When a dog-walker claimed to have witnessed a three-metre long shark leap from the water and devour a kangaroo as it paddled out to sea off a beach near Torquay in the Australian state of Victoria, nobody believed him.

Now a second man has now come forward to corroborate the bizarre episode, originally reported by Daniel Hurst. Mick Boucher, a local resident, was kite-boarding at Fishermans Beach on Saturday afternoon when he too saw the animal hop down on to the beach from the surrounding dunes.

Mr Boucher said the kangaroo, which appeared confused, stood at the water's edge for about 10 seconds and then dived into the waves.

''It was bobbing up and down,'' he told the Geelong Advertiser.

About 10 or 15 other people were on the beach watching the kangaroo, he claimed, including a young girl who tried to swim out and rescue it, fearing it would drown.

Mr Boucher said that the kangaroo was about 200m from shore when the shark struck, its back breaching the choppy surface as it attacked.

''It wasn't a huge shark, and it was too far out to see clearly, but it was a shark," he said. "I couldn't believe it.''

Local authorities lent further weight to the story when they confirmed they had retrieved a kangaroo carcass from the beach on Tuesday. Several Torquay residents had also contacted the Geelong Advertiser, the local newspaper, to report kangaroo remains on the shore.

Though instances of kangaroos swimming are rare, experts explained that they are capable of doing so in certain circumstances.

Mick Smith, a ranger from Serendip Sanctuary in nearby Lara, said that if a kangaroo felt threatened and viewed the water as an escape route, it might take for the water. However, although whiptail wallabie had been known to swim out to islands off Queensland, he had never heard of eastern grey kangaroos - the main kangaroo species in the region - swimming in the ocean.

"It sounds like very unusual behaviour,'' he said.

The kangaroo might have been ill as certain diseases could cause strange behaviour, Mr Smith suggested.

Stan Williams, a wildlife officer in Colac, Victoria, said he had known kangaroos to seek refuge in dams and rivers if they were being pursued by dogs. Several years ago, a kangaroo he was trying to catch had leapt into the sea and was last seen heading out towards a nearby island, he said.

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