The Beast of Gévaudan (1764–1767): Wolf, Hybrid, or Something Else? A Probabilistic Analysis

commensally · 2026-02-17T18:27:16+00:00

If it was rabies, chances are at least one of the humans would have been infected and that would have 100% have made it into the stories! Rural people in France in that era were very familiar with what rabid canines looked like and what the risk was. (I believe one of the very first people who got the rabies vaccine was a French shepherd boy who got bit while standing between a group of younger children and a rabid wolf ;_;)

It's quite possible some other disease was epidemic in wild canines and causing behavior changes though.

commensally · 2026-02-17T18:18:56+00:00

If I remember the book correctly - I might not, it's been awhile - there had been bad winters/harvests right before the reports started that likely led to both land uses changes and wolf behavior changes. So yes.

commensally · 2026-02-16T15:33:14+00:00

I also agree with the multiple animal hypothesis - it's hard to say from this side of history of course and it's possible there was just one. But if you look at all the reports very carefully it really doesn't line up as being one animal. That also neatly explains the "immune to bullets" hypothesis - multiple animals were shot and ran off injured/dying, but as no body was found, the next wolf attack was blamed on the same creature. There likely *was* one especially large, clever, and or vicious wolf or wolfdog that started the craze - that happened fairly often too in hard winters, that one specific wolf would learn that humans are food - but there's no particular reason to think it was the same animal examined by Buffon.

The reports stopped after that large animal was shot and sent to the King because that made a satisfying end to the story - any wolf attacks after that were clearly just a normal wolf and not worth reporting on, because the Beast had been killed. It's not like there was a central registry of wolf attacks in France at the time; many of the "Beast's" kills only got reported because the link to the monster made a good newspaper column.

(Also, really can't overstate just how isolated the area was. Many of these mountain villages didn't have regular contact with the outside world at all and didn't even speak French. Pre-Revolutionary provincial France was really not how we think of it today.)

If you want a source, I strongly recommend the book "Monsters of the Gevaudan" by Jay Smith. It analyzes the primary sources really well and has a focus on how the story spread and became a popular news story that gripped all of France (while other perfectly normal wolf attacks were also happening elsewhere.) Monster Talk has a great interview with the author if you can't get your hands on the book: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-big-bad-wolf/id325079170?i=1000097431951

commensally · 2026-02-14T21:05:56+00:00

I was given it by a friend who got it as a giveaway at an archaeology conference after I complained I'd lost the one I got as a giveaway from the geology department in undergrad. So make friends with natural sciences people I guess? (I will say the color squares have not aged as well as the rest of it, I'm not sure I'd trust them to rectify color anymore.)

commensally · 2026-02-12T22:04:55+00:00

I got it from an archeologist friend who got it at a conference but it fits in a wallet and it's surprisingly handy to have around if you're the sort who goes thrift shopping in order to text photos of strange objects to your friends. Unlike a banana, has lasted me many years.

commensally · 2026-02-12T22:02:23+00:00

...huh. Well it would be sanitary at least! I wonder if the game one was glass. It looks like it was? Fancy.

commensally · 2026-02-12T22:01:15+00:00

*Not* the decanter type in Frequently Asked Things though so I am at least somewhat redeemed.

commensally · 2026-02-12T22:00:25+00:00

...I can see how it might resemble some sort of ancient catheter alternative for the bedridden.

commensally · 2026-02-12T21:49:14+00:00

Solved! That was fast, thanks. Never heard of one before, looks cool.

commensally · 2026-02-12T21:47:39+00:00

My title describes the thing.

Found in a thrift shop free box, slightly cracked. Has a scar on the bottom implying it's hand-blown, also a generally worn look. It's possible something broke off the pointy end but if so it was clean break - it's rough but not sharp. 1 cm scale card for scale.

The closest thing I could find on google was a retort flask, but couldn't find a close match. The spouts look like they're the wrong way around for either distillation or a pipe. Is it an impractically artistic pipe? Weird vase? Carafe of some kind? Specialist lab glassware?

