Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry, I'm Tracy Wilson, and today's topic is when
Speaker 1: I'm kind of crazy excited about because I love it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's also one that people have asked us to
Speaker 1: talk about. Yes, so it's like a double bonus at
Speaker 1: that point. Uh. You may have heard some about this sale.
Speaker 1: But we're actually gonna do two parts. One is what
Speaker 1: actually happened when all of this was going on, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to do a second part about modern science, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of analyzing this historical event and what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. It's um, there are two famous lions called
Speaker 1: the Ghost in the Darkness. There have been movies made
Speaker 1: about them, uh several actually, and they were a pair
Speaker 1: of lions that killed and eight dozens of people in Tsavo.
Speaker 1: But what you may not know is that the lions
Speaker 1: in that region in Tsavo, uh in Africa, continue to
Speaker 1: attack humans and that there are actually a lot of
Speaker 1: question marks that have come up through the years about
Speaker 1: the genetics of these lions, their behaviors, their adaptations to
Speaker 1: their environments and as I said, because there is both
Speaker 1: this fascinating story of this particular event that is kind
Speaker 1: of considered a mythic killings free and a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting science about what may have caused this kind of
Speaker 1: behavior and and other subsequent things that have happened since then. Uh,
Speaker 1: this one is a two parter, So today is the
Speaker 1: event and then next time will be science about it.
Speaker 1: There's so much science about it. There's a lot of science.
Speaker 1: I actually had had to edit out a good bit
Speaker 1: of the science just to keep it to two episodes,
Speaker 1: because we could have gone on easily for three and
Speaker 1: possibly more because there have been some really good research
Speaker 1: projects around it. So first we're going to start uh
Speaker 1: in Tavo. So the very name Tavo is kind of
Speaker 1: ominous in the Kamba language, which is also called Kikamba,
Speaker 1: which is a narrow band language. It actually means place
Speaker 1: of slaughter, and it got this name from an ancient
Speaker 1: battle that happened there between two tribes, the Massai and
Speaker 1: the Acamba. And Tsavo is just a little bit smaller
Speaker 1: for visual reference than the state of Massachusetts. It covers
Speaker 1: about twenty square kilometers and it sits in what is
Speaker 1: today southeastern Kenya and its position is about a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty kilometers northwest of Mombasa, and it sits at
Speaker 1: the center of what's now known as the Greater Tsavo Ecosystem,
Speaker 1: which covers about forty thousand square kilometers and it consists
Speaker 1: of multiple national parks and reserves as well as ranch lands.
Speaker 1: The railway route that was built through Tsavo followed a
Speaker 1: footpath that had been used by slave caravans for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years to transport things from the African interior out
Speaker 1: to the coast. And the reason that we want to
Speaker 1: talk about the railroad route because that's really where all
Speaker 1: of this started being documented and happening. Uh In the
Speaker 1: late eight nine and these the British East Africa Company
Speaker 1: started construction of a railway that would join Mombassada Lake
Speaker 1: Victoria along Africa's eastern seaboard, and it was going to
Speaker 1: be called the Uganda Railway. But because there were just
Speaker 1: constant struggles going on with the construction of it and
Speaker 1: the company encountered one problem after another, some people started
Speaker 1: calling the project the Lunatic Express. It sort of speaks
Speaker 1: for itself. At that point, a lot of the workers
Speaker 1: who were hired for the construction had to be recruited
Speaker 1: from India because locals in the area were reluctant to
Speaker 1: come on board. Yeah, so that was one of the
Speaker 1: big challenges that they had. Another is that living conditions
Speaker 1: were really not very good for the workers. The water
Speaker 1: was unclean, the workers often had dysenterry, they would have fleas,
Speaker 1: they would have scurvy, they would have, you know, really
Speaker 1: horrific bouts of diarrhea that they had to survive through
Speaker 1: where they were risking um being completely depleted of their fluids.
Speaker 1: And they also lost so many animals that were part
Speaker 1: of the work process. UH in eighteen ninety seven, and
Speaker 1: if you look at the veterinary records for the area
Speaker 1: and for the company, all sixty three of the company's
Speaker 1: camels died, one of their three hundred and fifty mules died,
Speaker 1: five hundred and seventy nine of their six hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty nine head of cattle died, and all but thirty
Speaker 1: six of their eight hundred donkeys that they started with died.
Speaker 1: So the animals were dropping in an alarming rate, and
Speaker 1: the humans were getting sick pretty consistently well. And if
Speaker 1: you look back at the time period when this was happening.
Speaker 1: Those animals were crucial to the construction process. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would have been an inconvenient to lose the primary
Speaker 1: food source, but yeah, they couldn't. They were hauling things.
Speaker 1: They were right. They were part of a construction company,
Speaker 1: yes they were. They were not simply like herd animals
Speaker 1: being used to eat, although that also starvation is a problem.
Speaker 1: So over of the decade that it took to complete
Speaker 1: this project, the railway ended up costing eight million dollars
Speaker 1: to build, and that was four times more than the
Speaker 1: initial budget, and for the sake of comparison, that is
Speaker 1: more than five hundred million dollars today, which is a
Speaker 1: huge amount of money. Although part of me goes bigger, Yeah,
Speaker 1: jaded I am by huge construction projects. Um. And then
Speaker 1: a gentleman enters the picture. Who's sort of central to
Speaker 1: this whole story, and that's British Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson,
Speaker 1: and he was a civil engineer. He arrived at the
Speaker 1: harbor of Mombassa on March one and his assignment primarily
Speaker 1: was to head up the building of the permanent stonework
Speaker 1: and the embankments that we're going to be part of
Speaker 1: this railroad route. So at first he was pretty pleased
Speaker 1: with the task at hand and happy in his work.
Speaker 1: But things shifted pretty quickly, and this is what he
Speaker 1: wrote from a passage into his book, The man Eaters
Speaker 1: of Tsavo. Unfortunately, this happy state of affairs did not
Speaker 1: continue for long, and our work was soon interrupted in
Speaker 1: a rude and startling manner. To most voracious and insatiable
Speaker 1: man eating lions appeared on the scene and for over
Speaker 1: nine months waged an intermittent warfare against the railway and
Speaker 1: all those connected with it in the vicinity of Tsavo.
Speaker 1: This culminated in a perfect reign of terror in December,
Speaker 1: when they actually succeeded in bringing the railway works to
Speaker 1: a complete standstill for about three weeks. At first, they
Speaker 1: were not always successful in their efforts to carry off
Speaker 1: a victim, but as time went on they stopped at
Speaker 1: nothing and indeed braved any danger in order to obtain
Speaker 1: their favorite food. Their methods then became so uncanny, and
Speaker 1: their man stalking so well timed and so certain of success,
Speaker 1: that the workmen firmly believed that they were not real
Speaker 1: animals at all, but devils in lions shape. Which is
Speaker 1: how they get the name the ghost in the Darkness
Speaker 1: because people really do believe they might be spirit and
Speaker 1: the physical animals. Yeah, if you if you have heard
Speaker 1: the recent stuff, you should know episode on Where Wolf.
Speaker 1: Pretty Much every culture that has any kind of big
Speaker 1: carnivore also has some kind of mythology about about people
Speaker 1: becoming that thing in a demonic kind of way. So
Speaker 1: it's not totally surprising that that these became to be
Speaker 1: thought of as some kind of supernatural Yeah. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it really happened very quickly because it was just a
Speaker 1: few days after his arrival that Patterson was first informed
Speaker 1: that two lions had been spotted nearby, and not long
Speaker 1: after that, two of the Indian workmen vanished, allegedly carried
Speaker 1: out of their tents in the night by lions. So
Speaker 1: at first Patterson dismissed this lion story, and he thought
Speaker 1: that the men had maybe been killed by some of
Speaker 1: their co workers and some kind of murder slash, theft
Speaker 1: and incident. But when a third man vanished into the night,
Speaker 1: there were paw prints at the scene and witnesses convinced
Speaker 1: him that this really is the work of felines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was. He kind of mentioned in the book,
Speaker 1: the third man was one that he knew and that
Speaker 1: was very well respected and very well loved by everyone,
Speaker 1: So that also helped give a little bit of gredence
Speaker 1: to the idea that it was not just a murder
Speaker 1: over like a snag and somebody's paid a they There
Speaker 1: really was something much bigger going on, and Patterson immediately
Speaker 1: set to tracking the lion responsible. Uh He was also
Speaker 1: joined by a Captain Haslum who was in Tsavo at
Speaker 1: the time, and they followed the bloody trail left by
Speaker 1: this third vanishing and they eventually happened upon a scene
Speaker 1: that Patterson describes in his account as the most gruesome
Speaker 1: he has ever seen. Uh So, the victim's head was
Speaker 1: there intact, and it was adjacent to the rest of
Speaker 1: his remains, most of which had been consumed, so there
Speaker 1: were some bones left, but the head completely intact. And
Speaker 1: this is also when Patterson became aware that there were
Speaker 1: actually two lions and not just one, because he did
Speaker 1: find two distinct sets of paw prints. So he set
Speaker 1: up a post in a tree above the large tent
Speaker 1: that was being shared by multiple co workers in case
Speaker 1: the lions came back. That night, and they heard roars
Speaker 1: approaching and then halting, and as the night wore on, Uh,
Speaker 1: cries were heard from a camp about half a mile
Speaker 1: away where the lions had struck another tent. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did not come back to that same tent, as he
Speaker 1: had sort of hoped so that he could kill them.
Speaker 1: They instead went somewhere else because they're wiley. According to Patterson,
Speaker 1: the lions were in fact smart enough to hit different
Speaker 1: camps each night, so it made predicting their attacks really difficult.
Speaker 1: So if you can imagine the construction, it's going on
Speaker 1: along several miles at a time, and then it slowly
Speaker 1: moves forward as any railway at the time. We've talked
Speaker 1: about that happening here in the US as the railway
Speaker 1: boom was happening. Uh. And so there would be camps
Speaker 1: sort of spread out by half a mile or show
Speaker 1: between them, and the lions would just be hitting different
Speaker 1: ones each night. Uh. And this practice of theirs to
Speaker 1: be smart enough and wildy enough to kind of choose
Speaker 1: different locations each evening also fed the rumors among the
Speaker 1: men that the lions were supernatural because they were clearly
Speaker 1: too cunning to be normal beasts. There were also a
Speaker 1: number of failed attacks during this time, including one incident
Speaker 1: which Patterson describes as rather comical, intention breaking for the men.
Speaker 1: A trader from India riding his donkey down the road
Speaker 1: at night was attacked by a lion on the road,
Speaker 1: but the lion became entangled in the ropes that were
Speaker 1: holding all the all of the traders of wares and
Speaker 1: packs in place, and the clattering startled the animal and
Speaker 1: since it running away, and I you and I both
Speaker 1: have cats. It's reminding me of the time that one
Speaker 1: of mine got entangled in a shopping bag and and
Speaker 1: it was terrifying for her. I have had the same
Speaker 1: and it is they just and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: people always say, if you're trying to train a cat
Speaker 1: to do not do a thing, do you shake a
Speaker 1: tin can full of penny that will scare them away
Speaker 1: for the thing they were doing. And it works on
Speaker 1: giant wildcats as well. Uh Patterson also recounts an instance
Speaker 1: where the lions jumped onto a group tent and they
Speaker 1: actually dragged off a large bag of rice, presumably, he theorizes,
Speaker 1: thinking that it was a human, and they found the
Speaker 1: bag abandoned nearby. The next morning, so that was also
Speaker 1: one of the ones that he kind of frames is
Speaker 1: a more comedic event in the midst of all of
Speaker 1: this tension that was going on, because they were constantly
Speaker 1: in fear that the lions were coming. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: reminds me of a little less humorous thing, which is
Speaker 1: like when the shark bites the person on the surfboard
Speaker 1: and thin goes, oh wait, that's not a seal. So
Speaker 1: the person is injured, but the shark has realized that
Speaker 1: it made an error. So to repel these attacks, Patterson
Speaker 1: started building all kinds of fences or boma around the tents,
Speaker 1: but he admitted that there was still this constant fear
Speaker 1: that all line would just leap over them at any moment,
Speaker 1: and so he got into the habit of always having
Speaker 1: a rifle handy. There was also a string of lion sightings,
Speaker 1: and sometimes witnesses described them as very obviously stalking some
Speaker 1: of the men. During one overnight watch in which they
Speaker 1: were set up in a wagon, Patterson and one of
Speaker 1: his colleagues were startled by the one of the lions
Speaker 1: actually springing at them and both fired their weapons, although
Speaker 1: they the cat ran away, so they it was clearly
Speaker 1: not a killing shot, but in the morning they could
Speaker 1: only find one of the bullets, and Patterson believed that
Speaker 1: his had actually hit the mark. So this seems to
Speaker 1: have maybe scared the lions somewhat because their attacks did
Speaker 1: stop for a little bit, although they continued to attack
Speaker 1: other locations, just not quite as often. This gap in
Speaker 1: lion attacks in the book is filled with Patterson describing
Speaker 1: his relations with the workmen, keeping the peace, steering argument
Speaker 1: outsmarting the lazy people, that kind of thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: during this time he also devised a plan for a
Speaker 1: trap because he felt that they could not presume that
Speaker 1: the lions were not coming back, uh, and he describes
Speaker 1: it this way. I accordingly set to work at once,
Speaker 1: and in short time managed to make a sufficiently strong
Speaker 1: trap out of wooden sleepers, tram rails, pieces of telegraph wire,
Speaker 1: and a length of heavy chain. It was divided into
Speaker 1: two compartments, one for the men and one for the lion.
