Man-Eaters of Tsavo
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
- By Paul Raffaele
- Smithsonian magazine, January 2010, Subscribe
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.”
Paul Raffaele’s book Among the Great Apes will be published in February.
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Related topics: Carnivores Hunting Late 19th Century Kenya
Additional Sources
"Cooperation and individuality among man-eating lions," Justin D. Yeakel et al., PNAS, November 10, 2009.
Comments (9)
May Allah save us from these terifying animals
Posted by yakubu adamu burshika on February 11,2013 | 07:18 AM
I remember seeing these lions when I was a kid at the museum in Chicago. At the time I didn't know the story about them but looking at them just sent shivers down my spine. A few years after that my friend showed me the movie "The Ghost and the Darkness". I didn't realize until the end of the movie that the lions I saw in the museum where the actual lions that killed all those people.
Posted by Ian Power on December 24,2012 | 11:00 AM
i really enjoy the movie the ghost and the darkness. i think the movie was really outstanding especially the actors who did a lot work. i really feel sorry for the inda afican workers who died on that terrible night it must be horriflying but what i dont anderstand is they must have known that they were dealing with widlife. i can anderstand why john patterson had to kill the lions he must be very terrified but brave. i think the lions were more smarter than john patterson even though he was only a hunter. god bless him and all people who help him and god blees the people who made the movie i think they did a wonderful job and i wish them all good luck.
Posted by michele on December 5,2012 | 10:36 PM
Hi. I'm Bart. And very intreged by the movie Gost and the Darkness indeed! And especially by some of the facts,that these lions did infact hunt in a some what different way than what's to be expected of lions or big cats in general.. I understand perfectly well that there might have been a good reason why they targeted humans in particular instead of theyr usual pray. Weather we're just an easy catch (or just down right delicious;)or abundant,still doesn't explain the cave found with all those human remains in it. How ever I don't believe they killed for pleasure though.. A lion just needs to kill a hell of a of humans to aqual it's habitual diet of zebra,wilde beast,or even cape buffalo! For what I understand is that atleast one of the lions had some severe dental problems,witch made him weaker than a healthy lion. There for even more dangerous to people! Plus that lions are known to look after each other,making them an even more formidable team!
Posted by Bart Gielingh on May 23,2012 | 02:11 AM
Hollywood did a good job on the setting, sound and the actors. Some of the events are pretty accurate. I think the biggest injustice to the true Tsavo story was the scene when the lions killed everyone in the hospital like they just loved killing. The Tsavo lions came in to feed,,period!
They targeted the closest or easiest person in the camp one at a time. Very seldom were both Lions seen hunting to gether. It was more like they shared the workload of hunting,,taking turns. On most accounts one Lion made the kill and dragged the body to the closest obscure area where both would feast.
Posted by Eric on May 5,2011 | 10:54 AM
For those interested, here is the link to John Patterson's book, sadly without the images. Regardless it is an interesting read.
Another thing I want to mention in defense of John Patterson's claims of the lions eating over 100 people while the studies suggest 35 is that 35 would be the number if the All the protein in the people were consumed. Most likely the lions didn't consume every gram of protein in the bodies.
frank, I read somewhere online (can't remember the source right now) that the lions with manes were used in the film because it's hollywood and virtually all lion "actors" have manes, and that apparently lions with manes are easier to train. Also, in the original screenplay Remington had a very small part, but when the actor who played him signed on it was rewritten to incorporate a bigger part for him.
Posted by Ann on November 11,2010 | 12:39 AM
they should remake the movie and do it right there wasnt that many bones in the den cause they only found about 8 skulls.
other things that were wrong in the movie is that they stated the lions only killed for pleasure when the real lions were starving cause a disease killed off their natural prey so they had no choice but to kil and eat people for survival not for freaking pleasure!
they're favorite way to eat was to lick the skin off and drink the blood since they were also dehrayted cause of the drought that was making the water dry up.
and another huge thing wrong with this movie is the lions have freaking manes when everybody knows the real ones had none since they were maneless males.
hell they should of just used female lions in the movie!
plus there was no remmington patterson shot and killed the lions himself but there was some hunters that were hired to kill them but they got killed and eaten anyways.
so yeah hollywood remake tihs freaking mess of a movie and do it right!
ROAR!
Posted by red mist on October 15,2010 | 05:56 PM
I saw this great movie.At the end the hunter comes to the lion's den and sees many human skulls and bones.
Posted by frank de varona on January 7,2010 | 10:45 PM
This puts into perspective the 1996 movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" which I found very frightening.
Posted by aychbee on December 30,2009 | 05:30 PM