In this blog entry I want to talk about a case that at the time put a lot of people in the area of Tsavo in the making, having died, it is believed, more than 100 people. We have to go back to 1898, in March of that year began the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River, in Kenya. The construction site consisted of a large camp that housed several thousand workers, mostly Hindus, and was being carried out by Colonel John Henry Patterson.
For 9 months two male lions without manes terrorized the camp, lurking at night and taking their victims to be devoured in the dark.
The workers tried to scare the lions away by building fires and fences made of acacia trees (trees with strong and long thorns) around their camp but the lions jumped or crawled under the fences of thorns.
As the attacks increased, hundreds of workers fled Tsavo, stopping the construction of the bridge. Several colonial officers intervened at this point, some escaping nighttime attacks and others perishing in the hunt. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. After repeated failed attempts, he shot the first lion on 9 December 1898 and twenty days later, on 29 December, the second lion was found and shot.
After 25 years as carpets in Patterson's home, the lion skins were sold to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1924. The lions were rebuilt and are now on permanent display along with their skulls.
In 2001, a review of the causes of man-eating behaviour among lions revealed that the proposed human number of 100 or more was probably an exaggeration and that the most likely number of deaths was 28-31.
The two lion specimens at the Field Museum in Chicago are known as FMNH23969 and FMNH 23970. In 2009, studies were published on the analysis of isotopic signatures, their bone collagen and hair keratin. Using realistic assumptions about the consumable tissue per victim, the energy needs of the lion and its assimilation efficiencies, the researchers compared the signatures of the men's eater with various reference standards. Interpolation of their estimates over the 9 months of abnormal behaviour by these lions suggests that MNF 23969 ate the equivalent of 10.5 humans and that MNF 23970 ate 24.2 humans.
Scientific analysis does not differentiate between whole human carcasses consumed, as opposed to parts of individual prey, as the attacks often raised the alarm by forcing the lions to sneak out again.
Many workers during the long construction period disappeared, died in accidents or simply fled in fear, so it is likely that almost all the builders who stayed behind knew someone who had disappeared or been eaten. It seems that Colonel Patterson may have exaggerated his claims, although none of these modern studies has taken into account people who were killed but not eaten by the animals. The diet of the victims would also affect their isotopic signature. A low meat diet would produce a more typical herbivore signature in the victims, affecting the test result. It is important to keep this fact in mind, as many of the Tsavo workers were Hindus and may have had a vegetarian diet. This research also excludes, but does not refute, claims that the lions did not eat the victims they killed, but simply killed to kill (Similar claims have been made for other wildlife predators).
Some theories about the behaviour of lions that eat men may be:
- An outbreak of rinderpest in 1898 devastated the lions' usual prey, forcing them to find alternative sources of food.
- Tsavo lions may have been used to finding dead humans at the Tsavo River crossing. Slave caravans to the centre of the Arab slave trade, Zanzibar, routinely crossed the river there.
- Ritual invitation, or cremation of Hindu railway workers, inviting the lions to scavenge.
- A 2017 study found that one of the lions had an infection in the root of its canine tooth, making it difficult for it to hunt its usual prey.
Although this case of lions hunting humans seems distant to us, conflicts of this kind still exist today, perhaps not on the same scale but because of habitat loss many predators are forced to hunt domestic animals or even humans to survive.
Impilo enh adventurers!
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