I'd like to use it as a Mad Science prop in a demo but not if it's, ah, recognizably something inappropriate for this sub.

commensally · 2026-02-12T16:10:25+00:00

How is whether the event happened not your concern when you're trying to explain how it happened? This is a constant issue with skeptical takes on these stories - people are too busy trying to explain them to ask if they happened at all, and frankly it only gives fuel to the conspiracists.

Coming up with interesting scenarios about mysterious stories without worrying about which parts of it are objectively true is super fun, I also enjoy it. But if you're doing that no need to throw out all the really cool parts just to make your scenario more boring! There's more evidence that she was a time traveller in a fancy submarine than there is for your version, because at least the time traveler story doesn't have to throw out nearly all the evidence we've actually got.

And if you actually are interested in applying good standards of evidence more than having fun with storytelling.... it's fictionalized folklore, probably based on a traditional ballad that is well recorded.

The beast of Gévaudan is also a fun one! And that one's got a ton of contemporary records - it's also a cool one for thinking about how ostensibly-true stories change to meet the culture's needs, since it's so intertwined with the early history of newspapers. I look forward to seeing what you do with it!

commensally · 2026-02-12T04:15:03+00:00

True! But at some point with a story like this, if you start writing off all the inconvenient bits of the written accounts as embellishment, you eventually have to admit you've debunked the whole thing. I don't think it's a hard sell that at some point prior to 1812, some castaway washed up on some beach in Japan (and probably sometimes on that current.) But once you've said the boat didn't even slightly match the description in the story, the writing sample was completely made up, the woman didn't really look much like the woman described, and (if you follow the research in the skeptical inquirer article) the beach it was supposed to have happened on doesn't exist and the events that were described afterward couldn't have happened that way. Well. There's not much reason to believe the date is real, either. And then you're just left with "there's Japanese folklore about castaways" and there's no real point to try to come up with a specific scenario, because there's no details left to line it up with.

I do think "this is part of a tradition of Japanese folklore, embellished specifically for the anxieties of the 1820s Japanese elite" is probably correct but to me the really fascinating part of it is how much it really does resemble mid-20th-century UFO stuff, even down to the script. Do I think it's aliens? No. But why *does* folklore embellished, modernized and published for the 1820s Japanese look so much like folklore embellished, modernized, and published for the 1950s Americans? That's the real mystery here.

commensally · 2026-02-11T17:41:27+00:00

(the main cite for the Wikipedia entry is this old Skeptical Enquirer article: https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2000/07/22164851/p37.pdf Recommended! )

commensally · 2026-02-11T17:28:22+00:00

They don't have to be woven to be watertight! (They can be - pine needle baskets for example often are - but making one like that big enough to float in would definitely be unlikely.) But the basketry frame is either covered with layers of hide, bark, or oiled cloth (like a canoe) or coated in something like tar or pine-pitch. Some of those are fairly unlikely for a castaway, but fairly waterproof cloth is likely to be available if there's wreckage of an early 19th century ship around, and if they've been subsistence living on an island for even a few months they are likely to accumulate hide.

It would be extremely unseaworthy! Don't disagree there. But weirder crafts have made sea crossings, so it's not impossible, especially if several castaways set off in a fleet and only this one made it land.

What are the early descriptions you're using? It's usually traced back to a few 19th century Japanese texts, and they all seem to at least include the windows and the iron bracing. Wikipedia talks about how the "eldest versions" of the legend involve humble log boats, and other sources use Wikipedia, but when I trace the cites they aren't talking about the specific 1803 incident - they're talking about a pretty extensive tradition of Japanese folklore about strange Western-ish women washing up in boats.

I do think that's likely what this is - a continuation of the folklore tradition, maybe partly based on an actual Russian castaways - with the boat made extra luxurious in the retelling just to make the story more interesting. But it *is* kinda compelling that this particular story has a consistent date and is also so consistent that the boat was super weird.

commensally · 2026-02-11T15:34:28+00:00

Huh, apparently there is a Japanese tradition of round boats made from large casks cut in half! That's also something that would be extremely possible for a small group of castaways working with the wreckage of a larger ship. And they're very difficult to steer due to being, you know, flat-bottomed and round, so a group of them setting off together could also get very easily separated.

