The “ maneaters “ of Tsavo In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge in East Africa. Over the next nine months, two large male lions killed and ate nearly 140 railway workers near the village of Voi. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and thorn fences for protection, but to no avail. Hundreds of workers fled Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Before work could resume, chief engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson (1865-1947) had to eliminate the lions and their threat. After many near misses, he finally shot the first lion on December 9, 1898, and three weeks later brought down the second. 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 1996 hollywood movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" featuring "Michael Douglas" was based on Patterson's adventures in Tsavo.) We will never know why the Tsavo lions became man-eaters, but two factors may have contributed to their unusual diet. In the 1890s, an outbreak of rinderpest disease killed millions of zebras, gazelles and other African wildlife. Lions had to look elsewhere for food, and attacks on humans increased across the continent. Poor burial practices may have also contributed to the Tsavo tragedy. Railroad workers who died of injury or disease were often poorly buried, or not buried at all. A scavenging lion coming across this easy meal might start going after live humans. After completing the railroad, Patterson became chief game warden in Kenya and later served with the British Army in World War I. He published four books and lectured widely on his adventures. After speaking at The Field Museum in 1924, Patterson sold the museum the lion skins and skulls for the then large sum of $5,000. The skins arrived in less-than-perfect condition--old and dry, they had been cut down into rugs. (In real life the lions were even larger than they appear as taxidermy mounts.) The skins were also blemished by gunshot wounds and thorn scratches. Museum taxidermist Julius Friesser did an extraordinary job creating the life like mounts you can see at The Field Museum in Chikago |
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