Thinking Sideways: Tsavo Man-Eaters

by Done Joe. You didn't sing that, Joe. Okay, Oh wait, that's the wrong episode. Next time, next time handing my guitar. No, So, today's story, Um, well, actually, before we get in today's story. Today's episode is part of our summer series where we're taking some of the smaller mysteries and and going over those so that gives us some time off during the summer and it allows some time to research the bigger mysteries. Yeah,

like Dizzy Cooper and Stan Cooper and things. Just Dan Cooper. Okay, just the entire summer full of Dan Cooper, the summer of Dan Dans of summer. I'm sorry you were so proud of yourself I woke up at four o'clock this morning. I've been awake for a very long time. Okay, let's talk about van eater. Sorry, today's story is the Savo man Eaters. Uh. And this is a listener suggestion. This was suggested by David. Thanks David. Yeah no, this is a fun one. I had forgotten about this until I

came across down. The Law's fun except for the people who got eaten. Shush, jeezils we do um So. The Savo man Eaters are two African lions who in eight who were named locally the Ghost and the Darkness, killed workers on the East Africa Railroad at the Savo River which is today modern day Savo National Park in Kenya.

If you go to do a google on Savo, it's spelled t s A v O. Yes it is um Now, those lions, because of what they were doing to the people who were there, they actually stopped the railroad project that was going on. And it wasn't until they were eventually killed by British Army Colonel John Patterson that the project could move forward and complete at least the part that he was responsible for. But our mystery here, we're gonna to tell the story. But our mystery here is

why did they do it? Why? Like, why did the lions kill the humans? Yes? Not not Why did the British build a railroad? It's because because they were hungry? Well what motivated him? Since lions are typically known to hunt humans and they were they were taking out according to the story great swabs of people. Well, I mean they are cats and cats are jerks. Maybe that you just alienated all of our feline listeners. Steva doesn't have a comeback for that. We'll go ahead and just start

the story. Uh. In eight the British had decided to build a railroad in their East Africa and colony UH. And that was gonna run from the port city of Mombasa, which is in modern day Kenya, and then that rail line was going to run all the way to Lake Victoria and then go on to Uganda. And officially it was named the Uganda Railroad, but unofficially it was called the Lunatic Line. And that's because there was a lot of people in Parliament who didn't think that it was

worth it and they should be doing it. They described it as the railroad that ran from nowhere to nowhere. It's kind of like that high speed rail project in California something like that. Um Officially, what the British were hoping was that it would encourage people to move into the interior of Africa and provide a method for transporting

trade products between Africa and Europe. And by people, I mean British citizens because it was a colony and they wanted to get citizens in there, because that's how they were going to tame the What did they call it, It was the darkest Africa, Darkest Africa, Yeah, I think that was what they called that. They considered it a land of savages at the time. Is the way that you see it describe it. I mean again it was like the yes, yeah, so this is this is based

on writings at that time that that was there. That was their description. Yeah, I don't know that. The term was actually based on the complexions of the people who lived there, like sort of the you like her kind of heart of darkness kind of yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah,

it was it was a hard place to get to. Um. Now, unofficially, this railroad was also it was also intended to provide an alternative method to what the standard method of getting things from the interior of Africa to the coast was which was on foot, which is a long, long walk. It's a long hike, and I have a lot of people to carry all that stuff you do. Importers aren't cheap, and because cheap labor is kind of important when you're

you're trading, there was a blossoming slave trade. So there was tons of slaves that were being picked up in that entire region and then they would be walking in and out until eventually they die. So we're talking cheap as free, not like underpaid. You got to buy a slave, so it's not technically free. You're not paying wages, correct, So therefore you're not gonna you're not gonna spend a bunch of money on people. You just kitch product. You

hoofed into town. If somebody dies on the ways, whoops, you're out whatever you paid for them. Then it's on back down the road. Now, wonder how many slaves it took to carry a car. That's the weirdest question you've asked me in a while. Um, now, it did. It did eventually help bring the slave trade down, It wasn't the reason that the slave trade would eventually trade line. Yeah, because if you can throw things on a train. It's

way cheaper and easier unless morally wrong. Yeah, for the people who have who cared, I mean people who are buying and selling slaves typically probably don't have a compunction to worry about that. Yeah. A lot of people still back in those days thought it was okay. Yeah, it was standard fair. Um. So they're gonna build this railroad and thousands of labors are brought in and they are Indie in and Chinese. So yeah, there was it was Indians and there was Chinese brought in. Um they were

they were all as a group. The British referred to him as coolies. They were their labors. Um did the Alliance have a preference for one group of the other, Not that I know of. Um. So the railroad itself was gonna be a total of five eighty miles long, and when it was done it we had crossed valleys and rivers. Crazy though it took thirty years to complete.

It started in eight It reached Nairobi in like Victoria in nineteen o one, and then it took almost thirty or twenty seven more years for it to eventually get to Kampala, Uganda. That's a long time. Yeah, I think that there was some political tensions going on. I think that mostly it was and I don't mean political tensions in the area, I mean political tensions in Britain in the Parliament of why are we dumping more money into this?

