A fisherman died after a beaver attacked him when he tried to take a photo of it.

The beaver pounced and bit the 60-year-old man twice on the thigh, severing his artery before running off. His friends couldn’t stem the flow of blood and he bled to death on the way to a local village doctor in Belarus.

Sergei Shilinchuck, deputy head of Brest’s environmental protection committee, said he hadn’t heard of a beaver killing a person before. “People have lost fingers – that’s the worst I’ve come across,” he said.

“The beaver is not normally aggressive, but it does have big teeth and immensely poweful jaws; it can cut down a tree three feet wide,” he said.

Shilinchuck also said there was a chance the beaver was rabid, or that it was a young beaver looking for new territory.

The fisherman was partly blamed for the accident. “A beaver is a wild animal after all,” said Shilinchuck.

A video was published earlier this week of a beaver attacking a man. The victim was knocked over but escaped unharmed. Click here to watch the video.