Wolves very rarely prey upon people. However, under certain conditions, wolves will consider humans a prey source.
Although we can find modern and historical examples of wolves preying upon humans, some of the historical examples include so much local prejudice and folklore that one might start questioning the credibility of the account.
Take the case of the wolf of Ansbach.
Modern-day Ansbach is a city in Bavaria, but in the seventeenth century, Ansbach was the main city of a principality within the Holy Roman Empire (the thing that was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire and included most of the lands in which German is spoken today.)
In 1685, wolf began to prey upon lifestock.
And then it started to hunt both women and children.
Nobody knows how many peasants from Ansbach were victims of the wolf, but it was enough for it to be a major hazard.
Now, the rumor among the peasantry was that the wolf was the reincarnation of cruel Bürgermeister.
From that rumor, the maneating wolf became a werewolf.
Hunters pursued the wolf. Anyone who killed such a menace would have become a hero, for not only would he have killed the living wolf that had been killing women, children, and livestock, he would have exacted revenge upon the Bürgermeister for his various atrocities against the people.
One day, the hounds chased the wolf until it couldn’t run anymore, and it jumped into an uncovered well to escape.
Of course, that wasn’t such a smart move.
The hunters found the wolf in the well and dispatched him.
As as happened so many times when such a predator is killed, the body of the wolf was paraded down the streets of Ansbach and displayed in the market place.
But because everyone believed that this was no mere wolf, its carcass was not treated in the way one might expect.
The muzzle was cut off, and the body was dressed in human clothing. A wig was placed upon its head. A mask covered its face. A beard was placed upon its chin.
The animal became the hated Bürgermeister.
And to exact full revenge upon that tyrant, the clothed and disfigured wolf was hanged from a gibbet for all to see.
They had been unable to overthrow the tyrant while he lived, but in executing this wolf, they were able to symbolically overthrow him.
It is a very unusual story.
It is certain that there was a maneating wolf in the Principality of Ansbach, which had once been ruled by a tyrannical Bürgermeister.
In the lore of peasants, the two beings had to be the same, for both menaced the people of the principality at roughly the same time.
Perhaps some of the people believed it.
Or more likely, it is possible that in killing the wolf and displaying his body in this way, the people were better able to cope with the hardships they experienced under such tyrannical rule.
Or maybe the new Bürgermeister wanted some symbol to show that the reign of his predecessor was finally over. Trust your new ruler. I’m not like him.
Whatever it was, the real animal’s mythic and symbolic status exceeded his real attacks upon the people.
With wolves, such embellishment is not unusual. It is almost de rigueur. The wolves of the Old West that preyed upon the cattle herds and spent years evading traps, bullets, and poison developed a similar legendary status. (See the Custer Wolf).
These stories tell us so much more about our species than about theirs.
They are predators. They kill because it is their nature.
We are humans.
We believe ourselves to be separate from the other animals.
We also believe that we are above nature.
Animals that attack us or our livestock are an affront to that worldview.
And they must be destroyed.
To destroy them, we must cast the predator as an evil person.
The Custer wolf becomes the ranging desperado. The wolf of Ansbach becomes the evil tyrant.
To kill the wolf is to kill evil.
In killing evil, man is redeemed.
Man regains control.
The delusion of being separate from and in control over the rest of creation regains currency.
But the wolf itself is no more evil than the man who hunts deer or butchers pigs.
It is a part of nature. It is subject to the real forces of ecology and economy.
But man must feel he is separate from it.
It is a comforting delusion, but it is one that is as dangerous as it is beguiling.
To maim a dead wolf and dress him as a man shows us for what we are.
It really says very little about the wolf.
***
I think now we should have a discussion on something a little more important and bigger than our crazed symbolism about wolves. When do wolves attack people?
I found this piece by Valerius Geist on when wolves become dangerous to people, and I think it is very good for framing a discussion on the wolf and its relation to man.
They aren’t particularly dangerous to people.
But one should remember that all wolves are individuals. All wolf packs have different “cultures.” All ecosystems teach wolves different things.
Some wolves might consider people a food source under certain conditions.
