British biologist
Jeremy Wade volunteered to capture the perpetrator. Though originally skeptical of the truth behind the attacks, he later became intrigued because the attacks only occurred in a specific area spanning . He was told by the villagers that the creature likely developed a taste for human flesh and had grown large after eating half-burnt human remains discarded from
funeral pyres on the river banks. After examining the water where Bahadur had disappeared with a
depth sounder, Wade discounted the possibility of the boy having been dragged by a
whirlpool, as the attacks all occurred in areas without turbulence. Later, away, a
domestic water buffalo was reportedly dragged underwater by a strange animal while drinking in water only deep. Wade theorised that the creature would have had to weigh in order to do so. A buffalo weighs , according to the film. '' (goonch) caught in India. Some goonch in the Kali river grow large enough to attack humans and water buffalo. All three species of
crocodile possible in the area were dismissed:
saltwater crocodiles are not known to travel so far inland; the jaw structure of
gharials prevents them from killing humans or buffalo; and
mugger crocodiles, the most common Indian species, do not inhabit the cold torrents of the Kali River. Also, crocodiles had never been seen on land to bask or breed. Although
bull sharks were initially considered, an underwater investigation by marine biologist Rick Rosenthal in the area where the buffalo disappeared yielded no sightings of bull sharks. Further, Wade believed that bull sharks would not have lived so far upriver, and there had been no sightings of dorsal fins breaking the water's surface. However, during the underwater investigation, a goonch catfish was sighted, which Wade unsuccessfully tried to capture. Later underwater investigations yielded numerous group sightings of goonch, six of which were man-sized. three times the weight of an average goonch. Although Wade estimated that the fish was strong and large enough to eat a small child, he stated in an interview that he believed that larger specimens were likely to exist, and that the specimen he captured was not large enough to be the alleged maneater, on the basis of the sizes of the victims. These events were shown on his program
River Monsters. ==References==