I'm all for the beast having been a lion (subadult male). The physical descriptions match a lot, the descriptions of behavior and the way of killing also fit! Despite this, I don't believe that just this lion was the "only beast", there were certainly other animals involved, due to the large number of deaths and the size of the region. The other animals, "other beasts" were a wolf-dog hybrid and a hyena, specifically a striped hyena. This wolf-dog was the animal killed by Jean Chastel, I believe that this animal belonged to some maniac in the region, some theorize that it may have belonged to Antoine Chastel, Jean's son. I read about Antoine's true story and he was far from being a maniac. He was unfairly considered a maniac by the people, who didn't really know him. So, it is difficult for us to know who was actually the master of the beast (the wolf-dog). As for the striped hyena, it certainly shares the same origin as the lion, that is, it may have escaped from a duke's or count's menagerie or escaped from its cage or box during the outward journey to its "rich owner". In conclusion, it is likely that the subadult lion and the wolfdog were responsible for the massive majority of attacks, while the hyena made very few victims and, for the most of the time, only ate the remains of the victims left by the lion and the wolfdog. The wolves in the region also acted as scavengers, feeding on the carcasses of the dead people.
It was definitely a canine animal. The dentures prove this. Also the behaviour is more like a wolf than a lion. Lion are mainly ambushed predators. While the beast was attacking people even when he was aware they were aware of their presence. The people that believed this to be a lion just want a conspiracy for the story to sound more interesting.
@@cnote2458 Wolves don't attack humans though and certainly not on that scale - they are usually very afraid of humans - a big cat on the other hand will readily attack and eat people.
@@pietropes1322 You’re not wrong that wolves are normally timid and shy around humans. But there are a lot of reasons why a wolf could lose their shyness to humans. And there have been many cases where a wolf keeps attacking humans till it is killed. I believe in this particularly case it was more likely a wolf or a pair of wolves that escaped captivity. This would explain why they were so aggressive and had zero fear around humans. Like the guy at the top said the dental records are scientifically saying it was highly unlikely anything else but a canine.
Sorry but it not likely a lion. I do believe it was an exotic animal that the people thought was a werewolf. But the descriptions of the beast make it seem more like a hyena than a lion.
Yet there were people that fended it off, I'm more inclined to see them successfully warding off a hyena than a lion. I'd also be more inclined to believe at least the nobility might have been able to recognize a lion than a hyena. Untimately, we'll never know.
I’m not an expert but I’ve done a decent amount of research on this and I’ve got to agree. The bite force needed from some of the information out there alone fits a hyena much better than a lion. The only thing that makes me lean toward Lion is the description of the tail.
Hyenas do not kill with their claws. This animal did. It was also described as "as tall as a donkey" and long, strong tail. An adolescent lion fits the description.
They knew what a lion looked like lions are on a lot of statues and artifacts that were from that time that is still there in France today. If it was a cat maybe a tiger or dare I say the sabertooth cat which experts do believe could've had fur covered in spots or stripes but we know tigers have stripes. Also this was back in the 1800's so don't count out anything prehistoric because it's certainly possible a few could have survived. They act like nobody would have known what a lion looked like yes they would have the huge Catholic churches in France had lions all over stuff yes they would have.
Yes, the descriptions of the animal by contemporary witnessess points to it having been an escaped sub-adult male lion. "Muzzle like a cow, a tail longer than a wolfs ending in a tuft, tawny/russet colored fur, stripe of fur going down its back."
when the attacks stopped with the animal killed by Jean Chastel, the corpse was sent to Versailles and buried there, the skull was identified as a dog/wolf hybrid. so either the beast was never caught and died out of sight, or it was just that, an hybrid, that would explain the abnormal behavior unlike a wolf
One of the hunters that was sent by LouisXV spotted and wounded the beast, and described it as a hybrid of a lion and some other big cat (probably leopard, or jaguar), lion-jaguar hybrid would be the closest, because the beast often attacked heads of the victims, which is unique to jaguars. Beast also was described to have faint dots on its belly
definitely not unique to the jaguar. one of the earliest examples of animal predation on a human in our fossil record is a man whose skull was in the mouth of a leopard. it's a common method for big cats to carry prey around. they do it with their young with a much softer bite. it's most common when they kill animals. big cats lack the bite force and the shearing and tearing power of a dog. oddly enough, a 110 lb rottweiler's bite isn't a lot weaker than a big lion's. instead, big cats will cup the mouthof small prey or bite and bend the neck of large prey, and suffocate it. the biggest game is taken down by many animals and eaten alive. nature is wild.
