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'Man-eating' lions: 100 years later, their deadly legacy still roars at Chicago's Field Museum

By Dane PlackoPublished February 5, 2025 5:00pm CSTChicagoFOX 32 Chicago


'Man-eating' lions: Celebrating 100 years at the Field Museum
There are a pair of lions at the Field Museum that no longer roar. However, they still might scare you!

The Brief
The man-eating lions of Tsavo, exhibited at Chicago's Field Museum since 1925, continue to captivate visitors 100 years later.
The lions, responsible for killing at least 28 people in 1898 while building a railroad bridge in Kenya, were eventually hunted by Colonel J.H. Patterson and their remains sold to the museum.
DNA analysis revealed the lions were brothers, with evidence suggesting their broken canine teeth may have contributed to their predatory behavior, including eating humans.

CHICAGO - Exactly 100 years ago, Chicago’s Field Museum received one of its most popular exhibits, the man-eating lions of Tsavo. And though they no longer roar, they still captivate hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

What we know:

"Over a nine-month period, people were being removed from their tents at night by lions," said Roosevelt University Professor Emeritus Julian Kerbis Peterhans.

It's a polite way of saying people were being turned into dinner by the two big cats, who've been top attractions at the Field Museum since 1925.

"People have a fascination with man-eating animals," said Field Museum Chief Preparator Tom Gnoske. "And these two are probably the most famous man-eating cats known."

In fact, they're famous enough to have a movie made about them.

The backstory:

"The Ghost and the Darkness" tells the story of how the two lions terrorized workers building a railroad bridge in the Tsavo region of what is now Kenya in 1898, killing and eating at least 28 people and likely many more.

Workers were "originally disappearing. But in short order, it was realized they were being killed, dragged out screaming," Peterhans said. "You could hear the lions in these dense thorn thickets munching away."

With workers fleeing the worksite, head engineer Colonel J.H. Patterson, an experienced big-game hunter, tied dead cattle to a treestand and eventually shot and killed both lions.

Patterson then sent the hides and skulls to his home in England, where they were turned into rugs.

In 1925, Patterson sold the remains to the Field Museum, which taxidermied the hides back to life.

"Just to kind of Frankensteined them back together was something most taxidermists were not capable of doing," said Gnoske.

Even after a century, scientists at the Field continue to learn more about the lions. For instance, DNA analysis revealed they were brothers.

And from a broken canine tooth, they've extracted hair fragments showing their diet— including human hairs.

The painful tooth might explain in part the lions' hunger for humans.

"If they can't eat normal prey with this severely broken canine, might that be a reason to turn to people?" Peterhans said. "People are softer, easier, and less likely to escape your jaws."

What's next:

With DNA technology continuing to improve, scientists at the Field believe there are even more secrets inside the Tsavo lions that might be unlocked.

"They still have some secrets. I'm not sure they'll reveal all of their secrets," Gnoske said. "But I think we're on to at least a few more interesting things about their history."

Including whether a possible third man-eating lion mentioned in Patterson's diary has left any DNA pawprints with the two big guys.

The original book by Lt Col Patterson. "Maneaters of Tsavo" covers the accurate facts in building the "Lunatic Line" as it was referred to in British East Africa at the time.
Patterson himself had a couple of very close calls with these lions, including being locked in an iron bar cage-trap where he was almost "trapped" by one of the lions.
He shot one of the lions, and then got the other brother lion later. Ironically, he used a British
Army issue SMLE Enfield rifle in .303 to end their
railroad Indian laborer diet careers.

Proof that Hollywood can ruin any good historical
record from an excellent book is evidenced in "Ghost and Darkness". The only facts reflected
in that movie are marauding lions. Poor acting and
no factual accounting with no mention of Patterson
pretty much renders the effort toxic.
Read the book. It was offered in the Capstick Library selections at one time. The lions used to sit on the second floor of the Field Museum, unless they roamed downstairs.

Good review, Kathi.

LtCol Ridge Marriott

quote:

Originally posted by 450 Fuller:
Proof that Hollywood can ruin any good historical
record from an excellent book is evidenced in "Ghost and Darkness". The only facts reflected
in that movie are marauding lions. Poor acting and
no factual accounting with no mention of Patterson
pretty much renders the effort toxic.

