The Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of man-eating lions, which were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 130 construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway between March and December of 1898. The significance of this lion pair was their unusual behavior of killing men and the savage manner of their attacks.
As part of the construction of a railway linking Uganda with the Indian Ocean at Kilindini Harbour, in March of 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The building site consisted of several camps spread over an 8 mile area, accommodating the several thousand laborers.
The project was led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, who arrived just days before the disappearances and killings began. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging workers from their tents at night and devouring them.
There was an interval of several months when the attacks ceased, but word trickled in from other nearby settlements of similar lion attacks. When the lions returned the attacks intensified, with almost daily killings.
Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas, or thorn fences made of whistling thorn trees around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, all to no avail; the lions leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences.
Patterson noted that early in their killing spree, only one lion at a time would enter the inhabited areas and seize victims, but later they became more brazen.
As the attacks mounted, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. At this point, colonial officials began to intervene. According to Patterson, even the District Officer, Mr. Whitehead, narrowly escaped being killed by one of the lions after arriving at the Tsavo train depot in the evening.
Whitehead’s assistant, Abdullah, was killed while he escaped with four claw lacerations running down his back. Eventually other officials arrived, with a reinforcement of around 20 armed Sepoys to assist in the hunt. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree.
After repeated unsuccessful attempts, he shot and killed the first lion on December 9th of 1898.
Twenty days later, the second lion was tracked and killed. The first lion killed measured 9 ft 8 in (2.95 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp.
Patterson wrote in his account that he wounded the first lion with one bullet from a high-calibre rifle. This shot struck the lion in its hind leg, but it escaped. Later, it returned at night and began stalking Patterson as he tried to hunt it. He shot it through the shoulder, penetrating its heart with a more powerful rifle and found it lying dead the next morning not far from his platform.
The second lion was shot at nine times, five with the same rifle, three with a second, and once with a third rifle. Reports indicated that six of the shots found their mark.
The construction crew returned and finished the bridge in February of 1899. The exact number of people killed by the lions is unclear. The official record indicates that there were 135 victims. Many have questioned this figure, but it remains unchanged and unproven that it is inaccurate.
Theories for the man-eating behavior of lions have been reviewed by several experts. An outbreak of rinderpest (cattle plague) in 1898 devastated the lions’ usual prey, and may have forced them to find alternative food sources.
The Tsavo lions may have been accustomed to finding dead humans at the Tsavo River crossing. Slave caravans to the center of the Arab slave trade, Zanzibar, routinely crossed the river there.
Another argument indicates that the first lion had a severely damaged tooth that would have compromised its ability to kill natural prey. This theory has been generally disregarded by the general public and Colonel Patterson, who killed the lions, personally disclaiming it. He claimed he had been the one to damage the tooth.
Studies indicate the lions ate humans as a supplement to other food, not as a last resort. In a 2017 study carried out by Dr. Bruce Patterson, it was found that one of the lions had an infection at the root of his canine tooth.
That means it would have been more difficult for the lion to hunt. Lions normally use their jaws to grab prey like zebras and wildebeests and suffocate them.
This article cites information from Vanderbilt University and Suzanne Bauman. For more sports, news and entertainment follow the Midwest Sports Network on Twitter @MWSNsports or like our page on Facebook.
