| Canary Island Mastiff |
News headlines blared that 4
people have been found dead and partially eaten in Mexico City’s Cerro de la Estrella, a
partially wooded hill top park.
Sources say the victims were
killed by packs of feral dogs. The large
park is home to many abandoned dogs who eke
out a living in this impoverished section of Mexico’s capital.
Authorities are warning people to
stay out of the park until they get to the bottom of the deaths.
But many people are saying it is
hard to believe that the dogs roaming around the park are capable of inflicting
the great bodily harm they are seeing on the victims and also say nothing like
this has happened before. There have been reports of some minor attacks on
humans in the past, but none fatal.
Police are combing through the
park capturing any dogs they find to see if any of them are the killers. But pictures of some of the newly captured
dogs hardly fit the description of killer types, but are the more cute and
cuddly type including: beagles, maltese, poodles; etc.
Antemio Maya, president of the
Street Dog Protection association in Mexico
City, doubts that these dogs could have killed the
people found in the park.
'It's not the behavior of street
dogs to kill humans,' Maya said. Besides look at the dogs captured so far, do
they look like killer type dogs?
But Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement: “Experts
have established that due to the gravity of the wounds, at least 10 dogs were
involved in each attack.”
The 4 victims were found in
different parts of the park and all had died from bleeding to death caused by
their wounds. Prosecutors say evidence
shows the victims were not killed elsewhere and dumped in the park.
One of the victims had her arm
torn off and all of them had been partially eaten.
But if it is not the parks feral
dogs killing these people then what is it?
Mans best friend can also be a fierce-some enemy
There is some speculation, that
the victims could have been killed by trained attack dogs used by some of the
Mexican drug cartels.
Some breeds like the Canary Island
Mastiff are favorites of gangs. These breeds can weigh 120 lbs and are
trained to be ferocious killers, as evidenced by a woman killed by a pair of
them in San Francisco
several years ago. See Kimberly Guilfoyle
prosecutes dog owners.
It is also speculated that the
victims could have been killed by pit bull fighting dogs who got unleashed and
killed the humans.
Throughout the centuries dogs have
been trained in warfare and there are many books written on their
exploits. Ancient armies were
accompanied by their dogs of war that they would unleash on their enemies
causing terror.
During the war of 1812, at the battle of New Orleans, the American army under General Jackson, unleashed their hounds on the
British soldiers, who had turned and run. As written about in a famous song.
But dogs have been known to change
character when more than a couple of them team up…It seems a wildness comes out
in them and they do resort to violence as is evidenced by massive kills of
livestock by packs of domestic dogs….Who kill just to kill, not to eat.
But to attack humans and actually
kill and eat them, is a rarity among domestic stray dogs in a civilized society.
It will be interesting to see if
the Mexican authorities get to the bottom of this. They say they will round up all of the stray
dogs in the area and test their stomach content to see if they have been dining
on humans…Stay tuned