on the screen
and make it feel like it makes and in a
big part of how Rudolph pulls it off and the
screenwriters pull it off is by not filling in those blanks,
by keeping the mystery there. Like you see government researchers
doing this, collecting cattle and talking about it, and they're

(26:14):
just kind of like talking shop, like why should we
go out and get one more before we have to
clear out of here for secret reasons, And they're like, yeah,
we'll do it, and you buy into it because it's
well constructed and well presented on the screen, But they
don't actually explain. They don't they know better than to
try to explain why they would be doing this at

(26:36):
any rate. Is um as Goldman points out, like this
does seem to create a genuine feeling of fear and
disquiet in these regions about cattle mutilations. It's not just
again there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of
anxiety already about the socio economic conditions. Then this is
occurring there. People were thought telling tales about this, and
it's not just like casual like like oh here you

(26:58):
have the media, come over, I'm gonna tell owned by
this cow. I think it was alien, so I think
it was a conspiracy you know, people were apparently concerned,
and it led to the actual formation of vigil anti
groups who were checking out of state vehicles for signs
of cattle blood. Um. There were reports of encounters with
strange helicopters that were spreading around, So you had some
some unfortunate and dangerous incidents, like in Nebraska, a farmer

(27:21):
apparently shot at a utility helicopter and the Nebraska National
Guard had to ask all schoppers to start flying at
a higher altitude for a while. There was another case
with a rancher firing and a military chopper. So at
a state level, officials were worried that someone might get
hurt over this. Like it wasn't just there's some superstition

(27:41):
out there, but like it's it's leading to some potentially
dangerous situations. And on top of this, like the ranchers
are still saying, yes, something terrible is happening here, something
strange is happening here, cash rewards are being offered, and
also and ultimately official in the investigations are opened into
the matter. But when do we get to the Satanic cults? Oh,

(28:02):
now we get to the Satanic cults, because yeah, one
of the investigations that's opened. This is seventy five, so
this is this is pretty much the peak. According to Goldman,
you have the Minnesota a t f U, that's the
alcohol to back in firearms opening investigation, which led to
satanic biker gangs or as um as Goldman quotes them,

(28:23):
is saying hell oriented biker gangs hell oriented. Yeah. Uh
And according to Goldman, this comes about because the lead
investigator ends up talking to a convicted bank robber and
that bank robber insists that bikers hell oriented bikers are
the ones running around mutilating cows. Uh So yeah, at
this point the devil and his bikers are involved. But

(28:46):
of course, within the confines of an actual investigation, this
leads nowhere because because this was not actually happening, they
apparently did turn up some evidence on illegal motorcycle gang activities,
illegal motorcycle club activities in the region, but nothing that
connected to cattle mutilations. So the case was closed. Okay,
so it probably was not satanic biker gangs, right, I

(29:09):
think we can rule that out. But then the Colorado
Bureau of Investigation gets involved. Also in seventy five, a
nineteen month investigation with Carl Whiteside looking at more than
two hundred reported mutilations in the cropsies of nineteen carcasses.
I think they were going to try and do more,
but ended up being nineteen um Eleven of these cases

(29:30):
were ruled to have possibly had cuts made by a
sharp object or or instrument post mortem, but all signs
still pointed to natural causes of death. The cb I
posted a forty dollar reward for information on cattle mutilations.
They even set up a witness protection program for anyone
who would come forward with information, but no one came forward.

(29:52):
The case was closed due to lack of apparent criminal
activity and due to the fact that reports of cattle
mutilations began to drop off on their own by mid
nineteen seventy six. Now, during that CBI investigation, apparently Whiteside
asked the FBI for assistance, which was denied, apparently due
to lack of evidence. But of course the FBI's refusal

(30:12):
to investigate played right into the hands of conspiracy theorists
who are like, well, yeah, of course the FEDS aren't
going to look into it. It's the FEDS doing it right, right.
I Mean, one of the things about the conspiracy mindset
is it can accommodate anything. So if the FBI does investigate,
that's validation. If they don't investigate, that's also validation. Right.
But yeah, Camp Cornea Goldman seventy five was the peak