Agree 100%.

That movie is a cross between the ridiculous and the absurd.

I have seen them up close many times, and sadly the Tsavo lions look pretty ratty and abnormal. No doubt that's because the hides were never intended to be turned into full body mounts.

I guess it's a testament to the taxidermists that they were able to do anything with them at all.

I think movie was great and as with most movies, producers took liberty and made it more interesting
I love it and watch it every year in long winter nights

quote:

Ironically, he used a British
Army issue SMLE Enfield rifle in .303 to end their
railroad Indian laborer diet careers.

I’d have to revisit the book but Patterson’s hunting of the man eaters was before the SMLE existed (1904)
Could have been a Lee Metford or a Lee Speed as depicted in the movie as it happened in 1898 iirc.

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quar...neater-of-mfuwe.html

This man eater is also in the Field Museum. He is mounted with the clothes bag next to him.


On the Road: The Maneater of Mfuwe

Posted on Monday, Mar 4, 2019 1:45AM by Bill Murray
by Bill Murray

Just about everyone who visits the famous South Luangwa wildlife park drives through Mfuwe, Zambia. A mere wide spot in the road, a trifle to tourists, Mfuwe holds a fearsome, searing memory. It will forever be known for the Man-Eater of Mfuwe, a lion that killed six people over two months in 1991.


There are more famous man-eating tigers than lions in the literature. Tigers and people live in closer proximity in India than lions and people in Africa. I’ve seen an estimate of as many as 10,000 people killed by tigers in India in the nineteenth century.

The Champawat Tigress, the most infamous Panthera tigris, was said to have killed 436 people before she was killed in Nepal, then part of British colonial India, in 1911. After a spree of terror, hunters having failed to kill her, the authorities ultimately called in the Nepalese army. In Kenya’s Tsavo Park two lions killed perhaps two dozen Indian railroad construction workers in 1898, halting the colonizing Brits’ project to connect the port of Mombasa with the interior of British East Africa.

But the Mfuwe man-eater was no colonial-era killer. Its attacks occurred less than thirty years ago, thoroughly terrorizing an overgrown village of scarcely a thousand a spare 60 miles west of the border with Malawi, oriented toward the Malawian capital, Lilongwe. Lusaka, the Zambian capital, is 300 miles away.


The night of the first attack the killer struck two boys walking along a road at night. One escaped, but responding game rangers found only clothing and fragments of the other boy’s skull. A few days later a lion crashed through the door of a woman’s rondavel on the edge of the village. The second victim.

The third attack was nearly foiled by an edgy ranger, who fired his gun, but the victim, a young boy, was bitten and died of his wounds. Three more attacks were to come. People began to believe this was no ordinary lion, but a devil or a medicine man taking the shape of a lion.

•••••

Today the Mfuwe lion is stuffed and on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. 3.2 meters long, 1.2 meters at the shoulder and estimated at 249 kilos, it was male, and it was mane-less, similar in that way to the man-eating lions of Tsavo.

At first the lack of a mane led people to assume they were after a lioness. Early in the Mfuwe terror, people believed they’d got the man-eater, when a Japanese hunter brought down a lioness. But then the man-eater entered a woman’s hut and stole a bag of laundry, taking the bag into the village and roaring over it. This lion was clearly male.

•••••

Wayne Hosek wasn’t the first to try to kill the cursed thing. Other professionals, including the Japanese hunter, tried before Hosek.

Remarkably, as a child the man who ultimately brought down the Mfuwe man-eater studied the man-eaters of Tsavo, also on exhibit at the Field Museum. Wayne Allen Hosek was born in Chicago.

He says the Field Museum has always been one of his favorite places on earth. As a boy, Hosek spent days in front of the Tsavo lions, trying to imagine confronting the real thing, as he imagined it, with nothing but a few seconds separating him from their wrath.

Hosek’s battle with the Mfuwe man-eater stretched across the first nine days of September, 1991. First he met the hunter who had shot the lioness. Everyone hoped that solved the problem of this particularly evil Panthera leo but days later, two days before the hunter returned home to Japan, the sixth victim was attacked.

