I work for a magazine, and have received an angry letter from a reader who’s complaining about something we printed about wolves. The offending text (a silly factoid) was:
She gave me the standard qualified eco-line, which is:
While I would agree that wolves pose relatively little threat to those of us living in the U.S. today (though I wouldn’t say the same for pets/livestock), I find it hard to believe that wolves were NEVER a threat to human beings, and that the fears revealed by all of those European fairy tales that demonize wolves didn’t have some basis.
The way I heard it, it goes: **“There is no documented case of any healthy wolf ever attacking a human being in North America.”**This leaves several possibilities open, such as undocumented cases of rabid wolves attacking people in Asia.
Summary: there have been recent serious wolf attacks by healthy wolves. In these documented cases, though, all wolves had gotten so accustomed to people that they had lost their usual fear.
I find it hard to believe a wolf has NEVER attacked a human but I think it is exceedingly rare. Probably more along the line of you alone and dying in the wilderness and wolves pop along and take advantage of your weakened condition.
Mostly wolves got a bad rap because:
A) They killed livestock which pissed off farmers and…
B) They basically scared the piss out of people.
As to point B I spend a lot of time in Arizona and you can hear coyotes howling almost nightly…sometimes quite close. It is definitely spooky (but kinda cool). Coyotes are much smaller than wolves so I’m never really worried about them but hey…a starving pack might just get a crazy idea in its collective head so while I don’t really worry about them I try to pay attention (I swear a pack was howling not 50 feet from where I stood one night…THAT made me jump although they thoroughly ignored me).
As for North America, check this out from a wolf park in Ontario. It not only details the killing of a woman by captive healthy wolves, but mentions rare attacks on humans by wild wolves.
There are at least one or two news stories I have seen over the years of wolves being kept as pets that attacked people (typically small children).
God, we are arrogant creatures in modernity! Aside from specific cases wolves are highly agressive pack carnivores. Is there some magical dispensation for bipedal, hairless monkeys that get caught by a pack in the wild? I don’t think all the old medieval stories of hungry wolf packs attacking humans were conjured out of thin air.
I’m surprised she didn’t stick the word “unprovoked” in her letter. I’m sure that, at some point, some idjit has poked a healthy wolf with a sharp stick and suffered the results.
I remember when I was in Tucson that there was a brouhaha over a child that was killed by either a coyote or wolf in a Phoenix suburb. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which one it was and have no documentation of it.
The link below documents dozens of fatal and non-fatal wolf attacks in North America and around the world, from 1830 to 1996, some by healthy non-captive wolves.
I thought that was a mountain lion. The family was camping and the cat grabbed the kid. I think the mom frightened it away, but we are probably talking about two separate stories. Animals eat a lot of people in Phoenix, though.
Some problems with that:
[list=A]
[li]It is virtaully impossible to get that close to a healthy, adult, wild wolf.[/li][li]The wolf would most likely run away.[/li][/list=A]
Since that article was written, it was announced on the local TV news (we’re about 80 miles south of the attack area) that the wolves were not rabid.
They showed the victim on our local TV news here in Victoria the day after the attack, and interviewed him at length. The stitches in his scalp were shown in a loving closeup: about 1/2 his head was shaved, and a huge U-shaped line of stitching ran from the back of his head to about an inch behind his hairline: the “U” looked to be about 5.5 inches deep.
The local paper talked to some of the residents of the area, who confirmed that campers (and one unnamed local) on the island had been feeding the wolves for some months, and that it was clear that the animals had lost any fear of man.
I’ve been in the area up there when there are “wolf warnings” posted on the hiking trails in Pacific Rim National Park (this attack took place on an island which is perhaps 4 miles from the Park boundary).
I think anyone who would say that “NEVER in the recorded history of mankind has a healthy wolf attacked a person” has got to be smoking something. I’m sure at some point in recorded history, some guy somewhere, was probably killed by a pack of wild butterflies - probably flew down his throat and choked him when he was on a bike (those EVIL, bastard butterflies!!!)
I’ve heard similar claims about Killer Whales never harming people. I mean, the name certainly would lead you to think otherwise, and certainly that movie ‘Orca’ back in the 70s kicking Richard Harris’ ass all over Canada didn’t give the animal a lot of good press, but three ‘Free Willie’ movie later, everyone believes they are docile. I distinctly remember a trainer being attacked by a killer whale at Sea World only a few years ago…
Of course, if you ask an eco-Greenpeace nut about this, they say:
“Well the animal was provoked/ mistreated/ sick”
maybe, but from what I’ve seen the trainers really love those animals…the zoo might be a different story.
“Well, this isn’t a ‘wild’ animal. The domestic animals sometimes wig out.”
has to be bullshit. Domestic animals are in contact more with people, so as a consequence, there is more opportunity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I believe both animals are just as likely to attack (albeit, not that common)
And my personal favorite “Well, the animal is just playing and doesn’t understand”
O.k. fine, then the pit bull is just ‘playing’ tug-o-war with your arm instead of an old towel because he thinks it’s all a game too when you jump over the junkyard wall on to his turf. “Wee-hoo let’s play get the arm away from that torso that really seems to want it…”
That was a separate incident that I read about as well- the father and son were camping when that occured. And it was a mountain lion in that case (dunno if it was AZ though).
The incident I remembered involved a very young child playing out in the backyard. I’ve tried researching it and found nada.
I actually lived next door to a teen who got the tip of his finger ripped open by–gasp–a dolphin. He was at the entrance to a bay petting one from the boat and CHOMP. This was a wild dolphin and it could have just swam away, but choose to bite. So far as I know, he never officially recorded the attack in The History Books. I guess this dolphin just had “issues.”