It’s not hard to find news articles about animal bites. That’s because they are very common, sometimes incite controversy (e.g. to euthanize the offending animal or not) and occasionally cause severe injury or death.

Here’s a sampling of some recent reports:

  • The University of Arizona Medical Center is reporting a steady increase in dog bites, with an almost doubling of bite numbers between 2008 and 2012. Three-hundred and twenty-eight (328) people were admitted with bites last year, including both children and adults. Most were bitten on the hands and fingers, and most were bitten by their own dogs. There were no deaths reported in 2012, but there was one in 2011, a man that was bitten in the neck and arm by his own pit bull cross.
  • Sixty-three dog bite deaths were reported in Mumbai, India, over the past 5 years, out of a total of at least 90 000 people who are bitten annually.
  • A Stoney Creek, Ontario mother is lobbying to have her neighbour’s two German shepherds euthanized after they attached her 10-year-old son. The dogs were on leashes and being held by a friend of the owner’s 14-year-old son when "The dogs became startled" and the boy was bitten on the arm and face. The dogs’ owner argues that only one dog was involved, but figuring that out will be next to impossible. This raises a few different issues. One is the fact that a child, and not even a child of the owner, was responsible for the control of two large dogs in a public place. Another is what lead to the bite. The owner accuses the boy of taunting the dogs in the past, but even if that were true, previous taunting (what did he do? accuse the dogs of having a chihuahua for a mother?) isn’t an excuse for biting.

While we often focus on dog bites, pretty much any animal with a mouth can bite. Records from a New South Wales, Australia, ambulance service reveal some more unusual calls for help in response to animal interactions. These include:

  • A call because of a "deep bite on the hand" with "serious bleeding" after a woman was bitten by a Guinea pig. They were also called for a Guinea pig bite to a 4-year-old boy. The fact that Guinea pigs would bite isn’t surprising, but the fact that the bite would lead to an ambulance call is.
  • A call for a cat bite that severed an unnamed artery of an 80-year-old man. Hopefully it was a small artery.
  • While not a bite (although cattle can bite), ambulances were called when a cow hit a 83-year-old man in the stomach, lifting him 3 feet in the air, and when a water buffalo tossed another man.
  • Other animal associated calls included incidents caused by critters including a blue-ringed octopus, a catfish (would love to have the story about that one) and a goanna (a type of Australian monitor lizard – had to look that one up).
  • And (not surprisingly, for Australia) there were shark bites, including a spear fisher who was "nudged" by a grey nurse shark attracted to the fish he had caught, and a more serious attack by a bull shark that resulted in loss of a finger and a serious leg laceration.
  • Snake and spider bites weren’t even listed in the report for some reason.

Understanding why bites occur is important to preventing them, and it’s different in different areas. In North America, where most dog bites are from family pets, better training of the dog and people in the household is critical. In a place like Mumbai, where there are tens of thousands of stray dogs living in close confines with people and where many bites are from strays, a different approach is needed. Bites from pocket pets usually result from improper handling or trying to break up a fight. Shark bites are also another story. Ultimately, a lot of prevention is common sense, which unfortunately is not always that common.