The only canid that still provokes such irrational fear today is the wolf. Contrary to what we might think, this fear is not based on a long list of attacks or deaths caused by the wild predator since the evolution of our society in the 20th century up to the present day. Above all, it has been cultivated and maintained through the image we have mentally created of wolves, notably in fairy tales, old stories, myths and, later, in the cinema. Wolves face the same problem as sharks, "honored" in Steven Spielberg's famous "Jaws" saga in the 70s. This movie, a box-office hit, provoked an unprecedented wave of fear, leading to the slaughter of several hundred million specimens and prompting Spielberg's consternation and apology decades later. Wolves have always been portrayed in a very negative light, with bloody attacks on humans, threatening stances or devouring the dogs in the cartoon/book "Rémy sans famille" or Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother.

The vision isn't enchanting and, coupled with history, has left its mark on the collective imagination. Just like the number of stories and legends from centuries gone by, where wolves are seen tearing flesh and eating corpses, in a landscape of desolation and misery, due to wars and deadly epidemics, as we'll see later. 

There are many cases, in registers and other official documents between 1300 and 1800, where it's hard to separate fantasy and affabulation (based on a profound ignorance of canids), from reality. One of them is the famous "Beast of Gévaudan", a 16th-century story that is still remembered today, but for which we have never been able to identify the real culprit and what he looked like. When it comes to wolves and many other subjects from these troubled times, many stories have been invented, exaggerated and sometimes even instrumentalized, particularly under pressure from certain entities such as the Catholic Church, which portrayed wolves as "the devil". The hunt for werewolves and witches, of which the wolf was considered an accomplice, led to some 100,000 trials and 30,000 to 60,000 deaths between 1430 and 1680. This is just one example, among many others, of the weight of beliefs at that time, which weighed much more heavily because they were in no way counterbalanced by access to knowledge and school curricula. These beliefs played a major role in worsening people's perception of wild canids.

It's true that wolves, as their cousin the dogs, did attack and kill humans, mostly children and women, during the Middle Ages and up to the 20th century. But we seem to forget that all animals, wild and domestic, can interact with human, and that these interactions can be affiliative (friendly), neutral or agonistic (unfriendly - defensive or offensive aggression). And the outcome of these encounters depends on a multitude of factors, some predictable, others not, which you'll discover throughout this dossier. So it is therefore highly risky, even damaging, to compare or generalize with anything to do with living being and nature. 

If we really want to stop harbouring irrational fears, then we need to confront them. To do so, we need to delve deeper, to cultivate ourselves in order to sort out the truth from the false, looking at the whole picture. This means immersing ourselves in history, going back over the centuries to obtain all the vital parameters necessary for understanding, such as the living conditions of the time, the societal mode, the environment, the circumstances, the situations, the beliefs, and so on. But also to learn, through the many studies and books available today, who wolves really are, how they functions, their habits, etc. These two poles, learning and research, are inseparable if we are to better understand predation on humans and the circumstances in which it can occur.

Let's set the scene again, by going back to the Middle Ages, when the majority of attacks took place. This period of history was the scene of numerous wars across Europe, as well as major epidemics such as smallpox, plague, cholera and typhus, which claimed millions of victims. Corpses were left on battlefields or on the outskirts of villages and towns, as the population and the army were overwhelmed by the number of dead and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of burying them under the prevailing conditions. It has now been proven that wolves can be scavengers, so these plagues were clearly a way for them to feed, and would also have caused confusion in the minds of the population.
 
The societal mode and living conditions in place during these centuries were fundamentally different from our own now, in every respect. The population (or "petit peuple" as we named it sometimes) was much more widespread and present in the territories. They were plagued by severe poverty, famine, exploitation, harsh winters, disease caused by poor hygiene, etc. Mortality rates were extremely high and life expectancy extremely low. The concerns and lifestyles of our ancestors were completely different as what we experience today, in the 21st century. 