So that's why I didn't it and get very well funded at that point, So we're gonna go to This is two years after the construction has begun. The rail line has reached the Tsavo River in Kenya, which is about a hundred and thirty miles away from Ambassa. Actually

pretty good progress. It actually is pretty good progress for our rail line is being built by hand um And what they have to do is they have to cross a river, so they build a temporary bridge so that they can keep working on the rail line, and then in place of that temporary bridge, they pull it down and they're going to start putting in the actual bridge because right so, because why do you want to wait all this time for the bridge to be done when

you can keep making forward? Progress makes total sense. So what they do is in March of that year they bring in British Army Colonel John Patterson UM and he's brought in from India because he was evidently he was great with bridges and that was his thing at during during the construction of the bridge, Like I said, the they're gonna be building the bridge, and the rail line itself is gonna keep moving forward the leading edge of

the line as they're constructing it. And this what happened is that the camps, because the men who are working on the line have to sleep at night, so they set up temporary camps and their camps from the bridge forward, over time starts spread out about over a twenty mile area, so it's pretty big swath area. Well it's not, but I think it's within a couple of days to a

week of Patterson arriving that men start disappearing. And I was gonna say no. One immediately was like a crap, no, no, because all of the workers come to him and say they're being dragged out of their tents at night by a lion, and he's like, no, that's not really happening. I don't really believe you. Uh. And eventually he does go with them. They find a bot. And I've read the accounting of it, and if you from the description of it, it was pretty obvious that it was a

big cat that must have been doing it. So at that point he's on board, and eventually the workers would figure out that there wasn't just one, but there was actually two lions. Not to be racist, but how could they tell with two different lions? Wait, okay, so you're you're actually and you actually you actually praised it like a joke, but it's an actual question. When you see two lions at the same time, you know that there's more than one. Okay, I mean, I guess I just

thought that male lions hunted alone. Apparently these these two sort of had a had alliance their brothers. It was later determined that they were brothers. But the thing is, and we're going to talk a little bit more about these kind of lions in just a moment, but males will be with a pride of females, and if male doesn't have a pride, then he's just gonna row. Sometimes males will work together to hunt because it's mutually beneficial,

at least for a certain amount of time. So it's not completely unheard of to have a couple of males just kicking around at the same time together. Okay, it's actually I would be really handy for having because I mean just you know, like go spook some gazelles and driving towards your bro you know. Well, I mean that's why you know, wolves hunting packs, a lot of animals hunting packs, because the big cats do it all the time, except for usually not two males. No, no, but and

so let's let's go ahead and talk about this. Because the lions that are in question here are Savo lions, and they're different than the lions that I think most people think of are familiar with, which is the lions of the Serengetti. So there's there's some physical differences and there's some behavioral differences. The bigger, for one thing, they are, They are much bigger, and they also don't have mains.

So a normal you know, the Sengetti lion has that big giant mane that's so iconic, but these lions don't. And it's not understood why. There's some ideas that maybe it's because of the fact that that region is hotter than the Serengetti. Yeah, I think that is a reasonable Well, that's a good reason. Um Or there's also the idea that because the landscape in that area is very scrubby,

it's scrub brush, and it's very thorny scrub. So if an animal is squeezing through brush, either the main is gonna get caught or you're gonna get all kinds of stuff caught. In the main, they have a little bit of a main, so they have they do have scruff

occasionally if they have a main. I love that. I was looking at a drawing and they show just in front of the ears they then they literally call it the side burn and the beard because it's it's almost never fully encompassing or going all the way around the neck like you see traditionally. But I guess these two I was just looking at pictures. Did they had a

little little, tiny, very little bit of main. Well. And that's the hard part though, is that if you look at the pictures of these particular lions in the I can't remember what museum they're in right now, that those are the skins of those lions after they were rugs for about twenty years, so they weren't in great condition when they were brought in. If you look at the photos from after they were shot, it doesn't look like there's a whole lot there then, but it's also not

they're old images. It's really hard to tell. Yeah, but apparently they were skillfully restored and now they're they're stuff that looked like the real thing they do, except they're smaller. They're much smaller than they would be normally because of the fact that they were skinned to make into rugs and not to make into replicas exactly mannequins or whatever you wanna call it. I can't think, Yeah, they had trimmed away parts of the skins, but there's aren't they

in Chicago The Field Museum in um Chicago, Illinois. Thanks looking up. I knew it was feel something I can remember what it was. Um. Well, let's talk a little bit more about Savo lions, though it's a cup of

things more to talk about here. We talked about the fact that they're larger than the Serengetti lions, and it's believed that that might be that they're actually a more primitive version of the lion, because if you see apparently if you look at the drawings from like the Egyptians, because there was lions running around at two thousand years ago in that region, they look the same. They don't have a main and they're very large and the illustrations,

So that's one of the reasons. The other thing is that these lions are not The males especially are notably super aggressive because they have really high levels of testosterone, so they are prone to their automatic reaction is to attack, just because they're always kind of their dudes, they're totally worked up all the time. I know that. Yeah, so um,

we'll go back to the story though. As I said, the workers were spread over a large area again about ten twenty miles, and the lions started to attack, and they were attack primarily at night. They didn't show up every night, so it wasn't as if it was every single night they were there. Half a human is a lot of meal. I would say human would make a

couple of days. The other thing, though, is that when they showed up, they were much more likely to attack the livestock as they were the people, because you gotta remember, it's a camp of workers who have to have work animals or draft animals, and they've also got to feed themselves, so there's tons of livestock around, so it's whatever seemed most convenient pickens whenever it was easy pickings. Yes, I

think if I was putting up my tent. If I wasn't one of them workers, I would like stick goats and cows all around it. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is is that they did. Everybody was trying to keep the lions out. So what the coolies would do is they would they would build fences. They were called boma fences, and they would use the local acacia, which is a super thorny tree and bush, and they build fences out of that, so it's, you know, it's a it's a barbed wire fence of nature at this point.

