Man-eating animal
A man-eating animal or man-eater is an individual animal or being that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior. This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has killed in self-defense. However, all three cases may habituate an animal to eating human flesh or to attacking humans, and may foster the development of man-eating behavior.
Although humans can be attacked by many kinds of non-human animals, man-eating animals are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet and actively hunt and kill humans. Most reported cases of man-eaters have involved lions, tigers, leopards, polar bears, and large crocodilians. However, they are not the only predators that will attack humans if given the chance; a wide variety of species have also been known to adopt humans as usual prey, including various bears, spotted and striped hyenas, and Komodo dragons.Felids
Tigers
Tigers are recorded to have killed more people than any other big cat, and have been responsible for more human deaths through direct attack than any other wild mammal. About 1,000 people were reportedly killed each year in India during the early 1900s, with one individual Bengal tigress killing 436 people in India. Tigers killed 129 people in the Sundarbans mangrove forest from 1969 to 1971. Unlike leopards and lions, man-eating tigers rarely enter human habitations to acquire prey. The majority of victims were reportedly in the tiger's territory when the attack took place. Additionally, tiger attacks mostly occur during daylight hours, unlike those involving leopards and lions.
The Sundarbans is home to approximately 600 royal Bengal tigers who before modern times used to "regularly kill 50 or 60 people a year". In 2008, a loss of habitat due to Cyclone Sidr led to an increase in the number of attacks on humans in the Indian side of the Sundarbans, as tigers were crossing over to the Indian side from Bangladesh.
A theory promoted to explain this increase in attacks suggests that, since tigers drink fresh water, the salinity of the area waters serve as a destabilizing factor in the diet and life of tigers of Sundarbans, keeping them in constant discomfort and making them extremely aggressive. Other theories include the sharing of their habitat with humans and the consumption of human corpses during floods.Lions
Man-eating lions have been recorded to actively enter human villages at night as well as during the day to acquire prey. This greater assertiveness usually makes man-eating lions easier to dispatch than tigers. Lions typically become man-eaters for the same reasons as tigers: starvation, old age, and illness, though as with tigers, some man-eaters were reportedly in perfect health.
The most notorious case of man-eating lions ever documented happened in 1898 in what was then known as British East Africa, now Kenya. During the construction of a rail bridge over the Tsavo River in modern-day Tsavo East National Park, two enormous maneless male Tsavo lions terrorized the railway workers, most of them imported from India, and were believed to have killed or devoured over 130 men. The entire railway project had to be halted as the then British prime minister sounded the alarm. They were eventually tracked and killed by the project's chief engineer and required eight men to carry each to camp.
Man-eating lions studies indicate that African lions eat humans as a supplement to other food, not as a last resort. In July 2018, a South African news website reported that three rhino poachers were mauled and eaten by lions at Sibuya Game Reserve in Eastern Cape province, South Africa.Leopards
Man-eating leopards are a small percentage of all leopards, but have undeniably been a menace in some areas; one leopard in India killed over 200 people. Jim Corbett was noted to have stated that unlike tigers, which usually became man-eaters because of infirmity, leopards more commonly did so after scavenging on human corpses. In the area that Corbett knew well, dead people are usually cremated completely, but when there is a bad disease epidemic, the death rate outruns the supply of cremation pyre wood and people burn the body a little and throw it over the edge of the burning ghat. In Asia, man-eating leopards usually attack at night, and have been reported to break down doors and thatched roofs in order to reach human prey. Attacks in Africa are reported less often, though there have been occasions where attacks occurred in daylight. Both Corbett and Kenneth Anderson have written that hunting the man-eating panther presented more challenges than any other animal. In 2019 in India, an infant was stolen and decapitated by a leopard.Jaguars
Jaguar attacks on humans are rare nowadays. In the past, they were more frequent, at least after the arrival of Conquistadors in the Americas. The risk to humans would likely increase if the number of capybaras, the jaguar's primary prey, decreased. However, occasional attacks still occur; for example, in April 2025, a man was killed by a jaguar while collecting honey in a rural area of the Brazilian Pantanal, near Aquidauana in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.Cougars
