page_title: Beast of Gévaudan
section_title: Hypotheses
hierarchical_section_title: Beast of Gévaudan / Hypotheses
caption_attribution_description: English: Wolf of Chazes, shot by M. François Antoine de Beauterne, displayed at the court of Louis XV.Français&#160;: Représentation de la Bête du Gévaudan qui a fait tant de ravages dans ce pays et dans l'Auvergne, laquelle a été tuée le 20 septembre dernier par M. Antoine, chevalier de Saint Louis, seul porte-arquebuse de sa Majesté et présentée le 1er octobre au Roy et à la famille royale par M. Antoine de Beauterne fils. Pour que cet animal se conserve dans son naturel, on l'a disséqué, embaumé et attaché sur une planche tel qu'il est ici représenté. À Paris, chez Mondhare, rue Saint-Jacques. Gravure extraite du recueil factice de pièces relatives à la bête du Gévaudan, formé par Gervais-François Magné de Marolles.
context_page_description: The Beast of Gévaudan is the historical name associated with a man-eating animal or animals which terrorised the former province of Gévaudan, in the Margeride Mountains of south-central France between 1764 and 1767. The attacks, which covered an area spanning 90 by 80 kilometres, were said to have been committed by one or more beasts with formidable teeth and immense tails, according to contemporary eyewitnesses. Most descriptions from the period identify the beast as a wolf, dog, or wolf-dog hybrid.
  Victims were often killed by having their throats torn out. The Kingdom of France used a considerable amount of money and manpower to hunt the animals responsible, including the resources of several nobles, soldiers, royal huntsmen, and civilians. The number of victims differs according to the source. A 1987 study estimated there had been 210 attacks, resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries; 98 of the victims killed were partly eaten. Other sources claim the animal or animals killed between 60 and 100 adults and children and injured more than 30. The beast was reported killed several times before the attacks finally stopped.
context_section_description: According to modern scholars, public hysteria at the time of the attacks contributed to widespread myths that supernatural beasts roamed Gévaudan, but deaths attributed to a beast were more likely the work of a number of wolves or packs of wolves. In 2001, the French naturalist Michel Louis proposed that the red-colored mastiff belonging to Jean Chastel sired the beast and its resistance to bullets may have been due to it wearing the armoured hide of a young boar, thus also accounting for its unusual colour.
  Attacks by wolves were a very serious problem during the era, not only in France but throughout Europe, with tens of thousands of deaths attributed to wolves in the 18th century alone. In the spring of 1765, in the midst of the Gévaudan hysteria, an unrelated series of attacks occurred near the commune of Soissons, northeast of Paris, when an individual wolf killed at least four people over a period of two days before being tracked and killed by a man armed with a pitchfork. Such incidents were fairly typical in rural parts of western and central Europe.
  The Marin Report describes the creature as a wolf of unusually large proportions "This animal which seemed to us to be a wolf; But extraordinary and Very different by its figure and its proportions Of the wolves that we see in this country. This is what we have certified by more than three hundred people from all around who came to see him:"
  Despite the widely held interpretation, based on most of the historical research, that the beast was a wolf or other wild canid, several alternative theories have been proposed, such as a hypothetical lion.
caption: The wolf shot by François Antoine on September 21, 1765, displayed at the court of Louis XV
exif: {}