Man-eating animal
This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has killed in self-defense.
Most reported cases of man-eaters have involved lions, tigers, leopards, polar bears, and large crocodilians.
[citation needed] Tigers are recorded to have killed more people than any other big cat, and have been responsible for more human deaths through direct attack than any other wild mammal.
[1] Unlike leopards and lions, man-eating tigers rarely enter human habitations to acquire prey.
[2] The Sundarbans is home to approximately 600 royal Bengal tigers[3] who before modern times used to "regularly kill 50 or 60 people a year".
[3] Man-eating lions have been recorded to actively enter human villages at night as well as during the day to acquire prey.
[8] Jim Corbett was noted to have stated that unlike tigers, which usually became man-eaters because of infirmity, leopards more commonly did so after scavenging on human corpses.
[9][10] In Asia, man-eating leopards usually attack at night, and have been reported to break down doors and thatched roofs in order to reach human prey.
[14] Attacks on people, livestock, and pets may occur when a puma habituates to humans or is in a condition of severe starvation.
Unlike other big cat man-eaters, cougars do not kill humans as a result of old age or food preference, but in defense of their territory.
[22] Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and almost fully eaten by a 28-year-old brown bear on October 5, 2003.
In July 2008, dozens of starving brown bears killed two geologists working at a salmon hatchery in Kamchatka.
[23] After the partially eaten remains of the two workers were discovered, authorities responded by dispatching hunters to cull or disperse the bears.
[citation needed] Pigs are competent predators and can kill and eat helpless humans unable to escape them.
Being scavengers, wild pigs have been specifically documented to feed on human corpses or remains in post-combat, rural accident (e.g., plane crash) and crime (e.g., homicide) situations.
In a 2009 attack in India, a 3-year old girl, walking on a trail with her father, was grabbed by a wild pig, which then tried to flee with the child in its mouth.
[41] Large sized rats (some as big as a small cat) have been seen to feed upon human corpses in mortuaries in India.
Even so, there have been several notable instances of alligators opportunistically attacking humans, especially the careless, small children, and elderly.
[43] Unlike the far more dangerous saltwater and Nile crocodiles, the majority of alligators avoid contact with humans if possible, especially if they have been hunted.
[46] On 14 June 2018 a 54-year-old woman named Wa Tiba was eaten by a reticulated python, which had slithered into her garden at her home.
[47] A 45-year-old woman farmer in Indonesia, who had been missing since the day before, was found dead inside a 5-metre-long (16 ft) python in June 2024.
Also, multiple cases are documented of medium-sized (3 to 4 m [10 to 13 ft]) captive Burmese pythons constricting and killing humans, including several nonintoxicated, healthy adult men, one of whom was a "student" zookeeper.
[55] In the Philippines, more than a quarter of Aeta men (a modern forest-dwelling hunter-gatherer group) have reported surviving reticulated python predation attempts.
Despite their large size, attacks on people are often unsuccessful and the victims manage to escape with their lives, albeit severely wounded.
[61] This has led to the villagers of Komodo Island to relocate their graves, and pile rocks on top of them to deter the dragons.
[64] Various large raptors like golden eagles are reported attacking humans,[65] but it is unclear if they intend to eat them or if they have ever been successful in killing one.
The Taung Child, an Australopithecus africanus found in Africa, is believed to have been killed by an eagle-like bird similar to the crowned eagle.
The species that are most dangerous can be indiscriminate and will take any potential meal they happen to come across (as an oceanic whitetip might eat a person floating in the water after a shipwreck), or may bite out of curiosity or mistaken identity (as with a great white shark attacking a human on a surfboard possibly because it resembles its favoured prey, a seal).
[72] These sharks, being large, powerful predators, may sometimes attack and kill humans; it is worth noting that they have all been filmed in open water by unprotected divers.
[80] The giant grouper is one of the largest species of bony fish in the world, reaching a maximum length of 3 meters (10 ft) and weight of 600 kilograms (1,300 lb).