Hosek’s early description, a pdf in the Field Museum’s archives, is incomplete, reading as an early draft of an incomplete story (Hosek later wrote a book.). There’s even a place in the .pdf where his narrative reads “SECTION TO COME.”

In that section perhaps Hosek would have introduced us to his hunting companions, for later we are assumed to know “Charl” (Charl Beukes, another professional hunter), who was with Hosek the night the animal was killed.

Hosek visited villages where the lion had been spotted, talking to people, learning the cat’s behavior. The killer had dragged the last victim, a woman named Jesleen, from her rondavel in the Luangwa valley village of Ngozo.

The day after Jesleen was killed the lion walked into her home in the middle of the day and took a white bag with some of her clothing. People frantically beat on pots and pans to scare the lion away. It played with the bag like a cat with catnip. They found the bag in a dry river bed a mile from Jesleen’s house.

Village women used to wash their family’s clothes there by walking to the middle of the riverbed and digging down to water. Hosek writes, on this day “(e)ven the hornbills lounging in the riverbed seemed to be giving the bag a wide berth.”

Phillip Caputo, in Ghosts of Tsavo, writes that at this point Hosek’s trackers wouldn’t look him in the eye, two of them wouldn’t look at him at all, as if they resented his getting them into all this.

The elders decided Jesleen’s bag was bewitched and the lion was a sorcerer or a demon, “or at least demon possessed,” and villagers would not go near the bag. Authorities instituted a curfew at 5:00 over an area of some 65 square miles.

The hunters laid bait near the bag, hoping to keep the lion near, and retired to camp. Hosek’s companion Charl counseled, “Remember to follow-up HARD as soon as you make your first shot.” Hosek, a devout Christian, woke repeatedly that night, and each time he prayed.

The next day they built a blind using bamboo and elephant grass cut by villagers. Charl shot a small hippo and laid a haunch in the riverbed. They spent an uneventful night. The lion didn’t take the bait, but by day the hunters found its tracks a scant fifty feet from the blind.

The following day the hunters holed up in the blind around 3:30. Hosek describes “blind sleep” – “my eyes were closed, but my ears seemed to have acquired an ability to listen to each and every sound.”

Again they didn’t see the lion, but by now, “(t)he man-eater had become the center of my life’s purpose.”

Too many ineffectual cloistered hours led to a new strategy. They would build a new blind elsewhere, hang bait and leave the blind empty, in hopes the lion would get comfortable at the absence of its stalkers. They arranged for others to build the blind so the cat wouldn’t get the scent of the hunters.

Charl selected the site. He felt that the lion was clever enough never to let the hunters spy him standing still, and that it would be moving whenever it allowed them to see it. Gauging their being shut away in a blind against a lion on the prowl, he thought ultimately they would have no more than 2.5 to 3 seconds to take their shot.

When the hunters made their way to the new blind they saw that the man-eater had torn off part of the bait and eaten it in a footpath used by villagers. As Hosek tried to take a photo of the lion’s tracks, his camera broke.

As a Christian, he took it as “possibly a sign from the Lord.” The villagers saw the lion as a witch or a demon, after all. They had their spirituality. Hosek had his.

On the day of the lion’s death, the hunters entered the new blind, again about 3:30. In less than an hour Charl spotted movement in tall grass. The lion approached in line with the trunk of a tree, masking its visibility.

Hosek writes that he was “in a quick stride, almost trotting.” Hosek shot the lion below and behind its left shoulder, and it was dead. One of the trackers sang the Kunda tribal lion song and villagers converged on the place, spitting on the lion, beating it with sticks, and lit celebratory fires.

•••••

This is the story from Hosek’s memoirs, but I have found out a little more. Some time ago I asked Adrian Carr of the Norman Carr Safaris clan, about Hosek’s account. Carr figured in the man-eater story, but downplayed his role. He sat up on watch for the lion one night, saw it, but never managed to get a shot.

Here is Carr’s perspective:

“I had got involved because one of my workers insisted that I come and see something.

“He had got up in the night and gone outside for a wee. The lion had tried to catch him but somehow he got back in to his hut – the lion followed him in and he miraculously managed to get back out again – though the door. All this in the pitch black with all the terrifying growling. It was a small mud hut without windows and luckily he had been alone. The doors are on the inside opening inwards – so when he got back out he pulled the door closed and the lion was stuck inside. This is what he wanted me to see. It was like a bomb had gone off inside – the lion had totally destroyed everything including the roof from where he had eventually got out.

