The lion brothers are cannibals. Two from Tsavo: a colonial story that smoothly turns into a scary tale

The famous man-eating lions from Tsavo, who killed over 130 railway workers in Kenya in the early 20th century, killed people not for lack of food, but for pleasure or because of the ease of hunting a person, paleontologists say in an article published in the journal scientific reports.

“It seems that hunting a man was not a measure of last resort for lions, it simply made life easier for them. Our data show that these man-eating lions did not completely eat the carcasses of animals and people they caught. It seems that people simply served as a pleasant addition to their already varied diet. 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 from Vanderbilt University in Nashville (USA).

The story begins in 1898, when the colonial authorities of Britain decided to connect their colonies in East Africa with a giant railway that stretched along the shores of the Indian Ocean. In March, its builders, Indian laborers brought to Africa and their white Sahibs, encountered another natural barrier - the Tsavo River, a bridge over which they built for the next nine months.

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

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

Ghost and Darkness. Man-eating lions from Tsavo, reproduction at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago

During this time, the lions managed to end the lives of 137 workers and British soldiers, which led many naturalists of that time and modern scientists to discuss the reasons for such behavior. Lions, and especially males, at that time were considered rather cowardly predators that did not attack people and large cats in the presence of retreat routes and other sources of food.

According to DeSantis, such ideas led most researchers to assume that the lions attacked the workers because of hunger - in favor of this was the fact that the local population of herbivores was greatly reduced due to the plague and a series of fires. DeSantis and her colleague Bruce Patterson, the namesake of a colonel at the Chicago Field Museum of History, where the remains of 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 lions preyed on people not because of a lack of food, but because their fangs were broken. This idea was met with a flurry 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 when 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 kind of "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 on their teeth there should be traces of gnawed bones, which the predators were forced to eat with a lack of food.

With this in mind, paleontologists have compared the scratch patterns on the enamel of the Tsavo lions with the teeth of ordinary zoo lions fed soft food, carrion and bone-eating hyenas, and the man-eating lion from Mfuwe in Zambia, which killed at least six local residents in 1991. .

“Despite the fact that eyewitnesses often reported “crunching of bones” heard on the outskirts of the camp, we did not find evidence of damage to the enamel on the teeth of the lions from Tsavo, characteristic of eating bones. Moreover, the pattern of scratches on their teeth is most similar to that , which is found on the teeth of lions in zoos who 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 the lions simply liked the fairly numerous and easy prey, the capture of which required much less effort than hunting zebras or cattle.

According to Patterson, such findings partially support his old theory about dental problems in lions - in order to kill a person, a lion did not have to bite through his cervical arteries, which was problematic to do without fangs or with bad teeth when hunting large herbivores. animals. Similar problems with teeth and jaws, he said, had a lion from Mfuwe. Therefore, we can expect that the disputes around the cannibals from Tsave will flare up with renewed vigor.

What do you think, what is the most bloodthirsty species on our planet? That's right - man! We kill not only for food, but also for pleasure, to dress, to be treated, and also to ... but what kind of perversions a person can think of. We even kill each other. But fortunately, our smaller brothers help us to achieve one of the most important goals in life. The Lord instructs the animals on the path of revenge, introduces his emissary into the game to kill us one by one.

Some of them are like real killers who have undergone special training. They carefully prepare, methodically hunt down, surprise attack, skillfully kill, quickly hide. Their killings are not like a simple need for food. Previously, when such attacks became serial, the killers were deified, they were made into spirits, ghosts, heroes of folklore and myths.

Lions from Tsavo

Perhaps these are the most famous cannibal lions who defended their "Fatherland". They are also known as "Ghost and Darkness". Two lions worked in tandem at the end of the last decade of the 19th century. According to official figures, they killed 35 people. According to other sources, 135 people. This is probably due to the fact that at that time blacks were not considered people.

The territory of their activity covered the banks of the Tsavo River, which flows in Kenya. In 1898, a Briton named John Henry Patterson started building a bridge over this river. In addition to the British, many blacks and workers from India were involved in the project.

When the construction of the bridge began, the workers began to be kidnapped by two "kings". They abducted them under the cover of night right from the tents. The whole camp woke up from the screams and cries of the unfortunate, who were found after a while half eaten. The lions became very bold, they did not hesitate to attack during the day, leaving the "spectators" in mute horror.

The attacks continued for several months, and frightened and demoralized workers took action against the "warriors of darkness." At first they tried to use fires to scare away cats, but without success. Then fences went into action, but they did not stop the bloodshed. All efforts were unsuccessful.

Patterson, known as an experienced shooter and hunter, undertook to resolve this issue personally. He set traps, but the lions miraculously escaped them. Patterson's next step looked like a platform on stilts. This trick was proposed by the Indians, and it is called "machaan". But while the great hunter sat for the third day in a row at his observation post, the camp was attacked again and more than once.

Rumors spread throughout the camp. Representatives of different cultures and beliefs - all spoke with one voice about the punishment of the Lord. They named the deadly duo "Ghost and Darkness". They were afraid to continue working and left the camp.

The British eschewed pseudoscientific explanations. They assumed that the two lions were injured or alone, so they teamed up to hunt. They believed that if one was killed, the other would soon die. Then a second man named Charles Remington joined the hunt.

During their wanderings across the savannah, Patterson and Remington found a stinking cave where human remains were rotting. Some organs were simply bitten, and something was not touched at all. From this they deduced that lions hunted not only for food, but also for the thrill.

While they were looking for them, they never met the lions face to face, but often heard their rapid breathing or a dull roar. In the darkness, because of the grass, they sometimes noticed the glare of cat's eyes, but they quickly disappeared. The lions came quite close to the hunters, but people understood this only after some time. At some points, according to Patterson and Remington, it seemed to them that they were being hunted for them.

The situation escalated. A couple of men realized that this was not just a hunt, but a race to the bottom. The killing of the lions was to end the bloodshed that had begun nine months earlier. After unsuccessful attempts, the first lion was killed on December 9, 1898. Twenty days later, the second was also defeated. Later, the hunter told how even 9 shots did not stop the beast. “At the last moment, he tried to attack me. I'm lucky!" Patterson recalled.

The first of the lions was 3 meters long (from the nose to the tip of the tail). It was so heavy that it took 8 people to carry it to the camp. The bridge was eventually completed in February 1899, and the remains of the animals were sold to the Chicago Museum, where they are to this day.

Gustav

This name was given to a huge Nile crocodile that lives in the Ruzizi River and on the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika in Burundi. This is the largest crocodile. 7.5 meters long and weighing over a ton.

By some estimates he is 60 years old and still growing. This crocodile survived all assassination attempts (crocodile hunting became fashionable from the 1940s to 1960s) and even the civil war. Numerous scars testify to his turbulent past, one of which flaunts on his eye. According to experts, this scar is from a bullet.

In addition to his size, Gustav is known for his speed and agility. He has more than 300 people on his account. He, like a rocket, flew out of the water surface, grabbed the victim and hid in the muddy abyss. Gustav became the hero of local legends and even received the status of a "spirit". He has the handwriting of a real serial maniac. In just a few days, he killed about a dozen people, and then left the stage for a while, only to replenish his energy and hit with new forces.

They say that Gustav killed only for fun, and it was his revenge for the fallen relatives. He left the corpses at the scene of the murders intact (not eaten). The fun fact is reinforced by the fact that crocodiles can go without food for several months, and they do not need to kill so much. Gustav sneaked up to the fishermen under water, then grabbed them under water and waited until the poor fellow choked. Then he simply let go, allowing the unfortunate man to emerge. But the killer reached a whole new level when his killings turned into group killings: 5-6 people at a time. And then he went with a clear conscience into the depths of the river, leaving a blood-red trail behind him.

