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Tsavo Lions [Kenya] {1898-1899} (35+ Victims)

Hollywood darlings and arguably the most famous of the man-eaters, the Tsavo lions have been

the subject of several movies—including Bwana Devil (1952) and The Ghost and the Darkness

(1996)—and many books. The pair of males was accused of devouring some 140 workers along

Kenya’s Tsavo River, where crews were building a railroad bridge in 1898. Hundreds of workers

fled, halting construction; the project’s chief engineer finally hunted down both lions, and the

bridge was completed in 1899. Recent analysis of the lions’ hair and bones suggest that the lions

likely ate only about 35 people.

In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The

project was led by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. During the next nine months of construction,

two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging Indian workers from their tents at

night and devouring them. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas, or

thorn fences, around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, to no avail; the lions

leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences. After the new attacks, hundreds of workers fled

from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Patterson set traps and tried several times to

ambush the lions at night from a tree. After repeated unsuccessful endeavours, he shot the first

lion on 9 December 1898. Twenty days later, the second lion was found and killed. The first lion

killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry

the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed 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.

Patterson writes in his account that he wounded the first lion with one bullet from a Martini-

Enfield chambered in .303 calibre. This shot struck the lion in its back 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 .303 Lee Enfield, and found it lying dead the next morning

not far from his platform. The second lion was shot at most nine times, five with a .303 Lee

Enfield, three with a Martini-Henry carbine, and once with an unidentified rifle.

The first was fired from atop a scaffolding Patterson had built near goat kills done by the lion.

Two, both from the Lee Enfield, were shot into it eleven days later as the lion was stalking

Patterson and trying to flee. When they had found the lion the next day thereafter, Patterson shot

it three more times with the Lee Enfield, severely crippling it, and shot it three times with the

Martini-Henry carbine, 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.

After 25 years as Patterson's floor rugs, the lions' skins were sold to the Chicago Field Museum

in 1924 for a sum of US$5,000 (US $66,389.37 in 2012). The lions' skins arrived at the museum

in very poor condition. The lions were then reconstructed and are now on permanent display

along with the original skulls.

Patterson's accounts were published in his 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.

The two lion specimens in Chicago's Field Museum are known as FMNH 23970 (killed 9

December 1898) and FMNH 23969 (killed 29 December 1898). Recent studies have been made

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upon the isotopic signature analysis of Δ13C and Nitrogen-15 in their bone collagen and hair

keratin and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Using

realistic assumptions on the consumable tissue per victim, lion energetic needs, and their

assimilation efficiencies, researchers compared the man-eaters' Δ13C signatures to various

reference standards: Tsavo lions with normal (wildlife) diets, grazers and browsers from Tsavo

East and Tsavo West, and the skeletal remains of Taita people from the early 20th century. This

analysis estimated that FMNH 23969 ate the equivalent of 10.5 humans and that FMNH 23970

ate 24.2 humans.

This leads to the conclusion that the lower number of 35 victims is more likely and confirms the

study published 8 years previously by Julian Kerbis Peterhans and Thomas Patrick Gnoske

(2001) who estimated 28–31 victims. It appears that Colonel Patterson exaggerated his claims as

have subsequent investigators (e.g. ""135 men", Neiburger and Patterson, 2000) (though none of

these modern studies have taken into account the people who were killed but not eaten by the

animals). The diet of the victims would also affect their isotopic signature. A low meat diet

would produce a signature more typical of herbivores in the victims, affecting the outcome of the

test. This research also excludes, but does not disprove, the claims that the lions were not eating

the victims they killed but merely killing just to kill. Similar claims have been made of other

wildlife predators.

