The Beast of Gevaudan

It was a lion probably some idiot brought a young male, it's mane not fully grown in yet, back to France and it escaped.

From what I remember the beast was cow sized reddish fur with a dark line down the ridge. Spots were often a feature, which indicates the lions young age, sturdy front sleek hind quarters and a thin tail with a tuft on it. That combined with the ability to jump 30 feet, carry off fully grown humans, a preference for open field killing and the common tactic of cutting off air flow make me sure it was a lion.

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>>18293121
How does Lion translate to dogbeast though?

>>18293215
it was medieval france, there was all sorts of lion drawings that looked like dogs
no zoos, no internet, few books and paintings

>>18293224

Exactly. People were generally less knowledgeable back then. People take the abundance of information today for granted to hard. Back in those days what would be today considered common knowledge, like the country of Germany, or what a poem is, might not for a common person. Show a person back then a picture of an animal that can't be found roaming around the very spot where they live, they'd be all like "what the fuck is that thing?"

So where does Jean Chastel and his Hyena menagerie fit into this?

>>18293311
no where? And this is lion poster, what the other guys said . Lions without manes, in the dark, in a panic, with the most common large predatory beast being a wolf, = dog beast. The common elements despite the nick name all point to Lions over hyenas.

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>>18293077
Makes me think of a Maned Wolf

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Fucking sciencefags and wikipedos at it again rationalizing.. /x/ is truly dead..

>>18293224
It wasn't "medieval France" it was 1764-67. People knew what a lion was.

It was likely one or more especially large wolves.

>>18294611
Mastiff/Wolf mix?

>>18293077
It was [enter dangerous animal native to france at the time].

Were bears a thing in France? If so, bears.

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>>18294755
Mange bears?

>>18293224
Are you an idiot? Do you really think that people in the late 1700s didn't know what a fucking lion was? The comments on this board is astounding, holy christ.

>>18294762
Maybe mange, maybe just bears. Bears can turn into anything with distance, obscured, limited time to look, fear, so on. Could really have been a norma bear mistaken for a dog.

>>18293247
are you serious? everybody back in the day knew what germany was and what poems were, because they didnt have tv they told each other poems and riddles, retard.

...it was a large wolf. I don't see how this is a debate.

>>18294897
Because there's plenty that doesn't equal wolf

>>18294773
Are you fucking trolling me or really this level of retarded pseudoskeptic?

>>18294746
come again

>>18294767
I had classmates in college that didn't know the difference between the Atlantic ocean and Pacific ocean. You're thinking too highly of people.

>>18295185
The theory goes Jean Chastel had a red mastiff he bred with a wolf to creat an imposing hybrid that he donned with a boar-hide armor and orchestrated the killings along with his son to ends I can't exactly recall but that him shooting it was more like killing it in its kennel to cover up the evidence than a noble hunter slaying the beast.

Some of the reasons this is believed is because the Beast is said to have had an almost trained nature, being driven off only to stop and wait, assessing the situation or waiting for a handler.

>>18295282
How does that explain the three to four other wolves/beasts that Antoine hunted, one of which was identified as a very large wolf allegedly with scars correlating to where attack survivors had injured it?

>>18295282
the theory can't be right, a dog with a wolf content that high would be almost indistinguishable from a regular wolf. that and it would be impossible for one to follow orders.

>>18293077
I like it when non french people try to say Gevaudan.

>>18294767
doesnt matter if they did, mob mentality plus the fear of the unknown can cause a clouded common sense, even today
they were still believing in witchcraft and monsters back then, especially in a peasant village. Something starts eating you village neighbors youre going to panic, panic leads to exaggerating the truth to help vent the fear and before you know it bam, urban legend

>>18295947
Dude, you're going off on a completely different tangent. The issue being discussed is whether the Beast could have been a lion despite literally no witnesses describing it as a big cat. Not witchcraft, superstition, and urban legends. It WAS a real animal that did kill and eat people.

>>18296203
all im saying is, no matter what it actually was or wasnt, people that get hysterical in masses like that tend to make more shit up and thats probably why the rumor spread of it being a monster rather then an animal attack
dont over think it

>>18296222
I don't understand your point. No one here is claiming it was supernatural. It was a real animal/animals that attacked 210 people over the course of 3 years, killing 113 and injuring 49. Of the fatal victims, 98 were at least partially eaten. Louis XV himself commissioned several massive hunts to kill it.

>>18296256
im not claiming its supernatural either. Im saying that, as a french peasant in the 1700s, when your neighbors start getting eaten and nobody can stop the beast youre going to freak out and start saying it is a supernatural beat or monster because, again youre a french peasent in the countryside with more then likely little to no formal education and plenty of superstitious fear.
Maybe at first they thought it was a regular animal, but after a dozen or so kills they started saying "it must be a monster"

It was a hyena.