Naturally, the locals were afraid of him, and at the mere mention of his name, they scattered in panic fear. Some documents only confirm his extraterrestrial reputation. In one of the soldiers' reports, they say that the crocodile literally swallowed the entire line fired at him when Gustav attacked a 15-year-old girl in front of a group of soldiers.

The local celebrity is still alive according to residents. Numerous traps, famous hunters, traps with chickens, cows and even dogs did not help to capture the beast. The last activity was recorded in 2008. He must have gone deep to prepare for another blow.

Tilikum

A killer whale named Tilikum was caught off the coast of Iceland in 1983 at the age of 2 years. Now he has grown, now he is seven meters long and weighs 5400 kilograms. Tilikum currently resides at the Aquarium in Orlando, Florida. So far, he has killed 3 people in his life. Involvement in one of the incidents is questionable.

The first kill occurred in 1991 when a male was living with two females at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia. Then 20-year-old biology student Kelty Byrne worked part-time at an entertainment center as a trainer. During one of the shows, he jumped into the aquarium, where 2 females lived with Tilikum (as it turned out, they were pregnant). Without warning, all three pounced on the unfortunate student and drowned him right in front of the audience.

Byrne, being a professional swimmer, tried to get on land, but killer whales did not allow him to. They did not let him grab onto the life buoys, any attempts to help the unfortunate turned out to be in vain. When it seemed that the guy was about to get out to the side of the pool, the predator threw him back into the middle. When the coach drowned, his body could not be taken away for several hours.

Almost immediately after this incident, Tilikum was transferred to Orlando, where he committed another murder in July 1999. The victim was 27-year-old Daniel Dukes, who was found dead on the back of a killer whale. He was naked, and there were many abrasions, bruises and cuts on his body. Later it turned out that the guy was among the audience, and at the end of the performance he hid. At night he entered the pool. It is not clear what made the man climb there, because. an autopsy revealed no drugs or alcohol in his blood.

In February 2010, Tilikum killed an experienced animal trainer, Don Brancheau. It happened right after the show, when Don was petting her pet. In front of the gathering audience, Tilikum grabbed his mentor by the hand (some say by the scythe) and dragged him under the water. Ignoring all the attempts of Don's colleagues to distract him with food and toys, he nevertheless allowed himself to be lured to a medical enclosure, where he was easier to control.

Tilikum practically tore off his arm and head from Brancheau, there were many fractures, including fractures of the cervical vertebrae, and the spine was completely torn.

After warning sanctions, small fines and minor reconstruction, Tilikum was released again in 2011. Although his contact with animals and people is limited (he is practically non-existent), Tilikum is ready to kill.

Leopard from the Central Regions of India

At the beginning of the 20th century, the central regions of India were terrorized by a man-eating leopard. It is believed that the leopard "filled up" about 150 people, earning himself the nickname "Very cunning panther." He also distinguished himself by stability: he killed every 2-3 days.

It was difficult to predict his next strike. It seemed that the leopard moved at cosmic speed and never attacked twice in one place. Usually the next victim was more than 10 kilometers from the previous one. The increasing number of deaths and the impossibility of predicting the attack puzzled the local authorities. Some people refused to go to work, and some even refused to leave their homes.

The English hunters agreed to accept the challenge, but to say that it would be a heroic deed if successful would be an understatement. After a three-week search, the boy came to the hunters who were driving cattle, and said that his brother had just been killed by a big cat.

Then the hunters prepared an ambush at the fresh corpse. But when the leopard was caught, he could easily get out of the water dry, without giving the snipers a chance for an accurate shot. Then the desperate hunter jumped out and ran to the cat in the open, trying to scare with screams and waving his arms, but Leo just disappeared into the darkness.

Soon the hunter realized that he was now being hunted. It didn't take long for him to be content with empty feelings of being chased and snuffling empty calls in the middle of the night (no, Leo didn't call, of course). His fears were confirmed when, after spending the night in a tree in the jungle, he discovered that a deadly cat was quietly climbing up his tree. The next time he woke up in his tent, the awning of which someone was catching and trying to rip off. This time the beast was frightened by the cry of local residents.