Speaker 1: A sliding door at one end admitted the former, and
Speaker 1: once inside this compartment they were perfectly safe, as between
Speaker 1: them and the lion if he entered the other ran
Speaker 1: a cross wall of iron rails only three inches apart
Speaker 1: and embedded both top and bottom in heavy wooden sleepers.
Speaker 1: The door, which was to admit the lion, was of
Speaker 1: course at the opposite end of the structure, but otherwise
Speaker 1: the whole thing was very much on the principle of
Speaker 1: the ordinary rat trap, except that it was not necessary
Speaker 1: for the lion to seize the bait in order to
Speaker 1: send the door or clattering down. So he had really decided,
Speaker 1: and was very public about this, that he was going
Speaker 1: to end the scourge of these lions. So this trap
Speaker 1: was his sort of engineering mind, finding one way to
Speaker 1: address it. Not everybody was on board with this idea,
Speaker 1: though if they were not, he went on to say,
Speaker 1: the wise acres to whom I showed my invention were
Speaker 1: generally of the opinion that the man eaters would be
Speaker 1: too cunning to walk into my parlor. But as will
Speaker 1: be seen later, their predictions proved false. For the first
Speaker 1: few nights, I baited the trap myself, but nothing happened
Speaker 1: except that I had a very sleepless and uncomfortable time
Speaker 1: and was badly bitten by mosquitoes. So initially it seemed
Speaker 1: like his um the wise acres to whom he revers
Speaker 1: were correct and that the lions were not going to
Speaker 1: be lured into that trap. Yes, I also want to
Speaker 1: caution him about how he's gonna get malaria if he
Speaker 1: does that. When you're possibly going to be eaten by
Speaker 1: a lion, I think malaria falls down the list of
Speaker 1: things you're worried about. With that note, do you want
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Speaker 1: com and enter stuff. So now back to the lions. So,
Speaker 1: while the attacks had dissipated in most areas and even
Speaker 1: pretty much ceased near Patterson's own group. Uh, the men
Speaker 1: had become more relaxed than their behaviors. You can understand,
Speaker 1: the impending dooms seemed left impending, so they all got
Speaker 1: a little more chill about things. But the column was
Speaker 1: broken one night when the lions broke through a boma
Speaker 1: that was protecting the sleeping quarters and carried off one
Speaker 1: of the men. And this time, instead of what they
Speaker 1: had done previously where they dragged their prey far away
Speaker 1: to eat, the cats just kind of dropped the body
Speaker 1: about thirty yards from the tent where they had struck
Speaker 1: and just started eating there. Shots were fired at them
Speaker 1: as this grizzly scene played out, and you know, men
Speaker 1: were witnessing this and it was very horrifying, but they
Speaker 1: didn't manage to hit the cats, and moreover, they didn't
Speaker 1: even scare them. They those lions just sat there and
Speaker 1: had their meal. Like there's just so much irritating noise,
Speaker 1: but I'm really hungry, which is really brazen. It is
Speaker 1: very brazen, and I cannot imagine how horrifying it must
Speaker 1: have been to watch for the men who were attempting
Speaker 1: to fire at them. So Patterson asked that they not
Speaker 1: bury the victim right away. He was hoping that the
Speaker 1: remains would lure the lions back the following night, but
Speaker 1: instead they did what they had been doing before, and
Speaker 1: they struck a different camp, following the same pattern of
Speaker 1: consuming the victim pretty close to the camp site. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they had at this time altered their behavior where
Speaker 1: they didn't even bother to range away to eat uh.