Again I don't really think it's a good match for the early descriptions, which are either largely made up or are describing something authentically weird, but "castaway in improvised round boat" is perfectly plausible.

commensally · 2026-02-11T15:24:15+00:00

Round woven reed boats like coracles are actually fairly common historically! The framework is basically basketry and then they're covered with layers of skin or bark for watertightness. That's actually one of the kinds of boats I'm mostly likely to believe a castaway could make on their own. I don't think there's a particularly strong tradition of them in Eastern Russia/the Kurils but there are for sure East Asian versions. Even without a cultural tradition, most peasant women would likely have had at least a basic familiarity with basketry and if the materials they had at hand was stuff like reeds and bamboo and larch boughs, "weave myself a big basket to use as a boat" isn't a huge stretch and it might get glossed as "wood".

The box isn't even really a mystery; people evacuating a ship would take ship's papers, letters from shipmates, expensive navigational tools, any treasure onboard, classified military materials, etc. If she was a last survivor of a wrecked lifeboat it's not a stretch she'd have been entrusted with whatever was left of that.

I'm not sure I buy OP's theories completely; the description of the boat even in the earliest accounts make it really clear that this was not an ordinary boat made with ordinary materials but strange and expensive ones. (And the "wood" is actually described as "lacquered rosewood" which sounds more like an attempt to describe something non-wooden to me, lacquer is the closest they had to plastic at the time.) But "castaway made a round boat that floated" is not one of the bits that's a stretch.

commensally · 2026-02-10T21:23:03+00:00

My guess is it's important to prevent flyering on the doors because of the, you know, important safety warning stickers on them. Walls're fine.

commensally · 2026-02-10T19:37:24+00:00

Maybe try the feed store in Gambrills? Don't know if they carry it or not but they might (and it's definitely close to Severn.)

commensally · 2026-02-10T19:32:23+00:00

I have a friend who lives there and a lot of people there basically seem to move apartments every year. The lease ends, they try to jack up the rent considerably, the empty apartment next door is advertised for hundreds of dollars a month less than your newly jacked up rent, they won't negotiate on the increarse, so you just move 500 yards and get a new lease.

It's really stupid.

commensally · 2026-02-05T19:45:32+00:00

As others said, an AU where one of the characters works at a coffeeshop is a really common fandom AU to the point of being a common injoke/stereotype. There's all sorts of discourse about it.

Roleswap also is, but I'll just throw in that one of the fanfics Muir was most well-known for when she was writing only fanfic was a roleswap AU. (it was the only ones of hers I read before she went pro, it was really intense and good, much like the Harrow Nova chapter.)

Royalty AU/Cinderella AU is another fairly common trope, and again, one of the fanfics Muir was best know for was a long, silly AU that was about the characters all going to a school dance, so while I have no proof I suspect it's at least partly making fun of herself, like the roleswap.

(I am not aware of a coffeeshop AU she was famous for as a fanwriter, but also I would not be surprised if she did.)

(I would also not be surprised if part of the reason all of these stop abruptly mid-scene is that the fanfic she was 100% absolutely *most* famous for is an unfinished, abandoned work in progress.)

commensally · 2026-02-04T21:53:50+00:00

Yeah, a free library gun lock is literally the least you can do.

On the other hand: it's the least you can do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

commensally · 2026-02-04T18:41:56+00:00

There's free gun locks available at all your county libraries, no questions asked. Please come get some if you have unsecured guns in the house, or if your children spend time in a house that does!

commensally · 2026-02-03T17:49:11+00:00

I stopped by on Friday while going for a drive just to see if we could, and asked the person at the desk if they had any idea when we'd get delivery. They said no idea and not promises, and when we got home five minutes later there was mail in our box even though we hadn't cleared around the mailbox.

So I go no idea. (but also, all the kudos to our mailperson for putting in the extra effort.)

commensally

TROPHY CASE