(30:34):
for reported cattle mutilations. He writes that actual numbers of
reported cases are spotty, but some of the reported numbers
break down as follows. So there's like a hundred mutilations
in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa between May seventy three and
September seventy four, twenty two mutilations in Minnesota between nineteen
seventy and nineteen seventy four, and Colorado reports were high,

(30:58):
but also they fluctuated somewhat, So depending on apparently which
source you're looking at, could be as few as fifty
or as many as two hundred. It's interesting those numbers
are different than generalizations I know I've seen in the
more like fringe leaning cattle mutilation sources which say that
you know, there are thousands and thousands of incidents. Yeah,

(31:19):
but I think, as we'll discuss um, even that might
might not not be as impressive a number as we think. Um.
But anyway, Yeah, here here are the hard facts that
all evidence suggests that that these apparent mutilations were not
due to any of these um outrageous or otherworldly or
conspiracy minded um causes. They were in all likelihood due

(31:40):
to scavenger activity, with the possibility that there may have
been some human involvement in a few instances. Uh. And
and as for the cause of death, which again in
the cases where we had actual necropsies, uh, they seem
to all be natural causes. Goldman does drive the cattle
death is just a way of life, obviously generally caused

(32:02):
by diseases such as black leg, which apparently is a
common cattle disease all lightning strikes. Sorry black leg came
up in the elf shot episode because that's right. Yeah,
they were asking the in one of those reports, asking
the farmer whether the calf could have fallen ill, because
apparently with black leg also known as quarter ill, which
again is an infection caused by Clostridium bacteria, that often

(32:25):
an animal can seem healthy and then drop dead very rapidly.
It can be extremely sudden. Yeah, lightning strikes or another one.
And lightning strikes apparently can they can leave quite perplexing
injuries on the on a dead cow or horse, also
gastro intestinal problems due to consuming nails, barbed wire, et cetera. Uh,

(32:46):
you know, whilst grazing. But here's a Here are some
numbers from Goldman and I think are pretty interesting. Quote
in nineteen seventy four, again this is the this is
right around the peak, you know, right before the peak.
In nineteen seventy four, the U s d A estimated
that six point one million cattle deaths had occurred over
the course of the year, which equates to only four

(33:08):
point five percent of the overall cattle population of one
thirty one point eight million head. And this number, he adds,
was actually down from seventy three spike a six point
five million deaths. So Goldman contends that finding a dead
cow was nothing that unusual, and certainly ranchers would be
used to it. But but the thing is when there's

(33:29):
some other reason to be suspicious, if there's some other
possible idea that's introduced, that is backed up by media
circulation and so forth, then things can become different. Yeah,
And of course the people who would say, well, know,
cattle mutilation, there is something actually weird going on, they
would come back to that stuff we talked about before,
like the their claims about the characteristic features of the

(33:53):
injuries to these cow carcasses that they would say could
not be the result of natural predators or scavengers, right,
and that yeah, that and that's it's unfortunate that you
still see that reporting where where they will say, well,
this couldn't be animals doing this. What predator would would
leave all the good meat? What predator would only eat
these strange fleshes. But that's the thing, Uh, we can

(34:17):
we can pretty much agree that this is the work
of scavengers. Um. The frequently cited missing bits in the
cattle mutilation are exactly the sorts of flesh that scavengers
like coyotes, foxes, vultures, magpies, bobcats, badgers and flies would
go for. This is the soft tissue. And I think
we've discussed this very situation before in reference to crabs

(34:40):
on the show. There's also the argument, well, scavengers can't
be that precise with their cuts, but I think is
it we'll discuss that again in a little bit here,
but um, but also I think it's it's fair to
say that scavengers can can probably be more precise than
you think, especially if they're removing the soft flesh from region.
And then there's also the argument while there was no blood.

