Two items appear below:
1 Wolves and the Bible
2 Dangerous Woves and Eternity
WOLVES
AND
THE BIBLE
Anonymous
(Investigator 111, 2006
November)
LAYS DOWN HIS LIFE
Jesus said:
The good shepherd lays
down his life
for
the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the
sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and
the
wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because
a hired hand does not care for the sheep. (John 10:11-13)
Jesus’ message here is
primarily
spiritual
– but today we’ll examine the accuracy of the biology behind it.
Do wolves ever kill
people? Are wolves so
dangerous that a shepherd may "lay down his life" and "hired hands"
flee
and let the sheep perish?
The wolf's ferocity and
nocturnal habits
are mentioned in Genesis 49:27; Jeremiah 5:6; Ezekiel 22:27; Habakkuk
1:8;
Zephaniah 3:3; Matthew 7:15; Acts 20:29.
WOLVES
Wolves are carnivorous
animals resembling
a German shepherd but grow larger with broader head, stronger jaws and
bigger feet. North American wolves weigh up to 80kg, wolves in Western
Europe about 35kg. Wolves can travel up to 40km in one night.
Current estimated wolf
populations in
Europe
are Russia (20,000); Romania (2,500); Spain (2,000); Bulgaria (1,000);
Italy (600); Poland (600); Greece (500); Portugal (300).
RENSBERGER
Adventure-novelist Jack
London
(1876-1916)
wrote Wild Fang (1906) wherein he described wolves attacking
humans
and dogs:
When the ravenous beasts
took out one
of
the last dogs, Bill grabbed his rifle and their last three rounds of
ammunition,
determined to prevent another killing. His three shots missed and the
wolves
set upon him as well as the dog. Within minutes there was only silence,
but the pack was still hungry. Henry, now alone, began preparing to
survive
the night…
Biologist B. Rensberger
(1977) criticized:
Rather than relying on
first-hand
experience
for his writings, London borrowed instead from fairy tails. There is,
for
example, no evidence of a wild wolf ever killing a human in all of
North
America. There is only one documented case of a wolf even injuring a
person
and that animal almost certainly had rabies. Even in Europe and Asia,
where
the wolf has been the archetype of evil for thousands of years, modern
authorities on wolf behavior have concluded that the vast majority, if
not all alleged wolf attacks are false and that the handful of proven
attacks
were the work of rabid wolves or of wolf-dog hybrids… (pp 48-57)
Rensberger cites other
experts:
In 1931 S.I. Ognev, a
Russian
zoologist,
reported that "Cases of attacks are much rarer than is believed. Dinnik
reports that he knows of no authentic case of a (non-rabid) wolf
attacking
a man in the Caucasus."
A website by the
International Wolf
Center
cites two reports:
The first
report, "The
fear of wolves:
A review of wolf attacks on humans" edited by John Linnell, documents
worldwide
wolf attacks over the last 400 years. After reviewing hundreds of
records,
this report concludes that historically attacks on humans were very
rare,
and attacks in the 20th century are even rarer.
The second
report, "A case
history of
wolf-human
encounters in Alaska and Canada" by Mark McNay, documents 80 wolf-human
interactions that have occurred in the last 60 years. Of the 80 cases
described
in this article, none were fatal, and only 25 involved unprovoked
aggression
by healthy wolves.
KILLER
WOLVES
Wolves have
attacked, even
killed, people
in recent times:
In the grand duchy of
Posen nineteen
adults
and children were torn to shreds in 1820, although in the previous
years
the Prussian government had paid a bounty of 4618 Taler for shot
wolves.
(Bardorff, 1950)
The Advertiser
reported:
BUDAPEST: Residents of
the southern
Hungarian
town of Pecs have been warned to stay indoors after a wolf killed an
elderly
woman, seriously injured three children and bit several other people in
nearby woods. The wolf escaped from the local zoo. (December 30, 1995,
p. 11)
T. R. Mader, Research
Director of
Abundant
Wildlife Society of North America, studied wolf history for 15 years.
On
the Internet Mader documents dozens of wolf attacks in North America
between
the 1880s and 2000, and attacks in other countries:
The government of India
reported more
than
100 deaths attributable to wolves in one year during the eighties.
(Associated
Press, 1985)
Rashid Jamsheed, a U.S.
trained
biologist,
was the game director for Iran. He wrote a book entitled "Big Game
Animals
of Iran." In it he made several references to wolf attacks on humans…
In
winter, when starving wolves grow bold, they have been known to enter
towns
and kill people in daylight on the streets. Apparently, in Iran, there
are many cases of wolves running off with small children…
Mader says that wolf
attacks
in North
America
are few compared to Asia because efficient fire-arms gave humans the
upper
hand. He quotes The Yellowstone Nature Book
(M.P. Skinner, 1924):
Most of the
stories we
hear of the
ferocity
of these animals...come from Europe. There, they are dangerous because
they do not fear man, since they are seldom hunted except by the lords
of the manor. In America, the wolves…have found to their bitter cost
that
practically every man and boy carries a rifle.
To biologists
who say
there are "no
documented
cases of healthy wild wolves attacking humans" Mader answers that the
criteria
for "documentation" are unreasonable:
The wolf has to
be killed, examined
and found
to be healthy.
It must be
proven
that the wolf was
never kept
in captivity.
There must
be
eyewitnesses to the
attack.
The person
must
die from the wounds
(bites are
generally not considered attacks).
CONCLUSIONS
Human-wolf
confrontations
would have
occurred
when wolves attacked lifestock, were hunted, had rabies, were starving,
lacked fear of humans, were particularly aggressive, were disturbed by
humans, and mistook children for natural prey.
Wolves were
trapped,
speared, stoned and
clubbed by men for thousands of years, and in recent centuries shot and
poisoned. Natural selection would have favored wolves that avoided
people.
In other words wolves over time became less dangerous. Jesus commented
on wolves 2000 years ago and did so accurately.
REFERENCES:
Bardorff, W.
1950 Brehms
Tierleben,
Safari-Verlag, Berlin.
Rensberger, B.
1977 The
Cult of the Wild,
Anchor Press, USA.
www.wolfsongalaska.org/wolves_afghanistan_wolfattacks.htm
www.aws.vcn.com/wolf_attacks_on_humans.html
www.wolf-to-wolfdog.org/quebear.htm
DANGEROUS
WOLVES and
ETERNITY
(Investigator
120, 2008
May)
The Bible teaches that
wild wolves pose
danger
to humans. I showed this in #111 and answered wildlife experts who
claimed
the opposite.
New Scientist
magazine says: "As
recently
as 2005, a Canadian student was killed by wolves while working in a
mining
camp in Saskatchewan." (23 February, 2008, p. 46)
Ordinarily we
trust people
if we have
experienced
them as truthful and reliable on a number of occasions. The Bible,
however,
has proved correct in hundreds of disagreements across thousands of
years,
sometimes against the united opposing opinion of virtually all
humankind
– as shown in Investigator.
Everyone should
ponder
over this when
deciding
whom, or what source, to trust for guidance about eternity and God.
Anonymous
Hundreds
of articles about the Bible
http://ed5015.tripod.com/