Would a starving dog eat its owner? A Step-by-Step Guide

Hunger Hypothesis

“Dogs are descended from wolves,” says Stanley Coren, a psychologist who has written books and hosted television shows about dogs. “If we have a situation where the owner dies and there’s no source of food, what are they going to do? They’re going to take whatever flesh is around.”

In some cases, it’s clear that the animals were scavenging to survive. In one 2007 report, a Chow and a Labrador mix survived for about a month after consuming their dead owner’s body, leaving only the top of the skull and an assortment of bone shards.

Yet in the 1997 case, the German shepherd began eating parts of its owner soon after death.

“It is interesting to consider the reasons for an otherwise well-behaved pet with no motivation of hunger to mutilate the dead body of its owner so quickly,” wrote the forensic examiner, Markus Rothschild.

In 24 percent of the cases in the 2015 review, which all involved dogs, less than a day had passed before the partially eaten body was found. What’s more, some of the dogs had access to normal food they hadn’t eaten.

The pattern of scavenging also didn’t match the feeding behaviour of canines in the wild. When dogs scavenged dead owners indoors, 73 percent of cases involved bites to the face, and just 15 percent had bites to the abdomen.

By contrast, canines scavenging outdoors have a well-documented pattern, opening the chest and abdomen to eat the nutrient-rich organs early on, followed by the limbs. Only 10 percent of those cases involve wounds to the head.

You might not look at your beloved Bella or Buddy the same way after reading this.By

In 1997, a forensic examiner in Berlin reported one of his more unusual cases in the journal Forensic Science International. A 31-year-old man had retired for the evening to the converted garden shed behind his mother’s house, where he lived with his German shepherd. Around 8:15 p.m., neighbors heard a gunshot from the direction of the shed.

Forty-five minutes later, the man’s mother and neighbours found him dead of a gunshot wound to the mouth, a Walther pistol under his hands and a farewell note on a table. Most of his face and neck were gone—and there were tooth marks around the edges of the wounds. A half-full bowl of dog food sat on the floor.

The German shepherd was calm and responded to police commands. On the way to an animal sanctuary, the dog vomited some of its owner’s tissue, including skin with still-recognisable beard hair.

No one tracks the frequency of pets scavenging their expired owners’ bodies, but dozens of such case reports appear in forensic science journals over the last 20 years or so, and they’re the best window we have into a situation dreaded by pet owners: dying alone and being eaten.

I’ve reviewed about 20 of these published cases, along with a 2015 study that pulled together 63 cases of indoor scavenging. Some of the patterns are surprising, and they open up fascinating questions about why pets might be motivated to eat the dead.

Here are some of the most common misconceptions about post-mortem pet behaviour and what the available forensic evidence reveals.

“We suspect that the dogs were hungry, so they attacked Andre, because they had not been fed for 14 days,” he said. Police also found bones of two other dogs, believed to have also been eaten by the hungry canines.

“His skull was found in the kitchen, and his body was found in the front of his house,” Eriyana, a local police chief in Batam, an island off Sumatra, told VIVAnews website.

Lumboga was from northern Sulawesi island, a predominantly Christian area, where the local spicy diet is famous in Indonesia for including dogs, bats and forest rats.

A neighborhood guard was curious when he saw luggage lined up at the front of Andre Lumboga’s house, days after the 50-year old arrived back home. He approached the house, smelled something foul and called the police, according to a report.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Seven dogs starved of food and water for two weeks are suspected of eating their Indonesian owner after he returned to his hometown in Manado from a holiday, local media reported on Tuesday.

Family members find dogs eating owner’s body inside Philadelphia home

Three starving dogs were found eating their owner after he died of natural causes, police said.

Authorities were called to the 67-year-old man’s house in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after a family member checked in on the man, who had not been heard from in days, and saw his body partially eaten.

The man, who has not been identified, reportedly had three large dogs who were in the process of mauling his body when he was found.

His sister, Renee Melvin, said: ‘When I came around knocking on the door, the dogs came to the window, I didn’t know he had three dogs.’

Police responded to the home and confirmed reports that the man had been partially eaten on Wednesday. Animal control also came to the home to remove the dogs.

The victim’s brother-in-law, Hamin Melvin, said: ‘We looked at the side window and we see (him) lying in the bed, and his face was all pinkish.’

Police have not yet confirmed how the man died, but said it was likely he died of natural causes after his family said he was not in good health.

Investigators said the dogs destroyed the house, likely looking for food, because they were starving after having not been fed for days.

Video from the scene shows animal control workers taking the dogs, who appear to resist as they are taken.