Speaker 1: Patterson's account notes a pretty clear change uh and the
Speaker 1: progression of this brazenness and the lion's behavior as events continued,
Speaker 1: and in one excerpt pieces the following I have a
Speaker 1: very vivid recollection in one particular night, when the brute
Speaker 1: sees a man from the railway station and brought him
Speaker 1: close to my camp to devour. I could plainly hear
Speaker 1: them crunching the bones, and the sound of their dreadful
Speaker 1: purring filled the air and rang in my ears for
Speaker 1: days afterwards. So he describes kind of being in his
Speaker 1: tent and knowing that even if he goes out and fires,
Speaker 1: he's not going to scare them away, and will only risk,
Speaker 1: you know, potentially inviting their ire and just having to
Speaker 1: listen to them eat a man, which is will make
Speaker 1: your spine wiggle in ways it's not supposed to do
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's very chilling. Yeah. Well, and the
Speaker 1: the part of us that naturally wants to anthropomorphize animals
Speaker 1: all the time kind of imagines that they're doing it
Speaker 1: on purpose at this point, just just to be jerked.
Speaker 1: But we don't know. No, we don't know, and that's
Speaker 1: that's a human behavior ascribed to an animal at this point.
Speaker 1: So before this point, one of the lions would do
Speaker 1: most of the attacking and the other one would wait
Speaker 1: out in the bush. But at this point their tactics
Speaker 1: had really changed. They would both enter the camp at
Speaker 1: the same time. They would each sees a victim, So
Speaker 1: men were being carried off in twos. Yeah. Whereas prior
Speaker 1: they would hit like one camp and then another camp
Speaker 1: a lit always away theoretically so that they would each
Speaker 1: have a kill. They just started going in at the
Speaker 1: same time and kind of streamlining their own process. H
Speaker 1: And as the attacks increased and the lions behaved with
Speaker 1: greater and greater confidence, it really started to take its
Speaker 1: toll on the workman, as you can easily imagine. So
Speaker 1: this had started in March, and on December one of
Speaker 1: that year, the men actually approached Patterson as a group,
Speaker 1: and they told him they were not working anymore. They
Speaker 1: had agreed to come to Tsavo to work for the
Speaker 1: government and build a railroad, not to become lion food.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how I'm on the side of labor
Speaker 1: in this dispute. Oh, for sure, I mean you can't.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't fault them at all. No. Uh, I
Speaker 1: think anybody that's reasonable could step back and go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't work there either. That's a horrifying and terrifying
Speaker 1: situation to be in. So just before this strike, Paterson
Speaker 1: had contacted Mr Whitehead, who was the district officer, to
Speaker 1: come and assist with taking down these two lions, which
Speaker 1: at this point Patterson had vowed to kill. Whitehead's welcoming
Speaker 1: party turned out to be feline. He and his man
Speaker 1: servant were attacked as they approached the camp and his
Speaker 1: back was torn open by a claw and his man
Speaker 1: servant was killed. Yeah. They actually thought he had missed
Speaker 1: a train because he didn't show up, but he had
Speaker 1: just gotten there very late, and he foolishly tried to
Speaker 1: approach the camp in the darkness, and the lions obviously
Speaker 1: were stalking him. Uh. And so is a consequence of
Speaker 1: having been attacked and knowing this was in fact a
Speaker 1: very real situation Asian. With Whitehead's arrival, a very concerted
Speaker 1: effort went underway to slay these lions and get the
Speaker 1: Mammoth railway project, which if you look at it from
Speaker 1: a business perspective, was already behind schedule and very expensive,
Speaker 1: back on track. A superintendent of police and several other
Speaker 1: officials arrived from the coast, and Patterson's lion trap, despite
Speaker 1: all of the mocking, was put to use. Uh as
Speaker 1: the cabal of men sort of waited for the next
Speaker 1: attack like they felt like they knew it was coming,
Speaker 1: they just didn't know when. So that night a lion
Speaker 1: did enter the trap, but the outcome was not what
Speaker 1: Patterson had hoped for. Finding themselves at such close proximity
Speaker 1: to a man eating lion, the men who were the
Speaker 1: bait for the trap reacted by freezing rather than acting.
Speaker 1: Only after an officer called out to them did they
Speaker 1: kind of snap out of their collective days and start
Speaker 1: to fire. And here is how Patterson described that. Then
Speaker 1: when at last they did begin to fire, they fired
Speaker 1: with a vengeance. Anywhere Anyhow, Whitehead and I were right
Speaker 1: angles to the direction in which they should have shot,
Speaker 1: and yet their bullets came whizzing all around us. Together
Speaker 1: they fired over a score of shots, and in the
Speaker 1: end succeeded only in blowing away one of the bars
Speaker 1: of the door, thus allowing our prize to make good
Speaker 1: his escape. How they failed to kill him several times
Speaker 1: over is and always will be a complete mystery to me,
Speaker 1: as they could have put the muzzles of their rifles
Speaker 1: absolutely touching his body. There was indeed some blood scattered
Speaker 1: about the trap, but it was small consolation to know
Speaker 1: that the brute whose capture and death seemed so certain,
Speaker 1: had only been slightly wounded. And the men did track
Speaker 1: the lions, and while they heard them making noise periodically,
Speaker 1: they never actually made contact with them. So even in
Speaker 1: their injured state, they were able to elude these trackers,
Speaker 1: which only gave their mythos as being supernatural greater um fuel.
Speaker 1: A few days later, on the summer ninth, the lions
Speaker 1: were spotted nearby eating a donkey they had snatched in
Speaker 1: a failed attempt to take the person who owned that animal.
Speaker 1: Patterson felt that this would be his chance to catch
Speaker 1: the cats unawares and finally end all of this carnage.
Speaker 1: He thought he was going to sneak up on them
Speaker 1: while they were busy eating uh. And the hunt had
Speaker 1: some challenges, because that's just how things go with this
Speaker 1: particular project and lion situation. When they were first approaching
Speaker 1: the pair of lions in the bush, Patterson's guide made
Speaker 1: a misstep and snapped a twig. It's a classic film scenario, uh,
Speaker 1: and that alerted the animals, and Patterson then quickly organized.
Speaker 1: He retreated and organized what men were available to grab
Speaker 1: every noise making item they could find in the camp
Speaker 1: and form a semicircle behind the area where the lions
Speaker 1: were so that they could flush them towards Patterson, who
Speaker 1: was waiting with a heavy rifle. And this seemed to work.
Speaker 1: One of the lions was driven right into Patterson's sites
Speaker 1: until uh, the full which had been lent to him
Speaker 1: by the Superintendent of police, failed to fire properly. It
Speaker 1: was like every time they got so close and it
Speaker 1: seemed so obvious that they should be the victors in
Speaker 1: this situation, some weird or cookie thing would happen and
Speaker 1: the lions and once again, well it's it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that this whole thing has been made into a lot
Speaker 1: of movies because it's a whole horrifying, suspenseful event. But
Speaker 1: it's like the They didn't even have to add in
Speaker 1: the bad screenwriting to add more at tension to it,
Speaker 1: because it was all actually happening naturally in the real story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a second shot that he was able to
Speaker 1: get off, and he did hit the lion, but the
Speaker 1: cat was able to get away. Later that night, Patterson
Speaker 1: sat in a tree on a watch and he realized
Speaker 1: that one of the lions was stalking him. So he
Speaker 1: waited patiently for the cat to get closer and closer
Speaker 1: until he felt like he had a good shot, and
Speaker 1: he took it. He heard a roar and thrashing, and
Speaker 1: he fired. He fired several more times into the bush
Speaker 1: where the lion was. Eventually there was a stillness and
Speaker 1: the first lion was finally dead. And when they finally
Speaker 1: retrieved the carcass, it was, according to Patterson's account, nine
Speaker 1: ft eight inches in length and three ft nine inches high,
Speaker 1: and it took eight men to carry it back to camp.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, Patterson was able to successfully shoot
Speaker 1: and wound the other lion, but in spite of it
Speaker 1: having been obviously wounded, he couldn't find it the next
Speaker 1: morning that he really thought he was going to find
Speaker 1: it deceased somewhere in the bush, and he didn't, which
Speaker 1: was shocking, And in fact, they did not see it
Speaker 1: for ten more days uh then on December, so at
Speaker 1: this point it's been almost four weeks since the men quit. Uh.