And they would also like big camp fires and keep those fires going all night long in the hopes that the sound and the light would keep the lions from coming in. It didn't didn't work so well because the lions kept getting through the fences and kept yeah, they were there. Well, there's a there's a really interesting account where a lion actually got into a tent where a guy was sleeping, and in the scuffle and panic ended up grabbing the mattress, the sleeping mattress the guy had

and running away with that. And so the guy got away into lion got a couple of I'm guessing a couple of yards, realized it didn't have its prey and dropped it and continued. I feel like that might say something bad about the state of the worker, that they were easily mistaken for a mattress. Well, I think it's in the dark, in a tent, in the scuffle with the smells are your primary it's a sleeping pad that you sleep on or a mattress. Things, Well, maybe it is.

I don't know. You're right, Okay, you're right. A mattress and a human are interchangeable. They are. That's why I have one sitting in my cube right now at the office. Everybody thinks I'm working diligently, wait till they realize it's sorta all right. So April of that year, um. At this point, Paterson has been there for about a month or so, and now the rail line is extended forty miles away from the Tsavo, and there's only a couple of hundred workers left at the camp who are building

the bridge. And because this is where, you know, the bulk of the humans have moved on, and the camp is around the bridge, that's where the lions start to focus their attacks exactly. And so Patterson he he um. So he was brought in from India, where he had done a whole bunch of lion or not lion but tiger hunting, and so he considered himself a hunter of big cats. What he would do is he would climb a tree at night and he would sit in the tree all night long hoping that he could spot and

then shoot one of the lions. Obviously, he didn't have a whole lot of luck with it. The you know, he's in a tree. One night, the lions show up, They get into the hospital tent and they take somebody away. So he says, move the move the hospital tent. So they do. The lion goes to the new location of the hospital tent and take somebody else away. I think it was the water boy. Um takes him away. So then they do it a third time. They moved the tent a third time, and I'm like, why is he doing?

Does he not realize that lions can smell? Like, why

are you moving it? Yea, they're not stupid, but these ones particularly, And what he did this time when he moved to hospital to the third time, as he put up this rail car contraction that he had designed and had cattle in it, and the idea I think was that to get the lion in, shut the door so the lion couldn't get out, and then you could, you know, shooting fish in a barrel, lions in a car kind of the same thing for him, except it didn't work out.

The lion got a cow, got in, got the cow, got it out of the car, but then couldn't figure out how to get it through the fence, and eventually took off through the fence. So when the thing I guess what happened though, is that Patterson and the camp doctor, because it was near where the hospital site was, were out there at night, and the lion at that point, instead of trying to continue to drag the cow out of the fence, turned around and started stalking these two guys. Yeah. Yeah,

So obviously it's very aggressive. When I have just killed something, I can't get it, I'm gonna kill something else. I'm still hungry. I'm I'm totally still hungry. Um. So it did eventually attempt to attack them, and this is where Patterson shot at it, and he said he managed to wound it by shooting one of its teeth, and that scared it away enough and the whole tooth thing is supported with the actual jaw of one of the lions.

There is a broken tooth. Now, whether that tooth was shot by him or broken in some other manner, that's that's in dispute. But it seems weird. It seems like a hell of a lucky shot. Well, it seems it would kill the lion shoot him in the head basically, Well not if you shoot it from the side or from it or you know, or if it goes out. Think of if it went through the cheek. Yeah, I suppose it could have been deflected. Yeah, I mean, there's there's a bunch of ways that this could happen either way.

Like I said, I don't I think that mostly it was right there and he shot it, scared the holy crap at him, and it took off. But that's that's just my opinion. So of core. Okay, so we've got the whole He shot at the mouth. The lions then take off for a while, and they leave the camp for several weeks, and I'm sure Patterson is just relieved and thinking, well, yeah, I got rid of them. Scared him off, I did it. Yeah, unbeknownst that's what British

accents sound like. Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. Unbeknownst to him, what the lions had been doing during that couple of weeks was actually stalking um some of the other construction camps that were farther away. And they do eventually return to the bridge site. This is several weeks later. One of the cats enters and drags a worker away, and these and and both of them show up to the body of this worker. And this is

how brazen they get. After a while, they only dragged the body thirty feet away from the thirty yards away from the camp and then begin to have their meal. So they're obviously not intimidated by people, which at this point I'd be thinking of a career change. Yeah, me too. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be there, No, not at all. And and so this this continues for months. These lions can keep coming back and they keep making a kill and taking something, whether it be human or a four

legged critter away as a meal. We get to the first of December and at this point most of the workers board the train and they leave. They've they've kind of had enough that there's just this is not worth it, and they're gone. There's some people yeah, yeah, it makes sense. There's some people left, there's some workers who are going to try and stay on. On the ninth of December, one of the lions manages to kill a donkey that's

in camp, and Patterson sees this is his opportunity. And what he does is he has a bunch of guys go around behind it and then come at it, making as much noise as they can to startle it, to scare it out into the open so that he can, you know, shoot it. Well, he does manage to hit it. He does manage to wound the lion, but it gets away, but he's pretty sure that it's going to come back because it wants to get the meal the donkey. So what does he do. He builds a platform that he

can sit on and be in a perch. He waits, uh lo and behold, the lion comes back, but this time it doesn't come back for the donkey. It instead is uh it's it approaches Patterson on his perch instead of going to the donkey. Yeah. Are we doing that thing that we do when we listen to Steve stories where we do like the Grandios storytelling of the night and then go back and like talk about stuff. So here's the thing is that, from what I can tell,

the majority of the story comes from Patterson himself. So the details, the accounts of how it happened, he was this was something that happened. A lot of guys would do. Is you would be off somewhere and you'd write at a you know, a bit of an adventure that it happened. You'd sell it to newspapers. And it seems that that's what Patterson is doing. And then eventually he collected those and he put those into a book that he wrote,

and that's where almost all of this story is sourced from. Now, the lions are real, and it is the fact that they were killing people is real. Now his they were talking me and they came after me and I shot. It's Canaine tooth off. That's that's all Patterson. That's all Patterson. And there's no reason not to believe them. There there is. Okay, So let's talk about this briefly. Let me finish what happens to this line, and then I want to talk

about something to follow up on that. What happens with this line is that it's circling underneath him while he's in his perch, and he goes ahead and takes more shots at it. He does manage to hit it. Um, he hits it two more times and manages to kill it. So he took a total of three bullets to put this creature down. Um. Now, I want to talk real briefly about his writings and his book. Did either of you get a chance? It's all available online to skim through any of that not. Okay, so it's not the

greatest read in the world. But what's very funny is that about the first third to half of the book is dedicated to this story, and then after that it's all his accounts of hunting big cats. So he becomes the man eater killer. So he goes hunting after lions. He starts hunting tigers again. Um. So he's like a dentist's son something like that, excepted like when you when you get into his stories, it's I shot the beast and it left back up and charged back at me.

Like he always describes these things as if they are they're just amazingly resilient and impervious to bullets. You know, the bullet went right through it, but it didn't phaze it. It kept running at me, does happen. That does happen. But when you read one after the next after the next that has the same kind of discus options of the events, that's when I worry a little bit about it. So some of this may have you know, I don't know how much he I don't want to say inflated

bedazzle the dazzle fact. So you actually tigerheading especially is dangerous. I saw this incredible video this It was like a first person's shotgun of thing. Someone just holding a camera riding on the back of an elephant, I assume in India, and it runs up on the elephant suddenly suddenly it just comes charging out of the grass and then I just like babies on the elephant come upside of the elephant and that's the end of it. Yeah, So I I assume whoever was holding the camera died. I think

I remember that one. And I don't think that person died. I think that's just where the video broke. We should just make clear, if it's not abundantly clear already, we are not advocating hunting of game like it's horrible. Well unless they're but and if they're actually killing people, that I can sort of sure. If it's like I have to put this animal down for safety, fine, that's a totally different thing. We're talking about a late nineteenth century event.

This was commonplace at the time. It was believed. Everybody believed that this was. Okay, there's tons of these animals. We can't it doesn't matter. Yeah, I just mean that, as we're starting to talk about, you know, it's really dangerous, dangerous. So don't well that's that story Joe's talking about. I don't think that's an actual tiger hunt. That is just somebody on the back of an elephant. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that we are not appreciate.

And I agree with you there. Okay, So what happened to the second lion? Okay, so at this point we've only got one lion um and a couple of nights later, it comes back to camp and it attacks two goats, and so Patterson decides, well, you know what, I evidently it's got a taste for goats. I'm gonna put a couple of more goats out, and he ties three goats out to a railroad tie. Early, so partial railroad tie,

and if anybody's picked up a railroad tie. They're freaking heavy. Well, this lion shows up, kills one of the goats and then drags it and the railroad tie away, well presumably also the other two goats. You know, as I reread this, I'm wondering if maybe it was three goats tied to three individual railroad ties would make more sense. Probably. Um. So they, of course they go ahead and they you know that he takes shots at it because he's such

a good shot. He puts like three or four or five shots at it, but he had never managed to hit it. Um, it was it was dark. It was dark. I'm I'm being a little bit of a jerk to Patterson. It was it was dark at night. There wasn't a whole lot of light. But the next day they he and several workers follow the trail and they find um, they find the lion. Uh it ran off. So at this point he goes ahead and he builds himself another platform. One was bad. Well, they were both hunting people in

the camps. It wasn't like one st oh Billy lion always stays at camp and Timmy Lyon always goes and hunts the people. They were both doing it. So he builds himself another perch. He's sitting on the perch um that night and the lion returns and he does manage to shoot it twice. Evidently he had a double barrel gun and the lion walked directly underneath his perch, and he simply enough pointed down and pulled both triggers and shot its. Quite a kick. It had to be those

big game guns in Africa. There's those double barreled ones for enormous rounds. Yeah. Yeah, So he shoots it, but he doesn't actually kill it, and it takes off, and they are and and this lion stays away for another ten days. At this point they're thinking, well, it must have died from its wounds. Except then on the twenty nine December, it returns and it tries to pull a worker who's sleeping in a tree out of the tree.