(35:03):
While the lack of blood it was apparently often due
to the post mortem coagulation of blood in the lower
regions of the animals. So again, the animals died of
some of their cause. It's not been killed by a predator.
It dies, it falls over, the blood coagulates in the
lower regions, drains and coagulates, and then the scavenger arrives. Yeah.
The blood phenomenon also known as liver mortis l I

(35:26):
v o R. Another potential source of strange looking injuries
on an animal cadaver. That that I was reading about
decomposition itself. Decomposition of an animal body by insects and
by micro organisms does not always look the way you
would expect it to, and it can produce some very
weird and creepy looking details. For example, I was reading

(35:49):
in the Skeptics Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll an account
of an experiment carried out by the Sheriff's Department of
Washington County, Arkansas. I think this was in nineteen seventy nine,
in which a cal carcass was left out in a
field and observed for forty eight hours just to see
what the natural course of decomposition looked like. And Carol

(36:10):
writes that you know what, They found that blowflies and
maggots cleaned out portions of soft tissues sometimes said to
be missing from cases classified as cattle mutilation. And also
I found this maybe the most interesting part quote bloating
lead to incision like tears in the skin. So a
lot of the belief that it must be aliens or

(36:31):
it must be a government conspiracy leans heavily on the
cuts that resemble clean incisions or excisions rather than ragged tearing.
But it seems like there are cases where just regular
decomposition can lead to what looked like very clean splits
or cuts in the hide. Yeah. This, uh, this study

(36:52):
is one that I believe Goldman Niches as well, conducted
by anthropologist Nancy Owen Um funded about the University of
Arkansas using lethally tranquilized but already dying cows or already
dying cow and they found that the resulting scavenger wounds
matched up closely with reported um cattle mutilation quote surgical
cuts after thirty hours of exposure. Okay, So it seems

(37:14):
likely to us at least that many of the animals
reported as part of the cattle mutilation phenomenon probably had
injuries as a result of scavengers or as a result
of decomposition, but probably also some of them were actually
just cases where like a human person went out and
tampered with a cow carcass. Yeah, especially once the script

(37:37):
is is is it full power once the idea is
out there? So yeah, you do have again a few
cases of suspected human activity, and these were thought to
be poor post mortem wounds, so again that the animal
had died of some of their cause and then humans
came and messed with the with the body. And when
you get into the reason for this, well, I think

(37:58):
we'll get into that question a bit more and a
bit here. But um, at the time, one mode of
trot it out for these quote unquote rural vandals by
some local agencies was good old fashioned cult activity. So yeah,
this again we're kind of slapped up in the middle
of Satanic panic here. Uh So, I guess it unfortunately
makes sense that Satanic colts would be uh fingered in

(38:23):
all of this, So sort of like they were with
the biker scenario, so right, but not satanic bikers, just
your average running the mills satanic farm teenagers. Right And
according to Goldman, Iowa's Department of Criminal Activity at the
time claimed to have found evidence connecting some of the
mutilations to Satanic activity, but no arrests were ever made,
and at any rate, the cases with suspected human involvement

(38:46):
were very low compared to the overall reported rate of mutilations.
Given the general credulity about satanic cult phenomenon at the time,
I would be doubtful of that connection, right, but will
come back to this in a it. But essentially what
ends up happening, though, again is the rate drops on
its own. Uh. And investigations are less about let's find

(39:08):
these people before they strike again, or let's stop these
aliens or whatever, let's find out what's happening, but instead
trying to figure out what happened. Why Why were there
so many reports of cattle mutilations, and again mostly by
small scale ranchers blaming the federal government. Uh so you
had various surveys take place. Um. Former FBI agent Kenneth

(39:29):
Rommel investigated on behalf of the d a's office in
New Mexico, and he I think offered a very logical
sounding uh analysis of everything, blaming it on the power
of suggestion, media sensation, as well as irresponsible local law
enforcement officials. So basically, according to Rommel, you you'd have
this script already out there in the world and and uh,

(39:52):
then you'd have sensationalization by the media. And then comes
a local law enforcement officer into to uh to who
respond to your report of a cattle death, an officer
who probably didn't have experience with bovine deaths of goldman ads,
and who would then suggest the cattle mutilation script and
not necessarily simply coming out and saying, well, that looks

(40:13):
mighty strange. I reckon it was aliens, but even by
more casually just mentioning some of the sort of the
keywords of the script, like saying like like remarking that
the wounds look surgical, or remarking that that the wounds
look like cuts, and the mind can just fill in
the rest, was Rammel's argument. And the results of this then,

