By L. David Mech
Editor's note: In this article, originally
published in the Spring 1998 issue of International Wolf magazine,
wolf expert L. David Mech addressed the issue of whether wolves
pose a physical danger to humans. Reports of wolves killing children
in India and of a wolf attack on a sleeping 11-year-old camper
in Canada raised concerns among the general public about the danger
of wolves, and Mech, who had written on the subject in a 1992
International Wolf article, felt it was time to revisit the issue.
"There's never been a documented case of a healthy wild wolf killing or
seriously injuring a person in North America."
Many of us have heard this statement, or even uttered it ourselves,
especially those of us who study wolves or try to teach the public
about them. But just how true is the statement, and why the qualifiers?
The statement has been around for many years. Has there never
been an exception? Furthermore, if wolves do not attack people,
why don't they?
As one whose job has required me to deal up close with wolves
regularly, I have tried to keep track of these issues. I have
spent the last 12 summers virtually living with a pack of wild
wolves in the high Arctic just 600 miles from the North Pole.
Every night during those summers only the thin nylon of my tent
separated me from the wolves while I slept. Often, adult wolves
howled or barked, or pups whimpered, a few feet from my head,
interrupting my sleep. Even when I was outside my tent eating,
or sometimes when otherwise indisposed, my summer canid companions
would nose around and make me chase them off. This doesn't count
the number of times I have caught them rolling around on my freshly-cleaned
undershorts that I had spread on the tundra to dry.
All in all, I have worked and lived around 16 of these Arctic
wolves, and none has ever made me feel afraid of it. One got into
the habit of lying outside my tent like a dog while I slept. Another
let me sit among her pups and take notes while she nonchalantly
howled only a few feet away. Others once stuck their heads inside
my tent and pulled my sleeping bag out; fortunately I was watching
from a distance and was able to get them to drop it by letting
out a sharp hoot.
Nevertheless, these are the same wolves I have watched tackle
an adult musk ox and tear it apart. Their jaws were strong enough
to crack the ends off the musk ox's three-inch-wide leg bones.
Relatives of these wolves to the south have been able to crack
open the skulls of adult moose. It is clear that wolves could
easily kill a human if they so desired. Yet, at least until recently,
no one has ever turned up dead, missing, eaten or even seriously
injured by a nonrabid wolf during all the many millions of visitor
days in our national forests, parks and other wilderness areas
where wolves reside.
In fact, even the "close calls" between wolves and humans in
North America have been rare enough to warrant documentation in
scientific journals. Such reports include wolves treeing several
botanists who happened to be in the general vicinity of a wolf
den in Canada's Northwest Territories; a wolf biting a man in
the Arctic who tried to pull the animal away from his sled dogs
with whom it was fighting; and a wolf grazing its tooth across
the cheek of a paleo-botanist as the animal -- which appeared
to be merely curious -- jumped at the woman on Ellesmere Island
near the North Pole.
Two interesting wolf-human encounters in northeastern Minnesota
add further to the mix of ways in which wolves have interacted
with humans, without the humans coming out seriously injured.
The first incident involved a logger who saw two wolves attacking
a deer nearby. The logger picked up his dog, which had become
extremely frightened by the deer attack. One of the wolves charged
toward the man and dog, catching a lower fang on the logger's
black-and-red checkered wool shirt and slicing a six-inch gash
in the material. As the wolf tried to yank free from the logger's
clothes, its jaws opened wide and the logger looked right down
the animal's throat.
"It wasn't me the wolf was attacking," the logger told me. "He
was trying to get the dog who just happened to be in my arms."
The second Minnesota incident left a 19-year-old hunter with
a long scratch from a wolf's claws. The man had been hunting snowshoe
hares deep in a thick swamp north of Duluth during a snowstorm.
He was wearing his deer-hunting jacket, which was well anointed
with buck scent. Suddenly a wolf hit him from behind and knocked
him over onto his back. As the wolf stood over him, the startled
hunter managed to fire his .22-caliber rifle. The wolf appeared
to come to its senses and fled, leaving the hunter with a long
scratch.
Mistaken identity? Perhaps, but if the wolf had intended to
kill the hunter, it could easily have done so.
Why don't wolves kill or injure people in North America's forests,
parks and wildernesses? This is not an easy question to answer.
It is true that generally wolves are very afraid of humans. This
fear is probably because wolves have been so thoroughly persecuted
by humans for so long. Thus it is a rare and notable event when
someone spots a wolf in the wild, even when deliberately trying.
It is because of the wolf's elusiveness that I have had to travel
to the high Arctic each summer -- an area about 200 miles north
of the closest Inuit village - to observe wolves at close range.
Even the wolves on Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior,
which haven't been harassed by humans since their arrival on the
island in 1949, retain their extreme shyness of humans.
