Tsavo Man-Eaters

[Hidehunter]

Well FOs's hunt,story and pics had me watching 'The Ghost and the Darkness' again.  Made probly the tenth time I have seen it.  If anybody has not seen it, I highly recommend it.  I started doin a little more investigating of these male mainless Tsavo killers.  I just downloaded the book 'The Man Eaters of Tsavo' written by John Patterson himself where he recalls his stay in Africa.  Just wondering if anybody else has read this book?

[weedwalker]

What is a Tsavo?   

[HuntnCarve]

I read the book a while back.  It was alot more detailed than the movie.  A good read, that explains a good bit more of the problems they had with the lions as they were putting in the railroad line.  You won't be dissappointed.

Dave

[Okanagan]

Yes, read the book years ago, much more accurate detail than the movie, natch.  Very good read.

[FinsnFur]

So they are lions? 

[nastygunz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsavo_maneaters

The Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of notorious man-eating lions responsible for the deaths of a number of construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway from March through December 1898.

In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The project was led by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging Indian workers from their tents at night and devouring them. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas of thorn fences around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, to no avail; the lions crawled through the thorn fences. After the new attacks, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. After repeated unsuccessful endeavors, he shot the first lion on December 9, 1898. Three weeks later, the second lion was found and killed. The first lion killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899. The exact number of people killed by the lions is unclear. Patterson gave several figures, claiming that there were 135 victims.[1][2]


Patterson writes in his account that he wounded the first lion with one bullet from a Martini-Enfield chambered in .303 caliber. This shot struck the lion in the hindquarters, but it escaped. Later, it returned at night and began stalking Patterson as he tried to hunt it. He shot it with a .303 Lee Enfield several times, tracked it the next morning, and found it dead. The second lion was shot five times with a .303 Lee Enfield, but it got up and charged him in severely crippled condition, whereupon he shot it three more times with the Martini-Henry carbine, twice in the chest, and once in the head, which killed it. He claimed it died gnawing on a fallen tree branch, still trying to reach him.[3]

After 25 years as Patterson's floor rugs, the lions' skins were sold to the Chicago Field Museum in 1924 for a sum of US$5,000. The lions' skins arrived at the museum in very poor condition. The lions were then reconstructed and are now on permanent display along with the original skulls.

Patterson's accounts were published in his 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.
Modern research

The two lion specimens in Chicago's Field Museum are known as FMNH 23970 (killed on December 9, 1898) and FMNH 23969 (killed on December 29, 1898). Recent studies have been made upon the isotopic signature analysis of Î"13C and Nitrogen-15 in their bone collagen and hair keratin and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Using realistic assumptions on the consumable tissue per victim, lion energetic needs, and their assimilation efficiencies, researchers compared the man-eaters' Î"13C signatures to various reference standards: Tsavo lions with normal (wildlife) diets, grazers and browsers from Tsavo East and Tsavo West, and the skeletal remains of Taita people from the early 20th century. This analysis estimated that FMNH 23969 ate the equivalent of 10.5 humans and that FMNH 23970 ate 24.2 humans [4] This leads to the conclusion that the lower number of 35 victims is more likely and that Patterson exaggerated his claims(though this claim doesn't take into account the people that were killed, but not eaten by the animals).[5] It also adds credence to the infirmity theory that the root-tip abscess on the lower right canine of FMNH 23970 (the "first man-eater) triggered the man-eating episode.

However, an earlier (2001) study by Tom Gnoske and Julian Kerbis Peterhans, published in the Journal of the East African Natural History Society, contended that a human toll of 100 or more was possible.[6] The diet of the victims would also affect their isotopic signature. A low meat diet would produce a signature more typical of herbivores in the victims, affecting the outcome of the test.[7] This research also excludes, but not disproves, the claims that the lions were not eating the victims they killed but merely killing just to be killing. Similar claims have been made of other wildlife predators.
Possible causes of "man-eating" behavior

Theories for the "man-eating behavior" of lions have been reviewed by Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske (2001) and Patterson (2004). Their discussions include the following:

    An outbreak of rinderpest disease (cattle plague) in 1898 devastated the lions' usual prey, forcing them to find alternative food sources.
    The Tsavo lions may have been accustomed to finding dead humans at the Tsavo River crossing. Slave caravans bound for Zanzibar routinely crossed the river there.
    "Ritual invitation", or abbreviated cremation of Hindu railroad workers, invited scavenging by the lions.

