Child-murdering wolves trigger panic in India

Four-year-old Sandhya was sleeping outside her mud hut in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on the night of August 17 when a power outage plunged the village into darkness.

“The wolves attacked within two minutes of the lights going out. By the time we realized what was happening, they had already taken her away,” recalls her mother Sunita.

Sandhya’s body was found the next day in a sugarcane plantation, about 500 meters from her home.

Earlier this month, eight-year-old Utkarsh was sleeping under a mosquito net in a neighboring village when his mother noticed a wolf sneaking into their hut.

“The animal jumped out of the shadows. I shouted, ‘Leave my son alone!’ My neighbors rushed over and the wolf fled,” she says.

Since mid-April, a wave of wolf attacks has terrorized around 30 villages in the Bahraich district near the border with Nepal. Nine children and one adult were abducted and killed by the wolves. The youngest victim was a one-year-old boy, the oldest a 45-year-old woman. At least 34 others were injured.

Fear and hysteria reign in the affected villages. Many houses cannot be locked, children are kept indoors and men patrol the darkly lit streets at night. The authorities have used drones and cameras, set up traps and firecrackers to scare the wolves away. So far, three wolves have been caught and taken to zoos.

Such attacks on humans are extremely rare and are usually carried out by wolves infected with rabies, a viral disease that affects the central nervous system. A rabid wolf usually carries out several attacks without eating the victims.

A report by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research reported 489 “relatively reliable cases” of wolf attacks in 21 countries – including India – between 2002 and 2020. Only 26 of these were fatal. Around 380 people were victims of “rabid attacks”.

There have only been two confirmed cases of wolf deaths in North America in the last 50 years, Dave Mech, a renowned American biologist who specializes in wolf behavior, told the BBC. And that’s despite the fact that North America is home to a population of about 70,000 wolves.

So why do wolves attack people in Bahraich?

Nestled between a river and forests, parts of Bahraich have long been a traditional habitat for wolves. The district, which is home to 3.5 million people, lies on the flood plain of the Ghaghara river and is prone to seasonal flooding.

Heavy rains and floods during the monsoon have drastically changed the landscape. The swollen river has inundated the forests and may drive the wolves out of the country in search of food and water. Indian wolves prey on blackbuck, chinkara (Indian gazelles) and hares.

“Climate change is a gradual process, but floods can destroy wolves’ habitat and force them to move into human settlements in search of food,” says Amita Kanaujia of the Institute of Wildlife Sciences at Lucknow University.

Why should children be a target for wolves looking for food?

In an investigation into the killing of large numbers of children by wolf attacks in villages in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in 1996, wildlife experts found that the children received minimal supervision because most of the victims came from impoverished single-parent households, typically headed by the mother.

In these poor Indian villages, livestock are often better protected than children. When a hungry wolf, faced with depleted prey habitat and limited access to livestock, encounters such vulnerable children, they are more likely to become targets. “Nowhere else in the world have we seen such a wave of wolf attacks on children,” Yadvendradev Jhala, a leading Indian scientist and conservationist, told me.

The current wolf attacks in Uttar Pradesh may be the fourth such wave in four decades. In 1981-82, at least 13 children lost their lives in wolf attacks in Bihar. Between 1993 and 1995, another 80 children were attacked, this time probably by five wolf packs in Hazaribagh district.

The worst incident occurred in 1996, when at least 76 children from over 50 villages in Uttar Pradesh were attacked, leaving 38 dead. The killings stopped after authorities killed 11 wolves, which the media dubbed “man-eating” wolves.

Mr Jhala and his colleague Dinesh Kumar Sharma conducted a meticulous investigation into the 1996 killings, examining body remains, wolf hair, village huts, population density, livestock and autopsy reports. The current attacks in Uttar Pradesh bear an eerie resemblance to their findings from nearly 30 years ago.

In both cases, children were killed and partially eaten. They had bite marks on their throats and stab wounds on various parts of their bodies. Most attacks took place at night. Children sleeping outdoors in the middle of villages were taken away. Victims were often discovered in open areas such as farms or meadows.

Like Bahraich today, the 1996 wolf attacks occurred in villages near rivers, surrounded by rice and sugarcane plantations and swampy forests. In both cases, densely populated villages and many vulnerable children from poor farming families were affected, increasing the risk.

It is unclear whether the ongoing attacks are coming from a single wolf or a pack. Based on his 30 years of research into wolves, Mr Jhala believes a single wolf is likely responsible for the recent killings – as in 1996. Villagers have reported seeing a group of five to six wolves in their fields during the day, while the mother of eight-year-old Utkarsh, who survived, saw a single wolf enter her house and attack her son.

Thanks to the traditional tolerance of pastoral communities, humans and wolves in India have coexisted peacefully for centuries, wildlife experts say. This long-standing coexistence has allowed wolves to survive despite frequent conflicts, particularly over livestock. But times have changed, and the recent increase in attacks is raising new concerns.

Wildlife experts like Mr Jhala advise that children in affected villages should stay indoors and, if there is inadequate accommodation, sleep between adults. They should also be accompanied by an adult to the toilet at night. Villagers should avoid letting children roam unsupervised in areas where wolves might be hiding and employ night watchmen to patrol the streets.

“Until we ascertain the exact reasons behind these attacks, these precautionary measures are essential to ensure people’s safety,” says Mr. Jhala. Meanwhile, people in Bahraich are on edge every night.

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