The leopard continued to kill at an astonishing rate. Both cattle and people became its victims. It is not clear how much more the killing machine would have been atrocious if it had not been for the gas cylinder that stopped people's panic.

What made him attack people - such an unusual and unreasonable diet in terms of energy value? Scientists claim that cats switch to human flesh only when they have health problems, they are injured, or they get old. But our Leo had all his teeth and claws intact, he was young and healthy. So he didn't hunt for food. Experts have suggested a rather creepy thing: when Leo was still a kitten, he was fed human flesh.

Lone elephant from the forests of Aberdare

Throughout the 20th century, several villages in Kenya were attacked by the African elephant. For many months, the elephant destroyed villages with impunity, destroyed crops, broke dwellings and killed one person (according to rumors, there were more dead). He seemed to be specifically looking for people, but at the same time he was very cunning: he did not attack the same village twice.

Although one kill is not so much compared to previous killers, but this does not do him credit. Having torn to death one person, tearing off his arms from his body, the elephant inflicted fatal and not very injuries on many residents. If he had not been stopped, it is not known how many murders would have been on his account.

There was a hunter for the outcast under the sonorous name of J. A. Hunter. He learned about the killer elephant from the frightened villagers who interrupted their antelope hunt to tell him about the elephant raging in the vicinity. Then the lone elephant killed one of his own.

Hunter began the hunt by stalking the jungles of Aberdare. It was there that he clashed with him for the first time. The next day, the hunter tracked the elephant through broken branches and trees. But the elephant sensed the hunter first and set off on him, but Hunter shot him in the head with a large-caliber gun, and then finished him off in the neck.

An autopsy found a bullet wound in an elephant under the tusk, where the nerve center is located in elephants. As the veterinarians suggested, the pain caused the elephant to behave aggressively and break away from the pack. And people could not understand the animal.

Serpent of Nigeria

In 1999, in just 10 days, a cobra killed 16 Nigerians.

Snakes are known for being deadly, so no one provokes them on purpose. They have a very well developed defense mechanism. But this cobra specifically sought out victims, attacking from tall grass. She bit a man, then hid and after a while finished him off.

But what causes animals to break their usual diet and habits? "Ghost and Darkness", united, attacked due to the fact that they did not have a full-fledged pride. Killer whales due to pregnancy, elephants due to pain, Leo was tamed to human flesh as a child. Only it has not been clarified why Gustav and this cobra attacked (she, too, has not yet been caught).

In any case, as scientists say, large predators during illnesses, in old age, switch their mode to more accessible victims. An unarmed man is a very easy prey. From an evolutionary point of view, we are safe. We have no fangs, no claws, no poison glands. Why wouldn't an old alligator attack a human?

So if you are going to visit one of them, then at http://www.rustouroperator.ru/?cat=1 you can buy a ticket and tickle your nerves. To do this, choose tours from Moscow for 2 days and you will have time to see and do not spend a lot of money

Copyright website © - Marcel Garipov

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Fear has big eyes, and by means of Hollywood cinema, as practice shows, they can be enlarged many times over. Opinion polls have shown that after the release of the film "Jaws" the US population was gripped by the fear of being eaten by sharks. Respondents believed that this is one of the main reasons for the death of Americans, while in reality the chance of dying in the mouth of a shark is negligible.

The history of the Kenyan man-eating lions developed in approximately the same way. Several films contributed to making this story look as scary as possible, among them The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) with Val Kilmer.

More than 100 years after those events, scientists have debunked the myth of formidable killers by analyzing their remains stored in the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The results of the study are published this week Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Man-eating lions preyed on railroad workers in Kenya in 1898. They were able to be killed by a lieutenant colonel in the British Army. He stated that in the nine months of his struggle with predators, they ate 135 people. However, the Ugandan Railway Company denied this information: its representatives believed that only 28 people were killed. Patterson donated the remains of the animals to the Chicago Museum in 1924 - before that, the skins of lions served as carpets in his house.

