The Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of large man-eating male lions in the Tsavo region of Kenya, which were responsible for the deaths of many construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway between March and December 1898. The lion pair was said to have killed dozens of people, with some early estimates reaching over a hundred deaths. While the terrors of man-eating lions were not new in the British public perception, the Tsavo Man-Eaters became one of the most notorious instances of dangers posed to Indian and native African workers of the Uganda Railway. They were eventually killed by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, who wrote his account of his hunting experience in a semi-biography The Man-eaters of Tsavo. Today, the Tsavo Man-Eaters are the most widely studied man-eating pantherine cats given their behavior of hunting humans as a pair and dental injuries reported in one of the lions, a cause commonly attributed to big cats turning to humans as prey.
Historical information
Initial killings
As part of the construction of a railway linking Uganda with the Indian Ocean at Kilindini Harbour, in March 1898, the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The building site consisted of several camps spread over an area of 8 miles (13 km), accommodating the several thousand workers from India. 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 to get into the camps. 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, entering together and each seizing a victim. 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. However, his assistant, Abdullah, was killed, while Whitehead escaped with four claw lacerations running down his back.
Hunt for the lions Eventually, other officials arrived, with a reinforcement of around twenty 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 the first lion on 9 December 1898. Twenty days later, the second lion was found and killed. The first lion killed measured 9 ft 8 in (2.95 m) from nose to tip of the 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-caliber 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 nine times, five with the same rifle, three with a second, and once with a third rifle – six finding their mark. The first shot was fired from atop a scaffolding that Patterson had built near a goat killed by the lion. Two shots from a second rifle hit the lion eleven days later as it was stalking Patterson and trying to flee. When they found the lion the next day, Patterson shot it three more times with the same rifle, severely crippling it, and shot it three times with a third rifle, 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.
Resumption of works The construction crew returned and finished the bridge in February 1899. The exact number of people killed by the lions is unclear. Patterson gave several figures, overall claiming that there were 135 victims. At the end of the crisis, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Lord Salisbury, addressed the House of Lords on the subject of the Tsavo man-eaters: "The whole of the works were put to a stop because a pair of man-eating lions appeared in the locality and conceived a most unfortunate taste for our workmen. At last the labourers entirely declined to carry on unless they were guarded by iron entrenchments. Of course it is difficult to work a railway under these conditions and until we found an enthusiastic sportsman to get rid of these lions our enterprise was seriously hindered."
Museum display After 25 years as Patterson's floor rugs, the lions' skins were sold to the Field Museum of Natural History in 1924 for $5,000. The skins arrived at the museum in very poor condition. The lions were reconstructed and are now on permanent display, along with their skulls.
Modern research
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