Speaker 1: The lion attempted another attack. When Patterson was alerted to this,
Speaker 1: he fired shots in the air at first hopening hoping
Speaker 1: to frighten it off because it had caught them by surprise,
Speaker 1: and he mostly just wanted to not lose any more people.
Speaker 1: Uh And it was too dark for him to see clearly,
Speaker 1: so he didn't really think his odds were great to
Speaker 1: kill it them, but the lion did indeed treat The
Speaker 1: next night, Patterson and an assistant took up watching a tree,
Speaker 1: and they found themselves being stalked. So similar to the
Speaker 1: way the first lion lost its life trying to stalk
Speaker 1: Patterson up a tree, the second line was fired upon
Speaker 1: when he got within twenty yards, and they fired multiple shots,
Speaker 1: but they had to wait for daylight before they could
Speaker 1: follow the wounded animal, and they finally encountered him in
Speaker 1: the thicket and he was growling. But when Patterson reached
Speaker 1: out for his man servant to hand him his gun,
Speaker 1: he discovered that the man had actually run away in fear.
Speaker 1: So even though the lion was wounded, it was clearly
Speaker 1: still very frightening and seemed to present a threat. Uh
Speaker 1: So Patterson followed the man that had run because at
Speaker 1: that point he was unarmed in front of an angry
Speaker 1: and hurt lion and didn't know what it would do.
Speaker 1: And the lion did indeed chase him, but it had
Speaker 1: a broken leg from one of the shots that had
Speaker 1: hit it, and the men were able to take refuge
Speaker 1: once again up the tree. Trees are very vital to
Speaker 1: their safety in the story. As the lion turned to
Speaker 1: limp away, Patterson fired the killing shot, finally putting an
Speaker 1: end to what he had referred to as the reign
Speaker 1: of terror, and things were able to get back under
Speaker 1: way again. The railway was completed in nineteen o one.
Speaker 1: In in nineteen o seven, Paterson published his account of
Speaker 1: the incidents. He kept the skulls and he used their
Speaker 1: skins as rugs, and in n s he sold all
Speaker 1: of this to the Field Museum in Chicago for five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. You can still see them on display there,
Speaker 1: although at this point there are a lot of replacement
Speaker 1: parts in the in the taxidermy. Yeah there. Uh. Their
Speaker 1: skins were you know, used as rugs, so they were
Speaker 1: badly damaged and there was a lot of restauration that
Speaker 1: had to happen, and they really only had the skins
Speaker 1: in the skulls, so the rest is uh sculpted And
Speaker 1: they have an incredible taxidermy team at the Fields, and
Speaker 1: it's really quite an impressive piece of work. They're so skilled.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to mention that one of the things
Speaker 1: that really shines through in Patters since writing is how much,
Speaker 1: despite all of these lion difficulties, and possibly even partially
Speaker 1: because of them, uh, he seemed to really love his
Speaker 1: job and his time and Tsavo. Uh. He speaks so
Speaker 1: wistfully of eating lunches in the wild even when these
Speaker 1: lions were out there, and the joy of finding solutions
Speaker 1: to engineering challenges while the building of the Tsavo Bridge
Speaker 1: was underway as part of the railway. It's a really
Speaker 1: good read. I highly recommend it. Um It's it's just
Speaker 1: he has a great way with language and telling his story,
Speaker 1: and it has led some people to be like, he's
Speaker 1: a really good storyteller. So we don't know how much
Speaker 1: has been embellished, although there are enough different accounts that
Speaker 1: we know most of this is, in fact the way
Speaker 1: it went down pretty substantiated. Um. But that is the
Speaker 1: story of the the pair of lions that murdered dozens
Speaker 1: of men. And we'll get into just how many in
Speaker 1: the next one, because that has been a bone of contention. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's such a scary and fascinating story, and you kind
Speaker 1: of can't help but have respect for these animals because
Speaker 1: they really were quite cunning and ah, as much as
Speaker 1: what they were doing was horrifying, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of an eye opener. I think people use the term
Speaker 1: dumb animal and they don't really realize, Yeah, no, they're
Speaker 1: problem solvers. They can figure things out, and they outwitted
Speaker 1: a lot of men who were bright, gentlemen who wanted
