Big Bad Wolf or Man’s Best Friend?
7.7.2016, Carnivores.cz
After centuries of absence in many European countries, the return of the wolf (Canis lupus) in its historical range, while representing an unquestionable conservational success, is also raising social conflicts with local communities, mainly for damage to livestock.
Its growing diffusion also in agricultural and semi-urbanized areas contributes to revive a historical fear of the predator, whose presence is still perceived as a potential threat to people’s safety, resulting in reduced levels of acceptance. Moreover, in some areas this fear is worsened by the increased detection of wild wolf x dog hybrids, according to the untested theory that hybrids could be as harmful but more confidential than wolves towards humans. Anyway, despite such alarmism, in Italy, no verified wolf attacks on humans have occurred since the Second World War and no fatal cases in more than a century.
In the study recently published in the FSI: Genetics – the Official Journal of the International Society for Forensic Genetics – the team of Italian researchers from the Laboratory of Genetics of the Institute for the Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) demonstrates application of molecular techniques to identify species, gender and individual profile of a canid responsible for an aggression on a man, recently occurred in a forest on Monte Baducco, in the Northern Apennines of Italy. This area is known to host at least two neighbouring wolf packs, including three genetically-identified wolf x dog hybrids.
According to his report, on the 27th June 2015, at 9.30 a.m., the victim was gathering mushrooms when he was suddenly attacked by a wolf that caused him serious wounds on most of the body. He was urgently brought to the hospital, where he was treated and medicated with more than 150 stitches. If confirmed, this case would represent the first well-documented wolf attack on humans in Italy in several decades. However, according to the veterinarian report, the time and dynamics of the attack were anomalous for a wolf.
Therefore, genomic DNA samples from four hairs and three salivary samples, collected from the clothes of the injured man just five hours after the accident, were examined with the results unambiguously indicating that the aggression was conducted by a male dog and not by a wolf or a wolf x dog hybrid. Furthermore, the researchers were able to establish that the attacking dog was likely genetically similar to a Nordic Asian breed such as Samoyed dogs.
During the genetic investigations, possibly worried by their outcome, the victim confessed the actual dynamics of the accident, namely that he had been attacked by the guard dog of a neighbour within the owner’s private property, but that he lied at first in order to avoid the risk of causing the dog to be euthanized.
As expected, the genetic profile of the owned dog, a male pure-bred American Akita (obtained from the analysis of a fresh hair sample collected by the owner), perfectly matched with that identified from the biological samples collected after the aggression. Coherent with the assignment results, this dog breed belongs to the ‘ancient and spitz group’, together with Samoyeds, Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies.
These results confirm that once again the big bad wolf is misleadingly indicated as a threat to human safety and that the widespread fear of wolves in developed countries is rarely based on real facts, but rather due to prejudices from the past.
Conversely, the study shows that dogs, generally considered as the man’s best friends as the result of thousands of years of domestication, can represent a serious risk for human safety, confirming previous studies that document them as the most dangerous animals in terms of mortal attacks, and require thorough educational campaigns to ensure their better management and safer coexistence with people.
The author is a translator.
Full version of the article:
E.Randi, Big bad wolf or man’s best friend? Unmasking a false wolf aggression on humans, Forensic Science International: Genetics http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2016.06.009