A. Lieutenant Colonel Paterson with a man-eating lion he killed on December 9, 1898; B. Jaws of this lion - his right lower canine is broken and part of the incisors is missing; S. Second man-eating lion (killed December 29, 1898); D. His jaw with a broken upper left first molar//PNAS

Modern research has shown that the railroad workers were more accurate in their estimates than the military.

In fact, the lions (who were called Ghost and Darkness in the film) ate about 35 people for two.

In order to get the result, the scientists conducted an isotope analysis of the remains of animals, in particular, the content of stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the skins. The content of these elements reflects the diet of animals. For comparison, the content of these elements in the tissues of humans and modern Kenyan lions was also determined. The analysis was carried out both in bone tissues and in the animal's fur. Bone tissues provide information about the "averaged" diet throughout the life of the animal, and wool - "fingerprints" of the last few months of life.

Skulls used for nitrogen and carbon analysis//PNAS

Analyzing the data obtained, the scientists confirmed that these lions began to actively feed on people only a few months before death - the ratio of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the tissues of their fur and bones was too different. This difference, as well as a comparison of these numbers with elemental analysis of tissues from modern lions and humans, allowed scientists to quantify the number of people eaten. One of the lions ate about 24 people, while the second - only 11. The error of the method used, however, is very large. Theoretically, the lower estimate of the number eaten is four, the upper estimate is 72. Anyway, this number is less than a hundred, and rumors about the large number of victims of deadly predators are clearly exaggerated. Scientists still stick to the number 35, as it is close to the official figures of the Uganda Railway Company. Despite the fact that the animals hunted together, they did not share prey, as can be seen from the different composition of the tissues of the two animals. Joint hunting is important for lions when attacking large animals, such as buffaloes. Man is too small and slow for a single lion to take him down.

Joint hunting for a man suggests that man-eating lions were not the best representatives of the breed.

They took up hunting people not from a good life, they were also not the strongest and most courageous animals. On the contrary, they were weaker and could no longer hunt the types of prey more familiar to them. In addition, the dry summer of that year devastated the savannas and reduced the number of herbivores that were a common food for lions.

Ghost and Dark also suffered from gum disease and teeth, and one of them had a broken jaw. All these circumstances prompted the lions to choose easy prey, which does not run far and is easier to chew - people.

We cut wood, we dug ditches,
Lions came up to us in the evenings...
(N. Gumilyov)

I don't have a funny bedtime story for you. There is a terrible one. And it's not really a fairy tale...

In Chicago, the Museum of Natural History has an ever-popular display case. It contains two stuffed animals of the cat breed and several photographs.

These two lions are males, although they do not have manes. In Kenya, where they come from, in the Tsavo National Park, such lions are still found, maneless and short-haired ...
At the very end of the 19th century, these two stalled the construction of the Ugandan railway for several weeks. However, perhaps the hunter, by whose grace they are now in the museum, added something in his memoirs about those events;) And even more so, the creators of the Oscar-winning film "Ghost and Darkness" based on these very memories added a lot in Hollywood.
However, the fact that a bloody drama took place during the construction of the railway is pure truth.

The construction of the Uganda Railway began in 1896. And the episode of interest to us happened in 1898 in a place called Tsavo. I am not strong in Swahili, and I cannot confirm (or deny) whether "Tsavo" in this language really means something like a black hole. But engineer Ronald Preston, who was in charge of the construction of the road, found this place to be heavenly. It was exactly where the railway approached the river through which it was necessary to build a railway bridge that everything began. (“Daddy, who built this railway?” ... The British, baby. That is, of course, the Indian workers brought to the construction site laid the rails - the local African residents were not eager to cooperate. However, Preston managed to persuade some of them) . Workers began to disappear from the camp at night. However, the secret was quickly revealed, the traces were painfully obvious - a man-eating lion wound up near the camp.
They tried to catch the lion. Unsuccessfully. Around the tents they built fences from thorny bushes:

As it turned out, the lions (there were, apparently, two of them) made their way through them perfectly, dragging their prey with them.

