Nov-03-2009Study: Legendary Man-Eating Lions Really Did Eat Men
(topic overview)
CONTENTS:SOURCESFIND OUT MORE ON THIS SUBJECTA British colonel hired to hunt the beasts claimed the lions killed 135 people in attacks which eventually became nightly occurrences and shut down work on the 1898 railway expansion. That number was disputed by the Ugandan Railway Company, which estimated that just 28 people were killed. Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson's vivid accounts of the nine months he pursued the lions lent credence to his claims. By analyzing hair and bone samples from the pair of lions -- which Patterson sold to Chicago's Field Museum in 1924 after using their hides as rugs -- researchers were able to estimate that the railway company's account was closer to the truth. "This has been a historical puzzle for years, and the discrepancy is now finally being addressed," said Nathaniel Dominy, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
[1] English Colonel John Patterson, who lived through the terror, formulated the original head count. What's not disputed is the fact he put an end to an alarming number of deaths by bagging the lions, who were stalking his workers building a railway through Kenya in 1898. "These two lions, regardless of how many people they killed, essentially held up Great Britain," said Stanley. Now The Field Museum scientists, by analyzing the bones and hair from both hides for human traces, have determined the pair ate far fewer men; at most 35 during their nine-month rampage.
[2] "The possible range is between 4 and 72 humans, but 35 is most likely," said Justin Yeakel, one of the study's authors. Why the lions took the risk of targeting people is unclear, but changes to the Tsavo environment that affected their traditional prey likely are responsible, Yeakel said. Previous studies have suggested that lions developed a taste for human flesh because they lived near a slave trade route, with dead, sick or injured slaves offering easy prey, and that one of the lions may have suffered from toothache that made it easier to eat people than its typical diet. The numbers killed have been disputed since the lions were shot by Col. John H. Patterson, a British engineer who went on to write a best-selling book about their reign of terror that won praise from President Theodore Roosevelt. Patterson, a celebrity in his time, claimed in his 1907 book that "28 railroad workers and scores of unfortunate Africans" had been killed. After selling the lions' skins to the Field Museum for $5,000 in 1924, Patterson, short of cash and perhaps attempting to boost his reputation, wrote a pamphlet claiming 135 dead. In recent years, the Field Museum has come to rely on the higher figure, though an audio tour it offers fudges the issue by saying that "legend has it they killed and ate over 100 people." "It's remarkable how the myth has grown," said Roosevelt University Prof. Julian Kerbis, who has studied Patterson's diaries.
[3] The lions dragged people from tents at night. After nine months of this, the beasts were finally killed in December. The recent analysis suggests one of the lions had developed a toothache, which made eating humans easier than devouring its normal prey. The study attributes 24 deaths to one cat, or 30''per cent of its diet, and 11 deaths to the other, just 13''per cent of its food. Colonel John H. Patterson, a British engineer, shot the lions and then wrote a book about their killing spree, claiming that "28 railroad workers and scores of unfortunate Africans" had been killed. Some believe that in order to boost the selling price of the lions, he exaggerated the lions' man-killing ways and inflated the death count to 135.''
[4] PaThe legendary man-eating lions of Tsavo rumored to have killed more than 130 railroad workers in Africa more than a century ago likely only''ate about 35 people, according to new research. That's nothing to sneeze at, but the death count - which was the subject of a''not-so-great movie starring Val Kilmer - has been exaggerated over the years, according to scientists from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
[5] ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2009) - The legendary "man-eating lions of Tsavo" that terrorized a railroad camp in Kenya more than a century ago likely consumed about 35 people -- far fewer than popular estimates of 135 victims, according to a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
[6] The 35 deaths is based on a statistical estimate of the probability of humans in the lions' diet, said Nathaniel Dominy, an associate anthropology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who is co-author of the paper. He said researchers are "95 percent confident that the lions ate as few as 4 or as many as 75 people total, with the highest probability falling out around 35 people."
[7] The team characterized the humans' isotope ratios by taking advantage of "a fluke of history", says team leader Nathaniel Dominy, also at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In the early twentieth century, an archaeologist took more than 100 Taita skulls from Kenyan shrines and shipped them to England. Yeakel and Dominy accessed these skulls and found that the Taita's ratio of nitrogen isotopes was distinct from the herbivores. The lions' remains gave Yeakel two time windows of food preferences: the last 2'''3 months of the animals' lives, obtained by analysing the quickly regenerating tail tuft hairs, and the lifetime average in bone collagen. He then modelled which prey combinations were most likely to produce the lions' isotope ratios. The results show that for most of their lives, the maneaters' diets consisted primarily of grazing animals.
