It’s very much hearing hooves and thinking zebras. Also, I ken it’s a joke post but wolf attacks are a thing and they do happen somewhat regularly, outside North America. Even then 1: there’s nowhere where wolf attacks will be outnumbered by dog attacks and uuuuh 2: unless you see it happening I’m really not sure how you’d tell those apart. Let’s have some facts, why not?

First off, it’s kinda funny seeing someone say “well what about the USA where we have wild animals?” because North America has like, exceptionally low rates of wolf attacks? Honestly there’s a misconception in the Anglosphere that wolves don’t really attack humans because of the low rate of attacks by North American wolves.

I was going to use the handy wikipedia list of wolf attacks but it’s uh, a mess so I’m just going to have to boil some facts down for yous all: ~half of all wolf attacks involve rabid animals, however the other half do include a significant number of predatory attacks on humans by wolves, but the majority of attacks are non fatal as an adult human or group of humans is often capable of discouraging single and small numbers of wolves with stones and sticks. Most attacks happen in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Caucuses and the Middle East.

Anywhere with rabies and wolves in contact with humans, a doctor actually might have a moderate chance of recognising a wolf attack, or at least, a rabid wolf attack. Rabid wolves are kinda serious fuckin business and are noted in scientific literature for going absolutely apeshit (not the technical term). They’re known for going through a 1-2 day furious phase before paralysis sets in where they are regularly recorded as like, just running into villages, savaging people and livestock and then sprinting off to the next one in a pattern of behaviour that sounds totally fake but isn’t. Such attacks can cover like 20+km and injure tens of people, with a higher rate of death than rabid dog bites even with access to treatment due to different patterns of attack (much more likely to go for the head and neck). In 1996: 329 people in Iran were bitten by rabid wolves.

Dogs are still the greater risk by like a factor of 100 though, in 1996 48,000 people in Iran were given rabies treatment for dog bites. In 2019, at least 29 people attacked by wolves in India according to the terrible wiki page, with the actual number probably a little higher. But also that same year a single street dog went on a spree and bit 31 people; the total number of dog bites in India a year is probably in the region of 1.75 million, which you may notice is a slightly larger number than 29.

Having said that, India has multiple wolf related deaths every year, with spikes in number related to active predations, like oddly, also 1996, where 50 children were killed by wolves in Uttar Pradesh over an 8 month period. The last century has seen significant reductions in number but even then, since 1900 North America has seen 3 fatal wolf attacks, India has recorded nearly 400. Attacks are not limited to India though, two adult women were killed in their yard by a wolf pack, and 3 other people attacked by wolves in other villages in February and March 2019 in Taijakistan, there are multiple attacks yearly in Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states.

People are killed by wolves every year outwith North America; predatory wolf attacks are primarily on children under 10 but also uh, predatory wolf attacks kinda fall into two categories, neither of which is going to have ER doctors going “ah yes, wolf”: it’s either successful, in which case you’re looking at forensics, not a doctor, or it’s interrupted by other people and usually results in injuries that aren’t going to look much different from a dog attack. Lacking the intense clustering of rabid attacks as well they’re not going to stand out in the same way.

Either way I don’t remember what my point was other than wolf attacks are a regular occurrence in some areas and have historically been a big thing but even then responsible doctors don’t diagnose “wolf attack” without a patient history.