The identity of the Beast of Gévaudan

[Infinity Blade]

The title explains it all, really. A thread to discuss what, exactly, the Beast of Gévaudan was. To my understanding it's generally considered to be a wolf, but that hasn't stopped a number of different theories popping up, some being more fanciful than others. So, just to be clear, I ask: what theory regarding its identification is best supported?

[creature386]

Obligatory Trey video:

To be honest, my knowledge about this is largely limited to Trey's video. A wolf pack seems like the most parsimonious explanation, as cool as some of the other explanations (like the human serial killer dressed as an animal) are.

[Infinity Blade]

Interesting. So the attacks were likely unrelated to each other, and involved wolves, possibly a striped hyena, and just lumped together into one beast.

The bit about cryptids being a result of societal stress makes a lot of sense.

[smedz]

I have a hard time believing the beast was a wolf or wolf pack. Of all the large predators, wolves would've been the ones the locals were the most familiar with, and in other places where a certain predator attacked and killed humans and the locals were familiar with what species it was, they never acted like it was an unfamiliar animal, but always said it was a tiger, wolf, or whatever it was that hunted them. In trey's video, one learns that wolf attacks weren't uncommon in France at the time, but nobody acted like they were weird animals they never saw before.

In short, if a wolf or wolf pack was the beast, why didn't the people just say so?

[Infinity Blade]

I have a hard time believing the beast was a wolf or wolf pack. Of all the large predators, wolves would've been the ones the locals were the most familiar with, and in other places where a certain predator attacked and killed humans and the locals were familiar with what species it was, they never acted like it was an unfamiliar animal, but always said it was a tiger, wolf, or whatever it was that hunted them. In trey's video, one learns that wolf attacks weren't uncommon in France at the time, but nobody acted like they were weird animals they never saw before.

In short, if a wolf or wolf pack was the beast, why didn't the people just say so?

I think that's addressed (as far as it could be with a case this old) in the video. There was a lot of mass hysteria and quite a panic response involved, which was probably fueled by the horrifying descriptions of the initial reports. That mass hysteria might have resulted in people falsely attributing common wolf attacks to a single Beast. A Beast that people started subconsciously seeing in places where they otherwise wouldn't.

Interestingly, Trey seems to imply that hundreds of wolves in France were killed as a response (with half a dozen of them being claimed to be candidates as the Beast). If that's indeed true, I feel like that's quite telling. The contemporary Marin Report, the post-mortem report on the creature shot by Jean Chastel, also seems to think it was a wolf, if an unusual looking one.

If Trey is right in his suspicion that many of the attacks were completely unrelated, I feel like that might explain why descriptions of the Beast weren't completely consistent. There might have been a general understanding/hunch that wolves were behind the killings, but not a unanimous one. Even more so if that one incident of a striped hyena being shot in France at around the same time actually influenced any descriptions of the Beast (which might suggest the image of the Beast being drawn upon by more than one species).

[smedz]

Jun 29, 2020 0:54:17 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

I have a hard time believing the beast was a wolf or wolf pack. Of all the large predators, wolves would've been the ones the locals were the most familiar with, and in other places where a certain predator attacked and killed humans and the locals were familiar with what species it was, they never acted like it was an unfamiliar animal, but always said it was a tiger, wolf, or whatever it was that hunted them. In trey's video, one learns that wolf attacks weren't uncommon in France at the time, but nobody acted like they were weird animals they never saw before.

In short, if a wolf or wolf pack was the beast, why didn't the people just say so?

I think that's addressed (as far as it could be with a case this old) in the video. There was a lot of mass hysteria and quite a panic response involved, which was probably fueled by the horrifying descriptions of the initial reports. That mass hysteria might have resulted in people falsely attributing common wolf attacks to a single Beast. A Beast that people started subconsciously seeing in places where they otherwise wouldn't.

Interestingly, Trey seems to imply that hundreds of wolves in France were killed as a response (with half a dozen of them being claimed to be candidates as the Beast). If that's indeed true, I feel like that's quite telling. The contemporary Marin Report, the post-mortem report on the creature shot by Jean Chastel, also seems to think it was a wolf, if an unusual looking one.

If Trey is right in his suspicion that many of the attacks were completely unrelated, I feel like that might explain why descriptions of the Beast weren't completely consistent. There might have been a general understanding/hunch that wolves were behind the killings, but not a unanimous one. Even more so if that one incident of a striped hyena being shot in France at around the same time actually influenced any descriptions of the Beast (which might suggest the image of the Beast being drawn upon by more than one species).

With every man eater there's always fear and at least some hysteria. It's completely normal in human nature, I could understand if they made a wolf seem larger than it really was, but making it seem like a totally different animal? Not really. If hundreds of wolves got killed in response and the attacks still happened, the probably implies they were hunting the wrong type of animal. 

[Infinity Blade]

but making it seem like a totally different animal?

I'm no expert on the case, but Wikipedia's article mentions that the Beast was generally (though evidently not always) described as a canine-like animal. If people tended to be in agreement that it was like a canine, then that doesn't sound like too far off of a departure from a wolf to me. They'd be somewhere in the ballpark of a wolf (if you will) if they were describing it as some canine-esque thingy.

Also, the attacks seem to have stopped after they killed one final wolf, the one described in the post-mortem report.

I still think it's possible other non-wolf creatures contributed to the attacks collectively attributed to the Beast (namely the striped hyena), but I think wolves were almost certainly among those involved.

EDIT: I'll admit I find the lion (namely subadult male) hypothesis intriguing, though, particularly one that likely escaped from captivity.

[smedz]

Here's the entire article on the subadult lion theory.

blog.nationalgeographic.org/2016/09/27/solving-the-mystery-of-the-18th-century-killer-beast-of-gevaudan/

[kekistani]

A group of different, individual man-eaters: the Hyaena,and a wolf or wolf-dog hybrid

[spartan]

After reading Taake's book and several papers by him I'm now convinced that a male lion is the most likely culprit for the majority of the attacks.

[Infinity Blade]

I don't have his book, but I did read a couple of his papers. I have to say, I'm impressed by his arguments. Only thing I'm not sure of is how we'd explain the description of "reddish" fur.

www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl-Hans-Taake/publication/344881313_Biology_of_the_Beast_of_Gevaudan_Morphology_Habitat_Use_and_Hunting_Behaviour_of_an_18_th_Century_Man-Eating_Carnivore/links/5f968977a6fdccfd7b7f8ebc/Biology-of-the-Beast-of-Gevaudan-Morphology-Habitat-Use-and-Hunting-Behaviour-of-an-18-th-Century-Man-Eating-Carnivore.pdf

www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl-Hans-Taake/publication/339458501_Carnivore_Attacks_on_Humans_in_Historic_France_and_Germany_To_Which_Species_Did_the_Attackers_Belong/links/5e53fee892851c1dcb8a0419/Carnivore-Attacks-on-Humans-in-Historic-France-and-Germany-To-Which-Species-Did-the-Attackers-Belong.pdf

Apparently, though, someone named François-Louis Pe recently gave a talk on the Beast, and he argued the attacks could be blamed on Italian wolves (Canis lupus italicus). This was at this year's online TetZooMCon, which I didn't attend, so I don't know what his specific arguments are.

[Supercommunist]

Maybe the animal's fur got stained, similar to how some alligators turn orange when they hang out in water with a bunch of rust?

[spartan]

Lion manes are often reddish in colour, maybe the witnesses were talking about its sparse and underdeveloped mane.