[8] Anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy and ecologist Justin Yeakel of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wanted to pin down the death toll. The scientists knew they could piece together the lions' diet from isotopes found in their
hair and
bone. That's because isotopes such as carbon-13 and carbon-12 accumulate in an animal's body in a ratio influenced by its food.
[9] Now, however, experts from the University of California said the total of deaths was closer to 35 and they claim they proved it by analysing hair from the rugs. They analysed the hair and bones of the lions shot by the Lt Col held at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. They estimated one lion probably ate 11 humans and the other 24 people during the animals' attacks. Nathaniel Dominy, the university's associate professor of anthropology, said: "This has been a historical puzzle for years, and the discrepancy is now finally being addressed.
[10] Dominy and Yeakel requested bone and hair samples from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, which bought the lions' skulls and skins from Patterson. Other researchers provided samples from possible Tsavo prey--such as zebras and giraffes--as well as from skulls of people who lived in the area. During the lions' last 3 months, humans made up about 30 of their diet, according to the isotope analysis. Combined with the size of an average human and how much a lion eats each day, the researchers estimated that over the lions' 9-month rampage, they ate about 35 people.
[9] Looking at hair and bone samples from the pair of male lions, now resting in the Chicago Field Museum, researchers were able to determine that the Tsavo lions likely killed and ate approximately 35 people, not 135 as claimed by Lieutenant Colonel John H. Patterson.
[11] Dominy and lead author Justin D. Yeakel, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, collaborated on the project with Bruce D. Patterson, the MacArthur Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum (no relation to John H. Patterson). To investigate each lion's lifetime dietary patterns, Yeakel analyzed samples of their bone collagen and hair keratin that were provided by the Field Museum. He then compared those data to the isotopic signatures of the lions' presumptive prey, including modern grazing and browsing animals, and humans. Human samples were obtained from the remains of Kenya's Taita population that were gathered by anthropologist Louis Leakey during his famous East African Archaeological Expedition of 1929. The results suggest that during the final months of what John Patterson described as the lions' "reign of terror," fully half of one lion's diet consisted of humans, with the balance made up of mid-sized grazing animals such as gazelles and impala.
[6] Patterson's 1907 book, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international bestseller when it was published, and it remains in print today. "The fact that we can determine both the diet and the behavior of two animals killed more than a century ago is a testament to the enduring value of museum collections and the science that interprets them," said Field Museum curator Bruce Patterson. "The rather extravagant claims (Colonel) Patterson made in his book can now be pretty much dismissed." For Dominy, downgrading the number of human victims of the Tsavo lions is the latest chapter in a legend that takes a new turn with the insights about lion predation offered by these animals.
[6] As reported in the
Sun-Times, an article written by Justin Yeakel and published today in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that it was really probably closer to 35 people that were taken down by the infamous Lions. Field Museum researcher Bruce Patterson, no relation to John H. Patterson, said the researchers were able to track the presence of a Carbon isotope from the stuffed lions to determine what kind of mammal they were eating. "Just like salmon that eat mercury-tainted fish accumulate the metal in their bodies over time, so the chemical makeup of every animal's diet is reflected in the tissues of their bodies."
[12] Patterson often claimed the predators had killed 135 people but that figure has been disputed. Other researchers at the Field Museum analyzed Patterson's journal and other accounts to arrive at a much lower range of probable victims. In the latest research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one at the Field Museum analyzed the hair and teeth of the beasts to determine what they ate.
[13] By comparing the isotopic ratios of nitrogen and carbon in the lions' remains with that of contemporary lions, humans and herbivore prey, Justin Yeakel of the University of California, Santa Cruz, estimates the lions ate around 35 people.
[14] After analyzing fragments of the lions' bones and fur, scientists at the University of California in Santa Cruz have determined that the true number of humans eaten by the lions was likely closer to 35. By comparing isotopes in the lions' samples with their normal prey of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo, with other lions, and with the remains of 19th century Kenyans, the scientists estimated that one of the lions ate 24 humans, while the other ate 11.
[4] Scientists from the University of California at Santa Cruz have studied the lions' bones and fur. They determined in a study released Monday that the lions probably killed about 35, although they may have had as many as 72 humans or as few as four.