None of the stories or theories can explain how the beast could withstand so much gunfire over three years. It does sound lion like or hyena like to me though.
There was potentialy more then one. Or you got to remember that we are talking Muskets here. Less Powerfull and generaly a lot more short ranged then modern firearms.
I think it was a type of hyena particularly the brown hyena that looks more like a wolf than a hyena and is also called a Strandwolf. They are almost werewolf in appearance and have brown with grey fur around the neck. So I can see how witnesses confused it for a hybrid wolf. They're not good hunters to take large prey and often cache meat which explains the stock piling of meat and attacks on helpless children and women who were easy targets. The beast avoided large prey at first and seemed cowardly when confronted by cattle which would not be the case of a lion even a young one. Hyenas are known to have a strong bite force which is backed up by the victims crushed bones and skulls. Brown hyenas reach 100lbs, which is large to the French at the time who were only 5'-5'5" tall. The brown hyena is a scavenger but is known to attack people who are alone. There is also the striped hyena which can be found outside of Africa and areas like the Caucasian region. Maybe the beast was a captive hybrid of a brown hyena and stripped hyena, which made it even more unidentifiable. A brown hyena has thicker fur more suitable to survive the French winters and the fur could've provided some protection against the weak firearms too. In regard to the tail. Who knows maybe that was only one persons account. Just like it being described as running on two feet. Exaggerations. Furthermore, cats were already common to people in France so they would've described the beast as more cat like not wolf like and when it was finally killed and people examined it closer they would've described it as cat like. Instead they continued to insist it was wolf like which is more fitting to a brown hyena who was desperate to survive.
Very good video, I have been drawn to the beast of Gevaudan for most of my life. I have a theory too, but like everyone else, it can't be proven. I believe strongly it was an escaped war dog. They were trained for war and to attack people on the head. The way the beast attacked would have been exactly the way they were trained to attack. The war dogs would grow up to be 275 (or larger) pounds too, I would bet no one had even seen a dog that large. A war dog would have bounced across the field and it would have had a tail exactly the way the beast tail was described, and they would have killed for sport. It could have been a whole pack of war dogs that escaped from maybe a sinking ship or a ship in bad weather when they were lost overboard.
@@jacobclark6002 Maybe it wasn't a dog, but a War Dog is VERY different beast than a regular dog was at that time. Have you ever seen a Spanish Mastiffs? They were larger than humans and could grow (in that time) to 270 pounds and over 4 and a half to five foot tall. The War Dog would have preferred easy targets such as women and children (Smaller targets) and they would have known what a soldier was and stayed away. The Romans used a dog called The Molossian, it is extinct now but it was a shocking sight of a massive war dog. Celtic warriors used them, and they were larger than men. On Columbus 2nd trip he took to battle the natives with 20 Mastiff and a couple hundred conquistadors against thousands of natives. It is said that the sheer terror from just 20 dog's ripping men apart was what won them the battle. (I'm sure the black power rifles were a Boone also) Colombus said that ONE of the dogs was worth 15 of the soldiers and their bite was so powerful they could rip an arm from a man and crush a skull inside their massive jaw's. Those dogs were bread and trained for war, just imagine something so powerful, trained and smart in the countryside and the people have only been around average size dogs. The giant mastiff would have had rust colored fur, a black stripe down it's back, a bushy tail and if you look at the mouth it does look like a pig snout. It would have known what soldiers were and it would not have shown itself around soldiers. They would boil boar hide and wrap the war dogs in it, that boiled hide would have protected from the weaker black powder rounds fired at it and when the creature was taken down it was with a different type of rifle and a much more powerful bullet, even though it would be doubtful that the war hound would still have his boils hide on after that long. This is just an idea, I don't know what the beast was but I've looked into it for over 10 years and this makes sense to me.
@MrKsan05 Except we know what war dogs look like. They look like large dogs. And the beast would have been described as some king of large dog or wolf. It furthermore wouldn't have had so many of the hunting behaviors of a large cat.
There was an artists woodcut that looked a hole lot more like a Hyena, if he saw the beast then and there was any accuracy to his image thats what it was. Add to that, that early descriptions of Hyenas describe them as looking like a cat dog mix. Also as unlikely as it was for a french peasant to have seen a lion it is even more unlikely that they would even have seen a depiction of a Hyena. Which I believe was a trained being directed by a psychopath, otherwise it would likely have been caught and killed. Given the number of attacks and the distance involved indicates no natural predators, so if all or just a majority of the attacks are from one beast then there almost had to be human agency involved!
