I am not currently in possession of a copy of the book but I was last fall for a research paper. He told a story of a large black wolf that actually hopped about like a kangaroo. Clearly, this would have been an animal afflicted by disease or injury- but it was somehow still fending for itself. Perhaps this killer kangaroo was something similar. The account I just mentioned however is somewhat muddied by another tale. He mentions having twice seen a wallaby which I believe he also says was black.

Both of the tales are included as essentially “bonus material” as they only appear outside the main narrative. The book is assembled as I alluded to above out of his personal papers. He knew that his story and that of the Apache was worth telling and it seems that he had considered doing so in both a serial magazine form and as a direct memoir. Unfortunately, during his lifetime this had not really been possible for him as the credit for Geronimo’s surrender was shifted to others. Gatewood’s determined honesty and integrity had caused to run afoul of both General George Crook and his replacement General Nelson A. Miles.

If you have access to a decent library it should be possible to attain a copy of the book. I believe the chapter is titled “The Black Devil.” The wolf was eventually killed and he attempted to obtain the hide/skull but was unable to- the man who had killed it was unwilling to part with the trophy.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to shoot down what you were saying. Of course your observations are welcome and appreciated. In the end, we just don’t know what is going on here and can’t really assume anything I suppose. I was curious about certain aspects of the case.

Thanks for throwing in your to cents.

I certainly think a bear is capable of this, and it was actually my first choice over coyotes. That image shows pretty conclusively that a head could remain in the case of a large carnivore working it’s way through a dog. I actually did not mean to turn this into a discussion on just heads remaining. It was an aside and just a little detail I found curious and wanted more information on.

My main point here was that it was most certainly not a kangaroo.

Anyway, nice work posting that image.

Predators do consume most of their kills over time, but there would still be remains left over, bones and such that scavengers would then pick through. In those nature shows, you see the middle eaten out but there are still various parts that are remaining after the predator has eaten its fill. You don’t just have a perfect head remaining while everything else, bones and all are completely devoured without a trace. It’s odd.

The sort of picking over that would remove all trace of remains of the carcass except the head would take time, and the work of scavengers. Even if that were the case, then the head would most certainly show signs of being eaten as well. The head has soft tissues that would be targeted by scavengers and it would not be completely intact. The head does have edible parts on it.

Also, an expensive dog like a German sheperd would likely be missed fairly quickly, and the kind of total consumption of a large dog would take time. A perfect, untouched head remaining would be strange in the extreme.

I don’t have enough information to go on from this article. There is also the possibility that the body was taken elsewhere. But it is a little odd to me that everything would be gone except the head and shoulders. I would expect some other remnants of the carcass to be left behind as well.

Not really enough info to go on here, but if it is just a head sitting there while everything else is completely gone, that is a bit strange.

While it humans could be responsible, from my knowledge of animal behavior, the head of an animal is often the last part consumed by a predator. How often do you watch a nature documentary and see a leopard kill in a tree that’s essentially had the middle of it eaten out? The head doesn’t have a lot of meat. Areas like hindquarters and body cavity would be eaten first, for sure. I don’t find that part strange at all.

First, a normally herbivorous animal would likely resort to eating meat only under remarkable circumstances, such as if there was no other food available. Most strictly herbivorous animals have digestive systems that are primarily evolved to deal with plant matter, and they are not as efficient at digesting and deriving nutrients from a carnivorous diet. So meat would not be the first choice of diet if other food sources were available, which I suspect they would be in this particular locale. The herbivorous animal would likely eat whatever resembles its usual diet before resorting to hunting and killing prey.

Second, even if a herbivorous animal did resort to eating meat, it is not adapted to go about efficiently killing it’s prey. Even predators in the wild typically will go after sick or weak animals simply because taking down large prey is not easy business. It has the probablilty of incurring injury, and an injury while doing so can mean starvation and death. So even a large herbivorous kangaroo, not equipped or evolved to efficiently kill large prey, is almost certainly going to go for smaller, weaker animals if it does decide to eat meat. I find the possibility that it would go after a large, aggressive animal such as a German sheperd pretty low. Why would it risk injury or death trying to take down prey it is not designed to handle? Smaller, more harmless animals would be a more liklely target for a herbivorous animal forced into these circumstances.

I also find one detail of this account interesting. The fact that only a head and shoulders remained of the dogs also casts doubt on the possibility that a kangaroo did this. That a kangaroo would attack and kill a large animal like a dog for food is already pushing the limits of plausibility, but that it would strip and eat a carcass to the point that only a head remained? I find that pretty far fetched to say the least. As a matter of fact, only a head remaining is odd no matter what animal did it.

I do know one animal that would kill a dog and leave only a head and shoulders behind. Humans. Without data available for the examination of the carcasses, I have to ask the perhaps obvious question, maybe people did this? I’m not sure if looking for unknown animals is necessary if there is a chance that this is just plain old, fashioned human cruelty. Did anyone see a kangaroo attack the dogs? Was there concrete evidence that an animal did it, and if there is such evidence, could those same forensics that determined that not be used to confirm or rule out the possibility that a kangaroo did it rather than another predator? I say this sounds like something people would do.

I won’t discount the possibility that a large kangaroo was seen, but a kangaroo killing and completely devouring German sheperds and Alsatians seems a stretch. Perhaps there were sightings of such an animal and the killings were unrelated, leading to people attributing them to the kangaroo? Maybe there were sightings of a kangaroo and there were killings, but that does not mean that the kangaroo was necessarily the one doing the killings. It could be that we have two seperate cases here that due to timing converged into one.

Cougars and wolves were mostly extirpated from the eastern US by 1934, so I have my doubts that they would be responsible for the killings. A single coyote would not be able to kill and eat a german shepherd. A bear is possible, I suppose, but black bears will typically run from large dogs (even though they are capable of killing them). An adult male chachma baboon might be able to take a german shepherd out of the game, but I have my doubts. It would be a pretty even match and the monkey would likely suffer serious injuries. Assuming the reports are true, then I think a Thylacine may be a good suspect.