Uh it. The guy manages to not be taken, so Patterson says, okay, well it likes this tree, you go sleep somewhere else. I'm going to climb up into the tree. And uh, it does come back, comes back to that tree, and he manages to get another another two shots into it,

at which point it runs away again. In the morning, they follow the trail of blood and they do find the lion and apparently when they got to it, I'm guessing they must have found it kind of cornered because it charged him and he dumps so many bullets into it. He said he shot it five or six times, so he put in like beat multiple guns. He had guys carrying loaded weapon. Yeah, yeah, and so he managed to put five or six shots into it, so totally like now bullets. I just like the idea of a guy

being like, yeah, yeah, you you seven people carry my guns. No, no, don't shoot them, don't help me, just hand them to me. You are the worker, I am, I'm the hero. I'm the hero. I'm the protagonist of this story, damn it. Yeah. And that those people none of them had any experience shooting those I mean absolutely, and yes, that's it is like taking that story a little far. But I just like the image of him saying like, no, no, don't help me. And can you see him taking two shots

as the lion is running at him. He's like bang bang, holds the gun back and is waiting for somebody to take it. And that's why I yeah, why, like you know, a lion is charging you. I don't know why your initial reaction wouldn't be I have a gun that's loaded, I will aim and pull. Yeah, there's a lot of kicks, you know, blah blah blah. But if you know seven guns are going off with double barrels at once, the

chances of hitting that animal are pretty dang good. Instead, what a lot of the accounts were, You know what? The primary method of getting away from an attacking lion was climb a tree. It was so funny. This is another thing I picked up from his book. Is And then I turned around and so and so who had my gun had lost his nerve, And I saw him ten feet up the nearest tree, like they would do that.

So to be able to stand there and hand this guy gun after gun that actually takes a lot of willpower to to expect not to be just obliterated by this angry cat that's running it. It might be that there wasn't a tree near by to climb up either, so I think I had had no choice. Maybe it's also funny to me because I'm pretty sure lions do climb. Oh yeah, the cats, they can totally sure why they

would say no, they can't get me up here, definitely not. Well. Yeah, but if if there's more than one of you, if you're the first up the tree, then and there's the fact that when you're smaller and lighter, you can go up farther than the lion camp before it gets that's my advantage in this world. I can escape lions faster or at least higher than anyone else. As long as you can jump up and get the branch. That's a problem. Um Okay. So at this point Patterson is killed both

of the lions. He is triumphant. He finishes his bridge, and he goes on. Like I said, he writes a book and he does all this stuff to kind of make a living in in a sense. On his deeds, he says that these lions killed at least, if not more than a hundred and thirty five men in the nine months that they were stalking everybody at the camp. That seems like a lot, it really does. That would be if you do the math, that is one person every other day during the time frame for nine months,

for nine months. I persely feel that more likely what's happening is that people are getting they're scared out of their minds and they're bailing. They're they're leaving, and you go, oh, well where is he? Uh? I don't know, Well, the lion must have got him like that. It also would be if if there was some kind of shady you know, if the workers were kind of like indentured workers or something like that, it would be a good way to

escape without people going after your family. Maybe. But it was but it was imperial written, so it's not like they would turn around and say you your your your son escaped that ran away from the work. It was. They didn't seem to be practicing slavery. I mean they

were trying to get rid of slavery in the area. No, I don't mean slavery, but I just mean, you know, if there was some sort of deal that was set up, like I'm working off my debt or something, would be a really easy way to be like, you know what, A lion probably took me. Maybe I don't know that's what the arrangement was. I don't either. I just um, I do want to point out though, with this hundred

and thirty five number, that it's probably wrong. Um. As we've already been talking about, there is some tests that were done with science that I totally don't understand. But they did tests on the skin and the hair of the lions, and they were looking for delta thirteen C and nitrogen fifteen and somehow use that to determine how many people each of the lions had eaten, right, Yeah, And they figured out that one of them must have eaten ten people and the other one must have eaten

twenty five. So one of them was more likely to eat kill and eat a person than the other one. I'm guessing the other one was more interested in the goats and the horses and the cattle and donkeys and everything else that was there. You know, goats a lot easier to carry away, true, but it pre Yeah, but you gotta eat three goats in a night. You're not that big. I don't know. Do you think one goat

would not be enough? I don't think a goat would be enough, But that's just I think a goat is the same as half a person or third at least. Really yeah, more, I think you're nothing, but send you in guts and bone. Sorry, I don't need to goat a whole lot. Well I have there. There's not a whole lot to them you just buy a six pack. That's what the lion was doing. Why is the six pack tied to this heavy, heavy thing? Headlon must have been so peeved. Yeah, okay, ok, well that is the

end of the story. So at this point now we need to get into the theories because our original question is what was it that was driving these two lions to be attacking humans sactly. There's a number of theories. The first theory that we're going to talk about is the slave trade, because, as we said in the beginning, slave trade was pretty active in area, and one of the very well known behaviors slave traders is that if a slave dies, you just drop them where they fall.

