Walrus attack

Walrus attacks are attacks inflicted upon humans, other walruses and other animals by the walrus. They have been documented in the Arctic by the Inuit and by European explorers, both on land and at sea. The Greenland Inuit refer to the red walrus as saanniartoq, "the one who turns against one".[1]

Man in kayak attacked by walrus (c. 1895), Popular Science Monthly Volume 46

Walruses are most known to attack people in boats, and can cause serious harm with their tusks or by capsizing the boat or kayak. A 1918 memoir notes a case in Spitzbergen where walruses capsized a boat, killing all aboard.[2]

While most walrus attacks occur in the water, there are accounts of a walrus breaking through the ice to attack hunters walking on it, and one account of a walrus launching itself from the water to chase hunters on the ice.[3] In a 1960 case in Greenland, a hunter was pulling his kayak and seal out of the sea onto the ice, when a walrus emerged, stabbed him with a tusk (which did not kill him but knocked him unconscious) and escaped clutching the dead seal.[1]

References

Keld Hansen (2008). Nuussuarmiut: Hunting Families on the Big Headland : Demography, Subsistence and Material Culture in Nuussuaq, Upernavik, Northwest Greenland. Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 224–. ISBN 978-87-635-1084-4.
Donald Baxter MacMillan; Walter Elmer Ekblaw (1918). Four Years in the White North. Harper & Brothers. pp. 108–.
H. Grahame Richards (26 August 2016). Walrus Hunting in the Arctic Circle - Stories of Hunting in Franz Josef Land. Read Books Limited. pp. 6–. ISBN 978-1-4733-5706-8.

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[Hansen2008-1] Keld Hansen (2008). Nuussuarmiut: Hunting Families on the Big Headland : Demography, Subsistence and Material Culture in Nuussuaq, Upernavik, Northwest Greenland. Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 224–. ISBN 978-87-635-1084-4.

[MacMillanEkblaw1918-2] Donald Baxter MacMillan; Walter Elmer Ekblaw (1918). Four Years in the White North. Harper & Brothers. pp. 108–.

[Richards2016-3] H. Grahame Richards (26 August 2016). Walrus Hunting in the Arctic Circle - Stories of Hunting in Franz Josef Land. Read Books Limited. pp. 6–. ISBN 978-1-4733-5706-8.