The Beast Of Gévaudan

[QuaziWashboard]

But surviving eyewitnesses to the Beast of Sarlat testified the animal was definitely a very large WOLF.

And when the suspect wolf was killed, the attacks ceased.

Did they discribe it as a cow sized wolf with claws the length of a man's hand or just a larger than usual wolf?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Did they discribe it as a cow sized wolf with claws the length of a man's hand or just a larger than usual wolf?

Quazi, the vast majority of this material is in French and I'm thus forced to rely on robot translations [which consistently render "Great War" as "Large War" and "New Testament" as "New Will"!] and then to dress these up as much as possible into readable English, without violating the integrity of the original. But here is a short extract from a typical site:

"The Animal of Sarlat....[was an] enormous....animal....recognized like a wolf carrying the rage." [The above may mean either "it was definitely a wolf" or "it resembled a wolf."]

You may remember that just a few weeks back I unsuccessfully put out an appeal on this very thread for a Fortean fluent in French to go through and report on this stuff.

In any case, the Sarlat attacks took place at the same time as those in Gauvedan (1766) and only a very few miles away. So the Sarlat business can hardly be ignored by Gevaudan researchers.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

Did they discribe it as a cow sized wolf with claws the length of a man's hand or just a larger than usual wolf?

Quazi, the vast majority of this material is in French and I'm thus forced to rely on robot translations [which consistently render "Great War" as "Large War" and "New Testament" as "New Will"!] and then to dress these up as much as possible into readable English, without violating the integrity of the original. But here is a short extract from a typical site:

"The Animal of Sarlat....[was an] enormous....animal....recognized like a wolf carrying the rage." [The above may mean either "it was definitely a wolf" or "it resembled a wolf."]

You may remember that just a few weeks back I unsuccessfully put out an appeal on this very thread for a Fortean fluent in French to go through and report on this stuff.

In any case, the Sarlat attacks took place at the same time as those in Gauvedan (1766) and only a very few miles away. So the Sarlat business can hardly be ignored by Gevaudan researchers.

Ahh, well sorry, but my French just about stretches to Parly-vous Anglais(sp?)
I ask because if it was just larger than an average wolf, then it was probably just that, a big wolf. But if it was impossibly big for a wolf like 'cow sized' would be then it's probably be a bear.
Interestingly, a mate of mine who I've been showing this to has come up with a point. The locals to this area at the time may have only associated rabies with wolves. If they saw a huge hairy creature attacking them with obvious rabies, frothing at the mouth and such, and if they'd never seen a bear before, they could well have simply assumed it was a kind of wolf because it had rabies.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Quazi, the point I was attempting to make is that it stretches coincidence (for me, at any rate) to postulate a giant man-eating wolf in Sarlat and man-eating bears (plural) in Gevaudan AT THE SAME TIME and very nearly within walking/hiking distance apart. (In fact, they probably are within hiking distance.)

And when three oversized wolves were killed between the two localities the attacks ceased, at least at that time and in those areas.

As regarding rabies, citizens of rural areas in southern France would have been all too unhappily familiar with "the Rage" in wolves, dogs, cats, pigs and other farm animals, so extending this to bears or other mammals wouldn't seem to require all that much of an intellectual leap.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

Quazi, the point I was attempting to make is that it stretches coincidence (for me, at any rate) to postulate a giant man-eating wolf in Sarlat and man-eating bears (plural) in Gevaudan AT THE SAME TIME and very nearly within walking/hiking distance apart. (In fact, they probably are within hiking distance.)

And when three oversized wolves were killed between the two localities the attacks ceased, at least at that time and in those areas.

As regarding rabies, citizens of rural areas in southern France would have been all too unhappily familiar with "the Rage" in wolves, dogs, cats, pigs and other farm animals, so extending this to bears or other mammals wouldn't seem to require all that much of an intellectual leap.

But wolves simply don't grow to the size of a cow. People have been breeding dogs, the decendents of wolves, for thousands of years and quite a few have tried to get them as big as they possibly can. The biggest anyone's got so far are Mastiffs, Great Danes, Irish Wolfhounds, St. Bernards, ect.
None of them have managed to breed a dog the size of a cow in all these millenia so how can a wolf get so big?
If it was wolves, then the 'size of a cow' discription must have been an exaggeration.
If it was the 'size of a cow' then the only creature available that it could have been were bears.
If rabies was prevelent in the area, and if they had both bears and wolves in the area too, then it doesn't require 'much of an intellectual leap' to realise that cross contamination could occur. After all, rabies will make any animal more aggresive, especialy wild predators. I see no reason why they couldn't have been facing seperate attacks from both wolves and bears, simply because that if they both had rabies, they'd both be aggressive enough to attack people.
Remember also that rabies nearly always kills it's host eventualy and once the host has got to the aggressive 'foaming at the mouth' stage of rabies, the end for that creature is not far away. In the time it took for someone to hunt down and kill a few wolves, the actual creature responsible could have easily died by then, thus causing the attacks to cease anyway.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I see no reason why they couldn't have been facing seperate attacks from both wolves and bears, simply because that if they both had rabies, they'd both be aggressive enough to attack people.

