The Man-Eaters Didn't Die

In his book, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, Lt. Col. John Patterson describes in detail how he put paid to two famous lions who ravaged the railway camps in 1898 during the construction of the Uganda Railroad, infamously known in London as, “The Lunatic Express,” or to the Africans in Kenya as, “The Iron Snake.” Once the stuffed figures of both lions were ensconced in the Field Museum in Chicago, the story came to an end. As far as the general public was concerned the man-eaters were finished. Well done, Col. Patterson!

Nearly 100 years passed before the story again popped up, this time in the 1996 film, The Ghost and the Darkness. Even more important in some ways was the appearance two years later in 1998 in the same museum of an exhibit of a lion shot by Wayne Hosek. That animal surpassed all records at 500 lbs. A 10½ ft. long man-eater from a village in Zambia called, Mfuwe, it was truly a monster. With it came the revelation that modern man-eaters were still roaming the bush in East Africa.

That went against the completeness and finality of the final scenes of Patterson’s book where he takes leave of his servants and later looks briefly at the famous Tsavo river bridge by pale moonlight. Now safe in the knowledge that only a ghost of a threat remains, he can move on with his life. Or again when he shows up as Val Kilmer, adoringly looking at his wife and young son in the last scene of the movie while the Indian workers go peacefully back to work, the message is clear. No one will ever have to undergo anxious moments again because the Colonel and Val (with some help from Michael Douglas) have cleared the area of man-eaters.

Another important conclusion they arrived at is that the man-eaters that held up construction of the railroad in1898 were not usual African lions; they were aberrant animals. They were forced to eat people because they had lost teeth, or had deformed or weakened jaws, etc. We are left with the impression that as long as lions are healthy they will prefer wild game to man.

Recently this kind of cozy thinking has been challenged by Prof. Kerbis Peterhans and T. P. Gnoske of the Field Museum. They reviewed the earlier data and found the man-eating habit developed by the Tsavo lions was not due to poor teeth or feebleness on the part of the animals. It was more likely due to available food. At the time, a rinderpest epidemic had taken out many species of game animals. A famine raged in the region, and a series of epidemics, especially smallpox, resulted in local people dying right and left. Near the railway camps, bodies of Indian workers both Hindus and Muslims dead from disease were left outside the camp compounds. According to Prof. Peterhans, the lions simply adapted to available food, it was a case of easy pickings and a tasty menu, since, as I calculate, human flesh probably has a higher salt content than game meat.

So much for the man-eating lions of Tsavo. But what about now? A case in point was the modern day man-eater of Mfuwe mentioned above.

A maneless male of enormous size like its colleagues in Tsavo, it was in all other aspects normal, with near-perfect teeth. In the prime of its life its canines were in excellent condition. When they first saw the skull of the Mfuwe animal, the Field Museum team decided that it was doubtful that any trauma could have contributed to its man-eating habit.

Why then did it become a man-eater? The Victorian railroad lines were long finished and the easy pickings of the old days, bodies left lying about in the bush, were no longer there. East Africa had become a different place. Though not perfect, by earlier standards it was modern, with Internet, cell phones, and satellite TVs all in evidence; Japanese pick-up trucks on every road; epidemics that were controlled by health workers to some degree, and smallpox now much reduced; food, though scarce at times, was available for the most part. In other words, Africa was evolving and it was expected that the wildlife would evolve as well. Thus, for me and perhaps many others, it came as a surprise to read in Nature that over the period 1990-2005, more than 871 rural Africans had been killed or maimed by lions in Tanzania alone.

Prof. Craig Packer, a lion specialist at the University of Minnesota, and principle author of that report, said that the modern day man-eater had become so because of the problems that have beleaguered East Africa countries in recent years. Depletion of game animals, reduction in size of protected areas, increased rural population and the spread of people into remote areas. Thus, the most likely victims of man-eaters today are rural African farmers caught walking in the open, or on their way to and from outdoor privies!

And the price? The original toll at Tsavo of 140 indentured Indian railroad workers is considered an inflated figure, of which only 28 were documented, which still leaves us with the sad conclusion that not only have the man-eaters not died off, but they now kill or maim on the average 58 people a year in Tanzania alone. At that rate they have become even more of a menace than in the days of Col. Patterson.

The solutions offered to combat the man-eaters of today are all expensive and difficult to implement. This is especially true in regions where people are already very poor and at the mercy of the elements. Electrified fencing, safer rural housing, game management, including capture and release, more park rangers, etc. are beyond the wherewithal of local governments. Fortunately, Prof. Packer and his colleagues at the Wildlife Research Institute in Arusha, Tanzania, have come up with a workable partial solution to the problem. They noted in their article in Nature that lions initially come into areas looking for bush pigs. Farmers place themselves in jeopardy when they stay out at night guarding against bush pig damage to their crops. The scientists are convinced that if bush pigs were eradicated in the worst areas the attacks on humans would decrease; a theory that may yet require a brave effort on the part of someone to prove conclusively.