Miami Cannibal Attack in Perspective

In the May 26, 2012, Miami cannibal attack, assailant Rudy Eugene was fatally shot as he assaulted Ronald Poppo on the MacArthur Causeway in Miami, Florida. During the 18-minute filmed encounter, Eugene (who himself had stripped nude) beat Poppo unconscious, removed his pants, and chewed off most of his face above the beard, including his left eye. As a result of the incident's shocking nature and subsequent worldwide media coverage, Eugene came to be dubbed the "Miami Zombie" as well as the "Causeway Cannibal".

--Wikipedia

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One day in 2009, Travis the chimpanzee was out of sorts. His human companion, Sandra Herold, had been trying to calm him down all morning, even serving him tea laced with the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. She called her friend, 55-year-old Charla Nash, for help. Travis knew Nash well; they had always gotten along. When she stepped out of her car, he leapt on her and gnawed her face off. She tried to protect herself with her hands: he chewed her fingers off as well. Herold bludgeoned Travis with a shovel, but she couldn’t stop him. She tried a butcher knife next. At some point she took refuge in her vehicle and phoned the police, telling them that Travis had ripped her friend apart and was eating her. . . . Nash lost her fingers, lips, nose, palate, and eyelids in the attack; afterwards, doctors removed her ruined eyes.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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[The sloth bear] invariably attacked the face of the victim, which he commenced to tear apart with his tremendously long and powerful claws, in addition to biting. . . . Quite half the injured had lost one or both eyes; some had lost their noses, while others had had their cheeks bitten through. Those who had been killed had died with their faces almost torn from their heads. [One victim was found] lying at the foot of a tree in a puddle of his own blood. His face was a mass of raw flesh and broken bones, and the only way of distinguishing that he was breathing was by the bubbles of air that forced their way through his clotting blood.

--Kenneth Anderson, Man-Eaters and Jungle Killers

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[A] young man was found disemboweled and literally defaced. One of the searchers who found the body assumed he was looking at a murder scene—until he spotted a cougar five yards from the body.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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In late 2005, Isabelle Dinoire. . . underwent a 15-hour operation in Amiens, in the north of the country, after her original face was ripped to pieces by her pet dog.

-The Telegraph

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Fifty percent of dog bites to children are on the face.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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In 1995, a woman climbed into the lion exhibit at the National Zoo in Washington DC. Her body could not immediately be identified because the lions left her neither face nor fingerprints.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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Simborg then heard the hyena biting her face. It is the sound, specifically, that she remembers, followed by the feel: “My whole face just came open.”

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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A Chinese man whose face was badly disfigured after an attack by a black bear received a partial face transplant. . . Li Guoxing was given a new cheek, upper lip, nose, and an eyebrow. . . Li had been badly mauled in an encounter with a black bear in the southern province of Yunnan.

--China Daily

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One of the hyenas seized an eleven-year-old boy by the face and dragged him, severing his nose, destroying one eye and dislocating the other, crushing the orbital bones, and removing most of the left side of his face.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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The African’s face ended below his cheekbones: his nose, palate, upper teeth, tongue, and almost his entire lower jaw were gone. Only his eyes and the upper part of his head remained intact and yet he was alive and moderately healthy and had taught himself to swallow food. He had received one bite, just one snap.

--James Clarke, Man Is the Prey

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In 2000, a pair of pet ferrets inflicted more than 100 wounds on the face of a 10-day old girl while her mother slept.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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Two teenaged male chimps escaped from a nearby cage. . . . One of them bit off Mrs. Davis’s thumb. Her husband tried to protect her. The two teens then concentrated their attack on him. He lost a foot, all of his fingers, his testicles, part of his buttocks, an eye, and parts of his nose, cheek, and lips.

--The Book of Deadly Animals

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A woman was working in a potato field with her three-month-old son. A chimp appeared, pursued her when she fled, tripped her, and wrested the baby from her. A man with a spear managed to drive the chimp away, but it already eaten the baby's upper lip and nose.

--The Book of Deadly Animals