Due to the expanding human population, cougar ranges increasingly overlap with areas inhabited by humans. Attacks on humans are very rare, as cougar prey recognition is a learned behavior and they do not generally recognize humans as prey. Attacks on people, livestock, and pets may occur when a puma habituates to humans or is in a condition of severe starvation. Attacks are most frequent during late spring and summer, when juvenile cougars leave their mothers and search for new territory. Unlike other big cat man-eaters, cougars do not kill humans as a result of old age or food preference, but in defense of their territory. Such behavior has been documented in hunts by humans, where the cougar is flushed out by dogs which it either outruns or mauls some distance away. Then, the cougar circles around and mauls the hunter in ambush attack.Canids
Wolves
Contrasted to other carnivorous mammals known to attack humans for food, the frequency with which wolves have been recorded to kill people is rather low, indicating that, though potentially dangerous, wolves are among the least threatening for their size and predatory potential, except for the dog which poses lethal hazards for reasons other than predation. In the rare cases in which man-eating wolf attacks occur, the majority of victims are children. Habituation is a known factor contributing to some man-eating wolf attacks which results from living close to human habitations, causing wolves to lose their fear of humans and consequently approach too closely, much like urban coyotes. Habituation can also happen when people intentionally encourage wolves to approach them, usually by offering them food, or unintentionally, when people do not sufficiently intimidate them. This is corroborated by accounts demonstrating that wolves in protected areas are more likely to show boldness toward humans than ones in areas where they are actively hunted.Dingoes
Attacks on humans by dingoes are rare, with only two recorded fatalities in Australia. Dingoes are normally shy of humans and avoid encounters with them. The most famous record of a dingo attack was the 1980 disappearance of nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain. Her parents reported that they both saw a dingo taking Azaria out of their tent when she and her family were out on a camping trip to Uluru. In 2019, a father saved his 14-month-old child from a dingo which had dragged him away.Domestic dogs
Although dogs have many of the characteristics of bears and big cats, they are unlikely to act as man-eaters themselves. More often humans can be bitten to death by packs of stray dogs, but not eaten. Such attacks often occur in the countries of Eastern Europe, post-Soviet states, and some South Asian countries, such as India.Coyotes
Almost all known predatory coyote attacks on humans have failed. To date, other than the Kelly Keen coyote attack and the Taylor Mitchell coyote attack, all known victims have survived by fighting, fleeing, or being rescued, and only in the latter case was the victim partially eaten, although that case occurred in Nova Scotia where the local animals are eastern coyotes.Jackals
In June 2019, a nine-year-old boy was killed by jackals in Farakka, West Bengal, India. This was witnessed by a neighbor, who saw the child's half-eaten body being dragged by the pack of seven jackals.Bears
Polar bears
s, particularly young and undernourished ones, will hunt people for food. Although bears rarely attack humans, bear attacks often cause devastating injuries due to the size and immense strength of the giant land and shoreline carnivores. As with dogs, predatory intent is not necessary; territorial disputes and protection of cubs can result in death by bear attack. Truly man-eating bear attacks are uncommon, but are known to occur when the animals are diseased or natural prey is scarce, often leading them to attack and eat anything they are able to kill.Brown bears
s are known to sometimes hunt hikers and campers for food in North America. For example, Lance Crosby, 63, of Billings, Montana, was hiking alone and without bear spray in Yellowstone National Park in August 2015 when he was attacked by a grizzly bear. The park rules say people should hike in groups and always carry bear spray – a form of pepper spray that is used to deter aggressive bears. His body was found in the Lake Village section of the park in northwest Wyoming. Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and almost fully eaten by a 28-year-old brown bear on October 5, 2003. The bear's stomach was later found to contain human remains and clothing. In July 2008, dozens of starving brown bears killed two geologists working at a salmon hatchery in Kamchatka. After the partially eaten remains of the two workers were discovered, authorities responded by dispatching hunters to cull or disperse the bears.