“I then put a bait up nearby (a hippo haunch) and the same lion fed on it that night – he had a big distinctive track.

“I decided to sit up for him the next night.

“My plan was to commandeer one of the cylindrical grain storage bins (kokwe) around the village as a blind or shelter. It was September (I think) and the grain storage bins were mostly empty. Traditionally they are made from split bamboo and woven together very tightly. They are quite heavy, very strong and I felt (in the daylight) impregnable. I would plonk myself down on the ground 30 yards from the bait – the basket, 6 feet in diameter and 8 feet high would be placed over me, I would cut a little window to shoot through and await developments….

“I was a bit late arriving that afternoon, – a small crowd gathered. I dispatched 5 strong men to go and collect a kokwe and received some quizzical looks…

“I watched as one guy sauntered up to the kokwe and effortlessly lifted it up above his head!

“Oh dear…. !! Made of millet stalks instead of bamboo! That’s like pith and balsa wood with no strength at all.

“Too late however to do anything else if I was to retain my casual demeanor and reputation of aloof imperturbability and disdain for the magical beliefs that are always associated with man-eating lions.

“Privately, of course, I was seriously doubting the wisdom of the whole enterprise!

“He came soon after midnight. Or at least that’s when I first became aware of him. I could hear his footfall circling my paper-bag fortress. My two heavy rifles, three flashlights and a handgun were little comfort. It went quiet for a bit and then I heard him feeding on the bait. I let him settle in to the feeding for 20 minutes and then put the light on him. I still have the mental image of him standing up on his hind legs, very big and tall, maneless and pale. I was ready to shoot but the instant the light hit him he dropped and was gone. He never came back and Charl and Wayne got him two nights later.”

•••••

Adrian Carr graciously shared his story by email, kindly arranged by Norman Carr Safaris, which is now a company called Time and Tide. My thanks to the Carr family and Adrian Carr.

Read Harry manners story about men eating lion pack attacking whole village in Mozambique somewhere
Crazy story
I think tigers got famous but hell of a lot more people had been eaten in Africa by lions

Having read the book a number of times the movie was a disaster.

The only reality was the scary Lion scenes!

quote:

Originally posted by Rockdoc:
Having read the book a number of times the movie was a disaster.

The only reality was the scary Lion scenes!

Exactly!

The movie is nothing but an idiot’s interpretation of what had happened!

In fact, I have NEVER, EVER, seen a Hollywood movie that depicted any story true!

Movies are entertainment
Say what you will, I loved it

In September of 1992 I went to Zambia on my first African Safari. I hunted in the Lower Liponde area of the Luangwa Valley with PH Willie Cloete and the company headed up by Charl Beukes. On the first afternoon there, we were driving down the only tar road in the area, when Willie pointed to a trio of thatched huts a ways back from the road. He said that awhile back a lion had entered the middle hut, killed the woman there, then dragged her off to eat her. He also mentioned the white bag, originally a bag of corn meal, that contained laundry, and said that the lion carried it around like a rag doll, and the white bag was visible via binoculars in the two clumps of thornbush that the lion used for cover during daylight hours. Quite a treat for me to read the story nearly 33 years later.
As for "Ghost and the Darkness", there was certainly some exaggeration, but the real story is so bizarre that even Hollywood couldn't ruin it. Would any rational person believe that a stray bullet would hit the latch on the cage and free the trapped lion? The movie was just that, entertainment, and a chance to visit Africa again without leaving one's living room.

The man-eating lion is seldom even reported, although with the internet, reports are more common than in former days.

I remember reading a hair-raising case study of an episode of man-eating by a lion on the northeastern border of the Selous, in the Rufiji District, between August 2002 and April 2004.

I was hunting there during that time, and never heard a word about it until I read the report a few years later.

Thor and I hunted the Nyimba man eater over 10
Days. Fascinatingly experience and scary as we were tracking at night. Long story Thor wounded him and put him down the next day at a few yards in a thicket next to a village we were residing in.