Lion of Kimaa [Uganda] {1900}

A man-eating lion had taken up his quarters at a little roadside station called Kimaa, and had

developed an extraordinary taste for the members of the railway staff. He was a most daring

brute, quite indifferent as to whether he carried off the station master, the signalman, or the

pointsman; and one night, in his efforts to obtain a meal, he actually climbed up on to the roof of

the station buildings and tried to tear off the corrugated-iron sheets. At this the terrified baboo in

charge of the telegraph instrument below sent the following laconic message to the Traffic

Manager: “Lion fighting with the station. Send urgent succour.” Fortunately he was not

victorious in his “fight with the station”; but he tried so hard to get in that he cut his feet badly on

the iron sheeting, leaving large blood-stains on the roof. Another night, however, he succeeded in

carrying off the native driver of the pumping-engine, and soon afterwards added several other

victims to his list. On one occasion an engine-driver arranged to sit up all night in a large iron

water-tank in the hope of getting a shot at him, and had a loop-hole cut in the side of the tank

from which to fire. But as so often happens, the hunter became the hunted; the lion turned up in

the middle of the night, overthrew the tank and actually tried to drag the driver out through the

narrow circular hole in the top through which he had squeezed in. Fortunately the tank was just

too deep for the brute to be able to reach the man at the bottom; but the latter was naturally half

paralysed with fear and had to crouch so low down as to be unable to take anything like proper

aim. He fired, however, and succeeded in frightening the lion away for the time being.

It was in a vain attempt to destroy this pest that poor Ryall met his tragic and untimely end. On

June 6, 1900, he was traveling up in his inspection carriage… accompanied by two friends, Mr.

Huebner and Mr. Parenti. When they reached Kimaa… they were told that the man-eater had

been seen close to the station only a short time before their train arrived, so they at once made up

their minds to remain there for the night and endeavor to shoot him. Ryall’s carriage was

accordingly detached from the train and shunted into a siding close to the station, where, owing

to the unfinished state of the line, it did not stand perfectly level, but had a pronounced list to one

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side….[After dinner] they all sat up on guard for some time; but the only noticeable thing they

saw was what they took to be two very bright and steady glow-worms. After events proved that

these could have been nothing else than the eyes of the man-eater steadily watching them all the

time and studying their every movement. The hour now growing late, and there being apparently

no sign of the lion, Ryall persuaded his two friends to lie down, while he kept the first watch.

Huebner occupied the high berth over the table on the one side of the carriage, the only other

berth being on the opposite side of the compartment and lower down. This Ryall offered to

Parenti, who declined it, saying that he would be quite comfortable on the floor; and he

accordingly lay down to sleep, with his feet towards the sliding door which gave admission to

the carriage.

It is supposed that Ryall, after watching for some considerable time, must have come to the

conclusion that the lion was not going to make an appearance that night, for he lay down on the

lower berth and dozed off. No sooner had he done so, doubtless, than the cunning man-eater

began cautiously to stalk the three sleepers. In order to reach the little platform at the end of the

carriage, he had to mount two very high steps from the railway line, but these he managed to

negotiate successfully and in silence. The door from this platform into the carriage was a sliding

one on wheels, which ran very easily on a brass runner; and as it was probably not quite shut, or

at any rate not secured in any way, it was an easy matter for the lion to thrust in a paw and shove

it open. But owing to the tilt of the carriage and to his great extra weight on the one side, the

door slid to and snapped into the lock the moment he got his body right in, thus leaving him shut

up with the three sleeping men in the compartment.

He sprang at once at Ryall, but in order to reach him had actually to plant his feet on Parenti,

who, it will be remembered, was sleeping on the floor. At this moment Huebner was suddenly

awakened by a loud cry, and on looking down from his berth was horrified to see an enormous

lion standing with his hind feet on Parenti’s body, while his forepaws rested on poor Ryall. Small

wonder that he was panic-stricken at the sight. There was only one possible way of escape, and

that was through the second sliding door communicating with the servant’s quarters, which was

opposite to that by which the lion had entered. But in order to reach this door, Huebner had

literally to jump on to the man-eater’s back, for its great bulk filled up all the space beneath his

berth. It sounds scarcely credible, but it appears that in the excitement and horror of the moment

he actually did this, and fortunately the lion was too busily engaged with his victim to pay

attention to him. So he managed to reach the door in safety; but there, to his dismay, he found

that it was held fast on the other side by the terrified coolies, who had been aroused by the

