The Wolves of Hazaribagh were a pack of five man-eating

Indian wolves The Indian wolf (''Canis lupus pallipes'') is a subspecies of gray wolf that ranges from Southwest Asia to the Indian subcontinent. It is intermediate in size between the Himalayan wolf and the Arabian wolf, and lacks the former's luxuriant win ...

which between February and August 1981, killed 13 children aged from 4 to 10 years. Their hunting range was 2.7 square miles (7 square km) around the town of

Hazaribagh Hazaribagh is a city and a municipal corporation in Hazaribagh district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. It is also the administrative headquarters of Hazaribagh district and divisional headquarters of North Chotanagpur division. It is known ...

in the eastern Indian district of

Bihar Bihar ( ) is a states and union territories of India, state in Eastern India. It is the list of states and union territories of India by population, second largest state by population, the List of states and union territories of India by are ...

. They were apparently attracted to the area by the town's

rubbish dump A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...

, where

livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...

carcasses and bodies from the local

mortuary A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have cus ...

were often buried, and frequently attracted wolves,

striped hyena The striped hyena (''Hyaena hyaena'') is a species of hyena native to North and East Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. It is the only extant species in the genus ''Hyaena''. It is listed by the IU ...

golden jackal The golden jackal (''Canis aureus''), also called the common jackal, is a wolf-like canid that is native to Eurasia. The golden jackal's coat varies in color from a pale creamy yellow in summer to a dark tawny beige in winter. It is smaller a ...

s and

pariah dog Pye-dog, Desi Kutta or sometimes pariah dog, is a term used to describe an ownerless, half-wild, free-ranging dog that lives in or close to human settlements throughout Asia. The term is derived from the Sanskrit ''para'', which translates to "o ...

s. One of the first attacks occurred on 15 February 1981, when a wolf entered a yard bordered by

brushwood Brushwood can mean: * Brian Brushwood, American magician, podcaster, author and comedian known for ''Scam School'' * Brushwood, New South Wales, a rural community in the central east part of the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia * Br ...

and attacked a young boy. The boy's cries attracted several people, who attacked the wolf with wooden poles, beating it to death. Throughout the next six months, the remaining wolves killed 13 children and mauled 13 others. On a night of June 1981, they were seen via a headlight to be exhuming and eating a human corpse. During the year, 4 wolves were killed, the last of which, thought to be the dominant male, was caught in a scrub forest and shot. Another report Human-Wolf Conflict in human dominated landscapes of Ahmednagar District, Maharashtra states that in the Hazaribagh area, 80 children were attacked - 60 of them fatally - between April 1993 and April 1995 (Rajpurohit 1999). It was thought that five wolf packs were responsible for the attacks. Indeed, Hazaribagh appears to be particularly prone to wolf attacks on children; as attacks have been a regular occurrence over a large area in Hazaribagh from the 1930s onwards (and perhaps even before this), it seems likely that a number of packs have been in operation over the years (Linnell et al. 2002).

References

*"Wolves and wild dogs", from ''Man-Eaters'', Michael Bright, Robson books, 2000 * http://projectwaghoba.in/docs/roopa_krithivasan_indian_wolf_report_2009.pdf

Man-eating animals in India 1981 in India Hazaribagh History of Jharkhand (1947–present) Individual wild animals {{canid-stub

See also

References