Wild Leopards on Human Killing Spree in Bombay:
Leopards have killed 14 people this year, and 10 last month alone, in Bombay — a city unique in that it almost entirely surrounds a verdant forest.
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Environmentalists blame a shortage of prey in the forest, which forces an estimated 35 leopards living in an area 30 times the size of New York’s Central Park to hunt in the city.
I had no idea that Bombay (actually, it’s Mumbai now) surrounded a “verdant forest” 30 times the size of Central Park.
These attacks aren’t just on lone children:
On Sunday night an 18-year-old was dragged from the hut where he slept and a 50-year-old priest was mauled near a temple on the outskirts of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, a 40-square-mile forest in the northern part of India’s financial capital.
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Only last year, a 4-year-old boy was killed when a leopard scaled the wall of a housing complex and dragged him away while he was playing in the garden.
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A tribal man’s body was recently found mutilated outside the hut where he slept, while a 55-year-old lawyer was mauled during a morning walk in the deep jungle.
This story reminds me of a Discovery Channel documentary on wolves in India from a few years ago. Wolves Among Us discusses the attacks:
News out of Northern India in the mid 90s upset the widely held notion that wolves are not a danger to man. In August of 1997, CNN reported that wolves in India killed more than 50 children and wounded or maimed several dozen more.The Indian government tried without success to trap the offenders by stationing sharp shooters at water holes and other areas where they had been seen. Even though three were killed the attacks continued. The Indian government maintained that there were fewer than 2000 in India, even fewer numbers than the tiger.
However, scientists also discovered that if one member of a pack became a man-eater, the entire pack is liable to adopt the same behavior.
The New York Times recorded that wolves killed 33 children and seriously mauled 20 others in Uttar Pradesh, India from April to September 1996. British officials recorded 624 human killings by wolves in this area. The Associated Press reported “In one year alone, during the 1980s, more than 100 deaths were attributed to wolves in India.”
Recently, Discovery Channel presented a documentary on the man-eating Indian wolves. Showing horribly mauled children who survived the attacks, the program also talked to the parents of children who had not survived. These mothers and fathers related stories of how their children were dragged from their beds or stalked and carried off while separated from adults.
Some described finding their children brutally savaged by wolves and hauled into the underbrush. Often the only remains would be clothing or body parts littering the bush. There was no doubt that wolves had been responsible for the maiming and the deaths.