At 16:38 you stated that humans are easier prey, which is true. However, there were many livestock, like sheep and lamb during those attacks, but not once did it try to attack and eat them. It mainly only hunted and killed human children and women. I can't be the only one to think that sheep and similar livestock would be much easier prey than humans. I also thought that "the Beast" might be a lion or some type of lion hybrid, but why did it only hunt humans? I can understand if humans were practically the only prey in the area, but obviously there were other, easier food sources. Can an apex predator be trained to only hunt humans? Not only that, but specifically target women and children while leaving the other animals alone. Perplexing.....
It isn't about the availability of live stock or such animals as prey, it's just man-eaters for some reason target only humans once they get a taste of, The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag intentionally ignored live stock like goats and cows and specifically targeted humans.
@@jinsc2460 Also of note, menagerie animals are not usually wild caught as adults, they were typically taken as infants, raised without adults of their kind, and fed butchered meat by humans. There is a reason places with wild predatory animals warn people not to let them start associating humans with food. If such an animal is raised in captivity and associates humans with food but not live quadrapeds with food, which is it more likely to attack? Additionally, back in the bad old days when zoo conditions were much less humane and much more stressful for the animals, escapees were much more of a risk to the public, as the animals associated humans with stress and danger, and would go into fight or flight mode, and picking fight did not end well for anyone nearby. Like one of those dogs that has a tiny yard, never gets taken for walks, gets hit by it's owner, and the neighbourhood kids keep banging on it's fence with sticks and throwing cans at it to laugh as it goes psycho barking at them through the gate. Then one day it gets out and some other kid who was just walking past ends up in hospital getting stiches.
It wasn't escaped... It was kept and trained by someone and then used as a murder weapon. With so many hunting parties, they would have found it. On top of it all, the lion wouldn't survive winter conditions unless hidden and kept by someone. And French aristocrats did go to Africa and occasionally bring lions and other exotic animals... So, it was most likely the local count who got a lion, trained it and then used as a weapon. Because there is no way a wild animal would ignore the sheep and go for shepherds unless trained that way...
It cant be hyena coz hyenas make a lot of noise when attacking and it will be kinda hard for it to kill more than 100 people without getting noticed or shot .. idk if it was a lion or not but it was definitely a cold and calculated apex predator
I mean it could be something thought extinct. Remains of Cave lions have been found in France and they have only been extinct around 1000 years in certain parts of the world
Author Karl-Hans Taake, in "The Gevaudan Tragedy," claims that the beast was likely a cat, as you say, b/c its hunting patterns were similar as described as the lions of Tsavo, it could leap up onto walls easily, & held on tightly when it leaped onto some travelers on horseback. Some details are purposely left out on US cable shows, including how the victims' heads were often "clean," aka "licked clean," b/c cats have rough tongues (which dogs/wolves don't). The worst part, Taake claims, is that The Beast seemed to attack from a road known to traveling circuses, & migrated across the country. He says The Beast was just ONE incident, b/c otr animals who'd escaped from such traveling circuses/menageries had happened sev'l time. I should've written them down, b/c there were several (7 or so?). Thanks for this great video! /g
This was interesting🤔 I have watched almost all the videos and on this subject and my thoughts are that the beast was a mixed large wolf and a larger Irish Wolf hound mixed 🤔 trained to kill by a serial killer ??? In the 1700 hundreds the wolfhound s were more bigger and some did have stripped colors as side in some of the reports, that dog mixed with any of the large woods would look magnificent and very large wolf like 😊
What about a surviving soecies of the dire wolf? They dwarfed modern day wolves and would fit the bill or the bear dog or hyenadon which is not a canine its more jackal like.
Lions don't really look like cats. I've never seen a lion and compared it to a cat. Their eyes are totally different. The lion had a more elongated face and snout. I think lions are more likely to be compared to wolves by peasants. Which haven't serewlnything being midevil rural,
he's only reading accounts which suppoirt his theory for th emost part. that ssaid, there seems to be some agreement that this was likely a big cat. so many of its characteristics are big- cat-like. great bursts of speed and pouncing, no sound or little sound, its size, the idea that it's dragging people off and assumedly up a tree. sounds like a Eurasian mountain lion of some kind. could be a leopard.
