Norwegian boy
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 20:50
VIEWED: 3829
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Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Stupid, stupid, stupid; given the option, wolves do NOT attack humans!Quote:Silly story, in my opinion, as it was obviously that last paragraph which caused the wolves to retreat, but funny.
Luckily for Walter Eikrem, it does not appear Norwegian wolves care for Creed.
The 13-year-old was walking home from the school bus stop in the town of Rakkestdad this week when he noticed something on the hillside near his family’s farmhouse, according to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.
At first he thought they were dogs, but he soon realized they were wolves – four of them – the magazine said, citing Norway’s TV2.
The boy, remembering that his mother had told him never to run from wolves, pulled the headphones out of his mobile phone and cranked up the volume on the tiny speakers.
He was listening to “Overcome” by Creed, an arguably Christian rock band, and apparently, the wolves were not fans.
(Initial reports indicated Walter shooed the wolves away with a Megadeth song, but the blog at Gibson guitars cleared up the confusion.)
“They just turned around and simply trotted away,” he told the TV station, according to Der Spiegel. “The worst thing you can do is run away because doing so just invites the wolves to chase you down ... but I was so afraid that I couldn't even run away if I'd wanted to.”
To be fair, Walter was yelling at the top of his lungs and wildly flailing his arms, so it’s tough to say exactly what made the wolves decide the boy might not be delicious.
I'm not sure if I even believe the story; Norway has virtually wiped out their wolf population several times, and their annual wolf hunt is a controversy that goes on and on. Plus, wolves rarely attack humans; I can't find a single story of a human being attacked by wolves in Norway.
The truth isQuote:In fact, as of 2003
A wolf attack is an attack on a human by a wolf or wolves. Under normal circumstances, wild wolves are generally timid around humans. Wolves usually try to avoid contact with people, to the point of even abandoning their kills when an approaching human is detected, though there are several reported circumstances in which wolves have been recorded to act aggressively toward humans.
Compared to other carnivorous mammals known to attack humans in general, the frequency with which wolves have been recorded to kill or prey on people. Man-eater is a colloquial term for an anmal that preys upon humans. This does not include scavenging. Although human beings can be attacked by many kinds of animals, man-eaters are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet. Though potentially dangerous, wolves are among the least threatening for their size and predatory potential.Quote:I hate that we've made The Big Bad Wolf (and snakes) the bad guys everywhere. Humans. Bah...
There is only one case that has contemporary documentation. This concerns a 6-8-year-old girl who was killed in Sorum, Akershus County (southern Norway) on 28 December 1800. Records exist from local and national newspapers and from the parish register.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off
Stupid, stupid girl. North American wolves don't usually attack people, however their european conterparts are much more agressive. Sure I know the debate here is if a healthy wolf has ever attacked a human. That is not the case in Europe. Just letting you know.
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Yes, Lili, they heard it. A wolf's hearing is at least 16 times sharper than a human's. Wolves can hear a sound as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles away in open country. Their sense of hearing, like their sense of smell, is so much more than ours, it’s hard for us to conceive of it. But yes, they heard it. It may have been the strange sound, or even the mere presence of the boy, which caused them to leave.
As to the aggressiveness of “European” wolves versus “North American” ones, well, technically, there's no such thing as an 'American wolf'. However, if you're talking about Grey wolves (timber wolves), nowadays, it's very very rare to find a man-eating wolf. Wolves, for the most part, fear humans and will keep their distance. It is thought, though, that European wolves used to be much more aggressive in the past (hundreds of years ago), and it was not unusual for a wolf to attack a human.
Yes, the old saw is true that "There's never been a documented case of a healthy, wild wolf killing a human in North America." Unfortunately, the "no healthy, wild wolf" sound byte is often misstated with the word "killing" replaced by "attacking". This is not true. Wild wolves have attacked humans in North America. But no evidence suggests they ever killed one that I know of.