There are a few places, however, where wolves have either lost
their shyness of people or perhaps never developed it. An example
of the latter is in the high Arctic, where I live with "my pack"
each summer. Examples of the former can be found in several national
parks where some wolves, like some coyotes and bears, have become
accustomed to people.
Why don't these wolves, who have lost their fear of humans, attack
people? The answer may lie in the fact that humans stand upright
on two legs. No wolf prey does so. Furthermore, bears sometimes
stand upright on their hind legs, and generally wolves try to
avoid bears. Another possibility is that wolves long ago learned
to avoid humans. Those wolves that didn't learn this lesson were
eliminated.
A final part of the answer, however, is rather disconcerting.
I am referring here to incidents, mostly in Asia and Europe, in
which wolves apparently have killed or seriously injured people.
For centuries such accounts have emanated from areas like Russia,
China, the Mideast, and even Spain and other European countries.
Many such accounts are no doubt attributable to rabid wolves which,
like rabid dogs, squirrels and skunks, will attack people. Many
other accounts are clearly fabrications or extreme exaggerations,
such as the 1911 newspaper report from Tashkent in the former
Soviet Republic of Georgia which claimed that wolves killed an
entire wedding party of 130 people.
Such obvious fiction tends to cloud any serious accounts that
might be valid. Nevertheless, recent reports of wolves killing
people in India have been checked by qualified authorities and
appear to be valid. From March to October 1996, a wolf or wolves
allegedly killed or seriously injured 64 children in the Indian
state of Uttar Pradesh. Dr. Yadvendradev Jhala, a U.S.-trained
wolf biologist who studies wolves in his native India, investigated
these reports and attempted to determine if any animal other than
wolves could have been involved. By examining victims, questioning
survivors and witnesses, and checking tracks, hairs and scats,
Jhala concluded that a wolf or wolves were involved in the killings.
In March and April 1997, another nine or 10 humans apparently
fell prey to wolves in the same area. Almost all of the victims
were children under age 10 who had been playing or relieving themselves
around the outskirts of small villages surrounded by heavy vegetative
cover. Very few wild prey inhabit the area, and most domestic
livestock are well-tended.
The young children had been left unsupervised, perhaps even
neglected, by their parents at the time of their deaths. Because
the government of India compensates parents of children killed
by wild animals at a rate higher than average annual salaries,
Indian biologists believe that there may actually be an incentive
for parents not to watch their children as closely as they might
otherwise. In areas where the killings occurred, wolves commonly
frequent villages and sometimes even enter huts. They have obviously
lost their fear of humans, or perhaps they are so desperate from
lack of prey that they must resort to scavenging closely around
human abodes. This combination of lack of fear, proximity to humans,
and the presence of many small children in heavy cover may promote
in some bolder wolves the tendency to experiment with this new
type of prey. It may have taken wolves many attempts before they
actually succeeded in grabbing a small child, but once one or
two succeeded, the reward would have been enough to start fixing
the trait in the local wolf population.
A similar combination of circumstances might explain last year's
report of a wolf grabbing 11-year-old Zachary Delventhal from
his sleeping bag in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.
On
August 17, 1996, a wolf grabbed Zachary by the face and tried
to drag him off, causing a wound that required 80 stitches. The
wolf may have been trying, however, to grab not the boy, but his
sleeping bag. As mentioned earlier, the wolves I live with in
the high Arctic once tried to grab my empty sleeping bag from
a tent. Another time, they tried to run off with a sleeping bag
that I was airing on the tundra. Wolves, like dogs, seem attracted
to soft, fluffy or fur-like items, which they like to play with
or rip apart. Regardless of the wolf's intent in the Algonquin
Park incident, the important factor was that the animal was accustomed
to humans. It had been running off with backpacks, tennis shoes
and other human items in the area for several days previous to
the attack on Zachary. It had even been eating human food.
In other words, like bears that feed at dumps, garbage cans
or human campsites, this wolf had not only lost its fear of humans
but had been rewarded for doing so. While this combination of
circumstances certainly does not always lead to incidents in which
humans are injured, it appears to be a predisposing condition.
Put simply, it is not a sufficient reason for wolf injuries to
humans, but it does seem to be a necessary one.
As wolf populations begin to recover in both the Lake Superior
and western regions of the United States, it is important that
people understand this situation. Wolves are large carnivores.
Like bears, cougars and domestic dogs, they should be regarded
as potentially dangerous. This does not mean that wolves should
be viewed with an unhealthy fear or that we must return to the
days when wolves were regarded as demons. It only means that we
should view wolves with the same healthy respect due any potentially
dangerous animal.
L. David Mech is an internationally known wildlife research
biologist who has studied wolves for almost 40 years. He is the
founder of the International Wolf Center and current vice chair
of the Center's board of directors. He has published widely in
scholarly and popular journals. His books include The Wolf, The
Way of the Wolf and The Arctic Wolf, which has recently been reissued
by Voyageur Press with an expanded text.
