Beast of Gevaudan: Demon wolf or what? Your thoughts!!!

Hello Abovetopsecret readers,

I'm a new member...nice to meet everyone "Bows". I've always been interested in the unknown since i was a little kid. Just wanted to see what your thoughts were about the Beast of Gevaudan. Was this animal a "real" were-wolf, or some creature that went berserk and grew a taste for human flesh. Why was it so hard to kill? Even King Louis of France sending his personal elite hunters to track this animal could not kill it. I have read alot of sources on the net about this beast. It is real. It was even based on a movie " Brotherhood of the wolf". Anyways, you know what they say....sometimes real life has more scarier stories then fiction. Looking forward to your posts and thoughts. Here are some links on the story.

labete.7hunters.net...

www.net-monster.com...

Wow, I didn't know that movie was based on anything historical, fact or fiction. Thanks for the post, and welcome

First: Welcome to the ATS!

Nice Entrance.

And a Great Find!



I wasnt aware that the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf, was based upon this, historical facts - or whatever you want to belive "facts" are.

Anyway, I loved the movie and I live this article - great stuff!

This passage maybe solves the mystery of the Beast of Gevaudan:

There are many different views on what she was - about twenty books have been written - and almost all the other authors do not agree with Pourcher. They are fairly equally divided between conventional explanations - large wolves, cross-breeds, tricks with hyenas etc. and the abnormal - alien, mutant, prehistoric etc. There are also differing opinions among authors on La Bête as to the character of the Chastels - father and son. Pourcher records Jean Chastel as being a man of very good character whereas, for example, Chevalley, in his semi-fictional novel, regards the family with suspicion, even to the extent of surmising there might have been some deception or cross-breeding involving a hyena. It is alleged his son, Antoine, had been a prisoner, castrated and tortured in the Middle East. Incidentally, the hyena species, which hunts as much as it scavenges, is genetically more similar to cat than dog, being of the feline family Feloidea, which certainly opens up the possibility of a terribly formidable cross-breed, such as hyena and big cat. In any event, the Chastel name is closely associated with the La Bête mystery but whether justifiably and, if so, for good or evil has never become clear.



[edit on 12/5/05 by Souljah]

Call this far fetched but here's a thought:
What if the beast was the offspring of a normal big wolf and a werewolf? It could happen.

Originally posted by ShadowedRedemption
Call this far fetched but here's a thought:
What if the beast was the offspring of a normal big wolf and a werewolf? It could happen.

Have you seen this movie Brotherhood of the Wolf?

There it shows one version, what could this Beast of Gevaudan be - it was not a Wolf at all, but a Lion, covered with some kind of "armour" - and this Lion was a pet to someone in the Brotherhoood, and not a lone killer.

Well - Maybe...

Always loved this story and the wide range theories people have about it. One of the more bizzare, well at least interesting, theories is that the beast belonged to a thought extinct group of mammals called mesonychids. The description does seem to fit some of the accounts of the beast...

"The ungulate family is one of the largest and most successful branches of mammals. Typified by hooves and sometimes by horns or antlers, these creatures fill most large herbivore niches all over the world. At one time, not all of them were herbivores. One branch of the ungulate family, called the mesonychids, were predators. These hoofed predators came in diverse forms, from tiny to horse-sized. There were hoofed counterparts to every kind of predator we have today. Some mesonychids resembled wolves, some resembled bears, some resembled cats."

While they did become extinct there are, of course, some who think a scattered few may have survived.

Full Article From Above

The beast killed indiscriminatly for many years with only one person claiming to have wounded it.
Werewolf, i dont think...nor hybrid wolf-werewolf.
Maybe a big cat loose in the area...something escaped from a travelling zoo perhaps.

The beast killed indiscriminatly for many years with only one person claiming to have wounded it.
Werewolf, i dont think...nor hybrid wolf-werewolf.
Maybe a big cat loose in the area...something escaped from a travelling zoo perhaps.

Arcanum919

Great Find!



But, in the records of cryptozoology, there are indications that perhaps all land mesonychids did not become extinct. Things that sound like they might be hoofed predators are reported from places such as South America, where there is a beast called the tapire-iauara. The horned cats reported from islands near Java could be mesonychid predators. That region of the world is where many of the world's new animals are discovered, and islands are often known to preserve living fossils. In contrast to this, Europe is that last place we would expect to see a surviving mesonychid, but a strange hoofed predator was the object of an extended scare in France, this creature was dubbed the Beast of Gevaudan and was thought to be a strange sort of werewolf in local folklore.

