Did Robert F. Kennedy Jr really eat a dog?

If it weren’t disturbing enough to learn that Republican governor Kristi Noem shot her own dog, a new photo has emerged of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apparently eating one.

Vanity Fairunearthed the disturbing image which shows the US presidential hopeful posing with the barbecued carcass of an animal, which has been widely identified as that of a pup.

Kennedy, 70, texted the stomach-churning snap of an unidentified woman and himself posing with the charred four-legged animal to a friend last year, according to the magazine.

In the pic, he can be seen brandishing the roasted creature on a metal spit, while pretending to take a bit out of its ribs.

The carcass has 13 pairs of ribs, including a so-called “floating rib” – a characteristic of all dogs – which suggests that it is, indeed, a canine, as one vet told Vanity Fair.

However, on Tuesday (2 July) the environmental lawyer-turned-politician refuted the report, insisting the animal was a goat.

“[The photo is] of me at a campfire in Patagonia on the Futaleufu River, eating a goat, which is what we eat down there,” he told Fox News.

Kennedy allegedly shared the picture with a friend last year who was travelling to Asia at the time.

Alongside the image, Kennedy joked that the friend might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that had dogs on the menu — which further hints that the animal in question wasn’t a goat as he claimed.

However, the recipient found the picture insensitive for how it made light of animal cruelty, the Vanity Fair report clarified.

The unnamed friend also allegedly expressed concern that Kennedy was appearing to mock Korean culture, a move which could damage the reputation of him and his famous family.

The photo’s metadata reportedly dates it to 2010 – the same year Kennedy says a "worm ate part of [his] brain".

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