Surprising Animals That Have Attacked Humans
There are a lot of things in nature that could probably mess up your day real bad if they wanted to. Though it may not surprise you to learn that lions, tigers, and falling trees could probably beat you in a fist fight, there are some less obvious animals known to have attacked people for a variety of reasons.
The rampaging billy goat that terrorized an entire town
A single billy goat might have the upper hand when taking on a single human. Goats are strong and persistent and have a low center of gravity. But when it's several dozen people against one goat, you'd think the people would be able to work together. Judging by the above video, you'd be wrong.
Sometime in 2013, in the Brazilian village of Londrina, a lone goat decided it had enough of all these pesky humans. It knocked a scooter and its two riders off balance, then plowed another woman to the ground. Don't worry: a man standing nearby came to her defense, kicking at the goat. Good ol' Billy responded by butting him in the no-no happy place a couple times, which is a couple more than most people need to get the hint.
Several other villagers got chased down the street, around their cars, and up poles, while one enterprising gent got butted multiple times while filming video on his phone. Clearly, this goat wasn't ready for its close-up. After that, the footage ends, so it's unclear what happened to the goat. Maybe the whole town got together and enjoyed a nice dinner.
The angry alpaca that really hated her zookeepers
Alpacas aren't usually dangerous. They're giant fluffballs that are so cute that it's hard to be mad if they spit in your face. But if you cross one, expect an alpaca on your backa real fast.
In January 2015, AOL reported that a llama-alpaca hybrid named Misty had an adventurous run-in with Brian Barczyk, a producer for Animal Bytes TV volunteering at Maryland's Tri-State Zoological Park. Thinking Misty would be gentle like most other alpacas, Barczyk went to work cleaning up the petting zoo area, but Misty wasn't having it. She quickly starts jumping on Barczyk, tackling him and pushing him away as he attempts to rake up her dirty business. Barczyk tries to stop the insanity, yelling at Misty, "I'm just trying to get to the poo!" Sadly, Misty must've flunked English, because all she heard was "please keep chasing me." And so she did.
Finally, Barczyk abandons all pretense of doing his job and started running for the hills, with Misty chasing him around the pen. After a few laps, Barczyk jumps a fence and takes a breather. Later footage shows Misty attacking the zookeeper too, so perhaps she was just having a bad day.
The goose that attacked a police officer (and won)
The Canada goose, despite being named after one of the most welcoming and friendly countries on Earth, is kind of a douche. The bird is well-known for its aggressiveness and for attacking people for no apparent reason, like when one attacked a policeman in the U.S. and totally whupped him in early 2017. Thankfully for our purposes, it was captured on a security camera.
The unnamed Clarksville, Kentucky, detective was walking to work when the goose blindsided him with a beak in early 2017. The officer, no doubt calling on years of crisis training, responded by attempting to club the errant waterfowl out of the air with his bag when it attacked again, but he entirely forgot about his own balance and fell back into a patch of bushes. Still, the goose was no longer between him and the office, so he ran away with the goose hot on his heels. The officer, according to one source who spoke to WDRB-TV in Kentucky, only suffered an injury to his pride, but the mocking honks of that goose will likely haunt him for years to come.
The boxing kangaroo that went rogue on his trainers
Australia has a well-deserved reputation for housing animals that, on a good day, want us all dead. But kangaroos seem mostly OK — they just hop around and might look adorable with boxing gloves on. Turns out, kangaroos aren't Socker Boppers.
But two kangaroo trainers appeared on the Morning Exchange Show in the U.S. to promote a "comedy act" starring their boxing kangaroo, Killer Willard. According to Metro, the footage was likely filmed sometime in the 1980s. Regardless, Willard was feeling grumpy enough to live up to his nickname. He socked one trainer, Irene, in the face while her co-trainer and husband tried in vain to keep him away. Willard eventually went after his leashmaster instead, punching and tackling him until finally leveling him with hefty kick. The trainer was only lightly injured, although he did look pretty stupid.
According to Irene, Willard was mad because "people make coats" and dog food out of his roo buddies. That's understandable, but maybe he's also mad because you're putting him on a freaking leash and aggravating him all day. Or maybe it was his understanding of a complex, large-scale practice affecting his entire species. Hard to say.
The ladybug that nearly killed a man
You probably think of ladybugs, also called ladybirds, as among the cutest bugs in the world. It helps that they're harmless, right? Well ... usually. While it's very rare, ladybugs sometimes bite humans. In one such rare case, a particularly ornery ladybug reportedly came frightfully close to killing a full-grown man.
According to the BBC, in November 2016, Stoke-on-Trent bodybuilder Reza Rezamand was on his way to a competition when a harlequin ladybird bit him. He brushed it off, went and did his muscly thing, and then fell ill several hours later. Turns out, that teensy little bite had caused sepsis, where the body goes into extreme mode to fight off bacterial infection. Sepsis can kill people, and Rezamand was on that path. He provided pictures of his feet swelled up to a ridiculous size and said a combination of antibiotics and prompt medical care saved his life. Now you know: if a ladybug bites you, it might not have been a little love nip. You might want to seek professional care.
A drunk pig tried to pick a fight with an entire campsite
Back in 2013 a group of Australian campers in a Port Hedland campsite were awoken in the middle of the night by the telltale sound of a pig snuffling around their tents. Considering that Australia is home to giant, mouse-eating spiders, a feral pig might not seem noteworthy. But this pig was drunk.
