Wolf attack
[1][2][3] A study by the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research showed that there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, three in North America, and more than 200 in south Asia in the half-century up to 2002.
[4] The updated edition of the study revealed 498 attacks on humans worldwide for the years 2002 to 2020, with 25 deaths, including 14 attributed to rabies.
[7] Although they primarily target ungulates, wolves are at times versatile in their diet; for example, those in the Mediterranean region largely subsist on garbage and domestic animals.
Wolves living in open areas, for example the North American Great Plains, historically showed little fear before the advancement of firearms in the 19th century,[10] and would follow human hunters to feed on their kills, particularly bison.
[10] Wolf biologist L. David Mech hypothesized in 1998 that wolves generally avoid humans because of fear instilled by hunting.
[9] He speculated that attacks are preceded by habituation to humans, while a successful outcome for the wolf may lead to repeated behavior, as documented especially in India.
Cases of rabies in wolves are very rare in North America, though numerous in the eastern Mediterranean, Middle East and Central Asia.
[17] Agonistic attacks are motivated not by hunger nor fear but rather by aggression; designed to kill or drive off a competitor away from a territory or food source.
Wolf attacks are more likely to happen when preceded by a long period of habituation, during which wolves gradually lose their fear of humans.
[19][20] Predatory attacks can occur at any time of the year, with a peak in the June–August period, when the chances of people entering forested areas (for livestock grazing or berry and mushroom picking) increase,[16][21] though cases of non-rabid wolf attacks in winter have been recorded in Belarus, the Kirovsk and Irkutsk districts, in Karelia, and in Ukraine.
[16] Aside from their physical weakness, children were historically more vulnerable to wolves as they were more likely to enter forests unattended to pick berries and mushrooms, as well as tend and watch over cattle and sheep on pastures.
[30][31][32] As with North American scientists later on (see below), several Russian zoologists after the October Revolution cast doubt on the veracity of records involving wolf-caused deaths.
A report was presented in November 1947 describing numerous attacks, including ones perpetrated by apparently healthy animals, and gave recommendations on how to better defend against them.
[36] Police records collected from Korean mining communities during Japanese rule indicate that wolves attacked 48 people in 1928, more than those claimed by boars, bears, leopards and tigers combined.
In the former area, 721 people were killed by wolves in 1876, while in Bihar, the majority of the 185 recorded deaths at the time occurred mostly in the Patna and Bghalpur Divisions.
Between April 1989 to March 1995, wolves killed 92 people in southern Bihar, accounting for 23% of 390 large mammal attacks on humans in the area at that time.
His conclusions received some limited support by biologists but were never adopted by United States Fish and Wildlife Service or any other official organisations.
[9] Wolf numbers consistently dropped across the US during the 20th century and by the 1970s they were only significantly present in Minnesota and Alaska (though in greatly reduced populations than prior to the European colonization of the Americas[49]).
[20][53] Following the Icy Bay incident, biologist Mark E. McNay compiled a record of wolf-human encounters in Canada and Alaska from 1915 to 2001.