disturbance caused by the lion’s entrance. In utter desperation he made frantic efforts to open it,

and exerting all his strength at last managed to pull it back sufficiently far to allow him to

squeeze through, when the trembling coolies instantly tied it up again with their turbans. A

moment afterwards a great crash was heard, and the whole carriage lurched violently to one side;

the lion had broken through one of the windows, carrying off poor Ryall with him. Being now

released, Parenti lost no time in jumping through the window on the opposite side of the carriage,

and fled for refuge to one of the station buildings; his escape was little short of miraculous, as the

lion had been actually standing on him as he lay on the floor….

Ryall’s remains were found next morning about a quarter of a mile away in the bush…. Very

shortly afterwards the terrible brute who was responsible for this awful tragedy was caught in an

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ingenious trap constructed by one of the railway staff. He was kept on view for several days, and

then shot.

Chiengi Charlie [Zambia] {1909} (90 Victims)

This man-eater—missing half his tail and so light-colored that he was also known as “the White

Lion”—haunted Chiengi, the British post on the border of what was then Northern Rhodesia

(now Zambia), in 1909. Like many other notorious killers, and indeed like the cyclones which

occasionally devastate our countryside, he was given a nickname, in his case the unimaginative

alliterative Chiengi Charlie.

Of Africa's greatest recorded man-eaters, Chiengi Charlie ranks 5th numbers-wise and in Zambia

he is definitely the most colorful character - often endowed with the magical spiritual powers of

transformation. “In the district in which he carried on his nefarious practices Charlie (became) a

celebrity, almost an institution,” according to one account. “He was alluded to with the almost

affectionate familiarity with which some people speak of the devil.”

Even the Europeans had begun to credit Charlie with the possession of a charmed life! His

cunning and elusiveness were extraordinary and he seemed to have an uncanny premonition of

poison and traps. He had been known to kill within 100 yards of a watcher patiently sitting up for

him; or again he would take victims in places 50 miles apart within 24 hours.

He eventually teamed up with two other males to feed on the inhabitants of several villages.

Charlie and his partners reportedly ate 90 people, including the servant of a hunter sent to

destroy him. He eluded all manner of traps and the best marksmen in the country (though one

village woman managed to beat him off with a firebrand as he clawed through the mud wall of

her hut.) He was finally shot in a gun trap.

Msoro Monty [Zambia] {1929}

Though historically rich in wild game, the Luangwa River Valley in eastern Zambia has

produced a series of fearsome man-eaters. In 1929, one began stalking victims near the Msoro

Mission, which furnished his alliterative nickname. “Msoro Monty” never lost his knack for

sniffing out traps. After killing a large number of people, he disappeared without a trace.

Namwelu [Zambia] {1945} (40 Victims)

As recently as 1945, "Namwelu," which means "the cunning one," killed some forty people in

the Kasama neighborhood in Zambia.

The Man-Eaters of Njombe [Tanzania] {1932-1947} (1500+ Victims)

The most prolific of the man-eaters, this pride of 15 claimed hundreds of lives—perhaps as many

as 1,500—of lives between 1932 and 1947 in southern Tanzania. “The renowned man-eaters of

Tsavo were very small fry compared to what these proved to be,” wrote George Rushby, the

British game warden charged with stopping them.

Legend has it that the lions were being controlled by the witch doctor of a local tribe, named

Matamula Mangera, who sent them into rampage as revenge against his own people after being

deposed of his post. The tribesmen were so terrified of the man-eating lions that they wouldn’t

even dare speaking of them, believing that a simple mention would cause them to appear. They

begged to the tribe chief to restore the witch doctor to his post, but he refused. The lions kept

attacking and, eventually, took over 1,500 human lives (some say over 2000); the worst lion

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attack in History, and one of the worst cases of animal attacks ever recorded.

Prior to the pride’s bloody spree, the colonial government had reduced the numbers of prey

animals in the area in an effort to control a rinderpest outbreak that was destroying cattle herds.

The hungry lions quickly settled on human flesh as a substitute. Unlike most lions, the Njombe

pride did its killing in the afternoon, using the night hours to travel as far as 15 or 20 miles to an

unsuspecting village. Rushby believed that the cats actually used a relay system to drag bodies

into the safety of the bush.

When an attempt by some Italians failed, no one else tried to hunt the lions. The lions were rarely

even mentioned outside of the Tanganyika region, let alone inside it. When Rushby arrived there

six years later, he did not realize the seriousness of the situation until District Commissioner

Wenban-Smith telegrammed him saying, “I beg you to apply earliest attention to man-eaters stop

conditions in this District pathetic.” The Africans would not help Rushby at all out of abject fear.

Some believed that under Matamula’s control, the lions were simba mtu, or werlions, the result

of men returning from the dead and taking on the appearance of a lion, or even living people

with the ability to magically change from human to lion and back again. Others believed that

Matamula and two trusted followers kept these real man-eaters in a secret location, and would

command the lions to kill specific people at night. Matamula used this fear to accept bribes and

tribute from the Africans, becoming wealthy in the process. Rushby finally managed to break

through this wall of fear when a local subchief, Jifiki, explained the history and politics

surrounding Matamula.

Rushby had a hard time hunting the man-eaters of Njombe, as they were incredibly cunning and

had developed habits over the past fifteen years unlike those of normal lion prides. He noted that,

“If a man-eater continues to kill and eat people for any length of time it develops an almost

supernatural cunning. This often makes the hunting down and killing of such a lion a lengthy and

difficult task.” These lions proved true to Rushby’s observation, as it took over a year for all of

the man-eaters to be killed. It took over six weeks for Rushby to kill the first man-eater. Rushby

said that during this time the “local opinion that I was wasting my time hunting the lions” was

strengthened. After two lions were shot, the Africans told Rushby that they were happy that he

“had shown them the lions were not invulnerable.” Gradually, more and more of these man-

eaters were shot or speared by Rushby and some of his African rangers.

He finally hunted down and shot the lions. He killed 15 lions, and the rest of the pride eventually

abandoned the area, finally ending the nightmare. But, of course, the locals were convinced that

the lions left only because the tribe’s chief finally agreed to restore Matamula Mangera to his old

job.

Lion of Maiembi [East Africa] {Before 1950} (4+ Victims)

The man-eater of Maiembi caused fear which was not influenced by a belief that he was a demon

or the spirit of an irate deceased chief. This lion lived and died along the Zambezi River, again in

eastern Africa, sometime during the first half of the twentieth century. The local Africans knew

the reason why the lion had turned into a man-eater. A government official wanted a picture of a

wild lion, so he arranged for a lion trap to be set, which soon caught a normal lion. The lion

struggled to get free and eventually did so, but without the paw that had been stuck in the trap. A

wound like this one often turns a lion into a man-eater, since wild animals become too hard to

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catch when defenseless humans are around. The government official overlooked this fact and

thoughtlessly left the lion injured near a populous village. About a week after the lion escaped,

he killed his first victim. After another person succumbed to the lion, the local chief gathered

together the men of the island and tried to drive the lion off. This only resulted in the man-eater

killing two more people, since the villagers did not know how to organize a proper lion hunt.

Eventually the lion moved away from the first village and began terrorizing other villages. John

Taylor, a British professional hunter of man-eaters and marauding elephants, was passing

through the region and was asked to kill this lion as the African tribesmen lacked the experience

and equipment to do so themselves. After several days, Taylor finally caught up with the lion and

shot him. From this example, it is seen that when the cause of a lion turning into a man-eater is

known, the African tribes will not panic or being to suspect witchcraft is involved.

Lion of Mfuwe [Zambia] {1991} (6+ Victims)

This cat terrorized Zambia’s Luangwa River Valley—near Msoro Monty’s old stamping

grounds—in 1991. After killing at least six people, the lion strutted through the center of a

village, reportedly carrying a laundry bag that had belonged to one of his victims. A California

man on safari, after waiting in a hunting blind for 20 nights, later shot and killed him. The lion

was more than ten feet long and, like the famous Tsavo lions, totally maneless. His body is on

display at Chicago’s Field Museum.

