Over nine long months in 1898, two lions are said to have killed at least a hundred people in Kenya. People couldn't do anything about them. They seemed invulnerable, and only death stopped them.

Do you believe that animals can be serial killers? This is hard to believe, because animals are guided by instincts, and not by anger or thirst for profit. But two lions, nicknamed “The Men of Tsavo,” completely changed the idea of ​​what animals are capable of.

From March to December 1898, two male lions killed, according to various sources, from 31 to 100 people during the construction of a railway bridge connecting Kenya with Uganda. An unusual feature of these lions was that they lacked manes, although both were males. These lions specifically hunted down and killed their victims. The number of people they killed is incredibly high. But the most amazing and terrible thing in this story is that the lions did not kill because they were hungry. They killed because they liked it.

The British Empire began a project to build a railway bridge across the Tsavo River in Kenya to link Kenya with Uganda. The project, which began in March 1898, was led by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson.

Shortly after construction began, workers began reporting two lions roaming around their camp in search of prey. In the end, the lions pulled one Indian worker right out of his tent in the middle of the night and ate him.

This attack was followed by many others. The workers tried various methods to get rid of the lions. They lit large fires to scare away the lions from their camp, but to no avail. They built a fence of thorny bushes (boma), confident that this would keep the animals out, a ploy that would certainly have worked if the animals involved were normal. The lions that had tasted human flesh now avoided all obstacles, they jumped over thorny bushes or crawled under, not paying attention to the scratches that remained on their skin.

Superstitious Indian workers called the Lions “Ghost and Darkness”, and began to leave their jobs. Filled with horror, they returned to their hometowns. Construction of the railway bridge stopped completely. And then Colonel Patterson realized that the time had come to take serious action.

Patterson set traps to catch the lions. He used goats as bait, but the lions turned out to be so smart that they easily bypassed all the traps, while they managed to eat the goats. Then Patterson installed observation decks on the treetops and stayed overnight on them, ambushing the lions.

After several unsuccessful attempts to shoot the lions, Patterson finally managed to kill one of the lions on December 9, 1898. His first shot only managed to wound the lion, but when the lion returned to camp that night, he was hit again. At dawn the lion was found dead, not far from the place where the bullet overtook him.

The lion was huge! From nose to tail, it reached a length of almost three meters; only eight adult men were able to carry it back to the camp. And although the half-colonel managed to win, Patterson realized that there was still one lion left, and he too must be stopped.

This took Patterson another 20 days. He killed the second lion on December 29. Patterson said he shot it at least nine times before the lion died. Death overtook the lion as it clung to a tree, trying to get Patterson. As word spread that the lions had been killed, the work crews returned to work and the bridge was completed.

Most likely the lions in total killed from 28 to 31 people, but Colonel Patterson stated that they accounted for 135 human lives.

Patterson skinned the lions and used their skins as floor mats. In 1924, he sold them to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for $5,000. The lions' skins were in terrible condition. Experts restored them, and now the carcasses of these animals are on display in the museum. Lion skulls are located nearby.

Exhibition Ghost and Darkness at the Field Museum

In 2009, a team of scientists from the Field Museum and the University of California, Santa Cruz, examined the isotopic composition of lion bones and hair. They found that the first lion ate eleven people, and the second - twenty-four. One of the authors of the study, Field Museum curator Bruce Patterson (no relation to D.H. Patterson), stated: “The rather outlandish statements that Colonel Patterson made in his book can now be largely refuted,” while another author, Nathaniel Dominy, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, said: "Our evidence tells us the number of people eaten, but not the number killed."

The story of the Tsavo cannibals became the basis for the films Bwana Devil (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). In the last film, the role of Patterson was played by Val Kilmer, and the lions were named Ghost and Darkness.

The famous man-eating lions of Tsavo, which killed more than 130 railway workers in Kenya in the early 20th century, killed people not for lack of food, but for pleasure or the ease of hunting humans, paleontologists say.

"It appears that hunting humans was not a last resort measure for the lions; it simply made their lives easier. Our data shows that these man-eating lions did not completely consume the carcasses of the animals and people they caught. It seems that the humans simply served as a pleasant addition to their already varied diet. In turn, anthropological evidence indicates that in Tsavo people were eaten not only by lions, but also by leopards and other big cats,” says Larisa DeSantis from Vanderbilt University in Nashville (USA).

Dark Heart of Africa

This story dates back to 1898, when the British colonial authorities decided to connect their colonies in eastern Africa with a giant railway stretching along the shores of the Indian Ocean. In March, its builders, Hindu workers brought to Africa and their white “sahibs,” faced another natural obstacle - the Tsavo River, a bridge over which they spent the next nine months building.

Throughout this time, the railroad workers were terrorized by a pair of local lions, whose boldness and insolence often went so far as to literally drag the workers out of their tents and eat them alive at the edge of the camp. The first attempts to scare off the predators using fire and barriers of thorny bushes failed, and they continued to attack the expedition members.

The Man-Eating Lion of Tsavo and Colonel Patterson

As a result of this, workers began to desert the camp en masse, which forced the British to organize a hunt for the “Tsavo killers.” Man-eating lions turned out to be unexpectedly cunning and elusive prey for John Patterson, an imperial army colonel and leader of the expedition, and only in early December 1898 did he manage to waylay and shoot one of the two lions, and 20 days later kill the second predator.

During this time, lions managed to end the lives of 137 workers and British military personnel, which forced many naturalists of the time and modern scientists to discuss the reasons for this behavior. Lions, and especially males, at that time were considered rather cowardly predators, not attacking people and large cats if there were escape routes and other food sources.

According to DeSantis, such ideas led most researchers to assume that the lions attacked the workers due to hunger - this was supported by the fact that the local population of herbivores was greatly reduced due to the plague epidemic and a series of fires. DeSantis and her colleague Bruce Patterson, the namesake of the colonel at the Chicago Field Museum of History, where the remains of the lions are kept, have been trying for 10 years to prove that this was not so.

Safari for the "king of beasts"

Initially, Patterson believed that the lions hunted people not because of a lack of food, but because their fangs were broken. This idea was met with a barrage of criticism from the scientific community, as Colonel Patterson himself noted that the tusk of one lion broke on the barrel of his rifle at the moment the animal lay in wait and jumped on him. However, Patterson and DeSantis continued to study the teeth of the Tsavo Killers, this time using modern paleontological methods.

The enamel of the teeth of all animals, as scientists explain, is covered with a peculiar “pattern” of microscopic scratches and cracks. The shape and size of these scratches, and how they are distributed, directly depends on the type of food that their owner ate. Accordingly, if the lions were starving, then their teeth should contain traces of chewed bones, which predators were forced to eat when there was a lack of food.

Guided by this idea, paleontologists compared the scratch patterns on the enamel of lions from Tsavo with the teeth of ordinary zoo lions that are fed soft food, hyenas that eat carrion and bones, and the man-eating lion from Mfuwe in Zambia, which killed at least six local residents in 1991.

"Although eyewitnesses often reported 'crunching bones' on the outskirts of the camp, we found no signs of damage to the enamel on the teeth of the Tsavo lions, characteristic of bone eating. Moreover, the pattern of scratches on their teeth is most similar to that , which is found on the teeth of lions in zoos that are fed beef tenderloin or pieces of horse meat," DeSantis said.

Man-eating lions from Tsavo, reproduction at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago O

Accordingly, we can say that these lions did not suffer from hunger and did not hunt people for gastronomic reasons. Scientists speculate that lions simply liked relatively abundant and easy prey, which required much less effort to catch than hunting zebras or cattle.

According to Patterson, such findings partially speak in favor of his old theory about dental problems in lions - in order to kill a person, a lion did not have to bite through his neck arteries, which was problematic to do without fangs or with bad teeth when hunting large herbivores animals. According to him, the lion from Mfuwe also had similar problems with teeth and jaws. Therefore, we can expect that the controversy surrounding the Tsave cannibals will flare up with renewed vigor.

The Tsavo Man-Eaters were two man-eating lions active in the Tsavo River area (modern Kenya) in 1898, during the construction of the Ugandan railway.

Story

In March 1898, construction began on a permanent bridge over the Tsavo River, a section of the Uganda Railway. Construction was supervised by John Henry Patterson. For more than nine months, from March to December, workers were attacked by two man-eating lions. The workers, trying to protect themselves from the lions, built fences of thorny bushes (boma) around the tents, but they did not help. The attacks forced hundreds of workers to flee Tsavo and construction was suspended. On December 9, 1898, Patterson managed to shoot the first lion. On December 29, the second lion was also killed.

Both lions differed from the others in that they did not have a mane, although they were males. Both lions were about nine feet (three meters) long from the tip of their nose to the tip of their tail.

In 1907, Patterson’s book “The Man-eaters of Tsavo” (Russian translation of individual chapters was published in the almanac “On Land and at Sea”, 1962) was published. In 1924, Patterson sold the lion skins to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The lions were stuffed and are still on display in the museum.

Patterson gave different information about the number of victims. In a 1907 book, he wrote that lions killed twenty-eight Indian workers, and the number of Africans killed is unknown. In a brochure written in 1925 for the Field Museum, he gave a different number of killed - one hundred thirty-five.

In 2007, a representative National Museum Kenya said the lions' remains should be returned to Kenya as they are an important part of Kenyan history. In 2009, Kenya's Minister of Culture and Heritage, William Ole Ntimama, made a similar statement.

Research

The museum houses the lions under the numbers FMNH 23970 and FMNH 23969. In 2009, a team of scientists from the Field Museum and the University of California, Santa Cruz, examined the isotopic composition of the lions' bones and hair. They found that the first lion ate eleven people, and the second - twenty-four. One of the authors of the study, Field Museum curator Bruce Patterson (no relation to D.H. Patterson), stated: “The rather outlandish statements that Colonel Patterson made in his book can now be largely refuted,” while another author, Nathaniel Dominy, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, said: "Our evidence tells us the number of people eaten, but not the number killed."

Possible reasons why lions became man-eaters are:

• An epidemic of rinderpest, which reduced the number of usual victims, forcing lions to look for new prey;
• The habit of eating human corpses in the Tsavo region, through which many slave caravans passed from the interior to the Indian Ocean;
• Cremation of Indian workers, after which lions rummaged through the remains.
• Dental problems that prevented lions from hunting normal prey.

To the cinema

Patterson's book became the basis for the films Bwana Devil (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). In the last film, the role of Patterson was played by Val Kilmer, and the lions were named Ghost and Darkness.

“... It seems that hunting humans was not a measure of last resort for lions, it simply made their lives easier. Our data shows that these man-eating lions did not completely consume the carcasses of the animals and people they captured. It appears to have simply served as a welcome addition to people's already varied diets. In turn, anthropological data indicate that in Tsavo people were eaten not only by lions, but also by leopards and other big cats...”

— says Larisa DeSantis ( L arisa D eSantis) from Vanderbilt University in Nashville (USA).

Dark Heart of Africa

This story begins in 1898 year, when the colonial authorities of Britain decided to connect their colonies in eastern Africa with a giant railway stretching along the shores of the Indian Ocean. In March, its builders, Indian workers brought to Africa and their white “sahibs”, faced another natural obstacle - the Tsavo River, a bridge over which they built over the next nine months.

Throughout this time, the railroad workers were terrorized by a pair of local lions, whose boldness and insolence often went so far as to literally drag the workers out of their tents and eat them alive at the edge of the camp. The first attempts to scare off the predators using fire and barriers of thorny bushes failed, and they continued to attack the expedition members.

As a result of this, workers began to desert the camp en masse, which forced the British to organize a hunt for “The Tsavo Killers”. Man-eating lions turned out to be unexpectedly cunning and elusive prey for John Patterson, colonel of the imperial army and leader of the expedition, and only in early December 1898 year he managed to waylay and shoot one of the two lions, and after 20 days to kill the second predator.

During this time, the lions managed to end their lives 137 workers and British military personnel, which led many naturalists of the time and modern scientists to discuss the reasons for this behavior. Lions, and especially males, at that time were considered rather cowardly predators who did not attack people and large cats if there were escape routes and other food sources.

According to DeSantis, such ideas led most researchers to assume that the lions attacked the workers due to hunger - this was supported by the fact that the local population of herbivores was greatly reduced due to the plague epidemic and a series of fires.

DeSantis and her colleague Bruce Patterson, the namesake of the colonel at the Chicago Field Museum of History, where the remains of the lions are kept, have already 10 for years they have been trying to prove that this was not so.

Safari for the "king of beasts"

Initially, Patterson believed that lions hunted people not because of a lack of food, but because their fangs were broken.

This idea was met with a barrage of criticism from the scientific community, as Colonel Patterson himself noted that the tusk of one lion broke on the barrel of his rifle at the moment the animal lay in wait and jumped on him.

However, Patterson and DeSantis continued to study teeth “The Tsavo Killers”, this time using modern paleontological methods.

The enamel of the teeth of all animals, as scientists explain, is covered with a peculiar "pattern" from microscopic scratches and cracks.

The shape and size of these scratches, and how they are distributed, directly depends on the type of food that their owner ate.

Accordingly, if the lions were starving, then their teeth should contain traces of chewed bones, which predators were forced to eat when there was a lack of food.

Guided by this idea, paleontologists compared the scratch patterns on the enamel of lions from Tsavo with the teeth of ordinary zoo lions that are fed soft food, hyenas that eat carrion and bones, and the man-eating lion from Mfuwe in Zambia, which killed at least six local residents in 1991 year.

“... Despite the fact that eyewitnesses often reported “crunching of bones” heard on the outskirts of the camp, we did not find any signs of damage to the enamel on the teeth of the Tsavo lions, characteristic of eating bones. Moreover, the pattern of scratches on their teeth is most similar to that found on the teeth of lions in zoos that are fed beef tenderloin or pieces of horse meat... "

says DeSantis.

Accordingly, we can say that these lions did not suffer from hunger and did not hunt people for gastronomic reasons. Scientists suggest that lions simply liked fairly numerous and easy prey, which required much less effort to catch than hunting zebras or cattle.