You leave them there and you keep on going. You don't bother to give them a burial or anything like that, and you might dump them off the trail. A little bits aren't demoralized. But lions are scavengers. They have no problem with scavenging. They can be scavengers. Yeah, so they you know, if they are wanding along and oh hey, um, there's there's a there's a thing there, and you know the hyenas have already started ripping into it. And I bet you I could get some food out of it,

just like the NF. I'm walking on the street and I see I see a twinkie on the sidewalk, you know, go for it. That's so gross, dude, so gross that you're eating twinkies and be off the sidewalk. Yeah, okay, let's keep going. Um. Oh. The other thing about the Tsavo River is apparently, according to they're reading it was the river itself was a bit of a dumping ground

for bodies. Because the I'm guessing I've got to presume that it's because the route that they took followed the river, so if somebody dies, you just chucked the body in. Some bodies were floating down the river all the time. That's my presumption on that. So the theory here goes that these lions um, at this point they're used to having human remains around to scavengehn, so they come to

consider humans as a normal food source. And if you think about it, if there's you know, let's say there's a bunch of slaves tied up at night in a camp and you just come running in and they don't fight back and they can't run away, well that's the best cafeteria ever. Yeah, so they would at that point consider, um, you know, people's food source. And now the camps are setting up, so you've got this abundance of humans. That's great.

And then add to this, Oh and look, they've also brought along all these other animals, you know, like we talked about before, the goats, the donkeys, the horses, the cows, all of that stuff that that it's just it's too tempting. Well, all these things that I know how to eat are here. He totally can't blame them. I mean, I would take advantage of a great opportunity like that. Yeah, and and

well then that's the theory though. I mean, I don't know what your thoughts are on this in terms of the scavenging, but this is this theory says it basically they got used to eating people, so people are on the menu. I guess for me, it just seems like it's a leap to go from this is a super

easy thing that doesn't fight back at all. It's just easy meat that's laying there to go to this is a thing that fights back, and I have to like break into a camp and be really smart just because it's meat that's similar to what they're used to instead of targeting their normal I guess natural prey, because I mean, it's not as though there was a short age of normal prey for them around the area, right, we'll talk

about that there there is something. If that's the case, then yes, I agree, you know, but if you also think about it, if they're used to walking up and seeing a body and then snacking on that body, and now they walk up and that body is still laying on the ground, it just happens to be in this weird contraption that humans call a tent. Well, then you just walk in and then you grab the body as you normally do, and oh, it's struggling. Will I better

run away with it? The real hard because that's the thing is that you know, I I guess I never really thought about it, though I knew it is the way that lions kill. They their natural method of killing is to grab the throat and clamp down and suffocate while at the same time thrashing about to break the neck. And so it's either breaking the neck or suffocating their prey. And that makes sense when you think about it, but

I had never thought it. So that would explain why you know they're coming they're like, do the quick clamp and run the thing is gonna die. Yeah, let's go to a sort of similar theory. So our second theory is similar. Um it's it's described as partial cremations. And I will be honest that I only saw that in one or two places. I saw the term partial cremations. In one place, I saw some other stuff that we'll talk about this in Patterson's book. But I have to I have to admit that I tried to get a

better sense of what partial cremations meant. I'm doing research on it. All I can figure is that somebody tried to cremate the body to light a fire, but they didn't do a good job of it, so the body didn't burn. I would guess it's the lack of like a pire. It takes a lot of wood, actually totally consuming,

and there's not a whole lot of wood in that area. Yeah, So I would assume that somebody set up a kind of abbreviated, if you will, little pile and set them on fire and watch for a little while, and then you walk away, assuming it will continue to burn, and it goes out and it's just a half burned corpse. And related to that, um the other place that I

saw some descriptions of not exactly the same thing. But in Patterson's reading or in his book, I came across some stuff about the fact that there were poorly dug graves. So people would try to bury somebody, but they would only you know, dig down a little bit and then cover the body up, and then other scavengers would come along and dig it up. Now, Patterson, he says these things, he blaming the people who were burying the body in

kind of a derogatory way. But really I think it's just that they buried a body not expecting critters to come dig it back up, and critters dig it back up. And so this again is following the line the same lines as the last one of well, now they're used to eating people because they've been scavenging on them. It's possible they were slaves too. I mean, it's possible that slaves weren't actually just unceremoniously dumped but kind of haphazardly

given some kind of something. Right, Yeah, that's absolutely possible. I mean, it's not unlikely that a lot of workers were dying while they were working on it. If they send you out to digging grave for somebody and bury the body, and the people tend to cut corners a lot, you know, you might be tempted to bury the two or three feet down and just take that, take the rest of the day off, and just say he spent all day digging the grave really well, and building railroads

was not a safe occupation. People died almost freaking time. Yeah. I actually kind of wonder if that's part of the number that he had in terms of where that dy five number came. Is that somebody somebody died and they didn't want to say, oh, well, we accidentally had this pile of stuff fall on him. They just said, oh, well the lion took him. Yeah, that's entirely possible as well. The next theory that we have, which we alluded to a little bit, this is the one that we were