Speaker 1: nothing more to kill them, and they couldn't for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Nine months it took to kill these two
Speaker 1: lions that were hitting this same stretch of land over
Speaker 1: and over. Yeah. Well, and today we mostly talked about
Speaker 1: the like the the downsides of development in terms of
Speaker 1: like eating up animal habitat and causing extinctions and things
Speaker 1: and a lack of biodiversity and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: not as much attention today is paid to the fact
Speaker 1: of when humans start moving into an area that animals
Speaker 1: have mostly been running the show in the the animals
Speaker 1: themselves can also be a threat with the people. Like
Speaker 1: it's not just a matter of you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to have fewer species in the world because we're eating
Speaker 1: up all the habitats. There's also they And then the
Speaker 1: reason that we have things like shark attacks and bear
Speaker 1: attacks and line attacks is that there are people in
Speaker 1: places where these animals used to be the ones running
Speaker 1: the show. So next time we're going to talk more
Speaker 1: about the science and analysis of why they were doing this,
Speaker 1: how they were doing it, and you know what was
Speaker 1: actually going on from a scientific angle, which is super cool.
Speaker 1: I love the behavioral stuff. Do you have some listener
Speaker 1: mail for us before we go? I do. This one
Speaker 1: is from Kirk and he says, Hi, Hollie and Tracy. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your Heshian podcast yesterday while landing
Speaker 1: at Frankfurt Airport. I could see hess from my seat.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. I'm a descendant of a Hessian soldier,
Speaker 1: Johann Bernard shah Has, who surrendered to George Washington after
Speaker 1: the Battle of Yorktown. I've spent my life explaining the
Speaker 1: difference between mercenaries and adjunct armies f y I. After
Speaker 1: the war, Hessians were actually encouraged to defect and settle
Speaker 1: here rather than going back to hess. My ancestor married
Speaker 1: a nice Pennsylvania Dutch girl and moved to Virginia. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he references some research uh that was done
Speaker 1: by a fellow Heshian descendant. But Kirk, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: you didn't include the link, Please do it because I
Speaker 1: would love to read it. But it's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: one to have a direct link. We always love those.
Speaker 1: If we talked about it all the time, and to
Speaker 1: uh the idea that they were kind of encouraged, like
Speaker 1: just stay here, it's going to be easier than chipping
Speaker 1: you back. Yeah. We got several, like several notes and
Speaker 1: Facebook comments and things from people who whose immediate response
Speaker 1: was my ancestor was one of these soldiers. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we've we've had some who were encouraged to stay after
Speaker 1: the fighting was over, and some who pretty much got
Speaker 1: here and went, hey, okay, let's desert now instead of
Speaker 1: fighting and go start a nice farm somewhere. I can
Speaker 1: give the appeal. Oh me too? Oh yeah? Uh? Kirk
Speaker 1: roach us on Facebook. If you would like to do
Speaker 1: the same, you can do so at Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash history class Stuff. You can connect with us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Misston History, on Tumbler at Misston History dot
Speaker 1: tumbler dot com, and you can email us at History
Speaker 1: Podcasts at Discovery dot com. We are also on pintriest
Speaker 1: anning away many things. There are some images of actions,
Speaker 1: and there john the uniforms that we talked about in
Speaker 1: the podcast up there now. If you would like to
Speaker 1: learn more about what we talked about today, you can
Speaker 1: go to our website and type in the words man
Speaker 1: eating lion and the article that will pop up first
Speaker 1: is is there such a thing as a man eating lion?
Speaker 1: The short version is yes, but there's also some really
Speaker 1: cool interesting research in that article that talks about why
Speaker 1: there is. And if you would learn about almost anything
Speaker 1: else you can think of, you can do that at
Speaker 1: our website, which is how Stuffworks dot Com for laur
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics because it has
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