An alternative argument indicates that the first lion had a severely damaged tooth that would have compromised its ability to kill natural prey. Evidence for this is presented in a series of peer-reviewed papers by Neiburger and Patterson (2000, 2001, 2002) and in Bruce Patterson's (2004) book. This theory has been generally disregarded by most and Colonel Patterson, who killed the lions, has personally disclaimed it, saying that he damaged that tooth with his rifle while the lion charged him one night, prompting it to flee.
Popular culture

Patterson's book was the basis for the movies Bwana Devil in 1952 and The Ghost and the Darkness in 1996, with the incidents also used in 1959's Killers of Kilimanjaro. The names "The Ghost" and "The Darkness" were names given to the two man-eating lions.

The story of Patterson and the man-eating lions was also an inspiration for the book Three Weeks in December by Audrey Schulman, published in 2012.[8]

The lions also appear as a difficulty to be overcome in the "Cape to Cairo" scenario of the video game Railroad Tycoon II.

The plot of the Willard Price book Lion Adventure was inspired by the man-eaters of Tsavo, where Hal and Roger Hunt are hired to deal with a man eating lion that's preying on rail road workers. At one point in the book, Hal recounts the original tale of Colonel Patterson.

[FinsnFur]

Holy Crap  You coulda just said "yes"

[Ladobe]

Holy Crap  You coulda just said "yes"

   Sure glad he didn't. 

Like Hidehunter I too watched my DVD of the movie again.   It is entertaining, has acceptable actors, great scenery.   I also have done research on the incident more than once after watching the movie.   But I found many conflicting "opinions", none that I relied on.  And the "numbers" killed by them were very widely spread.    But I enjoyed being reminded of one of them by the C&P posted by nastygunz.    Never read the book by Patterson, no idea if I would count it as factual without first doing so.   Few real life books are 100% fact.    Regardless, if even a small portion of what has been speculated took place is actually fact, it's pretty interesting stuff.

[Hawks Feather]

As the one lion said, "Man.  It is what's for dinner."  You have to admit that most were the slowest animal there and probably had the smallest teeth to fight back with.

Jerry

[Okanagan]

Anyone interested in the Tsavo lions should also read come of Jim Corbett's books on man eating tigers and leopards in India, such as Man Eaters of Kuamon.  Anyone interested in the Tsavo lions probably already has read Corbett! 

[bigben]

I always liked the movie.  I always wondered how close the real story was to the movie tho.

[Hidehunter]

It appears that the real Story is better.  Book has alot more detail.  In real life, the lions would dissappear for as long as 5 months before resurfacing.  Also the small camp they stay in is nothing like what it really was.  There were multiple camps over a couple of miles the cats were hitting.  Around 5000 people there working. OK OK I'l shut up lol.  Ya need to read it...very interesting!!

[nastygunz]

I always find the books better then the movies. Here's some good old time hunting yarns:

http://www.classicreader.com/book/2222/

[Bopeye]

Never read the book, but watched the movie several years ago. If I remember right Val Kilmer was Patterson and Curt Douglas played a guy named Remington. Is that correct?
If the guy was Remington was he the same Remington of Remington firearm fame? Like I said,Just wondering. 

[Okanagan]

The Remington character in the movie was entirely fictional according to Wikipedia, and I checked there because that was my understanding as well.  The Remington character was slightly based on Jim Corbett of India but Corbett had nothing to do with the Tsavo lions and came to fame as a hunter of man eaters 20 years later.  The engineer, Patterson, hunted and killed the lions mostly on his own.

[CCP]

Patterson writes in his account that he wounded the first lion with one bullet from a Martini-Enfield chambered in .303 caliber.

To bad they didn't have the 17 HMR back then...

[MI VHNTR]

A few years beck, my daughter was in Chicago and she went to the museum while she was there. The Field Museum Of Natural History in Chicago, Ill. has a display called The Man-Eating Lions Of Tsavo and the lions were also on display in the display.  It also included a booklet by Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Patterson, D. S. O. published in 1925. It's a good read and has quite a few pictures of the lions, people and the surroundings.
I still have the booklet here and re-read it occasionally.

[Bopeye]

Thanks Okanagan. I figured it was probably some Hollywood stuff like that, since I wasn't seeing where anyone was mentioning Remington in the book or in their posts. You DA MAN!