A mutilation mystery is playing out on a remote Central Queensland property in Australia, after a number of cows were found dead in inexplicable circumstances.

Over 18 years, graziers Judy and Mick Cook say 20 cows have been killed in the same strange manner on their Eungella property – organs removed with surgical precision, without a trace of blood left at the scene.

The most recent death was six months ago, according to The Daily Mercury, when the couple found the carcass of a cow with its udder, cheek and tongue cleanly removed. And, once again, there was no blood or marks of movement at the scene.

The “only explanation” they can come to for the mutilations is as strange as the crimes themselves: aliens.

 “How is it happening? It must have something that lifts it up and puts it down and doesn’t leave any marks” Judy Cook told The Daily Mercury.

“(Aliens are) the only explanation I have got.”

The baffled cattle owners told the publication they previously never believed in the supernatural, but started to think it could be something not-human after seeing “really strange lights in the sky around our property.

“One night there was a light in the distance, very bright, we couldn’t tell how close it was,” Mick Cook said.

“It looked like it was just on the boundary of the property where I had found a mob of cattle out that way the next day who looked terrorised and they started running as soon as I got close to them, which was very strange.”

Judy and Mick Cook in Australia are convinced aliens are to blame for the death of 20 cows on their property. Photo / Stuart Quinn by News Ltd

The couple, who run 1100 cattle on a 14,600 hectare property west of Eungella, which is about 80km west of the city Mackay in Queensland, is not an isolated case.

Similar incidents have been reported for more than 50 years across the world, including in Australia – but UFO Research Queensland president Sheryl Gottschall said there had not been an incident in Queensland for quite some time.

“A man had travelled to the Cape York Peninsula looking for aircraft parts from World War II and he came across a mutilated bull and two calves which had its eyes, stomach bag, testicles as well as the backside removed,” she told The Courier Mail.

“Cattle mutilations have been linked with extraterrestrial activity since the 1970s and has been fuelled by the absence of a logical explanation for the mutilations, many cases are linked with the appearances of lights.”

The udder of a cow removed from a cow on the Cooks’ property. Photo / Supplied

Gottschall said the Cooks’ story matched reports of mutilations in the US, where cattle were found laying on their side, dead and mutilated. She said often “all the blood is removed and there is no sign of blood around the animal”.

“And when an animal is laying on its side, you look for hoof marks, where the animal has tried to get up, and there is none,” she said.

“So it is like it has come from somewhere else and it has been laid on the ground there.”

In 2013, a Missouri cattle farmer cried ‘alien’ after finding three cows mutilated in her fields, and vets and police were unable to explain the cruel and mysterious deaths.

In 1979, similar US incidents were subject to an FBI investigation, in which authorities found some mutilations to be the result of natural predation – of cows being eaten as prey – while most cases had inexplicable anomalies that caused conspiracy theories to kick into high gear.

The cows were found in various stages of decomposition, but no blood or traces of movement were at the scene. Photo / Supplied

The discrepancies caused many to believe there was a larger government plot afoot, or evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The Cooks’ daughter said the couple had information about similar incidents occurring “a couple of decades ago … with no explanation at all.

“It really makes you think that there’s something going on that the general public doesn’t know about, maybe there’s something being kept hidden from us,” Judy Cook said.

She said that although bringing up aliens might have been considered “odd” in the past, the public is “more accepting” of the possibility of UFOs in the sky or extraterrestrial visitations – something she is not scared of anymore.

“If (aliens) want to, they are going to come and get you,” she told The Daily Mercury.

“So what’s the use of worrying?”