But in that case why didn't any of the bitten survivors contract rabies?

 

[QuaziWashboard]

I see no reason why they couldn't have been facing seperate attacks from both wolves and bears, simply because that if they both had rabies, they'd both be aggressive enough to attack people.

But in that case why didn't any of the bitten survivors contract rabies?

How do you know that no one contracted rabies from the 'beast'? Are there records saying what the victims eventualy died of or even how long they lived after the attacks? You said yourself that rabies can lay dormant for quite a long time, and people who work the land and raise livestock are often getting bitten by other creatures that could just as easily be blamed for giving someone rabies.
Then remember that not every bite from a rabid animal results in the victim getting the disease.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

How do you know that no one contracted rabies from the 'beast'?

French people of 240 years ago knew perfectly well what rabies was, how it was contracted, and that the length of the incubation period could vary. (Two years is apparently the record.)

The fact that rabies has been suggested in connection with the Gauvedan attacks only recently is very nearly proof to me that it wasn't.

In fact rabies was considered AT THE TIME in regard to the Sarlat attacks, but rejected. I'm guessing that the main reason for that rejection was the lack of victims among the human survivors.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

How do you know that no one contracted rabies from the 'beast'?

French people of 240 years ago knew perfectly well what rabies was, how it was contracted, and that the length of the incubation period could vary. (Two years is apparently the record.)

The fact that rabies has been suggested in connection with the Gauvedan attacks only recently is very nearly proof to me that it wasn't.

In fact rabies was considered AT THE TIME in regard to the Sarlat attacks, but rejected. I'm guessing that the main reason for that rejection was the lack of victims among the human survivors.

'Nearly proof' and 'guessing' isn't the same as knowing. Without going and checking the names of every surviving victim (that's if all the names of the surviving victims were recorded) and cross referencing them against whatever official deaths archives they had in rural France in those days, neither of us can know for sure.
Something to think about is that it was not unknown for people who suspected they'd been bitten by a rabid animal to take their own life before the madness set in, and also it's not that hard to imagine rabies deaths being covered up as it was occasionaly seen as some sort of punishment from God or the Devil's work by the highly religous or superstitious, or even just the fact that many farmers wouldn't want anyone to know that rabies was rife on their farm...it'd be bad for business.
Anyway, the 'rabies' explanation is just a way off looking at why whatever was responsible for the attacks did it, it doesn't actualy help to explain what was responsible for the attacks, so I feel we're sidetracking a little here.
That just leaves us with the eye witness accounts of the time. The only accounts that don't conflict (some say it had claws, others that it had hooves, some said striped, others said red with a white mark on it's chest, ect.) are that it was huge, maybe as big as a cow, and had hair. As far as we know, the only wild predatory creature living in the area at the time that this could possibly describe, and in my mind the only creature capable of doing what the beast did to those people, is the bear. If all the beast attacks were done by the same, or same type of creature, it had to be a bear, wolves simply can't grow big enough to fit the description. But in reality, I suspect that a number of different animal attacks were all blamed on the 'beast.' That's the only explanation I can come up with as to why the discriptions vary so much.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Look, for the first 240 years that the Gevaudan engima has been researched and discussed and discussed and researched nobody - not Forteans, not folklorists, not naturalists, not mammologists, not canidologists, not virologists, not bacteriologists - has seriously mentioned rabies in connection with it.

Many of those individuals were French and would have possessed a far greater expert knowledge of what the peoples of southern France knew or did not know about rabies in the 1760s than either you or I.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

Look, for the first 240 years that the Gevaudan engima has been researched and discussed and discussed and researched nobody - not Forteans, not folklorists, not naturalists, not mammologists, not canidologists, not virologists, not bacteriologists - has seriously mentioned rabies in connection with it.

Many of those individuals were French and would have possessed a far greater expert knowledge of what the peoples of southern France knew or did not know about rabies in the 1760s than either you or I.