(40:35):
as this gets passed up the chain, the media catches
wind of it, and the so the results feed the
media coverage and the mild mass hysteria, as Goldman describes it, continues. Now,
of course we know conspiracy mindset can accommodate anything. So
if you have somebody investigated and find there's nothing to it,
well that that confirms it because they're part of the conspiracy,

(40:56):
right right, And yeah, So detractors argue that ramel With
clearly part of a conspiracy, especially with his FBI background. Uh.
There's another investigation that the Goldman mentions, a private investigation
by Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers. Uh and these backed
up most of Rama's findings as they conducted interviews across
the country and learn linked the reports to a loss
of faith in American institutions. Uh, so, belief in the

(41:19):
bizarre fueled by disillusionment. So Goldman spends a lot more
time making this case. And again, I think this paper
is worth checking out if you're really interested in the
nuts and bolts of it. Again, the wreck and the
cattle industry peaks in seventy five and falls away after that,
which matches up with the rise and fall of reported mutilations,
with small ranches hit the hardest by the wreck being

(41:41):
the main source of the reports. While larger ranchers remain
skeptical of the whole deal than you know. To echo
an idea that I think you already started to raise here,
it seems to me that perhaps a major source of
confusion is the very creation of this category known as

(42:07):
cattle mutilations, into which many, uh literally different incidents with
probably different causes can all be kind of sorted together.
And then once you have them all in the same
conceptual bucket, people naturally tend to assume they therefore must
all share a single explanation. So if you say, well,

(42:28):
you know, I'm I'm looking at this case of alleged
cattle mutilation, and this could probably just be a result
of natural predation or an animal dying of natural causes
and then being attacked by a scavenger, And then of
course someone could say, well, but that couldn't explain the
weird features of this other cattle mutilation case. And then
you could say, well, that could be just a product

(42:48):
of the normal features of decomposition of an animal body.
And they could say, well, but decomposition couldn't explain this
and this these other cases, and you could say, well,
maybe in that case a person just mutilated a cow,
like for some reason, some person did that, and then
they say, but a person couldn't have done what we
saw in this other case. So the problem would be

(43:08):
you were assuming these are all cattle mutilation phenomenon, which
mentally makes them all the same thing, which makes you
assume they must all have the same cause. And because
there's no one explanation that fits all of them, therefore
there's no way to explain the phenomenon. Yeah, and I
think this might this This is interesting because I think

(43:29):
it's also could help explain why, despite government conspiracies and
government tests and black helicopters being the primary detail of
the script UH in the nineties seventies, why it seems
to have drifted more towards the alien UH explanation in
like modern conspiracy treatment of it. Because yeah, if you

(43:49):
if you start saying again like you were saying, well,
if it can't if you can't be a person here,
but it, but it, you know, maybe could be here,
Like you eventually reach a point where the idea that
it's government agents doesn't even fit anymore. You have to
go entirely into the unseen world. You have to go
entirely into the realm of either elves or aliens. Yeah,
And I think the the impulse to say, well, it

(44:12):
has to be aliens really arises from the ones where, uh,
you know, the details people describe in the reports seem
to defy the laws of physics at least as you know, understood,
Like so the ones where they say, like there was
not a single drop of blood on the ground. I
don't know what to make of those cases. I don't
think it. I don't think you're justified in jumping yet

(44:32):
to it must be aliens. I think it's more likely
to say, maybe there's something you don't quite understand about
the way this scene is reported, or how exactly the
decomposition of an animal works, And that seems more likely
to me. But who knows, you know, I'm not all knowing.
But uh, anyway, to come back to my summary thoughts
on this, I personally think it makes the most sense,

(44:55):
when looking at this whole thing, to say cattle mutilation
is actually just a rouping of diverse instances of dead
animals with various injuries that have a number of different causes.
So some might be the work of natural predators and scavengers,
some might be animals that died of disease and simply
decomposed in a way that looked odd. Some might be

(45:17):
struck by lightning, some were actually mutilated by people for
whatever reason, and some might have explanations we haven't thought
of yet. Yeah, and I want to get here, and
we're not gonna spend as much time with this, but
I do want to touch on ostension as a way
of potentially understanding these cases, these few cases where human