He may not have actually seen a hippo tho He described other things he said he saw but did not. Your other comparisons, like reflective eyes relies on modern tech. An escape menagerie animal is almost impossible. It would be noticed and by the upper class. Sloth bears were bred and kept by gypsies. That used them for entertainment. A runaway sloth bear is more likely. Your lion info is totally wrong.
Possible, sloth bears are as feared as tigers in some places of India. The hardiness of the animal, if we believe that it was wounded as many times as claimed, is like a bear. Sloth bears don't have tails though,
Why didn't it eat its victims?? How were there any survivors? Why didn't they find any remains of other prey animals in the areas the animal occupied?? I don't think it was a carnivore. I think it was A sloth bear?? This would explain a lot. Why they singled in on humans. And did not eat them. Only killing or injuring them
I'm all for the beast having been a lion (subadult male). The physical descriptions match a lot, the descriptions of behavior and the way of killing also fit! Despite this, I don't believe that just this lion was the "only beast", there were certainly other animals involved, due to the large number of deaths and the size of the region. The other animals, "other beasts" were a wolf-dog hybrid and a hyena, specifically a striped hyena.
This wolf-dog was the animal killed by Jean Chastel, I believe that this animal belonged to some maniac in the region, some theorize that it may have belonged to Antoine Chastel, Jean's son. I read about Antoine's true story and he was far from being a maniac. He was unfairly considered a maniac by the people, who didn't really know him. So, it is difficult for us to know who was actually the master of the beast (the wolf-dog).
As for the striped hyena, it certainly shares the same origin as the lion, that is, it may have escaped from a duke's or count's menagerie or escaped from its cage or box during the outward journey to its "rich owner".
In conclusion, it is likely that the subadult lion and the wolfdog were responsible for the massive majority of attacks, while the hyena made very few victims and, for the most of the time, only ate the remains of the victims left by the lion and the wolfdog. The wolves in the region also acted as scavengers, feeding on the carcasses of the dead people.
Very unlikely BOTH a captive hyena and young lion were the beast. More likely just wolves.
I think they found the autopsy of the animal killed by Chastel, and its dents fitted more to a dog like animal than to a cat
It was definitely a canine animal. The dentures prove this. Also the behaviour is more like a wolf than a lion. Lion are mainly ambushed predators. While the beast was attacking people even when he was aware they were aware of their presence. The people that believed this to be a lion just want a conspiracy for the story to sound more interesting.
@@cnote2458 Wolves don't attack humans though and certainly not on that scale - they are usually very afraid of humans - a big cat on the other hand will readily attack and eat people.
@@pietropes1322 You’re not wrong that wolves are normally timid and shy around humans. But there are a lot of reasons why a wolf could lose their shyness to humans. And there have been many cases where a wolf keeps attacking humans till it is killed. I believe in this particularly case it was more likely a wolf or a pair of wolves that escaped captivity. This would explain why they were so aggressive and had zero fear around humans.
Like the guy at the top said the dental records are scientifically saying it was highly unlikely anything else but a canine.
Where can we fins these dental records? Who has the records? Gonna have to source ur statment
Sorry but it not likely a lion. I do believe it was an exotic animal that the people thought was a werewolf. But the descriptions of the beast make it seem more like a hyena than a lion.
An adolescent lion fits the description and hunting habits
Yet there were people that fended it off, I'm more inclined to see them successfully warding off a hyena than a lion.
I'd also be more inclined to believe at least the nobility might have been able to recognize a lion than a hyena.
Untimately, we'll never know.
I’m not an expert but I’ve done a decent amount of research on this and I’ve got to agree. The bite force needed from some of the information out there alone fits a hyena much better than a lion. The only thing that makes me lean toward Lion is the description of the tail.
Hyenas do not kill with their claws. This animal did. It was also described as "as tall as a donkey" and long, strong tail. An adolescent lion fits the description.
They knew what a lion looked like lions are on a lot of statues and artifacts that were from that time that is still there in France today. If it was a cat maybe a tiger or dare I say the sabertooth cat which experts do believe could've had fur covered in spots or stripes but we know tigers have stripes. Also this was back in the 1800's so don't count out anything prehistoric because it's certainly possible a few could have survived. They act like nobody would have known what a lion looked like yes they would have the huge Catholic churches in France had lions all over stuff yes they would have.