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
The man-eating lion is seldom even reported, although with the internet, reports are more common than in former days.

I remember reading a hair-raising case study of an episode of man-eating by a lion on the northeastern border of the Selous, in the Rufiji District, between August 2002 and April 2004.

I was hunting there during that time, and never heard a word about it until I read the report a few years later.

A true story.

That lion was on a rampage in the Utete area along the Rufiji River taking villagers from their makeshift huts at night while guarding their crops from wild pigs.

I cannot remember who eventually killed it (Palmer-Wilson keeps running through my mind) though had been told (true or false) that it was "baited" with one of its victims.

quote:

Originally posted by fulvio:

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
The man-eating lion is seldom even reported, although with the internet, reports are more common than in former days.

I remember reading a hair-raising case study of an episode of man-eating by a lion on the northeastern border of the Selous, in the Rufiji District, between August 2002 and April 2004.

I was hunting there during that time, and never heard a word about it until I read the report a few years later.

A true story.

That lion was on a rampage in the Utete area along the Rufiji River taking villagers from their makeshift huts at night while guarding their crops from wild pigs.

I cannot remember who eventually killed it though had been told (true or false) that it was "baited" with one of his victims.

Corbett did this with leopards

I think man eating has always been rather common along the Rufiji for some reason.

Methinks you folks should read Corbett's books!

I have. And they are a good read.

quote:

Originally posted by Esskay:
Methinks you folks should read Corbett's books!

I just finished Corbett's Man Eaters of Kumaon, it was given to me from George D. from here on AR. It is a good read!

I have read all of them.

Very enjoyable readings.

This is an excerpt from the report I mentioned. It details the tracking and killing of one of the man-eaters of the Mkongo Division on the south bank of the Rufiji River in Tanzania.

These man-eaters had killed at least 35 people in this area between August 2002 and April 2004.

The report indicates the lion in question was killed by game scouts and villagers, but that he could not have been acting alone.

The writer is noted German wildlife authority Dr. Rolf Baldus:

"In the case of problem animals, the District wildlife office normally assigns an appropriate number of scouts to the particular area in order to handle a situation, which usually entails killing the responsible animals. In the case of the Mkongo man-eaters the district game officer sent a group of District scouts to the area who sometimes stayed for several months, starting in 2002. They were strengthened in 2004 by the Anti-poaching Unit of Dar es-Salaam.

"In 2002, and for part of 2003, the scouts mostly stayed on the southern side of the river. They set up their camps at homesteads and followed up cases as they occurred. Additionally they put wiresnares around huts where people stayed or on footpaths. The scouts were armed with well-worn repeating rifles of .3006, .375 or .458 in calibre, .303 Enfield military rifles, some semi-automatic Simonov and single or double-barrelled shotguns (for buckshot).

"Hunting in this case was extremely difficult due to dense vegetation and high grasses with very low visibility. Local knowledge suggested that there was one male man-eater responsible, which was extremely sly and elusive. The scouts managed to kill a total of eight lions, most of which had been caught in wire snares, south of the river. They also shot one lion north of the river where they camped, and this lion certainly was unrelated to the killings. Several lions were shot at and injured, and it was reported that the lion in question had been wounded twice. According to the Wildlife Act it is legal to kill animals in defence of life and property by any method. The use of otherwise forbidden wire snares in such a case is therefore legal.

"Predation of people continued unabated despite the killing of these lions. By 2003 the whole area had been evacuated by the majority of people, with the dwellings mostly abandoned and fields had became overgrown. In 2004 the scouts moved to the northern side of the river and stayed there. They only went to the southern side for occasional patrols or following up incidents. Crossing the Rufiji River which is about 500m wide was done by dugout canoes which is the common mode of river crossing. In 2004 the district provided a motorboat for some time. The area does not have any road access and cannot therefore be reached by vehicle. While patrolling the northern side at night a hyena was killed. On one occasion two lions were reported. One was killed and another was wounded in a driven hunt. These lions were obviously unrelated to the killings and most probably came from the Selous Game Reserve which is also nearby on the Northern bank.

