In 1898, two maneless lions reportedly attacked, killed, and ate 135 railroad workers in Tsavo, southeastern Kenya, stopping the British Empire in its tracks and serving as inspiration for the 1996 film, The Ghost and the Darkness. Now a leading zoologist has put these infamous lions into modern scientific perspective in a new book, The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa's Notorious Man-eaters.
Author Dr. Bruce D. Patterson is MacArthur Curator of Mammals in the Department of Zoology at the Chicago Field Museum, where the ill-famed lions are stuffed and currently on display. Patterson, the leading authority on the Tsavo lions and principal investigator of the Earthwatch Institute-supported Lions of Tsavo project, offers a compelling story about the ecological underpinnings of the lions' historic "reign of terror."
"This book represents my attempt to make museum specimens ‘talk,'" writes Patterson in the introduction to The Lions of Tsavo, which details his work on lion ecology with Earthwatch teams. "None of the more than 170,000 mammal specimens at the Chicago Field Museum has a more compelling and involved history than the two lions . . . shot in British East Africa more than a century ago."
The Lions of Tsavo has all the elements of a great adventure: Africa at the turn of the century, the British Empire, monsters, and heroes. Patterson provides a story that is rich in historic detail, but in the tradition of George Schaller supports his findings with scientific detail that only a researcher that spends hours in the field can muster.
Patterson suggests that a variety of causes contribute to man-eating behavior in lions, both historically and today. Man-eaters are frequently thought to be old or infirm, with poor dentition and apparently incapable of normal predatory behavior, but Patterson contends that the reasons are often far more complex.
The Tsavo lions may have been driven to man-eating by prey depletion due to a Rinderpest epidemic among cattle and wildlife that hit Kenya in the 1890s, and severe drought during the period provided abundant human corpses for scavenging. Human habits such as open burial practices may also have invited scavenging lions to acquire a taste for human flesh.
"Our forensic studies of the lions' remains show one had a crippling tooth injury that likely prevented him from tackling normal prey," said Patterson. "However, most marauders in Tsavo today have perfect teeth, and their depredations reflect shrinking habitats and depleted prey populations. Mitigating such carnivore-human conflict through better ecological understanding is an important outcome of Earthwatch-supported research." Samuel Kasiki (Kenya Wildlife Service) and Roland Kays (New York State Museum) are fellow investigators in this work.
The Lions of Tsavo represents an important contribution to our understanding of lion behavior and ecology and an authoritative view of the most notorious lions in history. Patterson's exploration of the ecology and evolution of manelessness among Tsavo lions, a primary focus of his work with Earthwatch volunteers, has important implications for lion conservation.
The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa's Notorious Man-eaters. Bruce D. Patterson. McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Earthwatch Institute is an international nonprofit organization which supports scientific field research worldwide by offering members of the public unique opportunities to work alongside leading field scientists and researchers. The Institute's mission is to engage people worldwide in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment.