Determination of an animal's involvement, or lack thereof, in another animal's or a human's death may be of great importance. Examples that regularly appear in the news include wolf predation on livestock in the western U.S. and human/livestock encounters with mountain lions. It may be necessary for investigators to determine if a predator was responsible for the killing or if a predator was scavenging a carcass that died from some other etiology.

Also, it may be necessary to determine what kind of animal(s) or even what individual was responsible. Investigators may examine pattern of attack, bite marks, hair samples, and saliva DNA to help identify the culprit. We will review a hypothetical case to further explore the techniques involved.

This domestic dog was found mauled at a western national park. Another animal fled when the owners approached, but they did not obtain a good enough look to identify the animal.

As there had been recent concern over mountain lions in the vicinity, local wildlife enforcement submitted the carcass for forensic analysis. The first step would be to determine if these wounds were made while the dog was alive or after death.

In this case, it is fairly obvious given the appearance of the wounds and that the history probably indicated a young, happy, and healthy dog only an hour before it was found. The task would be more difficult if we were examining a calf that may have been stillborn.

For conjecture, do you remember how to determine whether the wounds were inflicted before or after death?

Yes, the edges of wounds inflicted before death would be engorged with blood. As is part of any forensic necropsy, you would need to determine if there were any concurrent or contributing medical abnormalities.

Next, the pattern of attack can be inferred from the pattern of the bite wounds. In the photograph above, the dog's head lies to the right. The wounds consist of a large area over the thoracolumbar spine and a second area over the neck. Two sets of large puncture wounds are identified over the affected areas.

At the time of necropsy, samples are taken in the region of the bite wound for possible saliva DNA extraction.

Hunting behavior varies between predator species. For our purposes, we only will discuss canids and felids. Canids (wolves, domestic dogs, etc.) often slow their prey by attacking the distal limbs.This may be evident at necropsy by damage to the region of the gastrocnemius muscles as is seen often in predated artiodactylids.

Another feature of the bite wounds of canids is that the lesions may be most apparent in the tissues underlying the skin, with little external evidence of trauma.

Also, canids may hunt in groups while most cat species are solitary hunters, African lions being one exception. Felids, such as mountain lions, frequently drag down larger prey by lunging onto the back. The final kill is made by a bite to the cervical region. The case above was ruled as most likely a mountain lion attack.

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