Stray Dogs Kill Five in Mexico?

Mexico City has had a real stray dog horror story recently that has hit the major news channels as well as flooding the internet. The story broke with the discovery of a woman and her baby plus a teenage couple all apparently mauled to death and, at least in the one case, partially eaten by “wild” dogs in a large, hilly park within the city. An immediate round-up of loose dogs in the area was conducted and over 50 were successfully trapped.

A few days later it was realised that the case of another woman who had died in the park a week or two earlier but had not been fully investigated was actually the first dog-mauling victim bringing the total number of deaths to five.

The local reaction to these events has been interesting. There have been strong protests about the fate of the captured dogs, which included some puppies, with a general disbelief that these dogs could have done such a thing. The tests for human blood and stomach contents have subsequently all proved negative and rather than dispose of the animals as may have been the original intention they are now being put up for adoption whilst the chances of discovering the real culprits are diminishing fast.

The other side to the reaction has been suspicion that this was actually a human crime being blamed on the dogs. The serious crime rates in the city, particularly related to drug gangs, has produced a cynical reaction that perhaps the bodies were killed elsewhere then dumped in the area and the dogs framed, and that this may have been done with the complicity of the authorities. However, understandable as such a reaction may be given the nature of life in the city, two things seem to point to the dogs themselves being the culprits. The initial reports included forensic evidence that clearly identified multiply bites as having occurred both whilst the people were still alive and after death. This in itself doesn’t discount the conspiracy theory but the teenage girl who died also rang her sister during the attack and in crying for help stated that they were being attacked by a pack of dogs. Unfortunately, the sister thought she was joking, although, given the size of the park even if she had believed it there probably wasn’t anything that could have been done at that stage.

Basically, although some people will always have some doubts, I see no compelling evidence to suggest that these five people died any other way than getting mauled to death by dogs in the park.

As an aside, I find people’s disbelief that the miserable, forlorn-looking dogs trapped in cages could have done something so terrible to be a classic human reaction that dogs have evolved to evoke in us. They are masters at deflecting human aggression, a trait that probably naturally developed in the earliest dogs as a consequence of them choosing to live near people. Neither of the other choices of fight or flight would have been as successful.

Going back to the story in Mexico City, there is another snippet of information that I find interesting but has not been picked up elsewhere. Namely, that when the police first started rounding up dogs in the area there was a mad scramble amongst the residents to make sure their own pets were safely shut inside. Prior to this, allowing pets to wander freely was the norm in the area. The assumption, of course, is that only wild dogs could possibly do such a terrible thing and the thought of looking towards the free-roaming pets never occurred to anybody. I would like to suggest that possibly the reason that none of the rounded-up stray dogs had any evidence of human blood on them or human tissue in their stomachs was that all that evidence may have already have been safely shut away in peoples’ homes. I cannot say with any confidence that local pet dogs were involved but I can say that it is quite possible and should have been considered from the start. I, for one, would not be at all surprised.

Although I often argue in support of free-living dogs I am under no illusion about their capabilities. Dogs are designed to elicit sympathy in us but still retain the potential to cause harm and, particularly in packs, to kill. To me, the idea of stray or feral dogs or pets-on-the-loose killing people in this way is quite believable but is clearly unusual and probably requires a particular set of circumstances in order to happen but unfortunately the details from these deaths in Mexico are frustratingly insufficient to gain any real understanding of what exactly happened.

Learn more about the lives and issue of unowned dogs in my e-book ”A Stray View” available from Bangkok Books (readable as .pdf on any computer)