Dogs kill people. Many Indians in the Caribbean and Latin America were actually dispatched by heavy greyhounds and mastiffs of the conquistadors, who occasionally killed Indians just to feed their bloodthirsty dogs.
So why is it so hard to accept that wolves sometimes kill people?
Animals that kill people should be killed.
However, we should not use the reality of predation in the way we historically have.
We should not use an act of wolf predation upon stock or people as an excuse to extirpate the whole species.
That’s folly. And it should be condemned.
But the longer we say that wolves never attack people, the more desperate and denialist we sound.
We sound like we’re bullshitting.
And when we’re dealing with animals as complex and intelligent as wolves, we need to be careful about our absolutes.
Only when we deal with the real organism can we work to conserve it.
The wolf is neither evil incarnate nor some kind of wild golden retriever that lives on mice.
It is a being.
It is complex.
It is incapable of being fully under our control.
It is incapable of being reduced to our prejudices.
That’s really what makes them so fascinating.
Interesting post. There are several wolf stories like this from Europe. I don’t think it is too unusual for humans to attribute supernatural characteristics to animals that begin to prey on human beings. Have you ever read Man-eaters of Kumaon, by Jim Corbett or one of Kenneth Andersons books like Nine Man-eaters and One Rogue?, Both of these feature tigers, leopards, and bears that hunt humans (though not wolves in this case). Yet, the Indians of the area began to think of the animals as demons or spirits. They were very used to living near these predators, just like the people of Ansbach would have been very used to seeing and living near wolves. It was when the animals started to act in an unusual way that the people thought they were supernatural. In the case of the Ansbach wolves this got mixed up with politics, which is a little different. In most of the cases covered by Anderson and Corbett, the animals were injured in some way. The article you cited mentions this can happen with wolves too.
You’re right, dogs do kill people. Wolves have killed people. Even coyotes have killed people , as we saw last year in Canada. I liked your example of the hounds that the Spaniards used to hunt kill natives with during the Spanish colonial period. Of course, these natives had dogs of their own, but they were pretty small in comparison. According to sources by Bernal Diaz and Bartolome de Las Casas, the natives thought these animals were more like jaguars than domestic dogs.
I believe there are people from the Amazon who didn’t own dogs before the Conquest who refer to dogs as a variety of jaguar.
on the scale of things, wolves are among the least dangerous animals to people. Certainly far less than tigers. Or bears. Or snakes… But of course the REAL dangerous animals are the invertebrates.
Can you find an engraving of the “killer mosquito” of Ansbach?
I have read most of Jim Corbett’s books(I LOVE Jim Corbett!), as well as quite a few others involving man-eating critters of all types–big cats, bears, hyenas, wolves, crocs, sharks, etc. When you get a more comprehensive view, man-eating is NOT so rare at all, nor does it always involve animals who are crippled and unable to kill their normal prey, or who are “degenerate” or “renegades” in any way, although this is how they are often portrayed. Saying animals kill people “by accident” mistaking them for other prey, I think is quite silly and overly apologetic for the animals(most of which have superior senses of smell, or read body language incredibly well, and know good and darn well that that human on a surfboard is NOT a sea lion, or that person squatting by the waterhole is NOT a wildebeest, or that bipedal, stinking ape walking by is NOT a goat!) I would agree that many predators are reluctant to attack humans initially, because we ARE strange-looking and acting critters ourselves–loud, aggressive, bold,, with our weird, awkward and jerky upright postures and manipulation of all manner of queer objects–it has to be off-putting to the average wild creature. But once they become overly familiar with us, and if we are little or no threat in return, it usually isn’t long before some classic predatory “testing” starts occurring, which can quickly lead to full blown man-eating, by perfectly healthy, normal predators. I think people demonize animals that do this, or put them in some supernatural or renegade category, because it makes them very uncomfortable(their physical and cultural selves) to be viewed by anything simply as another form of meat! And by a mere “animal”, whom humans are supposed to be so superior to intellectually, and divinely! But like it or not, we ARE still part of the food chain, part of life on this earth, no matter how we try to deny it with our selfish, warped funeral customs, religious exclusions from all other creation, and our lofty egos. Some critters just cut through all that cultural crap, and DARE to make a meal of us! Of course severe hunger can also be a great motivator…..