>>18298817
hyenas are small as fuck and feed on dead stuff

>>18294611
education for peasants was a puritan concept. most people never want to school

>>18298902
sit on a rake david

>>18293121
The adult spotted lion without a mane, is in fact a cryptid unto itself. Look it up. So you're explaining a cryptid with a cryptid.
A lion that size would have no spots.

Lions generally aren't described as 'red'. I've read reports that have described spots or stripes. I always thought maybe it actually had the markings like a spotted tabby or a leopard appaloosa. Their spots can sometimes be long and make stripes. From a distance they can looked striped, close up individual spots.

Cats, even a lion move much different than a canid. It's attack patterns does kind of remind me of the Ghost and the Darkness, in their boldness and cleverness.
But a lion looks like a cat, a very big freaking cat.

Lions do not have forequarters higher than back, like is described.

If I had to go with a natural animal, I'd say hyena. Hell, they eat enough people in their natural habitat. My main prob with that, hyenas make that god awful laughing sound. I imagine that freakiness would be mentioned.

I lost all my links, but i was reading a french website that had records of attacks before and after Gevaudan up and down the mountain range (if I remember right). They speculated some sort of migration of a remnant ancient hyena or canid like beast.

When did lions become extinct in Europe? How far north did they exist?

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>>18298916
>god awful laughing sound

Fuck you hyenas and their cackles are cute

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>>18298924
The farthest into Europe lions have ever ranged is the Balkan Peninsula. At their height, lions lived in all of Africa and spread all the way from the Balkans to India.

They've been extinct in Europe since 100 BC.

>>18299064
>one of the deadliest-to-humans animals is almost extinct

Good

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>>18298916

>They speculated some sort of migration of a remnant ancient hyena or canid like beast.

cool

>>18298892
>feed on dead stuff
this meme again. Hyenas have more successful hunts than Lions. More often than not it's the Lions that scavenge Hyena kills instead of the reverse.

>>18299087
Go outside

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>>18294767
look at old family or country banners that depict "Lions"

>>18300429
So why didn't they think it was a lion then?

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>>18295157
a bear with mange is pretty terrifying

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>>18302265
I see your bald bear, and raise you a hairless baboon.

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>>18302281
I raise you a hairless british actor

pretty obvious it was a window faller from an alt dimension similar to mothman

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>>18302265
>mange
Sure is oblivious in here

>>18295372
Jeh-voo-dahn?

>>18302433
No, Jeh-Vow-den.

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>>18293224
>>18293247
This. It is why chinese lions look crazy, they heard stories from india and even considered a lion a mythical creature. Since they had never seen lions and non existed in china anymore they just came up with this.

>>18295372
gay vow dan

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>>18293077
It was obviously just some wolves, since wolves were literally an epidemic during the period.

But anyone who actually cares already knows that, I just want to take a second to shit on OP for not using pic related to post the thread because it's way cooler than that deviantart garbage.

Some kind of wolf or big angry doggo

>>18303757
That's a Jabberwovky

>>18299064
That's bullshit. There were lions all over Europe until 11,500 years ago. They were called cave lions. The range you are showing is only since the end of the last ice age.

>>18303757

I think it's less likely that it was a regular ol' wolf, and more likely that it was a hybrid of a wolf and a large dog. It could explain its bigass dog head and broad chest (if it was something like a mastiff). It's usually described as having red fur, and the descriptions without any red say things like 'black and white spots'. If it was more than one animal, then this could point at other siblings of the litter that the red hybrid came from, maybe? Another common description is "bushy tail".

http://www.labetedugevaudan.eu/english/description-of-the-beast.html

This article mentions that the local peasants were already familiar with wolves so they were sure there was something off about it. "A wolf that is not a wolf." Does anyone here know more about that region of France?

>>18293077
The main thing that struck me about the beast was that dogs would cower away from it yet cattle would rush it. My guess is it was something that would naturally predate on cows or their ancestors in the past enough they instinctively knew how to deal with it.

>>18302284
Hehe.

>>18309171
Where'd you hear about the dogs and cattle? First time hearing of that. Does it have merit?

Not trying to shit on you, I just want to make sure it's true. Your instinct theory, if it really was some ancient predator, is pretty cool to think about.

>>18293077
I can't find anything about it on my usual media such as e621, so I really wouldn't know.

>>18309907
I used to have this old encyclopaedia of the paranormal that had a section on the Beast and one of the first hand accounts of woman being attacked mention that she was saved by her cow. This of course after.her dogs were scared off.

Just read this:
http://cryptozoology.wikia.com/wiki/Beast_of_Gevaudan

So it states that the beast was just driven off by one of the farms bulls. Different than what I read but still similar.

>>18310049
Mild kek