On 12 May 2024, the two passengers aboard the 15-metre sailing yacht Alboran Cognac, which was sailing in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, felt sudden blows to the hull and rudder, until water began to pour into the boat. A pod of killer whales was attacking the vessel. The two occupants were rescued by a nearby oil tanker, but the vessel sank. The incident was one of many that have occurred in the same location since 2020, attributed to a pod of about 15 killer whales called Gladis.
The public responds to these events with moralistic explanations—nature’s revenge on human wickedness—even though biologically this makes no sense. Orcas are just one example, but there are countless historical cases of unprovoked animal attacks on humans. Why do they happen? Are there common causes?
Sharks, dangerous animals?
There are cases where the purpose of animals attacking humans appears to be nothing more than feeding. These incidents are less common than people think. For example, many beachgoers are frightened of shark attacks, a fear that has been ingrained in our culture through film ever since Steven Spielberg’s timeless Jaws in 1975. However, according to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), a database maintained by Gavin Naylor at the Florida Museum of Natural History, there were 69 unprovoked and 22 provoked shark bites worldwide in 2023, with 14 fatalities.
When you consider that each year hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people swim in the sea, it doesn’t seem that shark bites are a common risk, but rather an extremely rare lottery. But do the sharks that attack us really do so to feed? Traditionally, it has been said that they mistake us for seals (pinnipeds), which would support this hypothesis, as these animals are the favourite prey of sharks such as the Great White. But there seems to be no definitive answer. In 2021, a study showed that the vision of a shark could easily mistake a human on a surfboard for a pinniped. Other experts argue that the motivation is simply exploratory behaviour in the face of something strange.
If the purpose were food, it would be logical that attacks would have fallen dramatically in recent decades, as shark populations have plummeted. But this is not the case: according to the ISAF, there are annual fluctuations that remain around certain levels. As Naylor pointed out to OpenMind, the incidence of attacks does not depend on the number of sharks, but on the presence of humans in the sea.
Myths about man-eating animals
This leads to the root cause of many attacks: human-animal interactions, which are becoming more frequent due to certain circumstances. For example, climate change is reducing the amount of floating ice in the Arctic during the summer, making it harder for polar bears to hunt seals. As a result, these animals scavenge in inhabited areas, increasing their interactions with humans and leading to more attacks.
For the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group, “human-wildlife conflicts are becoming more frequent, serious and widespread as human populations grow and habitats are lost.” According to a 2023 study, this is “one of the most pressing sustainable development challenges globally,” affecting developing countries the most.
But beyond these more explicable cases, a myth about man-eating animals dating back to the classical age of exploration suggests that animals that have tasted human flesh will return to seek it out again and again. The 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness popularised the case of two lions that repeatedly harassed a railway construction camp in the Tsavo region of present-day Kenya in 1898. The lions, christened The Ghost and The Darkness, devoured at least 35 workers.
A question of mimicry?
In 2017, a study of the lions’ remains showed that it may have been their diseased teeth that led them to seek out easy prey like humans. A similar case may have been that of the so-called maneater of Champawat, a tigress blamed for 436 human deaths in India and Nepal in the early 20th century. When the famous hunter Jim Corbett shot it in 1907, he also reported that its teeth were damaged.
So is it just a legend that some predators develop a special taste for human flesh? It seems implausible that carnivores would hunt for the taste of meat, but an expert from Nepal’s Department of National Parks told NBC that human blood is saltier than that of other animals and therefore more palatable. And while it is often assumed that humans are easy prey for old or sick carnivores, there are also cases of young animals becoming man-eaters. Scientists believe that lions may inculcate the behaviour of attacking humans in their offspring, passing it on to the next generation.
Experts suggest that mimicry could also explain the attacks by killer whales in the Strait of Gibraltar, but mimicry of what? Is it a simple game, or the memory of a bad past experience? This is a question still without a definitive answer.
Comments on this publication