Wolves Killing People
6. Perspective
Where do wolves stand in the order of deadliness? They must be seen against the broader tapestry of life because they are not the only killers of people.
Wild Animals
Hundreds of people are injured or killed every year in India and Africa today by predators, including tigers, leopards and hyaenas, and by non-predators, like sloth bears, elephants and hippopotami.
Compared with some of these species, wolf attacks are infrequent. Sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) eat a mainly plant and insect diet. Yet in Madhya Pradesh, India, 48 people died and 686 people were injured in sloth bear incidents during five years from 1989 (Rajpurohit et al 2000). Over the same period in Bihar state, India, 242 people fell casualty to elephants (Elephus maximus) (Rajpurohit 1999).
Dogs
The popular image of the dog is Man's Best Friend. Yet dogs bite an estimated 4.5 million people a year in the US alone, of whom at least three quarters of a million people seek subsequent medial attention (Sacks et al 1996).
Treating patients with dog bites may cost $102.4 million a year in emergency departments in US hospitals (Weiss et al 1998). The figure does not include actual hospitalisation, nor legal costs and insurance indemnity, which could increase the amount several fold.
At least 327 people died in the US in the twenty years 1979-1998 because of dog bites, an average of 16 deaths a year, mainly children (Sacks et al 2000).
National dog bite figures are not published in Britain. But Cusdin et al (2000) calculate 118 people per 100,000 people might need hospital attention annually for dog bites within the catchment area of a Yorkshire hospital they scrutinised. Extrapolating to the whole of Britain this would equal tens of thousands of dog bite casualties every year.
Of course dogs are more numerous than wolves and live closer to people. Nevertheless they are still obviously more dangerous than wolves.
Horses
There are no national statistics in the US or Britain on human deaths related specifically to horses. Mortality figures are based on the broader category of accidents involving 'riding animals'. However, statistics suggest that in the US there are an estimated 123 horse related deaths per year (Hammett 1997) and in England and Wales about twelve deaths per year (Office for National Statistics). An estimated 92,763 visits were made to emergency departments in the US in 1987 and 1988 because of injuries related to horse riding (MMWR 1990).
Lightning
About 2,500 wolves live in Minnesota. They are the largest population of wolves in conterminous US. The wolves have killed no one, but each year in Minnesota one or two people die by lightning strike (NOAA). In other words, if you live in Minnesota you are more likely to be toppled by that very rare event of a bolt of lightning coming at you than by a wolf. Lightning in Britain kills an average of three people per year (Elsom 2001).
In Sum
Wolves are not especially dangerous to people in the lethality order.
© Wolf Trust 2004. All rights reserved.