A temporary bridge was erected across the Tsavo River:

To build a permanent bridge in March 1898, engineer John Henry Paterson arrived in Tsavo, who wrote a best-selling book about his adventures in Africa.

Colonel Paterson

Paterson at the tent (left, with a gun). It’s hard to see, but I don’t have another Paterson for you :(

And here comes the fun. The fact is that there is a story about the events in Tsavo, which belongs to Preston. So, Paterson's notes with this story in some places coincide verbatim (even though Preston talks about himself, and Paterson - about himself). So understand what was there and who plagiarized what from whom ...

One way or another, from March to December 1898, with varying degrees of intensity and varying success, the lions raided the camp of the railroad builders.

Workers on the construction of the railway in Tsavo

Some of them were simply stolen at night right from the tents.

The tent of one of the victims of predators (I think so, the one in the foreground on the right)

Workers from the construction site began to scatter. However, perhaps it was not only about the killer lions, but also about the character of Paterson - it seems that the workers who mined the stone for the construction of the bridge even wanted to kill the stern boss ...

They tried to catch cannibalistic creatures in different ways. Once they built a trap:

The trap was divided into two parts by a grate - in the far part there was a "bait" with a gun. The lion fell into a trap, but the poor fellow, who served as "bait", was frightened when the lion tried to get it with his paw through the bars, opened random shooting and, instead of shooting the lion, shot off the lock of the slammed cage ... The lion escaped.
Paterson built an observation platform on a tree where a predator could not climb:

Paterson with the first lion killed:

Second lion killed

The fearless British officer took the skins as trophies, and for a long time they lay at his house, performing the function of carpets. And in 1924, when Paterson needed money, he sold it to the Field Museum in Chicago. The skins of the lions were in a deplorable state. it took a lot of work for the taxidermist to put them in order and make decent stuffed animals (by the way, this may be why the lions in the window look smaller than they really were).

Museum taxidermist at work:

Cannibals from Tsavo on display at the Field Museum in 1925

The railway bridge across Tsavo was successfully built, and in 1901 the entire railway line was ready - it went from Mombasa, on the ocean coast, to Port Florence (Kisumbu, on Lake Victoria), named after Florence, Preston's wife, the former with him in Africa all five years, while the railway was being built ...
And in 1907, Paterson wrote his famous book (by the way, selected chapters from it, devoted specifically to hunting cannibal lions, were translated into Russian). And Colonel Paterson came out around the hero, who saved the workers from the cannibals who killed 140 people. However...
Scientists who examined the stuffed lions say that in fact one of them ate 24 people, and the second - 11. That is, the victims of the lions shot by Paterson, in reality, were no more than thirty-five. What are 140 victims? The Colonel's hunting boast? Maybe so. Maybe not.
Paterson claimed to have discovered a lion's den littered with human bones. This place was lost, but not so long ago, researchers from the same Museum of Natural History rediscovered it and identified it from a photograph taken by Paterson (it has hardly changed in a hundred years, but, of course, there were no bones there anymore). Apparently, in fact, it used to be the burial place of one of the African tribes - lions do not put bones in a corner in a hole ...
In addition, it is known that, in fact, with the killing of lions from Tsavo, the raids of predators on the railway did not stop - aggressive lions came to the stations (not to mention the fact that it was possible to meet on the railway not only with a lion, but also with no less aggressive rhinos, and even elephants).
So maybe there really were one hundred and forty victims? Maybe these lions ate 35 workers, and others ate the rest of the hundred? For there is no evidence that there were only two lions...

And Tsavo is now a national park. You can go on a safari there, look at the maneless lions and listen to the story of how the British built the railway bridge...