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Tsavo lions ate 35 people, not 135 Jeremy Hance mongabay.com November 02, 2009
"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 University of California—Santa Curz. "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. So who do you trust? We're removing all those factors and getting down to data." 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.
"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. 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.
While results show just how many people each lion ate, the number of people killed by the pair remains a mystery. "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. Our evidence attests only to the number of people eaten, not the number of people killed." Related articles Lion population in Kenya could disappear in 10 to 20 years (08/20/2009) The Kenyan Wildlife Service recently announced that massive declines in lion population may lead to their disappearence from the region within less than 2 decades. Kenya currently has an estimated 2000 lions, but is losing the large cats at a rate of around 100 each year. Lion die-offs in Africa linked to global warming (06/26/2008) Scientists have linked climate shifts in East Africa to die-offs in lion populations in 1994 and 2001. The research is published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE. Africa's lions are disappearing 
(03/25/2008) The lion is Africa's best known carnivore. Once widely abundant across the continent, recent surveys show that lion populations have plunged from over 100,000 individuals to around 23,000 over the past century. The reason? Lions are poisoned, shot, and speared by locals who see them as a threat to livestock. 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. 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. The program employs Maasai warriors to monitor lions and help local communities prevent attacks on livestock.
Tags: lions cats big cats great cats mammals predators kenya east africa wildlife animals africa Animal behvaior animal behavior carnivores endangered species environment green jeremy hance strange Environmental news index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements:
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