For example, children were often unschooled (except among the aristocracy), worked on the farm and were often used to herd cattle or sheep, day and night. From the age of three or four, they performed a wide range of tasks and chores, often moving around or remaining unsupervised. Abandonment also left children of all ages homeless, forced to fend for themselves. Nowadays, it would be totally unthinkable to practice this way, as no child would find himself alone on a mountain pasture, looking after sheep when he's only 6-8 years old, without going to school. Nor would any of them be abandoned on the streets, isolated and vulnerable. Clearly, this has had a major impact on the risk of kids finding themselves defenseless in the face of a predator, whether animal or human with malicious intent ! The exploitation of children didn't really change until the 20th century, but before that their living conditions were harsh and mortality very high. One in 4 newborns died before the age of one, and barely one in two children reached the age of 10. The main causes were disease/epidemics (lack of vaccination) and nutritional insufficiency and deficiencies. In fact, children occupied 30 to 40% of the spaces in cemeteries.

Malnutrition and lack of hygiene therefore led to disease and a possibly weaker constitution, which may have contributed to making women and children more vulnerable. Thus, seen as prey, predators - stray dogs or wolves - were able to prey on them, under very specific circumstances in this period of extremely precarious socio-economic conditions. In fact, it should be noted that during these centuries, excessive hunting led to a decline in the number of prey species. It was itself due to famine and the miserable living conditions of the "petit peuple, often crushed by the ruling monarchies !

Clearly, without wild prey, predators (wolves and stray dogs) had no choice but to turn to livestock, corpses left on the ground or human victims for food. Women, children and sometimes the elderly were, according to all archival documents (ordinances, edicts, church registers), the categories most affected by predatory attacks. Indeed, we know that canids are opportunists, and if natural prey disappear, their survival instinct will kick in, like any other species. Logically, this will lead them to attack prey not normally on their menu. Unusual situations call for unusual behavior !

In identical circumstances, i.e. precarious conditions where food is in short supply and survival is threatened, humans are also confronted with the occurrence of behaviors that are not part of their nature, such as theft, aggression or even murder, in order to grab food or anything else that might save them or their family. Accounts of prison or concentration camps, of times of great famine, speak openly of that fact. The extreme but true story of the crash of the "Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya 571" plane in the Andes on October 13, 1972, in which the survivors fed on each other to survive, is another example of the survival instinct also present in humans. 

In the Middle Ages, we can also cite the difficulty of identifying/differentiating between canids, and therefore those responsible for attacks. Between stray dogs, often in packs, wolves, the time of day the attack occured, the distance, the environment, adrenaline, shock, the situation and the lack of knowledge on the part of the population, witnesses or victims of attacks or bites struggled to establish, with any certainty, the identity of the culprit. In fact, in the church registers, where all the population's births and deaths are recorded, the mentions ranged from "cruel, devouring, ferocious, ravishing beast" to "uncertain animal" and "foreign animal". Around 400 such cases were recorded over two centuries, in the Beauce region of France alone (6,000 km2). Even today, many people still struggle to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog, and misidentifications are common.

This difficulty in obtaining reliable information, to find the true culprit, is also present in testimonies concerning the "Beast of Gévaudan". During the 3-4 years of its murderous journey, the Beast changed shape, color and appearance countless times, oscillating between panther, wolf, human with large iron claws and so on. In the absence of medical/DNA evidence to establish the real cause of death and identify the attacker, too many doubts remain. 

During this period, a viral disease was also a major threat to human-canids coexistence, causing numerous attacks : rabies ! It affects the nervous system and is characterized by behavioral changes (characterized aggressiveness), locomotor disorders, hypersalivation and paralysis. Transmitted by a simple bite, it causes death in a very short space of time. It has been a real scourge over the centuries, and although Switzerland was officially declared rabies-free in 1998, the disease is still with us today, killing over 10,000 people a year in many of the world's mostly underdeveloped countries. According to John Linnell, author of the famous "NINA" report on wolf attacks on humans in the 20th and 21st centuries, rabies is the main reason (74%) for the incidents and deaths affecting humans during these centuries and even today.