kind of talking about, which is the food source. The theory is cattle plaques. The Savo lions are one of the only animals that are able to take down kate buffalo. And if you don't know what a kate buffalo is, it's kind of like a water buffalo. They're not actually related, but it looks like a water buffalo only bigger. They're huge creatures and there's tons of meat on them. The

problem is is a food source for lions. They kind of suck because they're just as likely to injure or kill the lion as not, so they're very tough to take down. I would definitely be looking for easier sources of food well, and lucky for the lions, we as humans love cows, and we brought a whole bunch of cows to the area, so the lions would have been well calos cow was much easier to eat. Well, yeah,

it does. But the thing is that cows are not very good at fighting back, so chances are good that they're easier to take down, except that they're was in the nineties a rash of cattle plagues. Um there is. It is render pest disease, which is basically a fatal disease for cattle. They get lesions and they have problems

in their sinuses and it's really kind of grows. So only if you've got a strong stomach do you look at some of this, because it's not pretty and it takes him down pretty quickly, and it was taking out entire herds at this time. In the mid to late eighteen nineties. So if these lions have now learned to hunt cows and hey, the cows are no longer available and I'm starving, show up and I have all these people show up that are making all this noise and

they smell and there's blood and they're cooking. Well, then that would explain why they would go there with the game all that. Yeah, but I think that it render pest. I said render pest, but it could be render pest. I'm not positive. Somebody out there looking. Yeah, but I think it killed either game. Then just kill off the cows, right, I didn't kill other game besides even toad ungulates. Yeah, so that means printers that have cloven hoofs so to

to toes, so it would get killed giraffes. It killed the antelope. It actually killed some of the cape buffalo and what was the other one? No, not the devil. It did not kill the robot devil um, but it you know, it killed off all of these other animals that oh it was dear was the other one, because there are deer in the area, so it's killing off all these these prey animals. So it's not just the

cows that are gone. At this point, there's a lot of animals that are disappearing because it's spreading through the entire areas. Here's my problem with this idea, So this is the first one that I'm gonna say I kind of call bunk on, is that if that were the case, because this was all over the region, why is it only these two lions that we know about who were

just going on these giant human killing sprees. Um, I guess my question would be how close to human populations were other lions, you know, because this it seems like the sort of thing where lions at this point, if they have you know, a few prey options, are going to go for whatever is easiest and closest. They're not gonna make fifty sixty seventy mile tracks to find a

population of humans. To get a human in a hut, that's like you have to break in, and there's like all this sort of stuffed law versus like these two. It just so happened that a huge group of humans we're just walking through their territory, camping in easy access tense. So, you know, for me, it doesn't bother me that much, I guess because they You know, I presume most people in that area where you know, had huts and things like that, more permanent structures that would be harder for

a lion to get into versus these workers permanent structure. Right, they're they're living in a tent and they're they're like easy access because they've just wandered right into the middle of these two lions territory, you know that sort of thing, I guess. And were there a lot of people living in that area, so it wasn't heavily populated, It was nowhere to nowhere, remember, yeah, I mean the area was

very rural. There were cattle everywhere. But if you think about it, a huge herd can be overseen by a very small group of people, So I mean, in villages aren't typically all that huge. And as you said, these lions, even in their most aggressive state, were just as likely

to go after livestock as they were humans. So if there's humans living in huts and livestock out, it wouldn't be that weird that we wouldn't have reports from this time that if there were livestock that were healthy in in villages that lions were taking those that wouldn't be Plus the eligenous people who were living in that area probably weren't writing the accounts of the lions stealing their goat and sending it to the bridge, and they were like, oh, yeah, uh,

a lion stole another goat. Weird now that that makes a ton of sense, But they aren't retract my distaste for this theory. So I like this theory, Well, let's go to a theory that I'm going to see if you really like our next theory is bad teeth. So

these lions had to go see a dentist. There are some researchers, and I apologize I failed to write down the name of these two gentlemen, but there are two researchers who have done a lot of studies on lions in general, and part of their studies were on the Tsavo lions. And they say that they exam then the skulls of these two and one of them had missing canines.

It was the upper left. I want to say that the canines were missing and that those were there, And then they did some X rays on the skull and found what were signs of lesions in the jawbone. So that led them to believe that it was probably a very painful injury, and that it had probably happened at least two years before the animal's death, and so that would impede its ability to hunt prey as normal. Because

we talked about this before. A lion has to be able to clamp down with its jaw on the throat and hang on. Well, if there's a set of canines and one side missing, you aren't going to have as good of a bite. People are slower and weaker than you. Know. Yes, we don't fight nearly as hard and softer, yes we

Our skin is much thinner, puts the lotion on. I was going to make that joke, Sorr that um, so then we go to so it wasn't Actually uh, I think I was wrong with the upper left in turns of the missing canines, But it doesn't matter because I'm now looking here because they did examine the skull of the second lion and that lion had fractures in its jaw which were around the teeth in the upper left.

