From our other sites
The story
It has come to light that in Miyakojima City, Okinawa Prefecture, about 60 farmed goats have been bitten by stray dogs in a string of incidents since the start of this year. Such cases were said to be rare in ordinary years, and goat farmers and city officials are increasingly worried that “people, including children, could be attacked next.” There have also been reports of dogs breaching a 3-meter-high fence to get in. On 5ch, users swapped firsthand accounts covering regional differences in how often stray dogs are spotted, the reality of hunting dogs being abandoned in the mountains and turning feral, and the risk of rabies — sparking a broader discussion about what’s driving the wild dog problem.
Published 9/2 (Wed) 8:21 AM
Okinawa Times
[Miyakojima] It has come to light that since the start of this year, Miyakojima City has seen incidents in which roughly 60 farmed goats were bitten by stray dogs. Such cases were said to be almost nonexistent in ordinary years, making this year’s numbers stand out sharply. Goat farmers and the city are growing increasingly concerned that “the damage to livestock could escalate to the point that people, including children, get attacked.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
41 Anonymous 2026/03/20 (Fri) 05:35:08.12 ID:Az+IKYP60
Re: #2
If 70% of the raw material for window sashes disappears, sash makers' work drops 70% too, right?
43 Anonymous 2026/03/20 (Fri) 05:42:48.27 ID:Az+IKYP60
Re: #42
If raw materials drop 70%, production drops 70%, work drops 70%, and you cut 70% of your staff too.
51 Anonymous 2026/03/20 (Fri) 05:55:14.23 ID:zlyhQQA/0
Re: #46
Because we've never been affected by this before.
So, mind if I save this post?
I'm hoping you're not a liar.
A 70% drop means if you're getting 100 orders a month, that falls to just 30-something. That's easy enough to check later, so I'll go ahead and save it properly — that okay with you?
52 Anonymous 2026/03/20 (Fri) 05:58:58.36 ID:Az+IKYP60
Re: #51
Sure, go ahead.
Worse than wolves, honestly.
People go on about the "Japanese wolf," but even the stuffed specimens look like dogs — and besides, every specimen is different from the others, so that's probably just stray dogs being mislabeled as "Japanese wolves."
Re: #8
There are tons of them in Shunan, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Crappy hunters just dump hunting dogs in the mountains once they're no longer useful, so there's a fair number out in the countryside, you know?
Sounds like there were quite a few around until about 1965.
In the cities they get caught quickly, so stray dogs have dropped off. But out in the countryside, they're up in the mountains. After a few generations, strays turn into fully wild dogs — they end up as wolf-like wild animals that pack together and attack animals and people.
They should just round the wild dogs up already.
I've been chased twice by a dog dragging its chain while jogging at night. I'd already scoped out several spots to flee to if I ever got attacked around there, so I ducked into one. Both times it started chasing me near an elementary school, so I ran into the schoolyard, climbed the monkey bars, and waited it out until the dog got bored and left before heading home.
What makes you think they're not eating them? I just assumed they attacked to eat, plain and simple lol
Stray cats can carry rabies too.
Not just India — I'd want to avoid stray dogs anywhere abroad. Even with owned dogs, it's only fine if the owner actually takes them for shots like people do in Japan lol
That was probably field rats, actually. Carnivores go for the internal organs first.
Ah, yeah — I heard something similar from relatives out in the countryside. A dog that seemed like a tame hunting dog wandered in once, and thinking about it, there's a good chance it had been abandoned by a hunter. I always figured hunters looked after their dogs until the end, so that was a shock.
Most of those cases are just dogs that got separated from their owner in the mountains. And that's a story from 30-plus years ago — these days you basically never see stray hunting dogs anymore.
There are basically no US servicemen stationed on Miyakojima.
Since rabies is a factor too, it'd probably get sorted out once public health authorities step in. Actually, stray dogs were everywhere up through the '70s, but once rabies became a concern they were culled, and by the '90s you barely saw strays anymore.
Sure, some got separated from their owners, but most are abandoned hunting dogs. Once a hunting dog gets old and stops being useful, it gets dumped in the mountains. Hunting dogs are often lent back and forth between hunters, so they've been bred to obediently follow anyone's commands — but that comes at the cost of a weaker homing instinct, meaning once they're dumped in the mountains, they can't find their way back. And apparently people dump them knowing full well that's exactly what'll happen.
Huh, I always pictured them as the hunter's loyal partner, so that's a bit of a shock.
Now that you mention it, maybe because they can't find their own way home, I used to occasionally see one just sitting in the bed of some random, unrelated pickup truck, waiting for its owner.
Not just with hunting dogs, but there are quite a few people who abandon dogs because "I don't want to watch it die" or "it's too sad if the pound puts it down." The logic seems to be, "well, if I let it go, maybe it can survive as a stray." There are even people who abandon old dogs on that logic, and honestly, that's just messed up.
The pound doesn't have the budget for it either. And even if they spent a fortune catching every single one, some idiot would just go dump more dogs again.
If a rabid dog ever bit someone, it'd be an absolute uproar. Then the pound would probably launch a full-scale capture operation, throwing a massive budget at it.
Well, that's Japan for you — stingy on prevention funding, but the moment something turns into a real crisis, they'll blow hundreds of times that amount dealing with it.
No need to bother — Tohoku can just "source" its own locally lol
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Miyakojima is a remote island off the main Okinawan archipelago, and while stray and wild dogs have sharply declined nationwide in recent years — especially in urban areas — this remains a problem with major regional disparities. In the thread, posters shared firsthand accounts from places like Shunan in Yamaguchi Prefecture and Kagawa Prefecture where wild dogs are still around, which clashed with the common assumption that “you just don’t see them in cities.” Japan has had no confirmed cases of domestically contracted rabies since 1957, so the thread’s worry about “is rabies really a risk” is low as an actual likelihood — though the possibility of it being brought in from overseas or transmitted via wildlife isn’t zero. Culling stray dogs is also complicated by the Animal Welfare and Management Act, meaning municipalities can’t simply euthanize them on their own initiative; capture and shelter housing by public health centers remains the standard response. Where opinions in the thread diverged was over the origin of the wild dogs — whether to see them as hunting dogs that simply got lost, or hunting dogs deliberately abandoned in the mountains — and several specific firsthand accounts were offered backing the latter view.
*This article was compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Okinawa] Stray Dogs Attack 60 Goats, Most Die — Miyakojima City Fears “Are People Next?” — Some Cases Involved Dogs Scaling a 3-Meter Fence.”
Leave a Reply