Yes, the descriptions of the animal by contemporary witnessess points to it having been an escaped sub-adult male lion. "Muzzle like a cow, a tail longer than a wolfs ending in a tuft, tawny/russet colored fur, stripe of fur going down its back."
Who's here after Mr. Ballen's story?
Me
The movie the brotherhood of the Wolf.
They do a good job with this story
when the attacks stopped with the animal killed by Jean Chastel, the corpse was sent to Versailles and buried there, the skull was identified as a dog/wolf hybrid.
so either the beast was never caught and died out of sight, or it was just that, an hybrid, that would explain the abnormal behavior unlike a wolf
One of the hunters that was sent by LouisXV spotted and wounded the beast, and described it as a hybrid of a lion and some other big cat (probably leopard, or jaguar), lion-jaguar hybrid would be the closest, because the beast often attacked heads of the victims, which is unique to jaguars. Beast also was described to have faint dots on its belly
Could have also been a hyena
definitely not unique to the jaguar. one of the earliest examples of animal predation on a human in our fossil record is a man whose skull was in the mouth of a leopard. it's a common method for big cats to carry prey around. they do it with their young with a much softer bite. it's most common when they kill animals. big cats lack the bite force and the shearing and tearing power of a dog. oddly enough, a 110 lb rottweiler's bite isn't a lot weaker than a big lion's. instead, big cats will cup the mouthof small prey or bite and bend the neck of large prey, and suffocate it. the biggest game is taken down by many animals and eaten alive. nature is wild.
The beast was described as canine, not feline.
A Cougar would fit the same descriptions and would explain why they didn't know it.
None of the stories or theories can explain how the beast could withstand so much gunfire over three years. It does sound lion like or hyena like to me though.
It was more prehistoric hyena than it was a lion.
The guns in that time were muskets and were not as powerful and precise as modern day hunting rifles
There was potentialy more then one. Or you got to remember that we are talking Muskets here. Less Powerfull and generaly a lot more short ranged then modern firearms.
I think it was a type of hyena particularly the brown hyena that looks more like a wolf than a hyena and is also called a Strandwolf. They are almost werewolf in appearance and have brown with grey fur around the neck. So I can see how witnesses confused it for a hybrid wolf. They're not good hunters to take large prey and often cache meat which explains the stock piling of meat and attacks on helpless children and women who were easy targets. The beast avoided large prey at first and seemed cowardly when confronted by cattle which would not be the case of a lion even a young one. Hyenas are known to have a strong bite force which is backed up by the victims crushed bones and skulls. Brown hyenas reach 100lbs, which is large to the French at the time who were only 5'-5'5" tall. The brown hyena is a scavenger but is known to attack people who are alone. There is also the striped hyena which can be found outside of Africa and areas like the Caucasian region. Maybe the beast was a captive hybrid of a brown hyena and stripped hyena, which made it even more unidentifiable.
A brown hyena has thicker fur more suitable to survive the French winters and the fur could've provided some protection against the weak firearms too. In regard to the tail. Who knows maybe that was only one persons account. Just like it being described as running on two feet. Exaggerations.
Furthermore, cats were already common to people in France so they would've described the beast as more cat like not wolf like and when it was finally killed and people examined it closer they would've described it as cat like. Instead they continued to insist it was wolf like which is more fitting to a brown hyena who was desperate to survive.
Personally feel like it was a striped hyena escapes or turned loose from a private menagerie or either a wolf/mastiff hybrid.
Very good video, I have been drawn to the beast of Gevaudan for most of my life. I have a theory too, but like everyone else, it can't be proven. I believe strongly it was an escaped war dog. They were trained for war and to attack people on the head. The way the beast attacked would have been exactly the way they were trained to attack. The war dogs would grow up to be 275 (or larger) pounds too, I would bet no one had even seen a dog that large. A war dog would have bounced across the field and it would have had a tail exactly the way the beast tail was described, and they would have killed for sport. It could have been a whole pack of war dogs that escaped from maybe a sinking ship or a ship in bad weather when they were lost overboard.
I've never heard that theory before but it's a good one. I can totally see that.
Why wouldn't they have just been able to identify a dog?
@@jacobclark6002 Maybe it wasn't a dog, but a War Dog is VERY different beast than a regular dog was at that time. Have you ever seen a Spanish Mastiffs? They were larger than humans and could grow (in that time) to 270 pounds and over 4 and a half to five foot tall. The War Dog would have preferred easy targets such as women and children (Smaller targets) and they would have known what a soldier was and stayed away. The Romans used a dog called The Molossian, it is extinct now but it was a shocking sight of a massive war dog.
Celtic warriors used them, and they were larger than men. On Columbus 2nd trip he took to battle the natives with 20 Mastiff and a couple hundred conquistadors against thousands of natives. It is said that the sheer terror from just 20 dog's ripping men apart was what won them the battle. (I'm sure the black power rifles were a Boone also) Colombus said that ONE of the dogs was worth 15 of the soldiers and their bite was so powerful they could rip an arm from a man and crush a skull inside their massive jaw's. Those dogs were bread and trained for war, just imagine something so powerful, trained and smart in the countryside and the people have only been around average size dogs. The giant mastiff would have had rust colored fur, a black stripe down it's back, a bushy tail and if you look at the mouth it does look like a pig snout. It would have known what soldiers were and it would not have shown itself around soldiers. They would boil boar hide and wrap the war dogs in it, that boiled hide would have protected from the weaker black powder rounds fired at it and when the creature was taken down it was with a different type of rifle and a much more powerful bullet, even though it would be doubtful that the war hound would still have his boils hide on after that long. This is just an idea, I don't know what the beast was but I've looked into it for over 10 years and this makes sense to me.
@MrKsan05 Except we know what war dogs look like. They look like large dogs. And the beast would have been described as some king of large dog or wolf. It furthermore wouldn't have had so many of the hunting behaviors of a large cat.
There was an artists woodcut that looked a hole lot more like a Hyena, if he saw the beast then and there was any accuracy to his image thats what it was. Add to that, that early descriptions of Hyenas describe them as looking like a cat dog mix. Also as unlikely as it was for a french peasant to have seen a lion it is even more unlikely that they would even have seen a depiction of a Hyena. Which I believe was a trained being directed by a psychopath, otherwise it would likely have been caught and killed. Given the number of attacks and the distance involved indicates no natural predators, so if all or just a majority of the attacks are from one beast then there almost had to be human agency involved!
*Young LION all the way who developed a taste for human flesh. Has happened before* Grrrr 🦁
At 16:38 you stated that humans are easier prey, which is true. However, there were many livestock, like sheep and lamb during those attacks, but not once did it try to attack and eat them. It mainly only hunted and killed human children and women.
I can't be the only one to think that sheep and similar livestock would be much easier prey than humans.
I also thought that "the Beast" might be a lion or some type of lion hybrid, but why did it only hunt humans? I can understand if humans were practically the only prey in the area, but obviously there were other, easier food sources. Can an apex predator be trained to only hunt humans? Not only that, but specifically target women and children while leaving the other animals alone. Perplexing.....
It isn't about the availability of live stock or such animals as prey, it's just man-eaters for some reason target only humans once they get a taste of, The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag intentionally ignored live stock like goats and cows and specifically targeted humans.
@@bttawfiq Ah ok. That makes sense then. Thanks for the info
@@jinsc2460 Also of note, menagerie animals are not usually wild caught as adults, they were typically taken as infants, raised without adults of their kind, and fed butchered meat by humans. There is a reason places with wild predatory animals warn people not to let them start associating humans with food. If such an animal is raised in captivity and associates humans with food but not live quadrapeds with food, which is it more likely to attack?
Additionally, back in the bad old days when zoo conditions were much less humane and much more stressful for the animals, escapees were much more of a risk to the public, as the animals associated humans with stress and danger, and would go into fight or flight mode, and picking fight did not end well for anyone nearby.
Like one of those dogs that has a tiny yard, never gets taken for walks, gets hit by it's owner, and the neighbourhood kids keep banging on it's fence with sticks and throwing cans at it to laugh as it goes psycho barking at them through the gate. Then one day it gets out and some other kid who was just walking past ends up in hospital getting stiches.
@@Eserchie Thanks for the detailed explanation. This makes a lot of sense.
The Brotherhood of The Wolf is probably th only movie about the beast of Gevaudan,
It wasn't escaped... It was kept and trained by someone and then used as a murder weapon. With so many hunting parties, they would have found it. On top of it all, the lion wouldn't survive winter conditions unless hidden and kept by someone. And French aristocrats did go to Africa and occasionally bring lions and other exotic animals...
So, it was most likely the local count who got a lion, trained it and then used as a weapon. Because there is no way a wild animal would ignore the sheep and go for shepherds unless trained that way...
It cant be hyena coz hyenas make a lot of noise when attacking and it will be kinda hard for it to kill more than 100 people without getting noticed or shot .. idk if it was a lion or not but it was definitely a cold and calculated apex predator
I mean it could be something thought extinct. Remains of Cave lions have been found in France and they have only been extinct around 1000 years in certain parts of the world
I love the talk about this tale. I still think its a hyena exotic pet and a psycho owner. Cool show you guys.
Hyena seems most
Likely. The descriptions were closer to that. Noway a lion with red fur and a black stripe down its back.
Author Karl-Hans Taake, in "The Gevaudan Tragedy," claims that the beast was likely a cat, as you say, b/c its hunting patterns were similar as described as the lions of Tsavo, it could leap up onto walls easily, & held on tightly when it leaped onto some travelers on horseback. Some details are purposely left out on US cable shows, including how the victims' heads were often "clean," aka "licked clean," b/c cats have rough tongues (which dogs/wolves don't). The worst part, Taake claims, is that The Beast seemed to attack from a road known to traveling circuses, & migrated across the country. He says The Beast was just ONE incident, b/c otr animals who'd escaped from such traveling circuses/menageries had happened sev'l time. I should've written them down, b/c there were several (7 or so?). Thanks for this great video! /g
If it's a circus it could've been a tiger then?
Even then, everyone knew what a lion looks like. The beast was described as canine, not feline.
Not really - the average peasant in rural France would never have seen a real lion and it's not like they had zoos or magazines or books on animals
Cats are cats.
This was interesting🤔 I have watched almost all the videos and on this subject and my thoughts are that the beast was a mixed large wolf and a larger Irish Wolf hound mixed 🤔 trained to kill by a serial killer ??? In the 1700 hundreds the wolfhound s were more bigger and some did have stripped colors as side in some of the reports, that dog mixed with any of the large woods would look magnificent and very large wolf like 😊
the giveaway was that it was reported that the BEAST had a extremely LOUD MEOW! 🤣🤣
This is cool. I like the lion theory.
It was a tiger, Doctor Watson..
Amphicyonidae Maybe? Some type of bear wolf hybrid?
Nah definitely not a lion, there would have been more reports of it looking like a "huge cat", which is what a lion looks like!
What about a surviving soecies of the dire wolf? They dwarfed modern day wolves and would fit the bill or the bear dog or hyenadon which is not a canine its more jackal like.
I'm more inclined to believe the hyena theory if it was an escaped exotic.
The color description kind of sounds like a thylacine.
Thylacine are small though - they aren't a threat to Humans
Lions don't really look like cats. I've never seen a lion and compared it to a cat. Their eyes are totally different. The lion had a more elongated face and snout. I think lions are more likely to be compared to wolves by peasants. Which haven't serewlnything being midevil rural,
he's only reading accounts which suppoirt his theory for th emost part. that ssaid, there seems to be some agreement that this was likely a big cat. so many of its characteristics are big- cat-like. great bursts of speed and pouncing, no sound or little sound, its size, the idea that it's dragging people off and assumedly up a tree. sounds like a Eurasian mountain lion of some kind. could be a leopard.
They described it as red with a black stripe. How is that a lion?
Its probably a Tiger rather than a Lion, Tigers especially Siberian tiger are very strong and may kill for fun.
Nice show gents
He may not have actually seen a hippo tho
He described other things he said he saw but did not.
Your other comparisons, like reflective eyes relies on modern tech.
An escape menagerie animal is almost impossible. It would be noticed and by the upper class. Sloth bears were bred and kept by gypsies. That used them for entertainment. A runaway sloth bear is more likely.
Your lion info is totally wrong.
Possible, sloth bears are as feared as tigers in some places of India.
The hardiness of the animal, if we believe that it was wounded as many times as claimed, is like a bear.
Sloth bears don't have tails though,
Cats eyes glow yellow or green not red
i say it was a kangaroo-koala hybrid, argue with me if you want
Nah a land shark for sure
Aliens
A lion or Tiger
Why didn't it eat its victims?? How were there any survivors? Why didn't they find any remains of other prey animals in the areas the animal occupied?? I don't think it was a carnivore. I think it was
A sloth bear?? This would explain a lot. Why they singled in on humans. And did not eat them. Only killing or injuring them
I think that if you are thinking the beast was a candidate, maybe it was Donald trump?
Indeed
I believe it to be a hyena
It wasn’t a lion.