[15] 
"Uncomfortably, that turned out to be us." The estimate of people eaten by the two lions is "a remarkable convergence on the numbers Patterson first published," says Julian Kerbis Peterhans, an African zoologist at Roosevelt University and the Field Museum, who was not involved with this study. "It's nice to see scientific methods used to reconstruct this historical event." Ecologist Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities--an expert on lions--says that if people want to figure out why lions eat humans, they don't have to look back 100 years. The large cats continue to attack people in Africa today, he says, and at greater rates than the 1898 Tsavo incident.
[9] Our evidence attests only to the number of people eaten, not the number of people killed." In 1924, John Patterson sold the hides of the lions -- which he had used as rugs -- to the Field Museum, where taxidermists restored and stuffed the pelts and mounted a diorama that continues to fascinate museum visitors today.
[6] The attacks on humans ended in 1898 when John H. Patterson, the railroad's lead British engineer, shot and killed the two lions in Kenya. Patterson claimed they had killed 135 people, though the Ugandan Railway Company put the number at 28.
[7] For years after, Patterson, who gained great notoriety for the feat, claimed the lions had killed 135 people -- far more than the Ugandan Railway Company's estimate of 28 victims. "This has been a historical puzzle for years, and the discrepancy is now finally being addressed," said Nathaniel J. Dominy, an associate professor of anthropology at UCSC. "We can imagine that the railroad company might have had reasons to want to minimize the number of victims, and Patterson might have had reasons to inflate the number. Who do you trust? We're removing all those factors and getting down to data."
[6] Despite Patterson's claim that the lions ate 135 people, the Ugandan Railway Company undertaking the construction of the railroad said that the lions killed and ate only 28 people.
[11] To discover just how many people the Tsavo lions killed and ate researchers analyzed samples of hair and bone from each of the lions. Researchers then compared their findings to isotopic signatures of the lions' prey: African ungulates and humans. They found that it was likely that one of the lions ate 11 people, while the other ate 24.
[11] By analyzing samples of the hair and bone of the lions, researchers were able to estimate that one lion likely ate 11 humans and the other consumed 24 people during the animals' final nine months. Both lions were shot and killed in December 1898 by Lt. Col. John H. Patterson, a British officer and engineer hired to restore safety in the region.
[6] "Our evidence attests only to the number of people eaten, not the number of people killed." The team investigated each lion's lifetime dietary patterns by analysing their bone collagen and hair keratin and then compared those data to the isotopic signatures of the lions' presumptive prey, including modern grazing and browsing animals, and humans.
[10] The scientists analyzed hair and bone from the''remains of the lions (which are''on display at the Field Museum of Chicago) and determined that one of the lions killed about 24 people and the other''took''out about 11. Scientists always thought it was odd that two male lions would work together to take down their prey, but the new research indicates one of them had a severe jaw injury that might have prompted the deadly''teamwork.
[5] CHICAGO — They may have been the world's most famous man-eating lions, but it turns out they made other dinner arrangements from time to time. Scientists have determined that the Tsavo lions probably ate about 35 Kenyans in the 19th century and not the 135 they've long been credited with devouring. The Tsavo lions are both now stuffed and on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Their killing spree inspired the 1996 movie "The Ghost and the Darkness."
[15] Some people will no doubt be disappointed to learn that the two man-eating Lions of Tsavo in Kenya, long on display at the
Field Museum in Chicago, didn't eat as many people as their reputations suggested, something like 35 compared with 135 people.
[16] Past the main exhibits in The Field Museum's Great Hall, in cases beside horned and long-snouted animals, you'll come face to face with legend: the infamous man-eating lions of Tsavo. "The public really freaks out when they hear about man-eating, "says The Field Museum Collection Manager Bill Stanley. The pair was purchased by The Field Museum in 1924, and the tale of their hunger for human flesh, eating as many as 135 railway workers, has captivated visitors for generations.
[2] If you've been to the
Field Museum in the last 80 years or so, you've surely gazed on the snarling, terror-inducing visage of the
Man-eating Lions of Tsavo.
[12] For more than 80 years, the man-eating Tsavo lions have been one of the Field Museum's top tourist draws.
[3] The stark dietary differences highlight the importance of considering individuals within populations, said Yeakel. "In ecology, we often think of a population as being the sum of its parts, but there can be really rich things happening among individuals in a population," he said. "It's a new way of thinking about how populations work to consider how individuals affect the whole." More than a century after the attacks, the Tsavo lions remain notorious; last year, the National Museum of Kenya began an effort to recover the remains of the lions, saying they represent an important part of the country's history and heritage.
