The Man Eaters of Tsavo

[tom]

The two man eaters of Tsavo shortly after being killed. They were killed a few weeks apart. 



They are perhaps the world’s most notorious wild lions. Their ancestors were vilified more than 100 years ago as the man-eaters of Tsavo, a vast swath of Kenya savanna around the Tsavo River.

Bruce Patterson has spent the past decade studying lions in the Tsavo region, and for several nights I went into the bush with him and a team of volunteers, hoping to glimpse one of the beasts.
We headed out in a truck along narrow red dirt trails through thick scrub. A spotlight threw a slender beam through the darkness. Kudus, huge antelopes with curved horns, skittered away. A herd of elephants passed, their massive bodies silhouetted in the dark.

One evening just after midnight, we came upon three lions resting by a water hole. Patterson identified them as a 4-year-old male he has named Dickens and two unnamed females. The three lions rose and Dickens led the two females into the scrub.

On such forays Patterson has come to better understand the Tsavo lions. Their prides, with up to 10 females and just 1 male, are smaller than Serengeti lion prides, which have up to 20 females and 2 or more males. In Tsavo, male lions do not share power with other males.

Tsavo males look different as well. The most vigorous Serengeti males sport large dark manes, while in Tsavo they have short, thin manes or none at all. “It’s all about water,” Patterson says. Tsavo is hotter and drier than the Serengeti, and a male with a heavy mane “would squander his daily water allowance simply panting under a bush, with none to spare for patrolling his territory, hunting or finding mates.”

But it’s the lions’ reputation for preying on people that attracts attention. “For centuries Arab slave caravans passed through Tsavo on the way to Mombasa,” said Samuel Kasiki, deputy director of Biodiversity Research and Monitoring with the Kenya Wildlife Service. “The death rate was high; it was a bad area for sleeping sickness from the tsetse fly; and the bodies of slaves who died or were dying were left where they dropped. So the lions may have gotten their taste for human flesh by eating the corpses.”

In 1898, two lions terrorized crews constructing a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, killing—according to some estimates—135 people. “Hundreds of men fell victims to these savage creatures, whose very jaws were steeped in blood,” wrote a worker on the railway, a project of the British colonial government. “Bones, flesh, skin and blood, they devoured all, and left not a trace behind them.”

Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson shot the lions (a 1996 movie, The Ghost and the Darkness, dramatized the story) and sold their bodies for $5,000 to the Field Museum in Chicago, where, stuffed, they greet visitors to this day.

Bruce Patterson (no relation to John), a zoologist with the museum, continues to study those animals. Chemical tests of hair samples recently confirmed that the lions had eaten human flesh in the months before they were killed. Patterson and his colleagues estimate that one lion ate 10 people, and the other about 24—far fewer than the legendary 135 victims, but still horrifying. When I arrived in Nairobi, word reached the capital that a lion had just killed a woman at Tsavo. A cattle herder had been devoured weeks earlier. “That’s not unusual at Tsavo,” Kasiki said. Still, today’s Tsavo lions are not innately more bloodthirsty than other lions, Patterson says; they attack people for the same reason their forebears did a century ago: “our encroachment into what was once the territory of lions.” Injured lions are especially dangerous. One of the original man-eaters had severe dental disease that would have made him a poor hunter, Patterson found. Such lions may learn to attack people rather than game, he says, “because we are slower, weaker and more defenseless.”

[tom]

Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson sold the bodies of the Tsavo lions to the Field Museum in Chicago for $5,000 where they were stuffed and put on display. The Field Museum.

[tom]

John Patterson

Killing the Tsavo lions

At this point workers were fleeing from Tsavo and the bridge construction was put on hold. British colonial support arrived with reinforcements of 20 armed men to hunt and kill the lions, with traps set and men hiding in trees to ambush them.

On 9th December 1898, Patterson shot one of the lions in its hind leg. It escaped, however, and came back to camp that same evening and began stalking Patterson as he tried to hunt it. Patterson shot the lion again, and the next morning found its dead body not far from camp. It measured 2.95 meters from nose to the tip of its tail.

Twenty days later, on 29th December the second lion was found and shot six times over the course of 11 days. Patterson claimed the lion died gnawing on a fallen tree branch, still trying to reach him.
The total number of people the two lions killed was never verified, though in his book Patterson states that in all 135 people were eaten. 

From Wiki:
Modern research
Tsavo Lion skulls on display at the Field Museum in Chicago

In 2001, a review about causes for man-eating behaviour among lions revealed that the proposed human toll of 100 or more was most likely an exaggeration and that the more likely death toll was 28–31 victims. This reduced total was based on their review of Colonel Patterson's original journal, courtesy of Alan Patterson. However, the same study also noted that the journal refers only to Indian workers, and that Patterson stated that the casualties were much higher in the African worker population, but that those numbers were not documented. [6]

Why did the Tsavo lions start eating humans?

According to Bruce Patterson in his 2004 book The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa’s Notorious Man-Eaters, these lions started hunting men for one or more of these four reasons:

In 1898, an outbreak of cattle plague left the lions with no food. They had to find some other food source, and they turned to humans.

The lions may have developed an appetite for humans from eating dead men found in the Tsavo River region.

The Hindus working on the railway had cremations for their dead, which may have initiated scavenging by the lions.

Severe dental disease meant that the lions migrated to humans as prey that was easier to catch and chew.

[tom]

I found it interesting that in the Tsavo region of Kinya that due to the hot dry climate that male Lions have sparse if any mane as did the two man eaters who preyed on the railroad crews.

[brobear]

Quote: Why did the Tsavo lions start eating humans?

According to Bruce Patterson in his 2004 book The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa’s Notorious Man-Eaters, these lions started hunting men for one or more of these four reasons:

In 1898, an outbreak of cattle plague left the lions with no food. They had to find some other food source, and they turned to humans.

The lions may have developed an appetite for humans from eating dead men found in the Tsavo River region.

The Hindus working on the railway had cremations for their dead, which may have initiated scavenging by the lions.

Severe dental disease meant that the lions migrated to humans as prey that was easier to catch and chew.

*My guess would be: all of the above; all four reasons might have played a roll.

[tom]

Yeah dead men who dropped where they stood from the plague and left to rot. Easy meal for a hungry Lion. I could see where they would have acquired a taste for human flesh.

[brobear]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0116409/

The Ghost and the Darkness - 1996. Michael Douglas as Charles Remington / Val Kilmer as Col. John Henry Patterson.

I've watched this movie several times.

[tom]

I posted this as I just watched the movie The Ghost and the Darkness the other night. I've seen it before but was intrigued as to the blood thirsty nature of the Lions so I kind of looked into why?

I also read where they did some forensic studying of the two stuffed Lions and were able to determine (can't find the article though) that likely one of the Lions had only eaten 8 humans while the other one 18 humans. Far from the reportedly 135 that Patterson wrote in his book. It's possible they may have killed many more but not eaten them.

[brobear]

Nov 5, 2021 13:13:49 GMT -5 tom said:

I posted this as I just watched the movie The Ghost and the Darkness the other night. I've seen it before but was intrigued as to the blood thirsty nature of the Lions so I kind of looked into why?

Also, those lions ( if I'm remembering right ) had some strange un-lion-like habits, such as dragging the bodies into a cave. 

[tom]

Yeah remember the scene in the movie where Michael Douglass and Val Kilmer stumble into that cave filled with human bones.

Michael Douglass who protrayed an experienced hunter of Lions stated when they put some light into the cave "Lions don't do this"

By the way Douglass's character was put in for the movie as there was no big game hunter hired in the real story. John Patterson killed both Lions.