If u look at the picture of the Mesonychid and u compare it with the drawings of the beast from france, they look really simarliar. The mesonychid has the large snout short and sharp ears the large cow like size,large paws and those distinctive coat linings. They seem similar but highly unlikely it was the mesonychid. It was definately a large wolf or wolf dog hybrid.

Originally posted by east
If u look at the picture of the Mesonychid and u compare it with the drawings of the beast from france, they look really simarliar. The mesonychid has the large snout short and sharp ears the large cow like size,large paws and those distinctive coat linings. They seem similar but highly unlikely it was the mesonychid. It was definately a large wolf or wolf dog hybrid.

Right, the depictions are very similar but realistically the idea doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The other sightings of these creaters in contemporary times have been reportedly limited to large, dense, and unexplored tropical regions such as the Amazon and parts of Southern Africa. I suppose the possibility would remain though that someone brought it back with them to France. Of course then this creature would have had to escaped and travelled well inland and then decided to hang out in this particular region.

[edit on 15-5-2005 by Arcanum919]

[edit on 15-5-2005 by Arcanum919]

But, in the records of cryptozoology, there are indications that perhaps all land mesonychids did not become extinct. Things that sound like they might be hoofed predators are reported from places such as South America, where there is a beast called the tapire-iauara. The horned cats reported from islands near Java could be mesonychid predators. That region of the world is where many of the world's new animals are discovered, and islands are often known to preserve living fossils. In contrast to this, Europe is that last place we would expect to see a surviving mesonychid, but a strange hoofed predator was the object of an extended scare in France, this creature was dubbed the Beast of Gevaudan and was thought to be a strange sort of werewolf in local folklore.

I don't mean to be rude, but the above quote was lifted without attribution from my website (see www.newanimal.org...). I don't mind it when people lift a short quote of that length, as long as they tell where it came from. Next time you feel a need to quote on a bulletin board, please include a link back to the original page or mention that it came from The Cryptid Zoo.

Jamiehall
Way to be on the ball. Welcome to ATS. I hope this wasn't your first visit, if it was, I hope you come back under more pleasant circumstances.

Souljah
Bad form.

Edit: As far as the beast is concerned, my money's on escaped lion.


[edit on 12-6-2005 by WyrdeOne]

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
Souljah
Bad form.

Bad Form?



I dont get it...

Didn't descriptions and old renderings show the wolf to have an abnormally long tail?
I know rumour and superstition was rife then, I believe that due to this creature's cunning and guile, french villagers thought that it must be demonic.
If memory serves me, the animal's head was all wrong too! It may have been a cruel and sad mishapen trick of nature.

It looks a bit like the apparant jersy devil. Correct me if i'm wrong but it looks like a relative of it. Its really intresting. Nice post!



[edit on 14-6-2005 by speight89]

It's not the Jersey Devil.

Lok at this realistically.

If it's the size of a cow,a wolf or dog is out of the picture.
It's not a panther, they arent near the size of a cow.
I've raised cows, and god knows every other farm animal, and some non farm animals for 11 years, and I've never seen any animals the size of a cow that match those descriptions...except

Lion, ok, possible, def huge, as long as a cow, not as tall.
Werewolf..ok if they exsist, they would be, from all lore, 8-9ft tall, so a beast that size is every bit the size of a lion, or tiger.
Hyena, not as big as a lion, length wise, but close height wise, and theyre stocky little #ers, and they match the description, but there are no Hyenas in the UK.

So my bet, is on one of those 3.

I heard about the beast on an episode of Animal X on Animal Planet a couple of weeks ago. They said it was a wolf/dog mix trained to kill.

Originally posted by IronMan
Didn't descriptions and old renderings show the wolf to have an abnormally long tail?

Could be a cheetah hybrid then, they have pretty long tails compared to all other animals.

Originally posted by Webmonkey336
I heard about the beast on an episode of Animal X on Animal Planet a couple of weeks ago. They said it was a wolf/dog mix trained to kill.

Dont think its a dog mix, dogs dont get anywhere that big! Only cat animals tend to be that big.. Otherwise its a whole other animal were dealing with.

Maybe its just a huge wolf just like there are huge people then there are huge wolf.

Does it go with packs or is it a loner?