Another important point to bear in mind is the difficulty in obtaining irrefutable medical evidence from dead bodies in the Middle Ages. It was a time when knowledge and methods were much more rudimentary than they are today. Autopsies could only be performed at the place of death, by a "barber/surgeon". They were less systematic, and in no way allowed us to delve as deeply into the subject as we can today. Thanks to the advent of DNA analysis in the mid-1990s, it is now possible to determine the identity of the real culprit (from millions of people), or to differentiate between dog and wolf. 

Unfortunately, in centuries gone by, this process was non-existent. Autopsies and medical knowledge only really took off in the early 1800s, with the advent of the microscope, radiography and toxicology. 

Added to this is the condition of the body and the time elapsed between death and discovery. Indeed, if the victim was not found immediately (which was often the case), if hours, days or even weeks had elapsed, and taking into account the numbers of stray dogs, wolves and other smaller predators (foxes, weasels, rodents, crows etc.), it is clear that the victims were then found devoured. The bodies were in such a state that it was virtually impossible to establish the true cause of death. And even if the body was found more quickly, there was no way of keeping it cold at the time, which was essential for autopsies. 

Clearly, we need to be cautious about "diagnoses" of cause of death based simply on visual evidence or writings in official or church registers. Human criminals must have profited over the centuries : their crimes could easily be covered up by dumping/abandoning the body in the wild, for the predators to deal with and then hold them accountable.

Given all these facts and parameters, common sense suggests that we should be genuinely cautious about the circumstances and motives behind wolf attacks in these troubled times, which are fundamentally opposed to our current societal mode. As you can see, it's extremely difficult to pinpoint the actual causes of wolf attacks. They could have been defensive or predatory attacks (often provoked by rabies, the disappearance of wild prey or habituation), the consumption of dead bodies whose death may have been due to other causes, or they could simply have been falsely attributed to wolvesf, for all the reasons mentioned above, including the lack of irrefutable proof. It is clear from this chapter that it is impossible, even dangerous, to make comparisons between different eras, societal modes, environments, circumstances and situations. It's about time that the dangerous nature of wolves stopped being exploited by political parties, who use it to create a climate of fear, ideal for manipulating the masses in an attempt to eradicate them. It's a method that's been used since the dawn of time. This special report will show you, in a clear and transparent way, the real dangers facing mankind when it comes to canids, and the high degree of responsibility we bear !

Today, in Switzerland, everything has completely changed and evolved, and we're nowhere near the Middle Ages. This is not the case in underdeveloped countries, where living conditions are closer to that period in history, increasing the risk of incidents. Wolves no longer represent the same danger as they once did, quite simply because the way we live in today's society, scientific studies and ethology having enabled us to gain a much better understanding of the mechanisms of living beings (instincts, behaviour, habits, communication, functioning, etc.), the control of certain diseases such as rabies, enable us to better apprehend animals and encounters, and to avoid reproducing gestures or actions that could lead to attack/aggression. The management of prey species, whose numbers are stable and even in excellent health in the case of deer, and the information transmitted by the media and official authorities concerning the ban on feeding wild animals and waste and garbage can management in our regions are the key to a coexistence with as few clashes as possible between wild canids and humans.

As the subject is fascinating and would take hundreds of pages to cover in detail, we recommend that anyone interested in delving into the history of wolves over the centuries should read the great and complete books of writer/historian Jacques Baillon. In particular, "Traces de loups" & "Drôles de loups et autres bêtes féroces". Click here to order them (in french only).

Dictionary

Societal mode        Refers to the various aspects of the social life of individuals, insofar as they constitute an organized society.
Behavior                All the reactions and actions of an individual in a given environment and under given circumstances.
DNA                      Molecule carrying hereditary genetic information (deoxyribonucleic acid).
Hypersalivation      Excessive production of saliva. 

Photos : L. Camy, Institut Pasteur, LIAGE

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