some days ago i downloaded a french movie from the internet called Le Pact Des Loupes (translated into English too by the name of Brootherhood Of The Wolf), great movie btw. it tells the story of a wolf or lion type creature that attacked France in the 1700's.

Wanting to know more about the creature i came upon this on wikipedia

The Beast of Gévaudan (French: La bête du Gévaudan) was a mysterious wolf-like creature that supposedly terrorised the former province of Gévaudan (modern day Lozère département), in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France from about 1764 to 1767. Many attacks took place - between 60 and 100 people were killed - and debate continues as to the Beast's true identity

more here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_Gévaudan

and a pic of it too

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...an-monster2.png


are you people familiar with this creature. what do you think it could be? a werewolf? a pre-historic animal?

btw for those who haven't seen it i recommend the movie. very good.

Ya I have heard about it and it seems like a weird creature. One theory, and the one I like the most, was that one person living there owned the beast and that the beast was actually a cross between 2 wild animals (i think a hyena was involved). I highly doubt it was a wolf because a wolf would not attack people like that. Also, the tv show I was watching on this said that a person might be behind all this, training the animal to kill humans.

I read an article about it a few years ago. I think the most likely explanation is that it was either an unusually large (and aggressive) wolf, or a crossbreed between two species (wolf and dog, maybe?).

Test

ya besides when wolfs attack they attack in paks most of the time
but i read an article about some poachers finding one and killing it
but of course there was no body so it was most likely a lie
i think it culd be a hyena and some sort of wild dog

Use the search facility provided on this forum, we have more than few La Bete Or The Beast Of Gevaudan thread.

Go to The Supernatural Zone website.They have information also on the beast.Hard to say what it was.Could have been a wolf and dog mix. Maybe like a wolf and a great prynnes dog.They are a large dog,I think about the size of a
Saint Bernard and used for herding.
Or it could have been a hyena,possibly imported for whatever reason.
I'll have to rent the movie.Didn't get to see it when in the theatres.

Mark Dacascos in on the movie.

Like capoeiranger said, searching the forums will get you the best results. Personally, I think it has most in common with a Hyena, it's behaviour and typical description don't really fit a wolf.

There was a previous thread on this very recently, as the other have said. The general consensus that was reached was that it was a wolf/dog hybrid that had been trained specifically to kill. Many wolf-dogs end up being rather large in size and we all know how deadly animals can be when trained specifically for such a purpose...

-Madcap

thats true

More importantly Monica Bellucci was in that movie!

brotherhood of the wolf!!

theirs a book on this out it has all the details of what exactly happened during that time its orginally all in french but translated by derek brockis

Anyways you gota read the book to understand to much information! The book is really sick and shocking, it was no wolf that did this, it wasnt a dog either, it was something out of this world

no wolf jumps walls that are 8 feet high with a child in its mouth and wolves dont spit blood at people and wolves, they do not use their claws to fight with!

it used its claws for fighting but could never climb treees, when it caught someone it would start eating them while they were alive and would rip off their heads or arms with one bite and run away with it, if people were getting in the way, sometimes it walked on its hind legs when it had to cross the river, it ONLY attacked during the day and slept at night like a human

it was seen by thousands and thousands of people and the actual body count was about 100 but it maimed and injured much more

and it even dominated strong men with axes, but men were always working with other men so when a man was attacked he would usually be rescued

This intrigued me, cateyes, so I checked Amazon. They have it in paperback, but it's pricey.

http://www.amazon.com/Beast-Gevaudan-Bjte-...8478&sr=1-1

Well, nothing comes cheap...I hope the book was worth it, rather than a glorified account of animal attacks.

Book looks interesting.. wonder if any local bookstores have one in stock so I could read flip through it and make sure it's not as capoeiranger said.. just animal attacks.

I would like to point out many of the things that are hard to explain for a wolf.. fit with a hyena.. or just pure exageration.
For example hyenas have claws. I have no idea how high a wolf or hyena could jump.. but both are powerful and likely wouldn't be slowed down much by having a child. The spitting blood sounds just like an exaggeration. Hyena's can essentially rip of a head (or crush it) or limb off with a single bite.. their biting force is 4500 N (greater than any other mammal).. a grey wolf has about 1500 N bite, and Labrador Retriever has about 700N bite.

A hyena's appearance is also dog like - even though they aren't a related species (they are more closely related to cats) that can lead to confusing reports on the appearance..

etc etc..

