If You Died Alone, Would Your Cat or Dog Eat You?

Source: SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd.

I remember a news report from a while back that claimed that a man in his 80s died while sitting in an easy chair. After some time, family and neighbors began to become concerned that they hadn't heard from him and he wasn't responding to phone calls or emails. They asked police to carry out a wellness check, and when they entered the apartment they found the man, dead.

What was most surprising was that they also found his Labrador retriever lying dead beside him, apparently a victim of starvation. The dog starved to death despite the fact that sitting in the chair was a source of nourishment that could have sustained him—namely the body of his owner.

While the news report couched this as a wonderful example of love and loyalty on the part of the dog, in my more skeptical scientific mind, I wondered just how atypical this behavior was, given the fact that dogs (and cats) are carnivores and my expectation would have been that even the most loving pet would have tried to stay alive by eating the body of their dead owner.

An Open Question

Recently, a friend of mine alerted me to the fact that there were discussion streams on Reddit and Quora with people musing about whether their pets would eat them if they died alone with no one around to protect their body. Most of the entries were anecdotes and opinions.

When I checked to see what research data was available, I found that the scientific literature on this topic was really quite scant. Most of the journal articles focused on the forensic science, assessing specific cases and attempting to determine the nature, extent, location, and sequence of bite wounds, most commonly in single case studies.

I could find no one tracking the frequency or probability of pets scavenging their dead owners. I found only one study, from a French team of investigators headed by Thomas Colard at the University of Lille, which looked at a large enough sample (63 cases) to allow reaching some conclusions about the general pattern of how a pet might consume their deceased owner. However, I could find nothing about the likelihood that such predation would actually happen.

Historically, there are many references to dogs eating dead human bodies. The Bible refers to Jezebel, wife of the seventh King of Israel, Ahab, who persecuted the prophet Elijah, and ultimately was thrown out of a castle window and left to be eaten by dogs. Homer makes several references to bodies being eaten by dogs in the Iliad, and some Islamic communities (in East Africa) consider dogs to be unclean because they believe that they ate the body of the Prophet Mohammed.

However, these instances do not refer to pet dogs consuming their owners, and all of these predations occurred outdoors, rather than in confined indoor spaces.

Some Reports From First Responders

In the absence of systematic data, I decided to gather some reports from three first responders to see if some information about the question could be found. All reported observing differences in the behavior of pet cats and pet dogs in this situation.

One woman who worked for the SPCA and was often called out to rescue pets when an owner died said, "The dogs guarded their owner's body even if they are normally gentle dogs. They often were quite aggressive when guarding the body, but they didn't eat it. I believe many dogs will starve to death before eating their owner. On the other hand the ME [medical examiner] on several cases told me that they observed evidence that the person's pet cats had been biting or eating the body."

One paramedic told me, "We are normally called out when there is hope that the individual is still alive, so we usually encounter recently deceased people. In my experience, it looks like cats will start chewing on the body as soon as it starts to cool. For dogs, it seems to depend on circumstances, but generally, dogs seem to regard the corpse as if it is still their owner and it looks like they will not readily eat them—but of course, I don't know what happens if the body has been there for a long time and the dog is starving."

A retired police officer sheds a bit more light on the situation. "In my 20 years on the force, I encountered several cases where a person had died indoors and only their pets were around. Recollecting these, it seems that if the person was newly deceased, their dogs would leave them alone, hover near them, or even try to protect them."

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Yet the officer added: "Once the body had started to putrefy, all bets were off. I remember a couple of cases where the dog ate part of the decomposing body. I believe that that was because, once decay set in, the scent clues that identify the body as their owner were gone. On the other hand, I seem to recall that at least in half of the cases where the body was discovered within 48 hours, there was evidence that pet cats had been nibbling on the corpse."

A Possible Trigger for This Behavior

There is some data provided by the French study I mentioned earlier. They found that in 24 percent of the cases when the body was discovered within a day, there was some evidence that dogs had consumed at least some part of the deceased.

However, Markus Rothschild, who was the forensic examiner for one case in Berlin in which a dog consumed part of its dead owner, suggested that the dog did not initially intend to eat its owner but rather, “One possible explanation for such behavior is that a pet will try to help an unconscious owner first by licking or nudging, but when this fails to produce any results the behavior of the animal can become more frantic and in a state of panic, can lead to biting.” If biting leads to the dog (or cat) tasting some blood, that might stimulate the instinct to eat.

In the absence of more solid data I, at least, have reached the tentative conclusion that if I die and no one is around for a while, my cat would be more likely to eat me over the short run, while my dog would wait around a while before consuming me. Personally, if I am dead, I have no particular need for my body and if it sustains my pets until they are rescued, that is fine with me.

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