RetiredUSNChief
Member
A full-grown wolf is as big as a full-grown mountain lion. I know as fact that two attacks by mountain lions in Big Bend National Park were initiated against small children of the 6-to-10 age group.
I figure that a hungry predator will go after a "target of opportunity". If I have a small child who has to wait for a school bus and the wait is at a spot a fair ways from home, I'll arrange for some sort of protection. "Cage", sit in the truck, whatever.
Just because some event has not happened does not mean that it cannot happen or won't happen.
Children are "target(s) of opportunity" because they trip the stalking instinct in predators.
Wolf Park (Battleground, In) is where I learned a bit about wolf behavior. One of the first things we were told as a group before we went out to the fenced area as part of our tour was to watch what happens to the wolves as soon as one of the children in our group starts fidgeting, whimpering, or crying. Such behaviors flip the "PREY!" alert in the wolves and they'll start stalking the kid.
Sure enough, just as soon as one of the little kids started crying, every wolf in sight stopped what they were doing and focused their attention on THAT child. Then a couple approached the fence and started pacing back and forth along the fence in the immediate vicinity of the child, always maintaining eye contact with THAT child.
Most people (read: idiots who insist on thinking of wolves as dogs) think such behavior is "cute" and/or "caring", in the same fashion that they would for domesticated dogs. But our guide informed us that wolves are NOT dogs and everything we were seeing about their response to that child was STALKING. That child was telling the wolves loudly and clearly "I AM FOOD FOR THE TAKING".
People should NOT screw with predators and should NOT mistake them for something they are not. And they most certainly should NOT underestimate them.