Massachusetts police had to call in a tow truck to remove a giant great white shark after it washed up dead on a beach in Cape Cod.

It remains unclear how the 12 ft (3.6m) shark died, local officials say, but they have been able to identify the animal.

The male shark, named Koala, was a mature male shark and was first identified by officials in 2022, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said.

Orleans police department described the incident as “not one of our typical calls for service”.

A police car followed the tow truck as it drove the shark away from the beach.

“You really never know what kind of call you’ll respond to on any given shift,” the police department wrote in a Facebook post.

Images of that removal have since gone viral.

“There are no obvious signs of how or why Koala died,” the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy said in a statement. “Further testing will have to be done to find a cause of death.”

Officials performed a necropsy, an autopsy for animals, and tissue samples were taken to be analysed.

“There were no bite marks or anything on it,” Dennis Reed, who operates Nauset Recovery Inc., told the Cape Cod Times, describing the condition of the shark’s body.

“It seemed like it had a lot of internal bleeding because there was a lot of blood around its mouth,” Mr Reed told the Massachusetts outlet.

White sharks are not uncommon off the Massachusetts coast. There were an estimated 800 great white sharks in the waters around Massachusetts between 2015 and 2018, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.