Your answer may be simply out of date, Kane. Tales about massive wolf packs devastating caravans of Russian troikas are undoubtedly fiction. During their brief “reign of terror” in France from 1764 to 1767, the infamous Beasts of Gervaudan killed at least sixty-four people--but it's been well established that these animals were hybrids not wolves. Most of the deaths blamed on wolves in southern and central Europe and in central Asia are attributable to hybrids or rabid wolves.
However, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, from March to October 1996 and March to April 1997, a wolf or wolves killed or injured as many as seventy-four Indian children, almost all of them under the age of ten. The deaths occurred among children playing or relieving themselves on the outskirts of small villages. There were also reports of a wolf entering huts, though it sounds as if no children were harmed.
Reasons why wolves in that part of the world are more likely to attack and kill humans are put forth by wolf experts:
1. Human density of 1,500 per square mile and livestock (goats, sheep and pigs) density of 950 per square mile;
2. Scarce prey for wolves;
3. Three-times more unescorted children than livestock;
4. Outdoor toilets on outskirts of village;
5. A government compensation program that pays 5,000 rupees ($125-an amount that exceeds India's average annual per capita income) for children killed by animals;
6. Victims all from very poor families;
7. And, probably the most important factor, as evidenced by their entering huts, wolves that are habituated to humans.
Given few, if any, of those conditions exist in America, it’s not surprising we have fewer attacks.
As to Norway itself:Quote:
http://www.cvfaf.org/NorwayWolves.html
For thousands of years, large numbers of wolves have roamed Norway. Today there are only between 8 and 15 left in the wilderness, and recently two of these few remaining wolves were shot by the authorities. One of the wolves had killed 16 sheep. By way of comparison, over 40 sheep die each hour during the summer season without any interference of predators. They die from reasons like parasites, flystrike, poisoned plants, illnesses and injuries. 130.000 sheep suffer and die every summer in the Norwegian wilderness, and only 3000-4000 of these can be documented killed by predators.
Still the sheep industry is about to cause the extermination of the wolves, and also the bears. In 2006 there were only 71 bears left in the Norwegian woods, and even this number is too high for the government and the sheep industry.
Typical human short-sightedness, egocentricity and prejudice. To paraphrase Hardware's sig, “The more I know hum
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By the way, just 'cuz, attacks by wolves in North America don't even show a particular interest in killing and are easily disaded. For example,Quote:
In Ontario, Canada where thousands of people visit Algonquin Provincial Park-and many of them come to see or hear wolves-five people have been bit in the past twelve years. During August 1996, a wolf dragged 12-year-old Zachariah Delventhal from his sleeping bag. This particular wolf, prior to attacking Zachariah, had entered campsites and taken things such as a backpack, tennis shoe and other human items.
Habituation and food conditioning play major roles with the wolf attacks in Algonquin Provincial Park. The wolf that attacked Zachariah had frequented campsites and taken human items, it had clearly lost a fear of humans. Some wolf biologists felt that the wolf might have been interested only in the sleeping bag. This could have been the case to begin with-however, such an explanation falters at the point the wolf took Zachariah's head in its mouth. As wolf biologists Pat Tucker and Diane Boyd pointed out, "Wolves olfactory senses are beyond our imagining. Only a scent-impaired wolf would fail to differentiate between a sleeping bag from a human." Initially, the wolf may have been attracted by the sleeping bag and, grabbing for it, mistakenly got a hold of Zachariah and, instead of running away, decided to see what happened next. This seems to be a case of habituation giving rise to experimentation.
Like humans, wolves possess character traits that shape them into shy, bold, dominant, submissive, extroverted or introverted individuals. The word bold, when attributed to a wolf, sounds synonymous with aggressive, but that's not necessarily the case. Think of a bold wolf as an open-minded wolf. A bold wolf could be a subdominant animal forced to strike out on its own or a wolf with a genetic make-up that made it less timid or more curious. The main point here is that such a wolf would be inclined to experiment and, if rewarded with food procured from scavenging or direct feeding, it would grow habituated to humans and associate us with food. Once a wolf became food-habituated it could continue experimenting, pushing limits in search of new rewards. Such an animal could prove a threat to humans.