"In 2003 we tried on several occasions to call the lions (Smuts el al. 1977), but without success. As we did not have the time to try this more often, it cannot be said whether it would eventually have been successful. We advised the scouts to obtain suitable bait from the nearby Selous Game Reserve, but they never tried this method. Our own staff built several tree hides in suitable places to improve visibility where lions had been tracked. They spent some time in these hides, but with no success. We did not try to ascertain the density of lions in the area, but we were always able to find lion tracks when we looked for them, although these tracks were mostly not fresh.

The villagers on the northern side of the river showed great interest in all activities, but otherwise provided little cooperation. All services like providing a canoe to cross the river had to be paid for. The few remaining farmers on the southern side were however cooperative. It was always easy to find men as guides. They were not afraid and were obviously used to moving unarmed through the area. One particularly courageous boatman and guide, who obviously had experience as a traditional hunter and claimed to have shot two lions in the are with a shotgun, was later reportedly killed by a lion.

"In April 2004 scouts were extremely lucky and their strategy of “wait and see” bore fruit. Three fishermen slept on an island in the Rufiji River on 7th April 2004. The lion had obviously swum from the southern shore to the island and attacked one fisherman who had tried to protect himself somehow with large spiky palm leaves. The beast only gave up the attack when the other two fishermen came to the rescue of their colleague. The lion run off and left the island, but swam north instead of south. Whereas the lion had obviously not crossed the river before, he did so now, probably as a consequence of the event on the island and the resulting commotion. This lion then killed a woman north of the river on 15th April 2004 and injured another woman on 19th April. On 20th April at 21 hours it again attacked two women of 60 and 75 years old respectively who slept in a little "dungu"-hut on stilts and dragged one of the two women away and partly ate her corpse. Early in the morning the scouts were alerted, rushed to the scene and started tracking. They found the half eaten victim after about one kilometre away. The flesh of the lower part of the body from the waist downwards and the intestines were mostly eaten and upper body and the bones of the upper legs remained. Obviously the lion had been resting and eating until it was disturbed. This behaviour was that of a somewhat careless lion rather than a cunning one. The lion was followed by a large group of villagers for some distance. At around 14 hours the lion took cover in a bushy area. The scouts climbed trees for more visibility, as they said, and the villagers drove the forest as beaters. One villager fired at the lion with a shotgun and wounded it. It finally approached the scouts and was shot at again. It escaped, but was followed by the scouts and died in a hail of bullets and LG shotgun pellets when it finally charged.

The lion turned out to be an adult male of 3 1/2 years (ageing by Craig Packer), in good health and well fed. All adult teeth were there. They were white and in good order and tooth wear was minimal. Some teeth were damaged by shots. The skull resembled a pepper pot but measured 35 cm (length) by 21.5 cm (width) according to Rowland Wards measurement system. The lion was not previously wounded, but the bare skin showed signs that it had been caught in a wire snare at some stage. No measurements were done after killing the animal by the scouts. Neither my staff nor I were around when the actual killing happened, so the lion was not further examined. It was not possible to recover the skin, as it had mysteriously disappeared. There was a lot of superstition surrounding this lion.

"No further cases of lion attacks have been reported from Mkongo Division since the lion was killed on April 21st 2004 up to now (July 2004). Given its age, the lion must have been under two years when the killing spree started. It is improbable that this lion had developed into a man-eater on his own at that age. He might instead have been introduced to it at that time by other members of the pride. It may be that these lions were amongst those killed by the scouts since then, but this is not sure. Obviously this lion was not responsible for the six killings and injuries by lions that occurred in Mkongo Division between June 9th 1994 and May 23rd 1998. We know this lion was a killer, but only time will show whether this lion was the notorious man-eater from Mkongo Division whom the people fearfully called "Ossama" and who had established himself as one of the worst individual cases of man-eating in Tanzania and possibly in Africa."

This lion actually made Discovery Channel.

The African Park Ranger that killed him, set up down wind of a killed villager. The lion came back to the killed villager, and got, got.

Discovery also did an episode on a man eating female tiger in the 2010. As of the program, the tiger had not been killed nor captured. Her Nan eating only occurred during certain time of the year. I assumed, inferred she was taking humans when she had cubs to support. The program never stated that connection.

An interesting FS T about the Lion, while colleges relocated in its wake. The Lion was filmed crossing a river following the village folk.