Nobody? Not even Forteans? What about Pietro_Mercurios and myself? That's two straight away that I can think of.
And anyway, as I said in my last post, 'The 'rabies' explanation is just a way of looking at why whatever was responsible for the attacks did it, it doesn't actualy help to explain what was responsible for the attacks.' so arguing over it doesn't get us anywhere. It doesn't really matter if the 'beast' had rabies or not as we are simply trying to determin the identity of the creature responsible for the attacks, why it did it is a matter for the animal psychologists.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I clearly wrote "the FIRST 240 years." This obviously doesn't include 2007, and that was the point of my post.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

I clearly wrote "the FIRST 240 years." This obviously doesn't include 2007, and that was the point of my post.

So we're the first to come up with this brand new rabies theory!!? WOOOHOOOO!

EDIT;
Oops...just found this.

There was speculation at the time that the Beast suffered from "the Rage"

 

[OldTimeRadio]

So we're the first to come up with this brand new rabies theory!!? WOOOHOOOO!

So far as I know. And I'm just naturally suspicious of claims that come up 240-plus years after the fact.

EDIT;
Oops...just found this.

There was speculation at the time that the Beast suffered from "the Rage"

You are quoting me out of context. That statement was made in reference to the Beast of Sarlat and NOT to the Beasts of Gevaudan! The rabies speculation was made early during the Sarlat terror. But the Sarlat Beast continued to kill for five additional months, rather effectively ruling out rabies. And in Gauvedan, the animals would have had to survive with rabies for three years!

 

[Quake42]

I may have lost the plot slightly but I thought the suggestion was that the Sarlat and Gevaudan beasts were the same creature or pack of creatures?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I may have lost the plot slightly but I thought the suggestion was that the Sarlat and Gevaudan beasts were the same creature or pack of creatures?

Personally, I think we've all lost the plot. This topic, which used to be one of the most fascinating on the FTMBs, has become increasingly tedious. And, mea culpa, that's probably as much my fault as anybody's.

The Sarlat attacks took place not very far from Gevaudan and during the "middle" of the Gevaudan terror. But the Sarlat beast was killed independently of the two monsters terrorizing Gevaudan.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

So we're the first to come up with this brand new rabies theory!!? WOOOHOOOO!

So far as I know. And I'm just naturally suspicious of claims that come up 240-plus years after the fact.

Well unfortunately, we don't have a time machine so we're stuck with theories (not 'claims'...we can't possibly know anything for definate so long after the event.) that we have reached by looking at the evidence we have today.

EDIT;
Oops...just found this.

There was speculation at the time that the Beast suffered from "the Rage"

You are quoting me out of context. That statement was made in reference to the Beast of Sarlat and NOT to the Beasts of Gevaudan! The rabies speculation was made early during the Sarlat terror. But the Sarlat Beast continued to kill for five additional months, rather effectively ruling out rabies. And in Gauvedan, the animals would have had to survive with rabies for three years!

I'm sorry you feel that way but I don't think I am quoting you out of context. If it's documented that rabies was a theory at the time, and if we're theorising that the Sarlat and Gevaudan were somehow connected, you can't possibly say that anyone on this message board is the first to have come up with it. There must have been something that 'suggested' that rabies could have been involved in order for whoever 'originaly' mentioned it to speculate over it in the first place.
How far is Sarlat from Gevaudan? Around 247 miles. Wolves and bear's territories can range for many hundreds of miles and we are looking at an area that still has huge tracts of countryside and woodland to this day and would have been even more so 240 years ago, so we could be talking about the same creatures here. Especialy if the particular territory is situated halfway between Sarlat and Gevaudan. We could even be talking about a creature that was driven out of one area and moved on to the other. If these creatures meet others of it's own kind in the wild regularly, then a disease like rabies could have infected many of them, effectively prolonging the number of attacks.
Again, it has to be said that the rabies question is by no means a definate. There could be many things that could cause hightened aggression in wolves or bears, from genetic traits to the ingestion of wildly occuring psycho-active plants, berries and mushrooms. Bears are after all omnivourous and wolves will eat vegetation if they are hungry and have no meat or even if they have an upset stomach and eat grass in order to make themselves throw up. That's where our dogs get the habit from because they are decendents of wolves. The Liberty Cap mushroom (known to hippies as 'magic mushrooms') grows in among grasses and could easily be accidently ingested. The Fly Argaric (deadly in anything but small amounts, but an absolute 'blast' if you get the doses right...so I'm told.) mushroom is red with white spots and has a slight odour of rotting flesh to attract flies, it's not hard to imagine a wolf or bear taking an experimental bite.
Again, these are just theories as are all the conclusions on this thread.
Personaly I think it was simply a case of many different unrelated events all being blamed on 'The Beast.'