(45:38):
acts seem to have been involved, where humans seem to
have come along and potentially uh carved up some of
these animals um post mortem to sort of prop up
the myth, prop up the legend. And I was treating
about this potential angle and death by folklore extension contemporary
legend and murdered by Bill Ellis again. That's published eighty

(45:59):
nine Western It's Folklore Society, and he discusses a quote
third dimension of the legendary Elis writes, quote Folklore's disagree
about whether legends describe events that actually did or did
not happen in the past, but in the light of
recent events and scholarship, it seems more accurate to describe
legends as normative definitions of reality. Maps by which one

(46:21):
can determine what has happened, what is happening, and what
will happen. I think that's incredibly perceptive and very well
put that in a way. When people are arguing about
the truth of a legend, often you know it takes
the form of arguing about whether or not something literally
did or did not happen at a particular time in
the past. But that's not really the spirit of what

(46:43):
they're arguing about. Often the spirit of what they're arguing
about is is this story reflective of how things are
in the world. Ellis cites the work of folkloreist Linda
dag and I hope I'm getting that right. If or not,
I apologize and Andrew Asan who contend that quote not
only can facts be turned into narratives, but narratives can

(47:05):
also be turned into facts, and so in this we
get into austension theory. Uh. These two authors were the
first to use austension in folklore, but the idea in
communication theory goes back further. Um Umberto Echo discussed it
in A Theory of Semiotics from nine but even in
that I was looking up some of his his writings

(47:26):
in that book about this topic and even that he's
he's citing Wittgenstein. So, um, I'm not not sure where
we are, how far back we trace this discussion, but uh,
Echo writes, quote austension occurs when a given object or event,
produced by nature or human action, intentionally or unintentionally, and
existing in a world of fact among facts, is quote

(47:47):
unquote picked up by someone and shown as the expression
of the class of which it is a member. And
so Echo uses examples in the books such as showing
a brand of cigarettes or showing a shoe and you
and you know, you might be conveying something like, uh,
the shoe is dirty or I need more of these cigarettes,
that sort of thing. Ah, but I can see how
this would apply to folklore and even to uh, to

(48:10):
fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, and that uh, you know,
when you believe very much in sort of a story
about something that recurs in the world or a way
the world is you, you don't just believe in the
instances of it that you already know about. You want
to like show new instances of that event as exemplars

(48:33):
of the fact that the the overall arc, the overall
narrative really does take place yeah, and it's kind of
it's kind of difficult to think about this because it's
you know you, I kind of waver on interpreting it
as like how much of it is so is sort
of subconscious? How much of it is conscious? Not to
say that it's entirely subconscious, but like, how much of
it is the conscious dimension of the act and how

(48:54):
much is the subconscious um. So, to explain things better,
Ellis brings up examples of folkloric ostensive actions such as
legend tripping. So going to or engaging in acts that
are said to elicit a supernatural response. So going out
and setting on railroad tracks at night, by the way,
do not do that generally. I think it's in many

(49:18):
of not most cases, it may be illegal to set
on those railroad tracks in addition to being dangerous. So um,
but doing things like that, hanking three times looking for crypto,
it's going on a bigfoot search. Uh. These are all
potentially examples of legend tripping. They're all essentially benign acts
for the most part. No one is going to get

(49:38):
hurt because you went out and search for bigfoot. And
doing this search doesn't rule out the monster but fuels
the legend, like nobody has ever gone out searching for
Bigfoot and then said, well, we didn't find him. I
just don't believe in it anymore. And to be fair though,
of course I'm not advocating the existence of squatch here,
but you know, you need to say, you need to

(49:59):
keep in mind search spaces like if you went out
looking for Bigfoot, even if Bigfoot really existed, would you
expect to find him on one trip into the woods.
Probably not. Yeah, So this is where things going to
do like darker shades of folklore, and Ellis discusses such
things as food tampering and ritual murder, but he also

(50:19):
brings up the cattle mutilation of phenomenon or cattle mutilation
panic at one point in the article, focusing on cult
interpretations of the crime, which we already discussed some of
those that were brought up in the other sources, as
well as some really out there statements from a couple
of Texas inmates at the time who said that it
was an elaborate satanic undertaking by cultists. Uh. He also

(50:41):
points to other nineteen seventy six reports of animal mutilations
cattle and other animals, some of which involved reports of
black robe figures and all the usual bells and whistles
of of cult activity. Uh. There were, of course no
firsthand accounts of any of this, but these were the
stories that were circulating. Was there a sacred bejeweled dagger?