On September 25, 1998, another Algonquin wolf circled a little girl and despite blasts of pepper spray, didn't leave until the child entered a trailer. Two days after that, a nineteen-month-old boy sat playing in the middle of camp, with his parents twenty feet away. The father thought he saw a dog emerge from the brush. He turned away for a moment and when he looked back, he saw his son in the jaws of a wolf. The wolf held the boy for a moment and then tossed him three feet. A local newspaper quoted the parents, "It wasn't hit and run. He hit him [the infant] and then it was wait and see. He [the wolf] circled the picnic table a number of times before he was scared off enough to leave." The infant received two stitches for minor injuries.
On April 26, 2000, a six and nine year old boy cut down small trees as they played at being loggers on the outskirts of a logging camp near Yakutat in southeastern Alaska.
Upon seeing a wolf, the children fled. The wolf took down six-year-old John Stenglein and bit him on the back, legs and buttocks. The boy's cries brought adults who drove the wolf away. John received seven stitches and five surgical closure staples.
During the evening of July 1, 2000, on the shores of Vargas Island, British Columbia, a wolf entered the campsite of a kayaking group. They chased the wolf away. Members of the group also spotted another wolf that apparently hung back from the bolder wolf. At 2 a.m., 23-year-old Scott Langevin awoke with a small dark wolf tugging on his sleeping bag. "I yelled to try to spook it off, and I kicked at it," Scott said. "It backed up a bit, but then it just lunged on top of me, and it started biting away through my sleeping bag."
He rolled in an effort to situate the f
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Dingoes have killed people in recent years, they're pretty close to wolves.
I love dingoes, but I'd be nervous around a pack of wild ones.
http://ozmagic2.homestead.com/dingo.html
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I'd suggest a bit of behavioral study as a defense then, if you are concerned about it.
Knowledge of animal behavior is more effective than even a semi-auto shotgun, because knowing how to get them to leave you alone means there's never any confrontation in the first place, and knowing how to trip their instincts into "run the hell away!" is worth every moment you invested in it, yanno.
Fringe-critters are usually the most dangerous, animals who have existed at the edge of human neighborhoods long enough for their behavior to change and adapt in unpredictable ways, but generally for most critters humans are outside their food chain, and when confronted with something outside of their instinctive heirarchy of behavior, most animals opt for getting the hell out of dodge...
-F
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Dingos are a whole 'nother matter. In a pack, they'll take on other predators, like Quote:
NOBODY takes on monitors! They usuall take kangaroos and are scavengers to boot, but given they'll take on WATER BUFFALO in packs, I'm impressed!Yes, their original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to their wild Asian Gray Wolf parent species. Since then, living largely apart from people and other dogs, together with the demands of Australian ecology, has caused them to develop features and instincts that distinguish them from all other canines.
the coordinated attack of three dingoes for killing a large monitor lizard was observed
Tho' the comparison fails in many ways, it is nonetheless appropos in others; personally, I'd rather face a pack of wolve than a pack of dingos ANY DAY! Wolves are easier to discourage and rarely attack humans; I'm not sure how easily dingos are discouraged if they approach humans.
Dingo attacks in Australia on humans are considered rare but are known to happen. All I can find on Wikipedia are four cases, ranging in age from 2 months to 9 years old. The most recent was just a few days ago, a tourist.Quote:
That one's weird. They all were on Frasier Island, which apparently is a big tourist spot, and they're guessing it's because the dingos are becoming familiar with humans, and people are feeding them. Who can say?
Regional Manager, Ross Belcher, said although there were five in the pack, it was only one that became violent.
"The woman was bitten on the leg, hands and arms," he said.
She apparently followed safety advice and responded assertively towards the dingo, causing it to retreat.
