Talk:Wolf attack

Template:Find sources notice

Outline for category section Feel free to edit

• Rabid -
• Not-rabid -
  • Provoked -
    • Accidental encounters, (Victim stumbled upon wolf kill, den, or pups)
    • Naive encounters, (Trying to feed or befriend wolf, take its picture)
    • Aggressive approaches
      • Wolf hunters, trappers
      • Hazing or harassing, "driving off"
      • Wolf biologists trapping, darting, collaring wolves.
  • Unprovoked
    • Predatory - motivated by hunger, wolf eats human
      • Child lifting
    • Agonistic - motivated by anger, not eaten
      • Eliminate competition - territorial
      • Establish hierarchy - captive animal, researcher habituated into captive pack, family pet, McNay's "disciplinary" attack

Random "notable cases" removed

Replaced with links to articles and the list. --Niemti (talk) 08:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Niemti's edits

Seeing as Niemti has not taken up the offer of resolving the current dispute over the "Notable cases" section in the talk page, I'll start it off in order to avoid a further edit war. Mariomassone (talk) 08:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Or maybe just look a section above. --Niemti (talk) 08:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

That's your argument? I don't see any attempt at discussion or justification, just a declaration. I'm contacting other active contributors to this page and see what their take is. Mariomassone (talk) 09:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Of course. It's a declaration of obvious. --Niemti (talk) 10:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello Niemti and thank you for your interest in improving this article. I noticed that you have added more notable cases, and some illustrations and other good edits. However, why have you removed all the annotations? Shouldn't we have a brief description of each on this page, so that readers may get just the basic facts about each without leaving this page, while still maintaining the option to hyperlink to learn more at each of the articles? It seems to me better that way. Chrisrus (talk) 14:25, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Can be added; there were only 4 and it was basically the same descriptions as in list of wolf attacks. --Niemti (talk) 20:34, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Would you be intersted in annotating the list yourself? Just a quick summary of each article is all that's needed. For those four that had had annotations, feel free to simply restore the deleted annotations, and, as always, feel free to edit. Chrisrus (talk) 21:39, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Fear of humans

I have read that wolves which have not grown up with humans are naturally afraid of us. At least this holds true for the wolves we have here in Northern Europe (Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus). Is there any difference between different subspecies?

2015-01-03 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.114.158.174 (talk) 21:07, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you could ask USER:Mariomassone, he seems to be the one most familiar with the available WP:RSes on that subject. Use few words; he seems to be a busy man. For example you could ask him "Is there a source for the statement "Some subspecies of wolves are temperamentally more prone to run from/attack people than others"?" proceeded or followed by a few very brief niceties.

I'm somewhat but not as familiar with the sources as Mario, but I haven't seen anything explicitly stating that some subspecies are naturally more or less likely to flee from or approach/attack humans. Having said that, however, it seems to me that there is some evidence for it, because some subspecies attack people relatively more often than others. For example, there has been some discussion about why wolves in North America don't seem to attack as often as Old World wolves. This has been explained in several ways, including the fact that Americans tend to have guns than people in India or France. This would logically select for a genetic predisposition to fear people, but would imply evolution of this trait in just a matter of centuries and one tends to expect evolution to take longer than that. Chrisrus (talk) 21:57, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Humans have been capable of killing wolves since pre-humans invented big game hunting 1.65 million years ago. So at least Old World wolves could have evolved an instinctive fear of us. However, wolves are relatively intelligent animals. If you have seen your family members killed by a certain species would you not be afraid of that species? I think wolves are also capable such thought processes. There are even areas in Africa were the lions are afraid of humans because the locals have hunted lions for centuries.

2015-01-04 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

This illustration tells a lot of why wolves may attack humans. It is worth noting that such attacks are common in India but uncommon or rare are here in Europe. The real problem we in Sweden have with wolves is their tendency to attack livestock. I know a woman whose parents-in-law had a sheep killed by a wolf. I told here that there are at least one breed of dog breed for the purpose of protecting livestock from wolves. Not long afterwards her parents-in-law actually bought two out of such a breed.

2015-01-05 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.