In India an elephant has reported which ate a human !? :
Tigers, Elephants Attacking Humans in India - ABC News
Tigers, Elephants Attacking Humans in India - ABC News
Man-eating elephants ?
- Thread starter vogelcommando
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Elephas Maximus
Well-Known Member
That's weird. We heard about piscivorous tapirs, but never about carnivorous elephants...
Maybe this cow decided to get calcium & protein replenishment after trampling the victim, since she was nursing a calf and probably starving.
As usual, nobody bothered to take/release any pics.
And this unique man-eating elephant was not preserved of course.
Maybe this cow decided to get calcium & protein replenishment after trampling the victim, since she was nursing a calf and probably starving.
As usual, nobody bothered to take/release any pics.
And this unique man-eating elephant was not preserved of course.
Animal Friendly
Well-Known Member
It is recorded in George Jacob's book Memoirs of a coarse zoo keeper that an elephant living in a European zoo once killed and ate its keeper through the night, all that were left were his boots poor man.
Actually, that's not correct. Stories about man-eating elephants have been circling around in Asia, usually in a mystic/religious context and including some alleged human remains found in elephant stomachs. And usually, no hard (or given the faeces context, soft) evidence.
That story Animal Friendly refers to is another hoax. The story itself remains the same, only the details vary. Sometimes, it's a cleaning lady that disappeared after sleeping in the elephant barn at Geneva Zoo in 1939, or a zookeeper at Berlin/Basel/Zurich ...zoo that finds human remains in the elephant enclosure...It's just an urban legend, retold by various writers without doing any background research.
I'm sure I remember there being a photo in Hediger's Man and Animal in the Zoo of the remains of the person, and it was German zoo (but I don't have the book here to check). From memory the story in Hediger's book was that it was a disturbed individual who got into the zoo in the night, but that might not be accurately remembered.
I can't provide the photo (all my books are in a storage locker) but I'd be willing to bet there are many members with the book who can have a flick through and check. From memory the photo was a partial body (legs and other bits) lying in the straw, and obviously was in black and white. The caption described the incident. I liked Hediger's book because unlike today's books he wasn't afraid to put grisly photos in there 
Of course, human memory being what it is I may have unwittingly invented some aspects of that.
Of course, human memory being what it is I may have unwittingly invented some aspects of that.
I can't provide the photo (all my books are in a storage locker) but I'd be willing to bet there are many members with the book who can have a flick through and check. From memory the photo was a partial body (legs and other bits) lying in the straw, and obviously was in black and white. The caption described the incident. I liked Hediger's book because unlike today's books he wasn't afraid to put grisly photos in there
Of course, human memory being what it is I may have unwittingly invented some aspects of that.
Indeed; you are perfectly correct, Hediger’s book includes the gruesome photograph you describe; from memory the incident occurred at Zurich Zoo.
My copy of this book is also inaccessible at the moment but I can check exact details in a few days although probably somebody else will be able to confirm before I get the opportunity to do that.
Thanks Tim May; looking forward to said information. Funny enough, afaik, Zurich Zoo never reported such a case. Isn't that funny, given that such extraordinary human fatality would be more than likely to trigger public attention and official investigation?
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794126,00.html
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794126,00.html
Although I was fairly sure that Hediger recounted the story of the man-eating elephant in this book, upon looking it up he actually specifically says that the body had not been eaten.
The incident illustrated by the photograph above is quoted from Huber's "25 Jahre Zoologischer Garten Zurich" (1954)...
(a mentally deranged woman had climbed through the elephant house window on the night of 1st November 1944 and been crushed by the animals) ...having killed the woman, however, the elephants were apparently not satisfied and although it seems highly remarkable from the ethological point of view, the human corpse was found broken up into small pieces; parts of the musculature were parted from the bones and squashed out of the skin. None of the corpse had been eaten. Although many people think that elephants are carnivorous they are in fact strictly vegetarian.
The incident illustrated by the photograph above is quoted from Huber's "25 Jahre Zoologischer Garten Zurich" (1954)...
(a mentally deranged woman had climbed through the elephant house window on the night of 1st November 1944 and been crushed by the animals) ...having killed the woman, however, the elephants were apparently not satisfied and although it seems highly remarkable from the ethological point of view, the human corpse was found broken up into small pieces; parts of the musculature were parted from the bones and squashed out of the skin. None of the corpse had been eaten. Although many people think that elephants are carnivorous they are in fact strictly vegetarian.
huh, funny how memory works isn't it? I was sure the book had stated the body had been partially eaten!