First point: the wolf does not identify humans as prey. Its diet consists mainly of wild ungulates deer, roe deer, chamois, wild boar, fallow deer and it is generally wary of humans, which it considers as a potential threat to be avoided if possible. In Italy and France, where the wolf is now present and widespread also in hilly and mountain areas e.
Western Alps where tourist attendance is intense, sightings are still infrequent and no accidents with people have been documented. In fact, the wolf normally goes away trying to avoid the encounter with humans. Like all wild animals, the wolf could show unpredictable attitudes, even aggressive, if it perceives a threat.
Since it is a wild animal, behaving respectfully is a must: in case you come across animals that are feeding or across a litter or a wolf that is scared, injured or in trouble and unable to escape, it is the best to keep your distance and move away. Archival documents e. In the countryside and in the cultivated and deforested alpine landscapes of a century ago, people and wolves probably also stray dogs were in direct competition for space and food resources.
In these documents of the time, episodes of aggression by wolves for food purposes are reported: the victims were often children or women left alone to watch the animals grazing, a widespread practice in Italy and other alpine countries until the early s. The method to determine the responsibility for the attack was totally subjective, unlike today where the contribution of genetic analysis on biological samples e.
In Europe, at least since the end of the Second World War except for one doubtful case that happened in , there have been no more attacks on humans for food purposes. A significant number of attacks fatal or not on people registered in the past in Europe were caused by wolves suffering from rabies. In six cases, bites were severe. No bites were life-threatening. Another 12 cases involved aggression by known or suspected rabid wolves.
In North America, there are no documented accounts of humans killed by wild wolves between Worldwide, in those rare cases where wolves have attacked or killed people, most attacks have been by rabid wolves. Another factor associated with wolf attack is habituation — losing fear of humans. Wolf attacks have also occurred when wolves are provoked, such as when humans trapped or cornered them or entered a den with pups.
Attacks are also associated with highly-modified environments, for example where there is little to no natural prey and when wolves are dependent on human food sources. There also have been recent reports of wolves attacking people. For example, no wolf has attacked a human in Yellowstone National Park since wolves returned in Overall, wolves represent little threat to humans, unless people habituate them by providing them with food.
Wolves may kill pets if they encounter them, as can other large carnivores such as mountain lions and coyotes. In America, the wolves are the same kind, but they have found to their bitter cost that practically every man and boy carries a rifle The areas of Asia where wolf attacks occur on humans are the same areas where the people have no firearms or other effective means of predator control.
According to Associated Press the government of India reported more than deaths attributable to wolves in one year during the s. In , British officials in Uttar Pradesh recorded human killings by wolves. The British offered a 5-rupee bounty for each wolf killed. This led to the slaying of nearly 2, wolves, and brought an end to the wolf killings in nine months. In the s, there was a wave of attacks in Uttar Pradesh in northern India.
John F. Since the first killing five months ago, 33 children have been carried off and killed by wolves, according to police figures; 20 others have been seriously mauled along this stretch of the Ganges River basin, miles from New Delhi. A hunt by thousands of villagers and police officers has killed only 10 wolves so far. More than nine million people live in the region in some of the harshest poverty found anywhere in India.
Tracing his finger over dotted lines connecting red triangles, denoting wolf killings, and blue circles, denoting maulings by the wolves, Mr. Singh showed why he believed that a single wolf pack was responsible for the attacks. Singh said studies in India, some going back a century and more, showed that wolves could cover 40 to 50 miles in a day. Because of the stifling heat and cramped village homes, many women sleep outside on latticed cots called charpoys, infants beside them, making inviting targets for the wolves.
In other cases, marks on dirt floors have shown how wolves have crept through doorways and carried off their prey. The wolf pounced while Urmila Devi and three of her eight children were in a grassy clearing at the edge of the village, using the open ground for a toilet. The animal, about pounds of coiled sinew and muscle, seized the smallest child, a 4-year-old boy named Anand Kumar, and carried him by the neck into the luxuriant stands of corn and elephant grass that stretch to a nearby riverbank.
From the claw and tooth marks, pathologists confirmed he had been killed by a wolf -- probably one of a pack that conservationists believe has been roaming this area, driven to killing small children by hunger or by something else that has upset the natural instinct of wolves to avoid humans, like thrill-seeking villagers stealing cubs from a lair.