According to The Independent, the pig managed to open and drink about 18 beers that had been left outside someone's tent. After what must have been an epic round of shotgunning, the drunken hog began acting like anyone else would after 18 beers. Specifically, it tore open some trash bags and tried to pick a fight with the biggest thing in sight.
Luckily for the campers, that thing was a cow, which the porker tried to attack. When that got boring, it swam to a small island and collapsed under a tree to sleep off the hangover. Impressive.
A rabid beaver needed to be stoned to death
It's easy to look at a beaver and assume it poses no danger to a fully grown human being since it's roughly football-shaped and could presumably be punted a fair distance if necessary. As one unlucky man found out in 2012, though, it's not a good idea to underestimate an especially angry beaver.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal (via the Associated Press), a Boy Scout leader named Normand Brousseau was swimming in Pennsylvania when he felt something biting chest. Brousseau quickly grabbed the creature, hurled it several feet away, and continued swimming.
Within seconds, the beaver (which was later found to have rabies) was attacking Brousseau again, biting chunks out of his legs, thighs, and yes, his derriere. Calling upon the kind of strength that can probably only be mustered when you've just been bitten on the butt, Brousseau once again wrenched the animal out of the water and threw it to shore. Spying no human opponents, the beaver turned its attention to a nearby pool noodle, viciously apparently attacking it without mercy. By this point, Brousseau's scout troop had been alerted. The young scouts heroically stoned the beaver to death. So don't mess with the Boy Scouts.
A man once had an hour-long brawl with a goat
In 2016, a 73-year-old Australian man living on the Gold Coast was surprised when he spied a small goat walking around his yard. A while later, several paramedics and a couple police officers were in the man's yard dragging the two apart.
Exactly what happened isn't clear, but ABC News (Australia) reported the man and the goat fought for "some time" before the goat's bleating and man's screams alerted a neighbor who called by the sounds of it, every emergency number they could think of. The man suffered several cuts and bruises and fought with the animal long enough that he became dehydrated. The goat meanwhile was still trying to attack people when the police arrived, so they restrained it and sent it to the local pound. Maybe this guy was the third of the three billy goats gruff.
The squirrel that took down a cyclist with his noggin
It's hard to believe a creature as small, fuzzy, and (dare we say it) wuzzy as a squirrel would ever attack a human being unprovoked. We massively outweigh them, most of us can punch pretty hard, and we don't live in the trees. Weirdly, though, squirrel attacks are common enough that some politicians and experts have proposed squirrel culls. One such politician is Howard Brookins, who was injured in 2016 when a squirrel ran headfirst into the spokes of his bicycle, killing itself instantly and causing Brookins to flip over the handlebars and fracture his skull.
What made this attack most unusual is that Brookins was a Chicago city councilman who had recently spoken out about the squirrel menace in Chicago. It would probably be a bit of a leap to say the squirrels put a hit out on Brookins, but Brookins himself suggested it was an act of revenge. And it does seem suspicious. Yeah, we're onto you, squirrels.
A rabbit in the U.K. sent a woman to the hospital
If the great documentary Monty Python and the Holy Grail has taught us anything, it's that sometimes, rabbits in the Middle Ages would leap through the air to try and tear out people's throats. It's just in their nature. Luckily, after many centuries, this killer instinct has been bred out of the common house rabbit. Right?
According to the Telegraph, in 2015, a small lop-eared bunny named Jack "stunned" rabbit experts with the levels of aggression he displayed. Jack, sometimes called "Thugs Bunny" by his handlers, would chase people around the room when let out of his cage and would nip the hands of anyone who fed him. (Yes, even despite a longstanding adage that discourages this.) Volunteers at the animal shelter joked that he had a taste for human blood, a joke that stopped being funny when Jack attacked an elderly woman so viciously she reportedly went to a hospital for treatment.
Animals psychiatrists were called in to provide some relief, so let's hope the little rascal's therapy has calmed him down.
The seal who didn't like surfers
Seals are pretty adorable. Their faces look like dog faces, and they're so fat they basically roll around when they're on land. But in the water, the animals are surprisingly agile and shouldn't be underestimated. According to the Daily Telegraph of Australia, a group of Australian surfers found this out the hard way in 2016 when an aggravated seal used its body as a battering ram to knock one of them over and then left comically horrifically big bite marks on two of their boards.
Those surfers got off a lot easier than a man named Nathan Shepherd who was reportedly attacked by the same seal while surfing about an hour later. Shepard headed to the hospital for stitches after the seal leaped out of the water and bit into his arm in midair. Experts said the seal must have felt threatened, which is probably not too surprising considering how many humans there are in the world these days.
Two swans terrorized a bunch of old people
The elegant appearance of the common swan belies the bird's true nature as a creature seemingly fueled by nothing but anger at the world at large for making them look so fabulous. Over in the U.K., mute swans in particular are noted for their aggression and territorial nature. In one instance, a pair of them terrorized an entire community of elderly people for several months in Brimscombe, England, in 2016. According to the Telegraph, the birds chased cyclists, tore up gardens, and were even observed trying to bite a car.
The elderly residents of the small community began carrying water pistols with them at all times to scare the birds away. Other residents tried to best the birds physically, which saw at least one old woman attempt to beat one of the swans with her walking stick when it attacked her.
Not all the residents minded the swans, though. One elderly swan sympathizer reportedly said they were "magnificent creatures who have more right than we do to live by the river." Well! Never mind about all the aggression and fighting then.