According to Patterson, such findings partially speak in favor of his old theory about dental problems in lions - in order to kill a person, a lion did not have to bite through his neck arteries, which was problematic to do without fangs or with bad teeth when hunting large herbivores animals.

According to him, the lion from Mfuwe also had similar problems with teeth and jaws.

Therefore, we can expect that the controversy surrounding the Tsave cannibals will flare up with renewed vigor.

The famous man-eating lions of Tsavo, which killed more than 130 railway workers in Kenya in the early 20th century, killed people not for lack of food, but for pleasure or the ease of hunting humans, paleontologists say.

"It appears that hunting humans was not a last resort measure for the lions; it simply made their lives easier. Our data shows that these man-eating lions did not completely consume the carcasses of the animals and people they caught. It seems that the humans simply served as a pleasant addition to their already varied diet. In turn, anthropological evidence indicates that in Tsavo people were eaten not only by lions, but also by leopards and other big cats,” says Larisa DeSantis from Vanderbilt University in Nashville (USA).

Dark Heart of Africa

This story dates back to 1898, when the British colonial authorities decided to connect their colonies in eastern Africa with a giant railway stretching along the shores of the Indian Ocean. In March, its builders, Hindu workers brought to Africa and their white “sahibs,” faced another natural obstacle - the Tsavo River, a bridge over which they spent the next nine months building.

Throughout this time, the railroad workers were terrorized by a pair of local lions, whose boldness and insolence often went so far as to literally drag the workers out of their tents and eat them alive at the edge of the camp. The first attempts to scare off the predators using fire and barriers of thorny bushes failed, and they continued to attack the expedition members.

The Man-Eating Lion of Tsavo and Colonel Patterson

As a result of this, workers began to desert the camp en masse, which forced the British to organize a hunt for the “Tsavo killers.” Man-eating lions turned out to be unexpectedly cunning and elusive prey for John Patterson, an imperial army colonel and leader of the expedition, and only in early December 1898 did he manage to waylay and shoot one of the two lions, and 20 days later kill the second predator.

During this time, lions managed to end the lives of 137 workers and British military personnel, which forced many naturalists of the time and modern scientists to discuss the reasons for this behavior. Lions, and especially males, at that time were considered rather cowardly predators, not attacking people and large cats if there were escape routes and other food sources.

According to DeSantis, such ideas led most researchers to assume that the lions attacked the workers due to hunger - this was supported by the fact that the local population of herbivores was greatly reduced due to the plague epidemic and a series of fires. DeSantis and her colleague Bruce Patterson, the namesake of the colonel at the Chicago Field Museum of History, where the remains of the lions are kept, have been trying for 10 years to prove that this was not so.

Safari for the "king of beasts"

Initially, Patterson believed that the lions hunted people not because of a lack of food, but because their fangs were broken. This idea was met with a barrage of criticism from the scientific community, as Colonel Patterson himself noted that the tusk of one lion broke on the barrel of his rifle at the moment the animal lay in wait and jumped on him. However, Patterson and DeSantis continued to study the teeth of the Tsavo Killers, this time using modern paleontological methods.

The enamel of the teeth of all animals, as scientists explain, is covered with a peculiar “pattern” of microscopic scratches and cracks. The shape and size of these scratches, and how they are distributed, directly depends on the type of food that their owner ate. Accordingly, if the lions were starving, then their teeth should contain traces of chewed bones, which predators were forced to eat when there was a lack of food.

Guided by this idea, paleontologists compared the scratch patterns on the enamel of the Tsavo lions with the teeth of ordinary zoo lions that are fed soft food, hyenas that eat carrion and bones, and the man-eating lion from Mfuwe in Zambia, which killed at least six local residents in 1991 .

"Although eyewitnesses often reported 'crunching bones' on the outskirts of the camp, we found no signs of damage to the enamel on the teeth of the Tsavo lions, characteristic of bone eating. Moreover, the pattern of scratches on their teeth is most similar to that , which is found on the teeth of lions in zoos that are fed beef tenderloin or pieces of horse meat," DeSantis said.

Man-eating lions from Tsavo, reproduction at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago O

Accordingly, we can say that these lions did not suffer from hunger and did not hunt people for gastronomic reasons. Scientists speculate that lions simply liked relatively abundant and easy prey, which required much less effort to catch than hunting zebras or cattle.

According to Patterson, such findings partially speak in favor of his old theory about dental problems in lions - in order to kill a person, a lion did not have to bite through his neck arteries, which was problematic to do without fangs or with bad teeth when hunting large herbivores animals. According to him, the lion from Mfuwe also had similar problems with teeth and jaws. Therefore, we can expect that the controversy surrounding the Tsave cannibals will flare up with renewed vigor.