A family owned pit bull puppy was strangled and cooked by a Florida man.

Thomas Elliot Huggins, 25, was arrested by police and charged with cruelty to animals.

According to published reports, the police arrived on the scene after a call from a family member. The dog belonged to Elliot's mother, The New York Daily News reported.

Tampa police told The Associated Press, "When officers arrived, they found the dog's ribs cooked in a pot on the stove."

Apparently, Mr. Huggins had chopped up the family puppy and stored pieces of the dog in the freezer to be used as food. The pit bull's head was found in the garbage, said authorities.

The puppy was about 6 months and was strangled by Mr. Huggins with his bare hands before storing chopped up pieces on the refrigerator, while cooking the ribs.

Huggins was arrested on charges of suspicion of animal cruelty and he was scheduled to appear before a judge. The judge set raised his bail from US$2000 to $10,000.

He told the police that had eaten rabbits and squirrels in the same way and this was not a novel experience for him.

Animal control was at the scene to collect the remains.

The troubling story cintinues to daunt psychiologists who say that it is not considered the norm for people in western countries to eat dogs.

According to the Dr. Sabine Peters, who writes for the Leiden Psychology Blog of Universiteit Lieden, humans have a tendency to eat cows and even horses, but not dogs. She notes that our desire to eat carnivorous food is dependant on our level of 'disgust,' which is also a measure of morality. She added that vegetarians found eating cows, dogs or humans to be equally disgusting.

In one of the comments to the blog post, "Why we eat cows (and sometimes horses), but not dogs," Annemieke Bijker reveals that the Chinese found it difficult to maintain dogs as pets and eat them as well. So, they came up with the idea to keep race dogs that can be eaten and other dogs that can be kept as pets.