[6] Why did the lions become man-eaters? In 1898, the Tsavo region had been hit by drought, and a European-introduced virus called rinderpest had killed many of the cats' natural prey, including buffalo and wildebeests. Other researchers have shown that such upheaval can cause individual animals to start transitioning to new foods, even different ones from their neighbors. With the Tsavo lions, Dominy and Yeakel think that they saw this in progress: The isotopic analysis revealed that one lion was the main man-eater with 25 kills, while the other may have still relied on its old diet to some extent.
[9] In the final months, the authors say, one animal continued to focus on grazers, with an occasional human meal, whereas the other was mainly feasting on browsers and people. Extrapolating from their isotope ratios, the authors conclude that, over the 9 month period, the lions probably consumed around 10.5 and 24.2 humans, respectively, or around 35 humans total. "It's really peculiar," says Dominy. "They were cooperatively hunting but they weren't sharing food." Dominy says that lions may team up for territorial defence 2, but such extreme dietary specialization in a cooperative group has not been seen before. Apart from the environmental pressures on the lions, the dominant maneater also had severe wounds in his mouth and jaw, potentially driving him to prey on humans. "Their divergent diets are mostly relevant for illuminating this one particular case," says Craig Packer, an animal behavioural scientist at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, which makes it difficult to extrapolate to other lions.
[8] Stanley Ambrose, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, is wary of the conclusions. The different prey possibilities have similar isotope ratios, he says. "a wide range of proportions of available prey items" could account for the lions' isotope ratios, including "many or no people, even during the period before they became maneaters". Yeakel acknowledges that there are many possible combinations ''' the model shows that humans could have made up 4'''56% of the dominant maneater's diet, for example ''' but they do not all have the same probability. Humans probably made up 30% of his diet.
[8] The lions dragged people from tents at night, killing 28 labourers and an unknown number of native Taita ''' estimates range from none to 107. After nine months of this, the beasts were finally killed in December. Yeakel analysed the ratios of carbon isotopes in the lions' tissues, which should reflect the isotope ratios of their prey. Browsing animals, such as giraffes and antelopes, have different ratios of carbon isotopes to grazers because their food ''' shrubs and trees versus grasses ''' carries out different types of photosynthesis.
[8] "We can imagine that the railroad company might have had reasons to want to minimize the number of victims, and Patterson might have had reasons to inflate the number. Who do you trust? We're removing all those factors and getting down to data." Researchers determined that one lion likely ate 11 humans and the other consumed 24 people during their final nine months. They reached that conclusion by using isotope analysis to determine how much humans contributed to the diets of the two lions and then estimated how many people the lions would need to eat to survive.
[1] Isotopes were analyzed to determine the number of people actually factored in to the diets of the lions so that researchers could tell approximately how many humans the lions would have to eat in order to survive. Based on the data, the researchers found that one lion probably consumed 11 people, and the other lion likely ate 24 more people in their last nine months.
[17] "You are what you eat," said researcher Bruce Patterson. "Just like salmon that eat mercury-tainted fish accumulate the metal in their bodies over time, so the chemical makeup of every animal's diet is reflected in the tissues of their bodies." The researchers on the project believed that they are "95 percent confident that the lions ate as few as 4 or as many as 75 people total, with the highest probability falling out around 35 people."
[18] Dominy said the analysis shows an "outside chance" that as many as 75 people were killed in total and noted that others may have been killed but not eaten. He said Patterson's claims of 135 deaths were likely exaggerated to help enhance his reputation. The results suggest that during the final months of what Patterson described as a "reign of terror" fully half of one lion's diet consisted of humans, with the balance made up of mid-sized grazing animals such as impala and gazelles. The other lion's diet was more heavily weighted on herbivores, which could mean the lions worked together to scatter both humans and wild game but did not fully share their kills.
[1] According to Dominy,'' the analysis suggests an "outside chance" that, at most, a total of 75 people were killed. He also noted that there may have been others killed, yet not eaten. Dominy believes that Patterson'''s claim that 135 people had been killed by the lions was more than likely blown out of proportion to help elevate his reputation. The study goes on to say that during the last months, which Patterson described as a "reign of terror", about half of one lion'''s diet was made up of humans, with the rest consisting of mid-sized herbivores such as impala and gazelles.
