Canary Island Mastiff

News headlines blared that 4 people have been found dead and partially eaten in Mexico City’s Cerro de la Estrella, a partially wooded hill top park.

Sources say the victims were killed by packs of feral dogs.  The large park is home to many abandoned dogs  who eke out a living in this impoverished section of Mexico’s capital.

Authorities are warning people to stay out of the park until they get to the bottom of the deaths.

But many people are saying it is hard to believe that the dogs roaming around the park are capable of inflicting the great bodily harm they are seeing on the victims and also say nothing like this has happened before. There have been reports of some minor attacks on humans in the past, but none fatal.

Police are combing through the park capturing any dogs they find to see if any of them are the killers.  But pictures of some of the newly captured dogs hardly fit the description of killer types, but are the more cute and cuddly type including: beagles, maltese, poodles; etc.


 Antemio Maya, president of the Street Dog Protection association in Mexico City, doubts that these dogs could have killed the people found in the park.

'It's not the behavior of street dogs to kill humans,' Maya said. Besides look at the dogs captured so far, do they look like killer type dogs?

But Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement: “Experts have established that due to the gravity of the wounds, at least 10 dogs were involved in each attack.”

The 4 victims were found in different parts of the park and all had died from bleeding to death caused by their wounds.  Prosecutors say evidence shows the victims were not killed elsewhere and dumped in the park.

One of the victims had her arm torn off and all of them had been partially eaten.

But if it is not the parks feral dogs killing these people then what is it?

Mans best friend can also be a fierce-some enemy 

There is some speculation, that the victims could have been killed by trained attack dogs used by some of the Mexican drug cartels. 

Some breeds like the Canary Island Mastiff  are favorites of gangs.  These breeds can weigh 120 lbs and are trained to be ferocious killers, as evidenced by a woman killed by a pair of them in San Francisco several years ago.  See Kimberly Guilfoyleprosecutes dog owners.

It is also speculated that the victims could have been killed by pit bull fighting dogs who got unleashed and killed the humans.

Throughout the centuries dogs have been trained in warfare and there are many books written on their exploits.  Ancient armies were accompanied by their dogs of war that they would unleash on their enemies causing terror.

During the war of 1812, at the battle of New Orleans, the American army under General Jackson, unleashed their hounds on the British soldiers, who had turned and run. As written about in a famous song.

But dogs have been known to change character when more than a couple of them team up…It seems a wildness comes out in them and they do resort to violence as is evidenced by massive kills of livestock by packs of domestic dogs….Who kill just to kill, not to eat.

But to attack humans and actually kill and eat them, is a rarity among domestic stray dogs in a civilized society.

It will be interesting to see if the Mexican authorities get to the bottom of this.  They say they will round up all of the stray dogs in the area and test their stomach content to see if they have been dining on humans…Stay tuned