...But purely from the discriptions, I still think bears were involved somewhere.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

Personally, I think we've all lost the plot. This topic, which used to be one of the most fascinating on the FTMBs, has become increasingly tedious. And, mea culpa, that's probably as much my fault as anybody's.

The Sarlat attacks took place not very far from Gevaudan and during the "middle" of the Gevaudan terror. But the Sarlat beast was killed independently of the two monsters terrorizing Gevaudan.

That's if all the creatures that were killed were the same creatures responsible for the attacks. How exactly were the bodies of the creatures confirmed as the exact same ones that carried out the terrorizing?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

How far is Sarlat from Gevaudan? Around 247 miles.

My error. I thought they were MUCH closer together than that.

There's a brand-new invention called a "map," and it would do me well to consult one. <g>

Thanks for the correction.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

How far is Sarlat from Gevaudan? Around 247 miles.

My error. I thought they were MUCH closer together than that.

There's a brand-new invention called a "map," and it would do me well to consult one. <g>

Thanks for the correction.

Anytime bud.
But the distance doesn't necessarily mean that the two cases are not connected. If there's enough wilderness between the two locations for the creatures to travel it could be possible that the same creatures were responsible. Looking at todays satelite images, of the area, it seems possible (maybe not probable but definately possible) and in the 1700s there would have been a lot more wilderness.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Re: Whoops!

This is a once-again revised and expanded version of the list which I first published her in November, 2006:

Derek Brookis gives a list of NINE [I have now expanded this to TWENTY-THREE) French "Beasts" active from 1633 [now 1420] through 1951:

1420. Beasts of Paris. Wolves reportedly invade City, devour inhabitants.
1439. Beasts of Paris II. Repeat of 1420.
1460. Beasts of Savoy. Wolves reportedly devour children on streets.
1521. Pierre Bourgot and Michael Verding condemned for werewolfery.
1573. Beast of Dole. Several girls devoured. Giles Garnier convicted.
1581. Beast of Chartres. Just one victim.
1598. Jura Mts. Boy killed. Perrenette Fandillon lynched for werewolfery.
1598. Beast of Caude. Small boy eaten. Jacques Rollet convicted.
1598. Beast of Chalons. Childrens' bones found. Tailor convicted, burnt.
1603. Beast of Roche Chalais. Little girls eaten. Jean Grenier convicted.
1633-1634. Beast of Evreux.
1679. Beast of Fontainebleau. Loggers killed.
1691-1701. Beast of Besnais. 200 kllled.
1723. Beast of Saulieu, Mirebeau, Longecourt.
1731. Beast of Auxerrois. (18 children.)
1745. Beast of Nolay and Izier.
1754-1756. Beast of Lyonese. (Several child vicitms.)
1764-1767. Beast of Gevaudan. (200 dead or hurt.)
1766. Beast of Sarlat. (Approx. 30 victims.)
1783. Beast of Brive.
1809-1817. Beast of Vivarais/Cevennes.
1946-1947. Beast of Valais. (Animal victims.)
1946-1951. Beast of Cezallier.

In addition:

1751. Beast of Vienna, Austria.
1???. Beast of Orleans.

Note: I believe Valais is in the French-speaking section of Switzerland.

Still don't know about 1954, though.

Edit - I have today (Sunday, November 26, 2006) somewhat expanded and amended David Brookis' list.

Edit - Three more added December 9, 2006.

Edit - Two more added February 11, 2007.

Edit - Six more added March 12, 1997.

Note: Don't confuse Giles Garnier and Jean Grenier. But the similarity is striking and was commented on at the time.

 

[rockingmule]

This is my first posting here. I have always been interested in the Beast of the Gevaudan and I am very pleased to find others who share my interest. I think it is possible the Beast was a Mesonychid, specifically Andrewsarchus.While it is true that this was an extremely primitive animal and the only known specimen, a single skull, was discovered in Mongolia, it is worth bearing in mind that the coelacanth was thought to be extinct 65 million years ago and was rediscovered in 1938. Aurochs are prehistoric animals, but the last recorded live aurochs, a female, died in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest of Poland. There is precedent for prehistoric animals turning up unexpectedly. It should also be taken into account that this is an extremely rugged area, mountainous and sparsely populated even today-the kind of area where a remnant of animals such as Andrewsarchus might have held out for a time.

Whether or not this animal was indeed the Beast, I have found some interesting images that show Andrewsarchus does fit the core description of the beast. The Beast was described as being about the size of a cow, with a long wolf-like snout. The feet were variously described as cloven hooves, each digit tipped with a hoof (a remarkably accurate description of the feet of a Mesonychid) or with claws so thick and heavy they resembled hooves. Certainly Andrewsarchus was the size of a cow, heavily-built, wolf-like, with hoof-tipped digits and a long tail. It had a long snout with large, sharp teeth and a massive skull three feet long. Its jaws were immensely powerful and it would have been able to crush a human skull with virtually no effort.

