The origin of the Big Bad Wolf lies in European folk tales and mythologies based on the deep ambiguity of human attitudes to the wolf. Wolves are usually afraid of human beings and prefer to keep to themselves, but in ancient Europe small settlements were allegedly sometimes attacked by starving or rabid wolves. The lone wolf attacking a flock of sheep or goats is a rarity, but a wolf faced with a penned flock that cannot flee will kill indiscriminately. Attacks on humans have always been extremely rare, and are usually associated with self-defense or defense of the pack's young, or less often with disease or starvation. However, the rarity of these attacks, during a period of European history in which most people lived on the verge of starvation or destitution, rendered them all the more stark.

Conversely, humans have often observed the complex social lives of wolves. Known to pair bond for life, to be protective parents, and to engage in playful behaviour with other animals — especially carrion birds such as crows and ravens, wolves have also been the objects of a level of respect. There is ample anecdotal evidence of wolves occasionally fostering small children abandoned in rural areas (there is an especially large body of such tales from India). "Wolf Children" featured in folk tales, as did werewolves, creatures who perfectly embodied the human attraction to and fear of the wolf.


European mythology is replete with lupine imagery: in Norse mythology the god Odin possesses two wolves, Geri and Freki; the god Loki has a wolf son, Fenrisulfr, who bites off the hand of the god Tyr, and who will eventually devour Odin at Ragnarok; Romulus and Remus, mythological founders of Rome, were brought up by a she-wolf, and are usually portrayed as infants suckling on their foster mother; Aesop's Fables often centred on wolves, with The Boy Who Cried Wolf being the best known; the Greek goddess Hekate, who was associated with death and magic, is often represented as wearing three wolves' heads and/or accompanied by three dogs; the Greek king Lycaon was turned into a wolf by Zeus, and it is from his name that we get the term lycanthropy (the ability to turn into or take on the characteristics of a wolf). Interestingly, wolves appear to have been widely venerated and respected by Native American peoples, who were horrified by the European settlers' systematic attempts to exterminate the animal.