[17] Now a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests the Tsavo lions' taste for human flesh may have been exaggerated. According to the man who finally caught them in 1898, the two maneless Kenyan lions munched their way through as many as 135 people before they were shot, skinned, sold, stuffed and put on display in Chicago. The story of how they preyed on a terrified camp of imperial British railroad workers for nine months captivated museum-goers for decades and inspired a 1996 movie with Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer, "The Ghost and the Darkness."
[3] Tsavo lions ate 35 people, not 135 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that the two man-killing lions of Tsavo very likely did not kill and eat as many people as claimed.
[11] Scientists now believe that the two infamous man-eating lions of Tsavo, which allegedly claimed 135 victims during railroad construction in Kenya in 1898, may have only killed around 35 people.''
[17] CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two man-eating lions terrorized Kenya during the building of a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River in the late 19th century, but only one was making regular meals of human prey, researchers said on Monday.
[13] CHICAGO — The two man-eating lions of Tsavo which terrorized a railroad camp in Kenya and have inspired three Hollywood films may not have been as deadly as legend would have it, a study published Monday has found.
[1] While the other fed more widely on humans. Despite their different diet, the lions by all accounts worked in concert. Researchers say that they suspect that the Tsavo lions worked cooperatively to bring down their prey'''both human and antelope'''but during eating one lion consumed human, while the other stuck to antelope. "The idea that the two lions were going in as a team yet exhibiting these dietary preferences has never been seen before or since," said Dominy. Lions are cooperative hunters when it comes to big game, such as African buffalo, but typically man-eating lions work alone, as humans are small enough for one cat to kill.
[11] Strikingly, the other lion ate very few humans, subsisting instead on herbivores. That dietary disparity leads Dominy and Yeakel to infer that the Tsavo lions worked together to scatter everyone, both humans and wild game, setting the stage for one to gorge on humans and the other to feed on herbivores. "The idea that the two lions were going in as a team yet exhibiting these dietary preferences has never been seen before or since," said Dominy.
[6] The team found that the pair probably consumed about 35 human victims, with one of the animals devouring the lion's share, while the other stuck to a more traditional diet. "We would expect that if they're within a cooperative coalition, they would be consuming similar things," says Yeakel. "This shows that lion behaviour is even more flexible and complex than we originally thought." It is the first time that different food preferences have been seen within one coalition of social carnivores. Lions normally dine on grazing animals such as zebra and wildebeest, but in 1898, drought, pestilence and hunting left the Tsavo region of Kenya barren of the lions' favourite meals.
[8] Cooperative hunting is beneficial when stalking large prey like buffalo, but humans are small and slow enough that lions typically don't need to work together to make a kill, Dominy said. Severe dental problems and a jaw injury suffered by one of the lions probably greatly inhibited its ability to hunt. The lions may also have been drawn to the railroad workers and the animals in their camps for food after their conventional prey were depleted by drought and disease, he said.
[1] Patterson's book describes how the lions often grabbed sleeping people (railroad workers) out of their tents and dragged them into the bush to consume them. In the dark of night, after the screams ended, workers would often hear the crunching of bone, as the lions usually dragged their victims just a few yards away. In the dark wilderness, you could not see them. They often found few remains the next day, little more than a bloody smear.
[12] The pair of Kenyan lions, nicknamed "Ghost and the Darkness", were killed in 1898 after reportedly eating 135 people! At the time, Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson was in charge of building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River to continue the Kenya-Uganda Railway. The lions began entering the camps at night and dragging Indian railway workers out of their tents to devour them.
[18] Lt Col Patterson was hired by the British East Africa Company to run the building of a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in present-day Kenya but lions began to snatch the workers from their tents and eat them over nine months. The attacks became so regular that the project was put in jeopardy until the former Army officer shot two animals in December 1898 and had their skins made into rugs.
[10] Though the study does diminish the number killed, it doesn't affect the reason for the Tsavo lions' notoriety, Bruce Patterson said. "The signal feat of the Tsavo lions is that they stopped the British Empire, at the height of its imperial power, literally in its tracks at Tsavo, and it was not until Col. Patterson dispatched them that work on the railway could resume."
[3] "Anybody who studied the historical records retained some skepticism," said Bruce Patterson, the Field Museum's curator of mammals (and no relation to the colonel), who assisted with the study. Lions in southern Tanzania in the 1940s ate more than 1,200 people, and individual tigers and leopards in colonial India ate hundreds, he said.
[3] John H. Patterson sold the pelts to the Field Museum for $5,000 in 1925. Field Museum researcher Bruce Patterson, no relation to John H. Patterson, said the researchers were able to track the presence of a Carbon isotope from the stuffed lions to determine what kind of mammal they were eating.