She was treated at the scene and did not require hospital care.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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You are correct. There is also something about their numbers being too large for the island because tourists are feeding them as well.
Wolves, dingoes, dogs can and will attack humans for a variety of reasons, but I think they tend to see us as competitors for their food source rather than prey.
In times when wolf numbers were greater, they were a real threat to humans in Europe, especially when hungry. But it has been many years since their numbers were significant.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Stupid, stupid, stupid; given the option, wolves do NOT attack humans!
They don't? Wow. I bet Candice Berner will be awfully relieved.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/candice-berner-killed-wol_n_4
96096.html
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/16586/alaskan%20fishing%20village%
20tries%20to%20adjust%20after%20wolves%20kill%20schoolteacher/
The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.
...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36
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A. They haven't proven it was wolves, tho' there's a good chance it was. The footprints and dragging mean nothing; wolves will scavenge and are very curious.
B. If it WAS wolves, any predator will chase something running away from it, it's the first rule of what not to do. If she was running, it would spike the instinct. We have some of the same problems in the East Bay with joggers and cougars.
C. Note BOTH stories state:Quote:
In fact, the attack on Berner was the first fatal wolf attack in Alaska, and only the second documented case of a wild wolf killing a human in North America. That might seem surprising considering there are more than 60,000 wolves in North America, and more than 7,000 in Alaska
D. I DID say “But no evidence suggests they ever killed one that I know of”. You catch “that I know of”? So. There have been two, out of 60,000 in North America and more than 7,000 in Alaska. Wow, consider the odds. You must have looked long and hard to find that.
E. They may well find that people were leaving their trash out and/or feeding them (probably the former, as Alaskan town are usually more careful than that). Wolves that become accustomed to humans DO attack, and might kill if there was nobody around to scare them off (which is relatively easy, as seen above).
Given how far down the thread you had to go, the knowledge of how much you dislike me and can't resist "one upping" me, and the fact that I’m betting you really had to look to find the story, I consider that a snark, and has nothing to do with the matter the thread addressed.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off
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Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
A. They haven't proven it was wolves, tho' there's a good chance it was. The footprints and dragging mean nothing; wolves will scavenge and are very curious.
B. If it WAS wolves, any predator will chase something running away from it, it's the first rule of what not to do. If she was running, it would spike the instinct. We have some of the same problems in the East Bay with joggers and cougars.
C. Note BOTH stories state:Quote:
In fact, the attack on Berner was the first fatal wolf attack in Alaska, and only the second documented case of a wild wolf killing a human in North America. That might seem surprising considering there are more than 60,000 wolves in North America, and more than 7,000 in Alaska
D. I DID say “But no evidence suggests they ever killed one that I know of”. You catch “that I know of”? So. There have been two, out of 60,000 in North America and more than 7,000 in Alaska. Wow, consider the odds. You must have looked long and hard to find that.
E. They may well find that people were leaving their trash out and/or feeding them (probably the former, as Alaskan town are usually more careful than that). Wolves that become accustomed to humans DO attack, and might kill if there was nobody around to scare them off (which is relatively easy, as seen above).
Given how far down the thread you had to go, the knowledge of how much you dislike me and can't resist "one upping" me, and the fact that I’m betting you really had to look to find the story, I consider that a snark, and has nothing to do with the matter the thread addressed.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off
It never ceases to amaze me how irrational and ridiculous human attitudes are towards wolves. Here in N. America, we imported our attitudes from Europe - and there haven't been any wild wolves in most of Europe in about 500 years. The only place they are currently found in continental Europe is the remote mountains of Spain and they are highly endangered. And yet we still fear and hate them beyond belief.
On the other hand, children really are at risk. Note that most of the fatalities cited are young people. I have personally witnessed "tame" predators that I could walk on a leash attempt to attack small children (fortunately I did have that leash!). But on the whole, humanity's attitudes toward wolves are cowardly and border on the absurd.
perfessergee
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