We may think that wolves are neither violent nor pose a threat to humans. This perception may come from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, where the character Mowgli is a child raised by a family of wolves. Children may also believe that wolves have a special affection for children.
However, the recent incident involving a two-year-old girl being killed by a wolf in Garethi Gurudutt Singh village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich district has raised questions about how the animal has become a “man-eater.” Former Indian Forest Service Officer and wildlife expert Ashok Kumar Shukla offers answers to some of these questions in light of the frightening incident.
Shukla explains that wolves are very peculiar when it comes to hunting. To satisfy their hunger, they do not distinguish between hunting a human child or an animal; they hunt whatever they can easily find to eat. They also have their own distinct hunting patterns.
According to Shukla, wolves are clever and agile hunters. They approach silently and quickly flee with their prey in their mouths. Wolves never eat their prey at the site of the kill; instead, they carry it one or two kilometers away and then eat in peace.
Shukla noted that due to this behavior, wolves hunt only animals they can easily carry away in their mouths. Since children under two years old are unable to walk or resist, they are the easiest prey. At night, wolves snatch children sleeping in the open and run away without being noticed.
Moreover, wolves often hunt in packs, with at least two wolves hunting together. They target small animals like rabbits and young goats, grabbing them by the neck and running away to consume them only after covering a long distance.
Shukla stated that wolves travel about 25 to 30 km daily. They prefer to live on the outskirts and in caves of forests. The distance to their next prey can be around 20 to 25 km from where they hunted the first prey, and the prey in each location can vary.
During monsoons, wolves move closer to the plains as water fills areas near forests and caves, making easy targets more accessible. It’s important to note that a wolf can inflict as much harm on an adult human as a dog can.
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