Food for survival, not for the host
Cases where pets ate their owners when they died in lockdown have been featured repeatedly in the media lately. And, according to veterinarian Tatyana Golneva, such events have been known for a long time.
“Even in old Russian fairy tales, there is information about this when people say, “the pig ate the baby.” Yes, a dog and a cat are not pigs, but unlike them, a pig is not a predator. But they are united by one thing: everything that goes into the “feeder”, they eat, if nothing else is offered to them, ”says the doctor.
And the thing is that Golneva believes that animals lack a moral side. They are predators and also live by instincts that come into play naturally under stressful conditions, as in humans.
“Even a dog that loves its owner very much can eat it after it dies, because firstly, its instinct works, and secondly, the animal realizes that it is something else, not the owner anymore. And when a pet eats human meat, it perceives it not as a host, but as food for survival,” says the expert.
Moreover, according to Golneva, there are studies that examine the interest of animals in human corpses. When American forensic scientists checked the degree of decomposition of human corpses in a specially designated area, they recorded cats entering the area and gnawing these corpses. And that takes into account the fact that cats are predators, not scavengers, who tend to scavenge.
“In the absence of a forage base, both cats and dogs can indeed use human meat as food. But we must understand that all these cases are super extreme when the animal is in the most difficult stressed state or when it is completely wild or has mental problems,” says the doctor.
This is confirmed by veterinarian Aziz Alekberov, who assures that if the animal still began to eat its owner, the main reason was precisely the stressful situation. For example, when the owner dies, the animal cannot go out and has no food left.
“Even hungry, abused and exhausted dogs don’t attack their owners for food. But even people out of despair start to eat other people. Half a century ago, a plane crashed in the Andes, and after the crash, the survivors at one point began to eat the corpses of those who died in the disaster. His instincts kicked in. They also work on animals,” says Alekberov.
“I was locked in and untouched for almost 30 days with its dead owner”
As Mikhail Shelyakov, a veterinarian of the highest qualification category, confirms, a person is in principle not included in the food chain of pets and we do not act as their food source, so dogs and cats will never attack either. availability of feed when quenching the hunger of a living or dead person.
“Some train dogs to attack humans. But if we are talking about ordinary pets, or even stray animals, they never attack because they want to eat human flesh. This is their way of dominating and defending the territory.
Those bitten by dogs often make comments in which they say that they were attacked by a stray dog and all this was absolutely starving. But it is not. Dogs attack people on the streets with a kind of hooligan motive – to bite and show who is in charge here, who is the boss. They don’t eat anybody,” says Shelyakov.
At the same time, Dmitry Fedoseev, co-owner of the Aibolit Plus veterinary clinic, notes that dogs were brought to the clinic, which had been hungry for about thirty days, and their owners died in the same apartment with them. They didn’t even touch the owner.
“Occasionally, animals come to us whose owners have died, and in our 15 years of work, someone bit a pet. At the same time, dogs and cats were with their owners for several days or weeks. Pets can lightly bite or scratch a dead person, and then, for the purpose of “awakening the senses”, but eat – in the rarest cases. Although I admit that it can happen. As for dogs, when they see a piece of meat, they can’t tell if it’s a chicken, a pig, or a human,” Fedoseev says.
“An animal that tastes human flesh can be triggered at any time”
However, there is an opinion that once an animal has tasted blood, it will definitely want to feel it again. And such an observation really does come true. Veterinarian Ekaterina Baldrueva says this.
“For any animal that has tasted human flesh, a trigger can occur at any time in interaction with other humans. In many animals, after such events the spirit is broken, respect for a person is lost. For this reason, pets that experience it are often euthanized. But only for humans. If the animal has not lost its mind and is safe – the doctor will say this – it can be taken into “good hands” for training. But even here you need to understand that the approach to it will be private, ”says the doctor.
The latter was approved by the doctor of the highest category, Shelyakov. In his opinion, it is unlikely that an animal that eats human flesh will eat, eat someone else, but there will certainly be irreversible changes in its psyche. At the same time, such pets even need to be socialized and rehabilitated in a special way to eliminate the resulting injury. Shelyakov is sure that other pets that are not in stressful conditions will definitely not try to eat with the owner.