(51:04):
So Ellis stresses that these rumors and legends reflect they
quote complex assortment of deliberate acts, misinterpreted evidence, and exaggeration.
And he writes that while logic neatly handles all the
challenges of the mystery, quasi extension plays the key role here.
Quote the observer's interpretation of puzzling evidence in terms of

(51:24):
a narrative tradition. So if if you're prepared to find
evidence of X, then you will find evidence of X.
If you go out looking for Bigfoot, yeah you may
you're not gonna fa see him, but you're probably gonna
there's a good chance you'll find something. Right, if you
find some hair, well that might be bigfoot. Here, there's
some bigfoot for right there. Uh, you know some other
strange mark. If you go looking for star jelly in
the woods, you'll find star jelly. But then human actors,

(51:48):
he writes, can insert themselves into a given script by
engaging in in acts of extension like legend tripping, which
sounds like a potential way to understand those few incidents
of cattle mutilation which human activity may have been involved. Uh,
and there's I want to read one last quote from
Ellice here that I thought was particularly creepy and very
seasonal quote. In contemporary times too, legends about satanic murder

(52:11):
and cattle mutilation are not just expressions of fictive horror.
They are paradigms for making the world more horrifying. The
haunted house and the outside world are always in danger
of merging. I guess that's true. It is up to
humans not to decide to make them merge by by
acting out a legend or or or dangerous fiction in reality. Yeah,

(52:36):
because I mean, we have to remind ourselves that a
lot of these dangerous fictions they're not just idle fascinations
or or they're they're not necessarily idle fascinations. Like certainly
you can have an idle fascination with with any number
of conspiracy theories, certainly, But where these things seem to
have more attraction is where like one's um you know,
personal identity or um or view of the entire world

(52:59):
becomes wrapped up in that thing. Uh. That seems to
be the area where you get some real potential for
for danger. That's where the haunted house in their outside
world can potentially merge. All right, well, we're gonna go
and close out the episode right here, but we'd love
to hear from everyone out there. Obviously, this is a
topic of much rumination in some circles, and some of

(53:20):
you might have read some other sources that you know,
you might have some examples of faulty logic on this
that would be interesting to share. You might have some
some examples of some very strong points or or or
a counter arguments. Also just other theories because some of
them the material out there. We we looked at a
particular recent documentary in which the another idea was brought

(53:40):
up that large ranches where the we're the cause of this,
like big ranchers were targeting the small ranches, and I
had not heard that. I didn't see that. That That wasn't
mentioned as a possibility in the sources I was looking at,
and I certainly don't think that was the case, but
I did think it was interesting because it does it
does fit in with the um the sort of socioeconomic

(54:02):
setting of the time of the mid nineties seventies. You
know the idea that again it is the struggling, smaller rancher,
that is, that is feeling the pain and is reporting
these incidents. So it would make sense that at least
some of them might say, well, I think it's these
big ranches that are doing it. Like you can see
why that script would would gain traction, is what I'm saying. Yes,
it's an interesting premise. Unfortunately, that document in particular, I

(54:24):
think is the result of a government conspiracy. It was
designed in a lab in order to reduce people's critical
thinking faculties. All right, well, we'd love to hear from
everyone out there if you haven't and have some critical analysis, uh,
or if anyone out there has, if you have ties
to the ranching world and have some insight, we'd love
to hear from you. You know, any everything's about it's
a uh feel free to write in in the meantime.

(54:45):
Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
podcast feed on Monday's. We do listener mail. On Wednesday's
we do a short form uh monster fact or artifact,
and on Fridays we do weird how cinema. That's our
time to set aside most concerns, serious concerns, just talk
about a weird film. In this Friday, we have a
weird one that is also a cattle mutilation film. UM.

(55:05):
I think it'll be a fun episode. Huge thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

(55:30):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you're listening to your favorite shows.