The Mystical Man-Eater Known As The Mysore Bear

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Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to the heart of Southern India. Yes, we have visited India before but this episode is very unusual indeed. The city of Mysore is seated toward the southern tip of the continent and is overshadowed by Chamundi Hill which rises about 1000 feet above its surroundings. The slopes of this hill are crowded with jungles and ravines, the perfect place for a stealthy predator to scrape out a living. Atop this hill is Chimundi Temple which holds a significant spiritual power and cultural importance to practitioners of the Hindu faith. It is said that the Goddess Durga triumphed over the demon king Mahishasura on the top of the hill which he ruled. It is in this setting that our episodes takes place.
In 1957 the locals south of Bengalore became acquainted with a sloth bear that was not particularly afraid of them. As you may know, sloth bears are nearly exclusively herbivorous, meaning that they eat mostly fruits, nuts or plants, but they also eat termites and other insects. They have been known to regularly raid wild bee hives and eat the honey but that is usually the extent of their aggression.
The sloth bear that the locals had run-ins with didn’t have the usual disposition of the average sloth bear. This bear had spent most of its time up on the boulder strewn slopes avoiding people and doing the usual sloth bear activities of food gathering and bee hive raiding. Somehow this bear had developed the habit of descending the slopes and searching out food in the lower areas near the human population. As it foraged among the villages and farms nearby, it apparently lost its fear and respect for humans.
The first reported attack happened near the city of Bangalore in the Nagvara Hills. Whenever the bear found humans it would become extremely aggressive. In some instances, the bear would see people at far off distances and run them down to attack them. This fact removed the notion that the bear was attacking people who happened upon it and surprised it, forcing a defensive attack.
Most of the 24 survivors of the bear attacks would come away missing parts of their face. The bear would use its large canines to grip the structure of the face and skull of its victims then use its long claws, fashioned for breaking into hard termite mounds to rip the victims noses from their face, or sometimes it would tear their cheeks or eyes from their place. For their size, the canine teeth of a sloth bear are larger than any other species and would inflict as much damage on victims as its claws, if not more. Every survivor of an attack by this bear was subject to a life of pain and deformation after a confrontation.
This bear also killed 12 people on top of the previously mentioned maulings. The bear partially consumed at least three of its victims and some of the people it killed had their faces completely removed from their skulls during the attack. Many of them went unreported until far too late to locate the specific bear that was responsible, until the bear killed a young man connected to a professional hunter.
The swath of death and destruction was first brought to the attention of professional hunter Kenneth Anderson, who was a British citizen frequenting the productive hunting grounds of India. A muslim friend of Andersons by the name of Alam Bux had written a postcard to Anderson requesting his help in ridding the area of the predatory and deadly bear after it had killed his son. The young man was only 22 years old and had accidentally run into the bear as he was walking along a road around 9 PM. Unbeknownst to the young man the road to the shrine he was walking was lined with fig trees planted by the shrine attendees and they were shedding their fruit. They had also planted a field of peanuts near the trees, which the bear loved to forage amongst. The sloth bear displayed its growing aggression on the young man by mauling him to death, prompting the postcard from Bux.
Anderson considered hunting the sloth bear to be much easier than other animals he had successfully stalked and killed, such as leopards and tigers. He had already built a renown reputation as a prolific hunter of man-eaters of various species and considered this hunt to be a mundane effort. Given these details, Anderson didn’t prepare for an extended hunt and only gathered his .405 Winchester hunting rifle and a flashlight, plus an extra change of clothes.
Sources:
https://darktales.blog/2019/06/02/the-sloth-bear-of-mysore/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317389076_The_sloth_bear_of_Mysore_A_really_rogue_bear_a_typical_sloth_bear_or_several_different_bears
https://dinoanimals.com/animals/man-eaters-sloth-bear-of-mysore/
https://wikimili.com/en/Sloth_bear_of_Mysore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamundeshwari_Temple#:~:text=It%20is%20situated%20at%20the,which%20was%20ruled%20by%20him.

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