Species‐specific spatiotemporal patterns of leopard, lion and tiger attacks on humans

Abstract

1. Large carnivores of the genus Panthera can pose serious threats to public safety.Although the annual number of attacks on humans is rare compared to livestock depredation, such incidents undermine popular support for wildlife conservation and require immediate responses to protect human life.2. We used a space-time scan method to perform a novel spatiotemporal analysis of 908 attacks on humans by lions, leopards, and tigers to estimate the risks of further attacks in the same locales.3. We found that a substantial proportion of attacks were clustered in time and space, but the dimension of these outbreaks varied between species. Lion outbreaks included more human fatalities, persisted for longer periods of time, and extended over larger areas than tiger or leopard outbreaks. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our analysis reveals the typical spatiotemporal patterns of past lion, leopard, and tiger attacks on humans. In future, this technique could be used by relevant agencies to warn local people of risks from further attacks within a certain time and distance following an initial incident by each species. Furthermore, the approach can help identify areas requiring management interventions to address such threats. K E Y W O R D S anthropogenic landscape, attacks on humans, big cats, human-wildlife conflict, Panthera, space-time scan, spatiotemporal clustering 1 | INTRODUC TI ON Despite dramatic declines in carnivore populations over the past century (Ripple et al., 2014), lion Panthera leo, leopard Panthera pardus, and tiger Panthera tigris attacks on humans elicit highly negative responses that present a profound conservation challenge in many parts of Asia and Africa. Nearly, a thousand people were attacked by African lions in southern Tanzania between 1990 and

Large Carnivore Attacks on Humans: The State of Knowledge

“…Chitwan NP, Nepal (Packer et al, 2018) NR Three of these cases were located in Minnesota, US, close to the Canadian border.^T his study data concerns only great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias).…”

Instrumented individuals are not representative of the population. Survival of wolverines with and without GPS collars

“…Bio-logging is commonly used to study large carnivores and helps inform debate, policy, and management (Carricondo-Sanchez et al 2020). Large carnivores are essential for ecosystem functioning but also get into conflict with humans as they prey on wild and domestic animals, and can occasionally injure or kill people (Packer et al 2019). The resulting controversy and debate extend not only to large carnivore management, but also to the use of biologging in carnivore research.…”

The African Lion: A Long History of Interdisciplinary Research

“…Although people accurately rate their relative risks of lion attacks in different contexts, their fear of lions is greatly exaggerated in comparison to the risks from disease or malnutrition (Kushnir and Packer, 2019). The sheer scale of the Tanzanian outbreak (900 cases in 15 years) permitted the application of epidemiological techniques for predicting the approximate timing and location of further lion attacks and proved useful for characterizing attacks by tigers and leopards in India and Nepal (Packer et al, 2019): lion outbreaks include more victims, cover a broader geographic area and persist for longer periods than in the other two species. Modeling routine reports of carnivore attacks with the SaTScan software could potentially provide an early warning system in any affected area and could also be applied to attacks on livestock as well as on humans.…”