The Mfuwe lion wasn’t killing and eating people back in Victorian times or anything like that.

Rather, it was a modern man-eater, its attacks occurring in 1991. The first occurred as two boys

were walking along a road at night. One boy fled; by the time game rangers arrived at the attack

site, only pieces of clothing and part of the other boy’s skull were found. The second attack

occurred at the edge of a village – this time the victim was an adult woman; the lion had broken

through the door of her hut to get her. The third attack (occurring at night on a boy who ventured

out to meet a friend) was foiled when a game scout fired his gun into the air during the attack,

but the boy died of his severe injuries anyway.

Three more kills occurred later in 1991, the last one again involving a woman being dragged

from the hut where she lived. Prior to this last kill, it was locally believed that lionesses

belonging to the ‘L-pride’ were responsible for the killings, and indeed one of these lionesses

was shot dead in August of 1991. The important role of an adult male lion now came to the fore.

This lion entered the woman’s hut during daylight and removed a bag containing her laundry. It

took the bag to the centre of the village, dropped it, and stood over the bag, roaring. Remarkably,

the lion carried the bag about the countryside, leaving it at different locations and sometimes

playing with it. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, people now suspected that the lion was no ordinary lion,

but a demon or sorcerer in lion form.

Some sources say that people weren’t allowed to hunt and kill this lion because Zambia’s laws

about game conservation didn’t allow it. That’s not wholly correct, given the killing of one of the

suspected man-eating lionesses by game wardens (they also shot a juvenile male lion at the same

time, but didn’t kill it). The other females in the pride were also shot dead later on.

The Mfuwe man-eater’s reign was put to an end by Californian hunter Wayne Hosek. Hosek

wasn’t the first to try and kill the Mfuwe lion – a professional hunter, and a Japanese hunter and

naturalist, had both tried earlier. Hosek was already in the area with permission to hunt

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individuals from a list of large mammal species, lion among them. There’s the whole debate here

about controlled hunting and its contribution to economy and conservation versus its abuse at the

hands of the unscrupulous, the selective impact it has on animal populations, and the ethics of

trophy-hunting.

Anyway, Hosek and professional hunter Charles Beukes sat for about three weeks in a hide,

hoping that a nearby bait of hippo meat would attract the cat and allow them to kill it. Early

attempts were unsuccessful – the lion even circled the bait one night, but was so stealthy that it

had avoided all detection. Eventually, Hosek succeeded in killing it. On the lion’s death, people

swarmed out of the village to spit at the animal and beat it with sticks.

Osama [Tanzania] {2002-2004} (50+ Victims)

Osama terrorized Rufiji, Tanzania, from 2002 to 2004; he was accused of killing more than 50

people from eight villages over a period of two months. Part of a pride of males and females,

Osama likely didn’t kill alone, but he was the lion villagers singled out to star in billboard-size

depictions of the bloody deeds (according to Tanzanian lion scientist Dennis Ikanda, the lion was

named after Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist attacks made headlines even in rural Tanzania.)

Osama was just 3 1/2 years old when game scouts shot him in April of 2004, around 150 km

south of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

Some have blamed his eating habits on a large abscess on one of his molars. "This lion probably

experienced a lot of pain, particularly when it was chewing," said Rolf Baldus, coordinator of the

wildlife programme of GTZ, the German development cooperation agency which has been

working with the Tanzanian government on wildlife conservation issues for the past 17 years. "It

probably gave up hunting wild animals like buffalo because the meat was just too tough and too

painful to chew. It almost certainly found humans easier to catch and less painful to eat." There

is of course no scientific proof for the toothache theory.

But, according to Packer, whose research team studied the case, plenty of man-eaters have

perfect teeth. Osama “probably got started when his mother started eating people,” Packer says.

"This lion was probably taught to hunt humans by its mother when it was young. Perhaps it gave

up hunting humans until it got toothache but then restarted," Mr. Baldus said.