Beast of Gévaudan

I was researching the history of silver bullets for another thread of mine, and I stumbled across this. from wikipedia:

One of the Beasts was described by eyewitnesses as having formidable teeth and an immense tail. Its fur had a reddish tinge, and was said to have emitted an unbearable odour. It killed its victims by tearing at their faces with its teeth.[1] The number of victims claimed by the beasts differ according to source, however, de Beaufort (1987) estimated a toll of 210 attacks resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries. 98 of the victims killed were partially eaten.

Any thoughts?

The two wolf-things terrorized parts of southern France between 1764-1767. The description of the things is above. They specifically targeted women and children, killing and eating nearly 100 people. The first was killed by a hunting party, the second was killed by a silver bullet (origin of the myth of silver bullets, btw.) The second was apparently at least somewhat impervious to other methods of defense by men.

I've heard about this. I don't remember if it was from some sort of documentary or a book. According to this site, though, it was determined to be a striped hyena. Beast of Gevauden
I haven't done any research on Franz Jullien, who said it was a hyena, but hey, it's a start.

reply to post by mr. wildflowers


I think the general consensus was that it was a large canine doing the killing. It is still one of the more popular cases, but lack of any physical evidence for DNA testing is the only thing preventing finding out what the beast actually was.

reply to post by AquilaCat


Interesting link, thanks. Some old drawings of the Beast I found certainly do bear a strong resemblence to a striped hyena.

www.dkimages.com...

upload.wikimedia.org...

Here's a previous discussion we had some time ago about the beast:
Previous ATS discussion

reply to post by Gemwolf


thanks gemwolf, i should have checked for existing threads before i posted this.

reply to post by Gemwolf


thanks gemwolf, i should have checked for existing threads before i posted this.

So this is probably where the werewolf myth started