[7] Bruce Patterson said the Field Museum would be changing the exhibit to reflect the new information. He doubted John H. Patterson would be disappointed to learn his story was a bit of a tall tale.
[7] John H. Patterson's son was a Field Museum curator, Patterson said, and the family was dedicated to truth above legend. "They are accordingly highly scientific and let the facts speak for themselves," Bruce Patterson said.
[7] The man-eaters, whose skins are displayed at the Field Museum in Chicago, were finally slain a few weeks apart in December 1898 by British officer John Henry Patterson.
[13] Researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago have now concluded that the number was most likely 35. They analyzed the bones and pelts of the stuffed lions to determine what they had been eating.
[18] Despite the notoriety of the attacks -- the harrowing nine-month saga has been the subject of three Hollywood films, and the lions remain a popular exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago -- the number of victims has been a matter of dispute.
[6] The two maneless lions have been a crowd favorite at Chicago's Field Museum, where the stuffed beasts have been on display for over 80 years.
[4] The notorious pair of Kenyan lions, part of a popular Field Museum display, did not kill and feast on 135 people working on and near an African railroad in 1898, new research has found.
[7] "The railroad company attributed the deaths of 28 Indian nationals to the lions, and Patterson may have reasonably assumed scores of Africans were also killed," said Dominy. "But based on our statistical analysis, there's an outside chance they ate as many as 75 people.
[6] Ending the terror earned Lt Col Patterson enduring fame, but Professor Dominy added: "The railroad company attributed the deaths of 28 Indian nationals to the lions, and Patterson may have reasonably assumed scores of Africans were also killed. "But based on our statistical analysis, there's an outside chance they ate as many as 75 people.
[10] The man-eating lions of Tsavo reportedly ate some 135 people before being killed. [2] New research suggests the man-eating lions of Tsavo reportedly ate far less than 135 men before being killed.
[2] According to legend, the infamous Tsavo man-eating lions dined on 135 people near a Kenyan labor camp prior to their capture in 1898.
[4] The Victorian hunter Lt Col John Patterson, who gained international fame by writing about his exploits shooting the man-eating lions he claimed had preyed on 135 people, exaggerated his daring, scientists claim to have proved.
[10] During the final three months of the nine-month siege, lion attacks were a "nightly occurrence," and work on the railroad expansion had ground to a halt as terrified laborers refused to work, said Dominy, noting that the delay prompted the first and only mention of lions in Britain's House of Parliament as members demanded an explanation for the work stoppage. Ending the terror earned John Patterson widespread and enduring fame, but Dominy wonders if the boastful hunter might have exaggerated his estimate of victims to enhance his own reputation.
[6] John Patterson, a British colonel, tried to trap and kill the lions, even baiting an empty railroad car. He was finally able to shoot them in December. A book he published in 1907 put the final death toll at 28.
[9] Reportedly responsible for 135 human deaths in Kenya while a railroad was being constructed in 1898; British engineer, hunter and probable all-around lady-slayer John Patterson killed the cats and sold the pelts to the Field for $5k. Now, a new study says that these wildcats were really a couple of pussy cats. (Comparatively.)
[12] The grisly chapter finally ended in December 1898, when John Patterson -- after nine months spent in pursuit of the animals -- shot and killed one lion, then killed the second lion 20 days later.
[6] He'll chew you up. This man-eater, shot by Col. John Patterson (seated) on 9 December 1898, terrorized the Tsavo region for 9 months and probably ate 25 people.
[9] Between March and December 1898, a pair of male lions killed and devoured 28'''135 people in the Tsavo region of Kenya.
[8] CHICAGO, IL The infamous Tsavo lions, said to have killed over 100 people, were found to have only eaten 35.
[18] The attacks began in March as the British were building a railway bridge across the Tsavo River, which provided the only water to the parched landscape. The two lions crept into the workers' camp at night, snatching people from their tents, according to some accounts.
[9] In 1898, according to numerous accounts and no fewer than three Hollywood movies, two male lions went on a nine-month killing spree around the Tsavo area of Kenya, devouring between 28 and 135 workers building the Kenya-Uganda railway.
[14] The lions attacked and devoured workers building the Ugandan Railway line through Kenya during several months in 1898, stalling construction and creating a legend that became fodder for the 1996 movie "The Ghost and the Darkness."
[13] Operators of the Ugandan Railway Company suggested the lions killed about 28 people. [5] While results show just how many people each lion ate, the number of people killed by the pair remains a mystery.
