Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Man eaters resting


So strange... A man eating beast is so feared. It's a creature straight out of hell! Evil and calculating...
Leopards, sharks and tigers. Those blood thirsty killers.
People have a very bad conscious and tend to see revenge everywhere they turn.
Here are some facts.

Shark attacks: annual shark attack in USA-1.
Australians are less lucky-27 attacks in 2016, two of them deadly. But it's important to note, that a big number of the sharks were provoked. Also, sharks attack humans by mistake. The fish don't have arms to try and touch you, so, in order to understand, they bite. And let go. "Hm, I was so sure it was a seal", would a puzzled shark think swimming away from a bleeding out surfer.

Tiger attacks: The most comprehensive study of deaths due to tiger attacks estimates that at least 373,000 people died due to tiger attacks between 1800 and 2009, the majority of these attacks occurring in South and Southeast Asia. "Tigers of the World: The Science, Politics and Conservation of Panthera tigris" edited by Ronald Tilson, Philip J. Nyhus.

Leopard attacks: many... "Like the tiger, the panther [leopard] sometimes takes to man-eating, and a man-eating panther is even more to be dreaded than a tiger with similar tastes, on account of its greater agility, and also its greater stealthiness and silence. It can stalk and jump, and...can climb better than a tiger, and it can also conceal itself in astonishingly meager cover, often displaying uncanny intelligence in this act. A man-eating panther frequently breaks through the frail walls of village huts and carries away children and even adults as they lie asleep." BDavid Quammen "Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind".

And there's one reason why the animal would suddenly prefer human flesh that gives me the chills.
Jim Corbett mentions that leopards are driven to man-eating by acquiring a taste for human flesh due to scavenging on corpses thrown into the jungle during an epidemic.
Of the two man-eating leopards of Kumaon, which between them killed 525 people, the Panar Leopard followed on the heels of a very severe outbreak of cholera, while the Rudraprayag Leopard followed the 1918 influenza epidemic which was particularly deadly in India. 

The reasons behind tiger attacks are less gruesome, but horrible nonetheless. The tigers that attacked people were usually wounded, disturbed when eating or with cubs. Also if the more natural prey is sparse the big cat can start looking for a more easy meal, but not necessary the tastier.  


Tigers are solitary animals, so I think the ones in my drawing are mating. Will the mother teach her cubs...?

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