(Been awhile since I did one of these)
On this day 115 years ago, Lt. Colonel John Patterson arrived in the small African province of Tsavo. He had been commissioned by the British East Africa Company to build a railroad stretching from Uganda to Kenya. The main focus of the effort was a bridge running over the Tsavo river. Almost immediately after his arrival in camp, his labor force was beset by a terrifying obstacle: two maneless lions with a taste for human flesh.
Thus began a nine-month long confrontation between man and beast. Patterson's men tried every trick in the book: torches, barbed wire, thorny hedges, booby traps, but nothing worked. The lions bypassed every countermeasure and continued to kill with impunity. Panic soon spread through the camp and hundreds of workers fled. Construction on the bridge halted completely.
It wasn't until December that the lions were eventually found and killed. The first one died after being shot through the heart, but the second lion required a total of nine rounds before it finally fell. Patterson claimed it continued trying to attack him even as it bled out. His weapons of choice were a Martini-Enfield and a Lee-Enfield, both chambered in .303 British. Patterson turns the lions into rugs for his house, but eventually sold them to the Chicago Field Museum in 1924 for $5000. The skins arrived in very poor condition, but the skeletons were reconstructed and have been on display there ever since.
The exact number of victims has never been proven. Patterson claimed that as many as 135 people were killed. Some modern researchers put the death toll much lower, around 25. Isotopic analysis of the corpses suggest that they may have killed as few as 10 men. Other studies suggest that the toll of 135 victims is possible because the diet of the Tsavo locals produced low isotopic signatures as well.
The behavior exhibited by the Tsavo Man-Eaters had never been observed by contemporary scientists. Dozen of theories have been purposed about what made the lions target humans specifically. One idea is that their usual prey had been devastated by an outbreak of cattle plague. Another hypothesizes that the lions gradually developed a taste for human flesh while scavenging corpses on the slave trail from Zanzibar.
The incident inspired several films and books, most notably the 1996 movie "The Ghost and The Darkness" starring Val Kilmer.
It also launched the study of man-eating behavior in other large carnivores (sharks, bears, tigers, and white rabbits.)
Ironically, the word "Tsavo" means "a place of slaughter."
Here's a documentary you can watch:
