>>5116754 it was probably a wolf, the french are a superstitious, cowardly lot, thats how a giraffe became the questing beast, and the crocodile became the tarasque
It was absolutely an example of a phantom animal. The "escape from a rich person's zoo" doesn't sound plausible because all descriptions of the creature involve some phrase like "nobody could figure out what the fuck it was". The Medieval world was not ignorant, they'd have noted some defining trait of the creature which they would themselves use to identify it, and no mention was made of unusual vocalizations that would make Hyena a likely explanation. >>5116763 >giraffe became the questing beast, and the crocodile became the tarasque Neither of these are true. Sometimes mythological creatures are just mythological. With the Beast of Gevudan, there was an actual corpse that was examined.
>>5116754 From the descriptions I always thought it would be a South American Maned Wolf or a subspecies of it. It's always been interesting because the documented accounts of the beast openly state it was not at all much like a wolf and that it looked strange. I never bought into the Hyena thing either because there's no written statements anywhere about the beast "laughing" and that would have been a pretty significant thing to document about it if it did.
>>5116836 They've been around for a while so they could have been much more aggressive then and those were the ones that were all culled by people while the timid and docile ones stayed alive and kept mating.
>>5116839 Nah. Their behaviour simply doesn't match at all. They behave more like foxes than true wolves. Besides the fact that they only hunt small animals and morning even close to human size, they eat a fucktonne of wolfapples. They're the majority of their diet. Hard to believe The Beast would eat apples of any kind and I don't think wolf apples exist outside of South American savannahs and scrublands.
>>5116754 The neck always screamed Hyena to me but the tail always throws that off for me I honestly don't know what the fuck the Beast of Gevudan was.
>>5116852 All these artworks were made by people going off the same vague descriptions we have access to. The sculptors/painters never saw it >>5116911 Way too small to be a tiger. It was supposedly 130 pounds and a tiger cub isn’t going to be very successful as a man eater
>>5116815 it is, because the description of the questing beast is how you would describe a giraffe by comparing it to other animals >body of a leopard, feet of a deer, tail of a lion, and head and neck of a snake its similar to how kirin are described, every time someone talks about some weird animal with spots and deer feet is usually going to be a giraffe, because a giraffe is a really strange creature and its very easy to draw the connection between a tarasque and a crocodile >a dragon, half animal, half fish, thicker than an ox, longer than horse, with sword-like teeth its very common for giant river/water monster to be a crocodile, because theyre dangerous and made going to waterholes dangerous, and they didnt have access to the oceans to see whales or sharks
>>5116932 >It turns out that the beast was a lion that Jean-François brought back from Africa as a cub that was tortured into becoming vicious and trained to wear spiked metal armor. spoiled fuck you
>>5116754 >killing over 100 people that sounds kinda unlikely, unless it's straight up supernatural. or several wolf attacks that were just attributed to the same animal
>>5116754 >What was the Beast of Gravytown? >read the wiki article >described as wolf like >colored like a wolf >wolf attacks were rampant in the era in which the Beast was active Must have been a cryptid.
>>5116833 Why would a maned wolf be a maneater? Isn't a big part of their diet fruit? I would imagine somebody's shitbull would be more dangerous than this thing.
>>5116815 >It was absolutely an example of a phantom animal. The "escape from a rich person's zoo" doesn't sound plausible because all descriptions of the creature involve some phrase like "nobody could figure out what the fuck it was". The Medieval world was not ignorant, they'd have noted some defining trait of the creature which they would themselves use to identify it, and no mention was made of unusual vocalizations that would make Hyena a likely explanation. 1764-1767 is only a decade before the American revolution and right after the French and Indian War. This was not the middle ages, this was the 1700s. Ancien Regime France only seems "medieval" because the social and economic structures of French absolutism retarded its development. Newton was already pretty much a century ago. There's a world of difference between the Middle Ages (til 1300-1400) and the 1700s when the age of exploration has been going on for centuries and now modern physics, chemistry and biology (with Linnaeus's Systema Naturae) are all taking off. French robe nobility/people who got state-funded sinecures like >>5116800 is alluding to legit included chemists like Lavoisier who discovered oxygen. The enlightenment and modern politics was also taking off, as was European domination of parts of the world with their own respectable old civilizations (like India). You should read Tim Blanning's Pursuit of Glory and Voltaire's Candide to get a feel for the period. It's probably one of the most fun in human history.
