Cannibals from Tsavo

In March 1898, construction began on a permanent bridge across the Tsavo River, a section of the Uganda Railway. Construction was led by John Henry Patterson . For more than nine months, from March to December, workers were attacked by two cannibalistic lions. Trying to protect themselves from lions, workers built fences from a prickly bush (bom) around the tents, but they did not help. Because of the attacks, hundreds of workers left 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 manes , although they were males. The length of both lions from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail was about nine feet (three meters).

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

Patterson reported various numbers of casualties. In a 1907 book, he wrote that twenty-eight Indian workers were killed by lions, and the number of Africans killed is unknown. In a pamphlet written in 1925 for the Field Museum, he named another number of those killed - one hundred thirty-five ^[1] .

In 2007, a representative of the National Museum of Kenya stated that the remains of lions should be returned to Kenya, since this is an important part of Kenyan history ^[2] . In 2009, a similar statement was made by the Minister of Culture and Heritage of Kenya, William Ole Ntimama ^[3] .

In the museum, lions are stored under the numbers FMNH 23970 and FMNH 23969. In 2009, a group of scientists from the Field Museum and the University of California at Santa Cruz investigated the isotopic composition of the bones and hair of lions ^[4] . They found that the first lion was eaten by eleven people, and the second by twenty-four. One of the authors of the study, curator of the Field Museum Bruce Patterson (not a relative of D.G. Patterson), said: “The rather ridiculous statements made in his book by Colonel Patterson can now be refuted in many ways,” at the same time, another author, Nathaniel Domini, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, emphasized: “Our evidence speaks of the number of people eaten, but not the number of people killed” ^[5] .

The possible reasons why lions became cannibals are as follows ^{[6] [7]} :

• Epizootic of cattle plague , which reduced the number of casualties, which led the lions to seek new prey;
• The habit of eating corpses of people in the Tsavo area, through which many caravans with slaves passed from the interior to the Indian Ocean;
• The cremation of the Indian workers, after which the lions rummaged in the remains;
• Teeth problems that prevented lions from hunting prey;
• Damaged jaw of the first lion.

Patterson’s book became the basis for the films Bwana Devil ^[en] (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro ^[en] (1959) and Ghost and Darkness (1996). In the last film, the role of Patterson was played by Val Kilmer , and the lions received the names Ghost and Darkness.

• John Henry Patterson . Cannibals from Tsavo
• Cannibals from Tsavo at the Field Museum
• Found a distinctive feature of cannibal lions