I suspect a lot of the stories are simply exaggerations - eye witnesses are terrible at reporting details (more people get falsely convicted due to incorrect eye witness testimony than any other cause). When you're living in a very .. unscientific time .. where people are seeing devils everywhere - I have little doubt they added imagined details, or altered things that happened.

Edit: Capoeiranger.. the 'i' in the middle of your name always messes me up

the book is thick and full of translated historical accounts letters news paper clippings of that exact time and exact place of the events

So basically you can go threw the book and read for yourself all the evidence and come to your own conclusion, nothing is made up its all translated stuff from when The beast was eating people

Everything on the internet is just based on that book, people put it into their own words

ITs thick thick but worth it! some of the stuff in there is just sick though what this creature did! You would think it was some sort of demon or devil and not an animal

Well u can get it cheaper at authorhouse I think? I have the soft cover I might buy the hard cover also, cause i keep going back and reading things over and over, you will get addicted to it lol

this happened in the late 1700s thats not THAT long ago, its a very well documented case well documented in french, now its been translated to english you can understand why it was so strange

many smart educated rich people of that time had lots of experience with it not just poor uneducated country pple even

when u read the book u will understand it could NOT of been a hyena

This thing had a long thick powerful tail

it also had very shaggy fur something the spotted hyena doesnt have, the spotted hyena is the only capable hyena the rest are just whimps!

this animal did NOT have spots either

And hyenas do not fight with their claws they use their mouth only, hyenas dont like to raise up on their back paws either, this creature had a habbit of doing that

this creature has been documented making giant leaps they actually measured how far it could leap and it was like 30 feet or something, it could leap like that with a child in its mouth no wolf or hyena can do that

I've wondered if the creature could be similar to the cocrotta or leucrotta

As a brief point.. 'spotted hyenas' aren't all spotted

.

But regardless I would be more inclined to believe in the unreliability of people who witness it... people.. rich or poor, young or old, even with experience in the wild.. suck as eye witnesses. People will often see what they want to see, there are plenty of studies about this where they show people a photo/video of something. Later, ask them to describe it and they add in details that they expect to see - even though they weren't in the original photo. In addition other studies also show that a persons confidence in what they've seen is in no way related to their accuracy.

So what you have are many eyewitnesses, who essentially expect to see a demon.. so they give it demonic attributes when they see it. To me even going as far as hyena might be getting too exotic, and it could have easily been a wolf/dog.

The only reason I like hyena was because it explained two things to me. Why it was willing to attack people so often ( wolf/dog has this explained too ), why people thought it was so odd ( I would expect them to recognize a wolf or dog.. but hyena? probably none of them even knew they existed - even now with the internet most people aren't aware of the many of hyenas weirder attributes). However maybe I'm the one now looking for what I expect.

yes but the descriptions of the beast were consistent like the color of it the long long shaggy fur, the tail the long claws

Also keep in mind the thousands of people that saw this creature saw it DURING THE DAY

Most people estimated its size the size of a ur forgetting its leaping ability and extremly long bushy tail

The leaping is well recorded as the hunters constantly took notes and stuff studied it immensly since NO ONE could catch it or kill it

The best hunters at that time hired by the king no one could catch it

REmemberr this thing also constantly outran horses, sometimes 20 thousand people were all hunting this thing in that area at the sametime

So many innocent animals (wolves, dogs etc.) died because of it

ALl the poison they put out for it, they would take victums bodyies (humans) and they wouldl poison them and put them all over the place and not once did the creature touch anything with poison in it but so many other things like dogs and wolves all suffered from that

Also remember this animal ALWAAYS ran threw a herd of sheep and attacked the shepherd or shepherdess FIRST it NEVER went after livestock for food, not once has it been recorded going after livestock in order to eat

IT has killed dogs and livestock out of rage like just say a person was rescued from it, it had a bad habbit of going on a mental rage killing things but it wouldnt eat them (UNLESS IT WAS A HUMAN)

REMEMBER during the 3 years this creature killed and ate people the description on how it looks was ALWAYS roughly the same.. the same pattern in the coat etc.. dont forget

Ive studied hyenas and dog/wolf attacks they could NEVER of done the things this animal has done

There was a hyena killed along with a strange ape/baboon like creature & giant sized wolves killed BUT none of that stopped the or slowed down any of the killing

I have bought every book on this subject thats offered in english read them more then once etc..


We could say that the creature was constantly exagerated but descriptions of it stayed the same roughly the 3 years