How The Wolf Got Evil How did wolves get an evil reputation? Let us find some answers. Wolves Preyed On Livestock The Western perception of the wolf can be traced back to the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', the first reference to a wolf in Western literature. The Epic was preserved on clay tablets over 4,000 years old from ancient Mesopotamia and relate the adventures of Gilgamesh, a hero-king. The story pre-dates Homer's Iliad by 1,500 years. The reference reads: "You also loved the shepherd with his herd, He piled ash cakes high for you without cease, And on this burning charcoal daily offered you his young and succulent kids But you struck him And turned him into a wolf So that now his own herd boys drive him off And his own dogs bite at his thighs." Shepherds and their livestock guarding dogs were driving off wolves even in those days. Ancient shepherds, however, like today's shepherds in remote pastoral societies, were not unduly troubled by predators. Their traditional husbandry evolved to cope with whatever mother nature could throw at them: disease, floods, drought, predators - including wolves. It was Medieval Europe which especially infused modern man with a massive bias against wolves. However, wolves were not necessarily the dreaded destroyer of livestock that accounts of wolves would have us imagine today. The destructive power of the wolf was more in people's minds. Nevertheless, wolves did sometimes get through the Medieval European shepherd's defences and kill livestock. The worst was that wolves had the capacity to wipe out a flock or heard in a single night if a herder neglected his livestock or was just unlucky (see Surplus Killing). Since his flock was his subsistence, social status and substantial part of his life's investment, a surplus kill could leave a Medieval sheep producer and his family seriously impoverished. Moreover, a particularly serious surplus kill could carve itself deeply into the memory of the community and be recounted for generations as though it happened just the other day. It is therefore not surprising that wolves were damned. Wolves Attacked People On of the wolf myths is that wolves are ferocious beasts. They are not. Of course when wolves attack prey for their dinner they have to bring them down and kill them. So wolves must be tough and vigorous and predation looks and sound savage. But when shepherds in Europe today spot a nearby wolf, they do not tremble in fear, they shout and throw sticks and stones at him to drive him away. That often does the trick. If they have firearms, they might use them and indeed would do so if their intention is to kill the wolf. But firearms are not essential for driving off hunting wolves from a well tended and adequately guarded flock. Shepherds will even corner a wolf, knowing there is no danger to themselves, and kill the wolf by clubbing him on the head. That is how retiring and shy wolves can be. Nevertheless, wolves do attack people sometimes (see Wolves Killing People). Most attacks on people are by rabid wolves. Rabid wolves are not hunting humans as prey. Nor do they wish to harm anyone. They have been taken over by a virus infecting their brains which makes them run berserk, biting any animal or human in their path. Their behaviour is the virus's way of getting itself passed on to other animals to replicate itself in them. The rabies virus is just like the flu bug which makes you sneeze against your will so that it can drift across to other people and infect them. Scientists sufficiently understand wolves nowadays for them to pick out a number of categories of wolf attack on people and their underlying causes (see Categories Of Attack). Rabies is one category and was probably a recurrent problem in the social and economic conditions of medieval Europe, but fortunately not an issue today. The point is that wolves are not indefatigable homicidal maniacs as popular stories about wolves make out. Nevertheless, attacks on livestock did occur in medieval Europe, people were killed or wounded, and it must have seemed that each attack confirmed the image of the wolf as a ferocious, murderous brute. Mud sticks. The wolf's blackened reputation was irreclaimable for centuries. Only in the last few years have we been rethinking wolves. Wolves Scavenged People Wolves scavenge. In the popular mind scavengers are loathsome repellent beasts because they feed on offensive, putrid, fetid bodies of dead animals they find. For a long time and until very recently people around the world thought of hunters as pure and noble animals. The lion is the purest hunter. Big animal, big roar, commanding mane, he was made the king of beasts. In contrast, animals like hyaenas and jackals are scavengers: sly, shady, sordid characters. They feed off the hunters, the ones who do the real work by making the kills, and rob them of their hard won work. After years of patient field work, however, and armed recently with the latest see-by-night viewing equipment, scientists now know that hunters are also scavengers and many animals thought of as mere scavengers are skilful hunters. In fact, the roles of hunter and scavenger are interchangeable in the same animal. Lions often scavenge and hyaenas and jackals often hunt. Wolves are no exception; they hunt and they scavenge. Nevertheless, to the medieval mind their role as a scavenger was an uncompromising stigma. Much worse, wolves had a reputation for feeding on dead people. Roaming wolves could find moulding bodies collected after pestilence had swept through a populace but not properly buried. Battlefields were another abundant source of corpses. The scavenging wolf was an offensive turn-off for medieval man, compounded in an age of heightened religious sensibilities. Even today people would be shocked if wolves ate someone's remains, an odious profanity. Many of the wolves eating the dead were likely to be dogs, but it was more dramatic to call them wolves, and strict species identification was not material. So the reputation of the wolf suffered. Man Subdued The Earth The word of God manifest in scriptures and religious schooling was an explanation of life and a command to tell the good man what to do. The Book of Genesis famously tells man to go forth and subdue the earth: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28) People interpret literature depending on their needs and the attitudes held by society of their time. The 'subdue and have dominion' command was taken to mean that people should conquer and occupy the wilderness: man should make use of natural resources for his own benefit. People did not think much about the consequences of their actions, ecologically or philosophically. Nature exists to support man (Genesis 1:29), who must cultivate it (Genesis 2:15), and animals are made especially for him (Genesis 2:18-20). The only good nature was a nature controlled my man, more specifically by white Christian culture. It was easy to see predators as the archetype of wild aggressive nature. The ferocious bloodthirsty wolf is repeatedly named in the scriptures as a special foe of flocks: a metaphor for men of evil spirit who lust for power and dishonest gain. Matt 7:15 "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Matt 10:16 "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves." Acts 20:29 "For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock." Eze 22:27 "Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, to shed blood, to destroy people, and to get dishonest gain." As a predator the wolf was prominent, not running solitary like other predators, but in packs and, even when you could not see them, howling at night, a ghostly, forbidding, melancholy sound if disposed to hear it that way. So as the agrarian way of life expanded, the conquer-the-wilderness spirit led to the killing of real wolves and eventually to their complete destruction from most of western Europe and the American colonies of the New World. Thus the wolf got evil - at least in men's minds. © Wolf Trust 2004. All rights reserved.

Home - Wolf Trust Home - Thinking Wolves