[11] An array of conditions may have temporarily altered the lions' behavior, including drought and disease that depleted the availability of the lions' conventional prey. Large numbers of people and animals had gathered for the railroad project, and severe dental problems and a jaw injury suffered by one of the lions probably greatly inhibited its ability to hunt. "These findings underscore the complexity of what lions are capable of doing, and the complex interplay of costs and benefits that determine the size of their coalitions," he said.
[6] One of the lions had even sustained significant dental and a jaw injuries that made hunting difficult. The lions were probably attracted to the railroad camp for food after drought and disease wiped out their usual prey, says Dominy.
[17] The results suggest that the lions hunted together but didn't always share food, which makes the pair the first example of a cooperative hunting group that ate different prey. The two lions developed a taste for man after drought, pestilence, and hunting killed of most of their usual prey, according to previous research.
[4] Analysis of the lions' bones and pelts reveals they most likely ate only 35 humans, according to a "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" article released today.
[7] A notorious pair of man-eating lions that teamed up to terrorize Kenyan labour camps more than 100 years ago did not have the same taste for human flesh, a new study suggests.
[8] "The possible range is between 4 and 72 humans, but 35 is most likely," said Justin Yeakel, one of the study's authors. Update: All Things Considered host Robert Siegel on Monday spoke with Yeakel who explained how the scientists made their determination that the lions feasted on significantly fewer humans than previously thought.
[16] To understand what happened, Justin Yeakel, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues analysed the lions' remains.
[8] Adapted from materials provided by
University of California - Santa Cruz.
[6] If anything we're adding an additional layer," said University of California ecologist Justin Yeakel, one of several researchers who worked on the study. [13] In addition to Dominy, Yeakel, and Bruce Patterson, coauthors on the paper are Kena Fox-Dobbs, assistant professor of geology at the University of Puget Sound; Mercedes M. Okumura, research curator in human evolutionary anatomy at the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge; Thure E. Cerling, distinguished professor of biology and of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah; Jonathan W. Moore, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC; and Paul L. Koch, professor of earth and planetary sciences at UCSC.
[6] Human samples were obtained from the remains of Kenya's Taita population gathered during a 1929 expedition. Professor Dominy said: "The rather extravagant claims Patterson made in his book can now be pretty much dismissed."
[10] The path of human evolution has been shaped by predation, said Dominy, noting that the efficiency benefits of bipedalism are gained at the cost of speed, making humans vulnerable to quick, four-legged predators, including lions.
[6] "One lion was consuming a lot of humans, and one was not," Yeakel says. He attributes 24 deaths to one cat, or 30''per cent of its diet, and 11 deaths to the other, just 13''per cent of its food.
[14] Most lions probably left the region, but two turned man-eaters, Yeakel speculates. "People are a dangerous food to go after," he says.
[14] Although the almost mythic tale has spawned three movies, people still debate the final death toll. Now, hair and bone samples from the famed lions have shed light on how many people they devoured and why they did it.
[9] After many unsuccessful traps, Patterson was able to shoot the lions three weeks apart. Only 28 Indians were recorded as being killed, however Patterson put the total number at 135, after including what he claimed were the deaths of unrecorded African locals.
[18] In the past year alone, well over 35 people have been killed in Tanzania by lions.
[12] I am very much interested in wild life. I didn't know that the lions have killed this many people.
[5] Key to the effort is reducing livestock losses to lions. Leela Hazzah, a field researcher with the project, says the "Lion Guardians" program at Mbirikani Ranch in Kenya has proved remarkably successful: not a single lion has been killed since its inception in November 2006.
[11] In a new study, researchers provide insights into the genetic structure and history of lion populations. Their work refutes the hypothesis.
[6] Lions are not stupid. They have tactics, they study their targets and isolate their prey. They attack at night, moving quickly and silently. They can get into houses, kill people and take them away. I speak in present tense because it happens to this day.
[14] For 9 months in 1898, two lions terrorized the southern Kenyan region of Tsavo, killing as many as 135 people by one account.
[9] One of the Tsavo lions after being killed. "These findings underscore the complexity of what lions are capable of doing, and the complex interplay of costs and benefits that determine the size of their coalitions," he said.
[11] The Tsavo lions lived near a slave trading route, which offered easy access to sick, injured, or dead slaves.
[4] I worked in Africa and actually visited the den to f these lions in Tsavo National Park.