She told her story with tears in her eyes, to anxious murmurs from the crowd. It was wearing a black coat, and a helmet and goggles. But we have seen this thing with our own eyes. It is not a wolf; it is a human being. Other rumors have put the blame for the killings on infiltrators from Pakistan, who are said to have dressed up as wolves. Pakistan is India's traditional enemy.
The hunt involves thousands of villagers and police officers armed with bamboo staves and gauge shotguns. But nobody can be sure that any of the wolves shot so far were part of the pack that Mr. Singh and other experts believe is responsible for the deaths.
Men stay awake all night, keeping vigil with antique rifles and staves. Mothers keep children from the fields, and infants are kept inside all day. In the dark interiors of stark brick homes made clammy by the monsoons, fantastical stories are told, sweeping aside all attempts by officials to convince villagers that the killers have been wolves. Many men head off to Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta in search of menial jobs, but living in slums among others much like themselves, they learn little to allay the superstitions of village life.
In the case of wolves, these are compounded by fairy tales told to children -- Indian versions of ''Little Red Riding Hood'' -- in which wolves, and werewolves, are represented as among the most cunning and dangerous of all creatures. Singh is convinced that the most likely cause for the attacks is hunger. For five years in the 's, Mr.
Singh was director of India's troubled effort to save its diminishing stock of tigers, and that experience showed him how India's fast-growing population, competing with wild animals for land and resources, had driven some species, including tigers, to desperation in the struggle to survive.
Tigers were on the list, as were wolves. But while the number of tigers continued to plunge, with many poached to feed the market for tiger parts elsewhere in Asia, wolf populations soared. Singh, directing the effort here to hunt the wolves, believes the growing numbers have now outstripped the habitat available to support the wolves, at least in eastern Uttar Pradesh, causing some of the hungrier animals to become man-eaters. Singh drafted plans to have hunters patrol hundreds of square miles along riverbanks in the area known to be the favored spot for wolves' lairs.
But Mr. Singh has no patience for this view. If they do, they must be killed. If India is going to save the wolf, it is going to have to be in sanctuaries. Two of them -- in the Muinak district -- died in early February as a result of their wounds.
First, they ate all the dogs. Now they have begun to eat sheep, cows [and other animals]. In the past two months, they have eaten of them. Wolves dig through mud walls, break into sheds, and attack [animals]," Qozibekov said. But Temur Idrisov, program director of the Tajik environmental group For the Earth, says he promotes a system of indemnities for the damage caused by wolves. The main issue here is [to draw] the attention of the government to this [problem].
If some community loses cows or sheep, there can be a system to covers this damage. But of course it should be partly subsidized by the government and by international organizations or environmental NGOs," Idrisov said. In , the governor of Sakha Republic, Russia's largest region declared a state of emergency after a surge of wolf attacks.
The local government has announced a three month "battle against wolves". Special task forces will be put together and the hunting season extended all year round in a bid to tackle what the local authorities have described as a "mass migration" of the creatures. The governor has even promised a six-figure cash prize for the hunters who bring back the most skins. The sparsely populated Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, has seen several dramatic confrontations between humans and the animals in recent years.
Last January a "super pack" of wolves laid siege to the remote town of Verkhoyansk, forcing locals to mount patrols on snow mobiles until the government could send in extra help. Wolves usually hunt in small groups of just six or seven, and naturalists believe only a serious failure of the usual food supply could have brought such a large pack together to tackle larger prey.
This year naturalists say a shortage of the wolves' traditional pretty — especially blue hares — has seen vast numbers of the hungry animals migrating from their mountainous hunting grounds to central parts of the republic. While scientists agree a food shortage is at the root of the problem, it is not clear what has impacted the small mammal population.
Some naturalists have pointed to cyclical fluctuations in the population of small mammals, but others have suggested unusually harsh winters could have played a role. There are thought to be about 3, wolves in the Sakha Republic, which covers an area larger than Argentina. The local government says the territory can realistically support no more than While no attacks on humans have been reported recently, the influx of predators into more populated regions has had a big impact on agriculture — especially the region's traditional reindeer herders.
Wolves killed horses and over 16, reindeer in , according to the agriculture ministry. In August , an attack in the dead of night by a pack of hungry wolves on a village in far west China left six villagers injured. They made enough noise to wake up several families in the village, who tried to chase them away. In the subsequent fighting, six villagers were bitten or clawed.
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