Scale of human to Andrewsarchus
http://www.paleocraft.com/images/Andrwscale.gif

Full size mechanical head of Andrewsarchus
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/tv_radio/wwbeasts/images/makingof_article_pop_big6.jpg

Full size artist reconstruction of Andrewsarchus
http://www.museon.nl/NR/rdonlyres/4E472C03-5D20-46B6-8416-C7F8B260BC21/2211/JWMWAndrewsarchus01.JPG

Edit: Link Size altered. P_M

 

[stu neville]

This is my first posting here.

Welcome .

.. I have always been interested in the Beast of the Gevaudan and I am very pleased to find others who share my interest. I think it is possible the Beast was a Mesonychid, specifically Andrewsarchus....

I must admit, I've been leaning towards that explanation for a while now. It's not a totally made-up beast, and we don't have conclusive proof that it's extinct (or certainly was extinct 250-odd years ago.) So however remote the possibility, it's not one we can totally rule out, which is a principle upon which Forteanism stands. All explanations have to be considered, though with degrees of plausibility.

TBH, to me the idea of a relict Mesonychid isn't all that much wilder than the concept of a giant wolf or a mutant bear or escaped tiger or whatever.

Thanks for the pics, too.

 

[rockingmule]

This is my first posting here.

Welcome .

.. I have always been interested in the Beast of the Gevaudan and I am very pleased to find others who share my interest. I think it is possible the Beast was a Mesonychid, specifically Andrewsarchus....

I must admit, I've been leaning towards that explanation for a while now. It's not a totally made-up beast, and we don't have conclusive proof that it's extinct (or certainly was extinct 250-odd years ago.) So however remote the possibility, it's not one we can totally rule out, which is a principle upon which Forteanism stands. All explanations have to be considered, though with degrees of plausibility.

TBH, to me the idea of a relict Mesonychid isn't all that much wilder than the concept of a giant wolf or a mutant bear or escaped tiger or whatever.

Thanks for the pics, too.

Thanks for the welcome! The pictures were pretty amazing-I admit I never heard of this animal until recently, but once I started doing research it all fit together. Even the supposed relic in the museum that was identified as a hyena could easily be an Andrewsarchus that shrank in the process of taxidermy. The man-eating lions of Tsavo are in a museum, and they appear much smaller than they actually were because of poor taxidermy. And as you say, the idea of a relict prehistoric animal isn't any stranger than the other explanations. Actually, I find it far more logical. The notion of the villagers (not to mention the professional hunters!) not being able to recognize a bear is....well, everybody's entitled to their own opinion, but I don't think that's a very likely possibility.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Thanks, Rockingmule

Rockingmule, for my money you seem likely to have hit the nail squarely on the head.

I had been thinking more along the lines of the (admittedly extinct) Western U. S. dire wolf, but the Andrewsarchus is much closer to what the peoples of the Gevaudan must have seen....and worse.

Thanks!

OldTimeRadio (George Wagner)

 

[Xanatico]

It does sound interesting. However from the links I looked at, it seemed not much more than the skull of Andrewsarchus had been found and the rest extrapolated. So it´s still a bit uncertain with a lot of the features.

 

[stu neville]

Still, a skull's pretty good going. IIRC all they have for Gigantopithecus is a jawbone or three and a lot of teeth, from which they appear to have deduced its size, weight, colouration, and probably which Sunday paper it preferred.*

Seriously, paleontologists have been known to get it wrong before, though a skull does give quite good parameters as to probable morphology.


*Though some of these conclusions are somewhat disputed, such as height, weight, colouration etc, though they all agree it probably read the News of the World.

 

[Semyaz]

Quick question: If they only have a skull for Andrewsarchus, how do they know that it had hooves??

'They' being paleontologists and other associated scientists...

 

[AndrewLynn]

Brotherhood of the wolf

So I watched this movie in french class the other day and as I was doing so I kept thinking "I know I've heard this somewhere" and then I remembered something I read in one of Brad steingers books "out of the dark"

It was a movie about the beast of gevuedon (not sure I spelled that right)
Which if you've never read about it's very interesting (the movie wasn't bad either) It's about a wolf like creature that terrorized France from 1764 to 1767.

 

[stu neville]

You'll be pleased to see that have a nice big thread about it, in which we also touch upon the Brotherhood of the Wolf film, to which I've now merged your post.

Enjoy.