So that's where I was getting the upper left from. Well, I mean the idea here though, is that again it's hurts and it's not able to hunt effectively. It would explain if they were brothers. If they were related, right, it wouldn't be so crazy that they both had this thing. But it would also explain why as they matured they continue to rely on each other because they weren't effective hunters, so they had to work as a team to be effective. Yeah, I don't hate it. I don't love it, but I

don't hate it. It's not usual. Typically when an animal does start at the human populations, like say a mountain lion here in the state, it's usually because he's old and sick and you just can't do can't go after the normal stuff anymore. But that's the thing is that these lions, they weren't old. So that's one thing, is they weren't old. But the injury, the idea that there's

an injury makes sense. I gotta say, though, is that if if a lion's jaws are so injured that for from two years prior or a year prior to all to being killed, that's a long time before these camps of people showed up. Now, maybe it's scavenging on other stuff and that's how they're getting along, But I'm just I'm curious about how they got to the time frame

that they assigned for the age. The researcher talked about the fact that they saw there was erosion on the teeth around it, and the bone in the socket had begun to grow back where the tooth was at. That's how they determined it. But I mean, does that mean that it was painful and incapable of using its jaw? I That's what I'm questioning. Well, I mean, maybe it's a combination of things. I'm just advocating for all of

these tonight. Maybe it's a combination of you know, the so the railroad construction, you know, it made the slave trade take a step back. So maybe what was happening is, you know, the slave trade was getting slaves picked off by these lions before when they were going through their territory, or their dead bodies, or maybe a combination of both. And if you're partaking in an illegal slave trade, you're not necessarily going to be like, yeah, it's weird the

lions keep stealing these people that I totally own. You're just gonna say it's the cost of business. Oh, No, Apparently it was the traders were Arabs, the slave traders that were coming through that area, and that's so that's that's so, I guess that would help us get to this timeline of they had been living on humans or but didn't didn't start getting knocked back as much until

the rail line was finished finished. Okay, well, I mean that that still doesn't necessarily present a problem, but it also I guess on top of that you can say, uh, but on the other hand, yeah, they if he if one of them drug a goat that was attached to a railroad tie, you wouldn't think that if their mouth was an intense pain, they'd be able to drag that

kind of weight. I think that probably that, you know, maybe it got a little better over time, or maybe they were just used to it, or they're just really they're just really badass and tough, or Patterson was a liar and where it out there. Because that's the other thing is that I have to imagine that he wrote these accounts, at least the original versions that went into the papers. He probably sat down and wrote those from his journal or memory, and then of course had to

spice him up to get them bought. Yeah, well, it's not as interesting a story if you say these two lions were taking out humans because they were too sickly to take on any other prey, and I totally killed them. It's way more you know, badass to say. Yeah, And it was capable of dragging a goat attached to a railroad tie. It was so strong and virile that I, you know, and I took it down with nine shots.

That's a way better story, a little better story. But I as gonna say, if I was going to put a goat out there for bait, I would totally tie to a road tie. It makes sense because it's going to slow the lion way down when you drag away. Apparently not slow enough for Patterson to shoes. By the way, I do want to point out with the whole it took nine shots to take it down. He says that with the last two shots he shot I think he shot it in the head with the last two shots.

But it was so aggressive and it wanted him so badly that it was leaning against a branch or a log and was gnawing at the branch or log. This hunkle would as it was trying to get at it. Have you ever seen like a cat that ladies and it's trying to get something and it's it's biting at it. If this is the big version of it, that's what he's saying. But so so these are things that I point out. I bring up these these descriptions in his his story because it makes me stop and go, uh, yeah,

that's just that's really colorful writing. To yeah, um, really colorful writing is actually what gives us our final theory, which because we actually have one more, which is that they were bloodthirst the animals who had developed a taste for humans and or maybe we're just insane, because that's what Patterson said. They acted pretty sane if you ask me. Yeah, I don't think that they were. If they were, if totally insane, they would have just been coming into the

camp constantly running through everything. And it said they were very stealthy and they were really really smart in how they went about stealing or getting their food. I shouldn't say stealing getting their food. Um, so I don't think that. I don't think that the Tavo lions were insane. I mean, like I said, he made a career out of hunting other lions. After that. The the there's all these supposed

man eaters that had killed a couple of people. I think that part of the problem though, is that all these supposed man hunters are We're expanding, and we're expanding into their natural territory. And what happens when humans and other animals collide, Well, usually the people lose it first because we're dumb and ignorant, but eventually just through sheer numbers. Yes, and so I think that that's why all of these these lions that are called man killers and man eaters

and insane, they're they're actually not. They're just they're pushed to a breaking point and they have to survive because that's what their natural instinct is. So my personal opinion is that I think that these I kind of fall in line with the slave trade. I think that that gave them an idea of humans, at least for these two, particularly in that area, as oh, this is a normal food source. Okay, the other ones I'm not so sure about. I like the cattle plague. Cattle plague it's good, I mean,

not like I don't like it. I'm Facebook friends with the cattle player and they put up the best post ever. We go out to drink sometimes it's great. Cattle plague tails, the best jokes. Uh. Maybe some combination of all of them, even I hate to sound wishy washing here. The cattle plague, I think is a good one because you know, they have plenty of that play to snack on. They didn't

need to actually go eat people. And then boom, all that goes and well you gotta go find food somewhere, and these guys come waltzing and conveniently driving right through the middle of their territory. Yeah, so what do you expect? Alright, there we go. So let's go ahead and give the important bits that I know people really like to hear us repeat every week. We have a website. Yeah, we

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