Human Finger Found In Alligator Snapping Turtle Prompts Police Investigation

Louisiana police are investigating after a man discovered a human finger inside an alligator snapping turtle on Monday.

Officials at the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office in Covington, Louisiana, are looking to find the person who lost a finger after a man cleaning the animal for consumption discovered the digit inside its body.

The man said he was processing the animal when he found the finger. The snapping turtle was captured by someone else on a trout line in a river in western St. Tammany Parish, police said. The finger was recognizable and had not undergone decay at that point.

"We really don't know what we have," Captain Scott Lee, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "It could be a careless fisherman...We're not ruling anything out."

Police took the finger and handed it over to St. Tammany Parish Coroner's Office to run tests. The Sheriff's Office Crime Lab and Coroner's Office tried to obtain a fingerprint from the digit but failed.

A DNA test would be the next step in trying to identify the finger, a spokesman for the Coroner's Office told the New Orleans Advocate. But that could be an issue because only a small portion of people have their DNA on file in the national database.

Meanwhile, officials contacted hospitals in the area, but no incidents of a missing finger have been reported so far. Police are canvassing the area where the finger was discovered with the help of a K-9 unit named "Maggie" who detects human remains. The Louisiana Search & Rescue dogs will also be used in the investigation.

Alligator snapping turtles are the largest freshwater turtles in North America, according to National Geographic. They are often referred to as "dinosaur of the turtle world" because of its beak-like jaws, thick, scaled tail, and spiked shell. The largest male turtle can weight up to 200 pounds and can live up to 70 years.