Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz have published a report in the National Academy of Sciences that sheds new light on an old, gruesome story.
If you’ve never read the 1907 nonfiction thriller The Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo by J. H. Patterson then you are missing out. And no, just watching the 1996 movie The Ghost in the Darkness starring Val Kilmer doesn’t count.
Here’s a brief synopsis, stolen verbatim from the Daily Telegraph:
Lt Col Patterson was hired by the British East Africa Company to run the building of a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in present-day Kenya but lions began to snatch the workers from their tents and eat them over nine months.
The attacks became so regular that the project was put in jeopardy until the former Army officer shot two animals in December 1898 and had their skins made into rugs.
He claimed the beasts had eaten 135 people and, in 1907, his account of the dramatic events was published as The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and became a bestseller.
But modern science has revealed that Patterson may have stretched the truth a bit. By researching samples of hair and teeth from the two lions, which are kept on display at the Field Museum in Chicago, scientists believe they have finally proved Patterson’s claims to be exaggerated.
Instead of consuming 135 man morsels, as Patterson claimed, the research shows that the lions could not have eaten more than 72 (and possibly even fewer) humans during their killing spree.
Of course what researchers did not take into consideration during their studies was that these animals, which were clearly supernatural devils spawned from the very bowels of Africa in order to prevent European colonization there, cannot be analyzed in any mortal lab. Or maybe I just feel like somebody just told me Santa Clause wasn’t real.
Whether the research is right or wrong, fans of the book (like me) can’t help but wonder why these scientists didn’t spent their research dollars on more pressing concerns, like, oh…I don’t know….climate change maybe? I’m sure those involved in the study will offer up all kinds of predictable rebuttals, like ‘climate change is outside my scope of expertise’ and ‘we just made a major breakthrough here – how about giving us some respect?’ Don’t listen to their whining. These people just spent a lot of time and a lot of money to discredit one of the greatest adventure-travel books of all time.
Sure, sure, as a representative of the media I want the truth to be known – that’s why you’re getting the post. But dammit, even if those lions only killed 72 of those men instead of the 135 Patterson claims, that’s still a lot. And if you are a fan of nineteenth-century adventure books (yeah Sir Richard Burton, I’m talking about you too) then you know that a good chunk of what you read is probably B.S. anyway.
Want to learn more about the man-eating lions that thwarted Patterson’s bridge-building efforts? You can get the book for less than a dollar at Amazon or you can check out the exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago.
[Via: Daily Telegraph]