Corbett,
Isn’t he the fellow who became the great tiger conservationist?
Yes. Although he had a long career as a hunter of man-eaters in India. he also had a few stories about his hunting dogs. Several of his books are free online now.
Jim Corbett was a great conservationist, way before his time! He grew up in India, and developed a great love of the native peoples, animals, and nature. His woodcraft and knowledge of local wildlife was unsurpassed, which is why he was often called upon to shoot especially difficult man-eating leopards and tigers. Reading his books ARE NOT like reading most hunting adventures popular in that era–he had a great respect and admiration for the big cats he was sent to kill, and he was constantly apologizing for their behaviour in his books, and went to some effort to point out that virtually all of these man-eaters were either crippled by old wounds or old age(and this certainly does factor into this issue, but pefectly young, healthy animals do turn man-eater, too, sometimes….). And unlike most big-game-bwana-types writing of their adventures at the time, he tends to downplay his own abilities and is often quite disparaging of himself, which only added to his appeal, to me(but in reading between-the-lines, damn, he had some close calls, and was an amazingly courageous and tough guy!). And he was incredibly unlike the typical ethnocentric writers of the time–he had enormous respect and affection for the local people, so much so that to this day he is still greatly honored in India. His best books, all readily available now, are the INCREDIBLE “Man-eating Leopard Of Rudraprayag”, “The Man-eaters Of Kumaon”, and “The Temple Tiger And More Man-eaters of Kumaon”–I also love his book relating his tales of growing up in India, titled “Jungle Lore”. All these are MUSTS for anyone wanting to study the morbidly fascinating subject of man-eating big cats–highly, highly recommended. One aspect that I found so interesting, is just how well the cats learned human behaviour, and adapted their hunting to it, which Corbett describes in detail. Incredible books about the incredible adventures of an amazing man and some fascinating animals……
Accounts of other animals killing and eating humans are anecdotal. Certainly many of them are true.. but thousands of years of human history demonstrate that they are not COMMONLY true. The fear humans have of some large predators is not rational. Our attitudes towards other animals in general is not rational.. or we’d have exterminated elk as avidly as we exterminated bison (you can try to explain why the bison is still regarded as a threat though it carries the same disease as elk, or why male bison, which cannot transmit the disease, are slaughtered in the name of disease control).
Predators have “images” of what their prey is and apparently don’t even seem to recognize some animals they could eat as prey. It’s well known that there are packs of wolves living in cattle country that don’t eat cattle. (some, that is.. obviously many do). May coyotes don’t eat sheep, either.
Most large predators that could eat us don’t. And most predators that kill us don’t eat us. Tigers and polar bears seem to be the primary exceptions: predators that do regard humans as prey.
No one should deny that wolves can, and have, killed/eaten humans. But to assert that it is common or normal flies in the face of science.
We have little to fear from large predators. The reverse, of course, is not true.
Very true, Emily.
Large predators generally don’t attack people, and I think the “images” thing is very important to understanding lots of things.
It may be why we were able to dominate the other predators so easily and why wolves didn’t think of us as prey.
If you look at us, our heads and necks are in entirely different positions form the normal prey species. Our bipedalism does get up some protection from predators in this regard.
I think it’s very easy to use wolf attacks for political purposes. In the Middle Ages, if the forests were full of maneating wolves in the popular mind, then it was easier to keep people on the manor and out of the forest. Stay in the manner and grow grain for your lord. Don’t go into the forests and become poachers and squatters. It was very useful for feudal lords to use wolves in this way.
And I know you live in a state that totally demonizes wolves. Probably not as bad as this guy in Idaho:
Farley Mowat is not the real animal. Little Red Riding Hood isn’t the real animal.
But the animal is, on average, closer to the Farley Mowat animal.
[…] If you’d like to see examples of wolves hunting people, check out The Wolves of Paris, The Wolf of Ansbach, this fatal wolf attack in Alaska, and the story of child snatching wolves in India. The last two […]