>>5117908 >Ancien Regime France only seems "medieval" because the social and economic structures of French absolutism retarded its development. And even then mostly in rural areas the cities had salons and other modern era shit where you absolutely would not get burned for witchcraft* or whatever else dumbass redditors think would happen if you showed people an Iphone in any era before trannies and nigger rights
*witch burnings were primarily a product of the protestant reformation which was still early modern and not medieval btw
>>5116754 People want to believe that it was an escaped hyena or a jaguar or whatever but the most likely answer is that it was just a big fucking wolf
>>5116754 Likely a series of wolf/wolfdog attacks, be it from one pack or several, combined with mass hysteria. I like the idea that at least the "main" beast was some giant fuckass wolfdog since those can be pretty vicious.
That or the anomalies from Primeval are real and some ancient beardog or hyaenadont was running about France munching on the common folk. Would make a cool episode.
>>5116754 >far bigger than any wolf >reddish-brown >long, thin tail that was said to have a tuft of fur at the tip and had a single dark stripe that ran down its back >witnesses specifically said it would pounce prey, climb on top of cattle, and heavily relied on sharp claws This is a big cat. Like a sub-adult lion that slipped from a noble's menagerie
>>5119358 I don't know, it would be strange if nobody knew what a lion was in the 1700s, I mean, it was and is the most famous animal in the world and the lion symbol was everywhere.
>>5119447 When the point of reference to what a lion looks like for majority of people is things like this, I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't the first thing to come to a farmer's mind, especially if the beast was a younger lion that hasn't grown out a mane yet.
>>5116815 >The Medieval world was not ignorant They believed their imagination was real and were superstitious as fuck, especially the french. Also unable to pass information ahead without altering it to seem more impressive and badass, see >>5117752. They were ignorant as hell
First off wolf attacks at this time were very common. Particularly in France and Italy. The Turku Wolves in Finland for example killed 30. You’ll find rashes of wolf attacks all over France often numbering in 5-10 fatalities each during the period. Add in hysterical and dramatic Frenchmen lying and embellishing everything like they always do and you have le terrible monster.
There’s the possibility of it being a rabies outbreak but the fact that the kids were eaten makes me doubt it.
Most common scenario is a medium sized pack of wolves figured out human children were as easy a meal as their sheep were and did their thing. Foppish French Dandy nobles shot some wolves and called it a day. The job was half done. Some more kids got ate. Chastel shot another one. The pack fragmented and fucked off.
I would also like to note that the whole menagerie and wolf/dog theories are a direct throwback to the Wolf of Gysinge which was a pet wolf that escaped and attacked 31 killing 12.
The Russian wolf attacks are where the juicy shit is though. Russian wolves murder hard.
>>5116977 That movie was pure shit. I hated it. Had my girlfriend watch it a few months ago because ahe'd never seen it before. She hated it too. At least I warned it was shit. The acting is terrible. The plotline is shit. The movie is basically an excuse for exhibitionistic Hollywood whores to violate us with their disgusting nudity. May as well have been a retarded porn.
IMO: It was a serial killer carrying out the attacks. Bodies were found and superstitious stories started being spread around until it became a legend.
>>5116754 A subadult male lion. It size and coloring are that of a subadult male lion as well as it use of claws and its hunting habit of jumping on the backs of livestock to kill it. Probably escaped from a menagerie somewhere.
>>5128582 They didn't become extinct, they just realized that continuing to expose themselves to danger doesn't work when you're outnumbered 10,000 to 1.
>>5116754 big wolf specimen potentially injured in a way that got in the way of hunting its prefered way so they go for something slower and youre not gonna outrun a boar or a deer
>>5116813 The Beast of Gevudan killed and ate plenty of women too. Its first two victims were 14-year-old girls, and at that age they'd be almost the same size as adult women.
>>5117908 >enlightment That was just proto-marxist fuckwittery and slander of tradition. Nothing enlightening about other than demonstrating how much degenerate pseuds like to sniff their own farts.