[12] Oh, well, thank God it's only 35 people. I mean for a minute there I was concerned that these lions were real maneaters. Can't understand why anyone would want to shoot them.
[3] Well. Not that I'm really interested enough to go and read the actual paper, but it seems to me that a lion could still kill that many people while only making up 15-30% of its diet that way.
[4] 35 is still a lot of people and it seems like the lions still have every right to be considered as man-eating as ever.
[16] While lion populations in protected areas remain relatively healthy, conservationists say that without urgent measures, lions may disappear completely from unprotected areas. The Kilimanjaro Lion conservation Project is working to avoid this fate by developing practical measures to encourage coexistence between people, livestock and predators.
[11] The lions consumed most of the victims. In their den, there were thousands of bones, some human, of kills that the lions dragged away.
[12] "The lions had different diets." One of the two large male lions was getting nearly one-third of its diet from human meat, while the other about half that much.
[13] Cooperative hunting is beneficial when lions are stalking large prey like Cape buffalo and zebra, but humans are small enough that lions don't typically need to work together to make a kill.
[6] Of course, humans got the last laugh, as evidenced by the fact that the lions have been stuffed and staring out at visitors from a display case in Chicago for the last 80 years.
[16] "What's even more interesting, the results seem to indicate one lion ate more humans than the other," said Stanley.
[2] The pelts hung for years in Patterson's home. Curators say their stare and threatening stance will continue to mesmerize visitors no matter how many humans they really ate.
[2] The overall sum is well under Patterson's 135 figure, the scientists report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's lost in history whether the number was changed to increase book sales," Yeakel says.
[9] The new study, "Cooperation and Individuality Among Man-Eating Lions," appears in the Nov. 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research utilized a sophisticated stable-isotope analysis to investigate this vexing question.
[6] Scary enough. The revelation comes from researchers at The Field Museum, using new advances in science to determine the colonel who gunned them down, in spite of having a tale to tell to begin with, most likely overestimated their hunger.
[2] The researchers believe that a unique situation brought about the behavior: drought and disease had led to a decline in the lions' normal prey, and it is known that one of the lions suffered from a jaw injury and dental problems making it difficult to hunt in a conventional manner.
[11] Zebras typically munch on relatively carbon-13-rich grasses, whereas giraffes chew leaves from trees with lower carbon-13 levels. Lions will acquire isotope ratios in their tissues similar to that of their prey.
[9] Either the railroad workers were really tired or they were really slow. Wonder if they drew straws to see who would go out and run around to get eaten?? (Keeps the Lions away from the main group.)
[18] Patterson became famous for shooting and killing the lions in December 1898.
[11] Kenya currently has an estimated 2000 lions, but is losing the large cats at a rate of around 100 each year.
[11] What's fascinating is how scientists came to the new estimate, by examining isotopes in the fur and bones of the animals. [16] Our evidence attests only to the number of people eaten, not the number of people killed."
[11] SOURCES1.
AFP: Man-eating lions of Tsavo less voracious than thought: study2.
Lions Of Tsavo Ate Far Less Men Than Reported - cbs2chicago.com3.
Scientists restate Tsavo lions' taste for human flesh -- chicagotribune.com4.
Kenya's Man-Eating Lions Not as Man-Hungry as Previously Thought | 80beats | Discover Magazine5.
Man-eating lions of lore prove to be not so bloodthirsty after all | Eco Speak | STLtoday6.
Notorious 'Man-eating' Lions Of Tsavo Likely Ate About 35 People -- Not 135, Scientists Say7.
New study finds that notorious Tsavo lions only ate 35 people :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State8.
Lions' taste for human flesh dissected : Nature News9.
A Body Count for Two Man-Eating Lions -- Torrice 2009 (1102): 1 -- ScienceNOW10.
Hunter who killed the 'Maneaters of Tsavo' exaggerated their attacks, scientists say - Telegraph11.
Tsavo lions ate 35 people, not 13512.
"Maneating Lions of Tsavo" Really Just Damn Near Kittens: Chicagoist: Chicago News, Food, Arts & Events13.
One of Tsavo's lions ate mostly human prey | Reuters14.
Humans are an acquired taste for lions - life - 02 November 2009 - New Scientist15.
The Associated Press: Study: Tsavo lions may have just snacked on humans16.
These Lions Ate Humans Though Not As Many As Once Thought - The Two-Way - Breaking News, Analysis Blog : NPR17.
The Man-Eating Lions Of Tsavo - Science News - redOrbit18.
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