Lieutenant-Colonel Patterson, the Lunatic Line and the Lions

This is the second instalment of “Proud & Majestic” but another title fit better and it stands proudly and majestically on it’s own.

In this post, I want to tell you a story. Indeed, it is one of the best stories because it is true (and artistic licence is obvious and mine and mine alone). It contains some remarkable people, some of whom appear in it completely unexpectedly, an exotic location, death and controversy. So sit and read on …

This tale is set in Tsavo, a region in southern Kenya many years ago. There was and still is a river flowing through the region, the Tsavo river. Slave caravans travelling to Zanzibar in Tanzania had to cross it and often the river took victims that it left lying along the banks. The area was not savannah but more bush land limiting the number of grazers which are many carnivore’s preferred prey, especially the lion’s around whom this story shall revolve.

The lions in this area are unusual in that they lack manes almost completely and in that they are bigger. They live in prides of about seven females and one male, the former being “normal”, the latter not. Serengeti lions, for example, live in prides containing two to four males. The Tsavo lion’s size helps them hunt their preferred prey, Cape buffalo. However Cape buffalo are no docile prey and lions regularly get injured. Male’s regularly take part in the hunt too, something that is more uncommon in other lions. The main hypothesis to explain the lack of manes in these lions is the heat of the area. Temperatures regularly exceed 40°C and manes store heat. Reducing the mane would be a means of cooling down. It has not been determined whether this change is due to environmental control of the genes or a mutation (West & Packer, 2002). Another hypothesis is that the only one male per pride reduces the pressure of sexual selection (Kays & Patterson, 2002) though this hypothesis would hold more ground if prides in general were smaller.

The area is not only home to the lion and various other wildlife, but also to various native peoples, among them the Taita and the Maasai who shall feature later in the story. The Taita bury their dead for a approximately a year and then open the grave and remove the skull to put in rock shrines.

In the year 1897 a severe draught, later termed the Mwakisenge draught, hit the area, affecting humans, crops, life stock and wild life. Rain would not fall again in normal amounts for three years. Yet this was not all that made life unpleasant in Tsavo at that time. In 1898 the rinderpest virus struck the area decimating animal numbers further.

All things considered, in retrospective 1898 seems like a bad year to work on the Kenya-Uganda railway that was build in the area. However, the empire knew no rest despite the averse circumstances. Over 32 000 workers were imported from India. These where Hindu and their rites of death included ritual cremation which involved burning a body and later immersing the remains in a river. Due to the circumstances however, it appears that the workers only placed a hot coal in the mouth of the dead and left them by the river.

In more recent years, the term “Lunatic Line” has been applied to the venture. Local resistance, for example from the Maasai in 1895, was met by vicious counter attacks, though these were not always successful. In 1895 Andrew Dick was speared to death by the Maasai after running out of ammunition. 1898 was another year in which the railway crews met local resistance but this time it wasn’t from the local people. It might seem like nature itself protested against the railway being put into the landscape.

In March 1898 Lt. Colonel Patterson arrived at the site where a bridge was to be build over the river Tsavo, dispatched there because the project was running behind schedule. Patterson was 32 years old and a seasoned tiger hunter after military service in India. One can only imagine that he was an enthusiast and he is a character around many other stories can be told. But first let us finish this story. Almost immediately after Patterson’s arrival, workers started disappearing. Rumours had it that lions were responsible while for a short time Patterson favoured the explanation that fellow workers had killed the missing men for their possessions. Yet something happened around three weeks after his arrival that changed his mind.

It was around midnight and Lieutenant Singh was sleeping in his tent. Suddenly the flap of his tent moves and he sees two eyes looking at him. It all happens so quickly that he barely knows what is happening but somehow the lion grabbed onto his head. He is dragged out of the compound by the lion, still struggling.

A witness to the attack runs and wakes up Colonel Patterson who follows the trail of blood out of the camp into the wilderness, clutching his gun tightly. He finds Singh’s body with the head a few steps further, eyes open and staring at him. Patterson later describes it as “the most gruesome sight” he has ever seen. Now not even he could deny that lions where responsible. Further attacks showed that two lions lived in the area. One of them watched in the bushes while the other attacked. At least for a while …

The lions of Tsavo, in the Field Museum of Natural History

The lions, who Indian workers believed where evil spirits where nicknamed The Ghost and The Darkness (at least in the 1996 movie). The workers where terrified and blamed Patterson, after all, the attacks had coincided with his arrival in Tsavo. Meanwhile Patterson was trying to track the lions down and kill them but was unsuccessful. As the months moved on, more and more workers and locals where killed and the second lion too started participating in the kills and the pressure on poor Patterson was mounting. Finally, on the first of December the workers had enough, packed their things and left. Patterson had to do something. He build a scaffold to sit upon and placed a bait underneath it.

Finally, on the ninth of December he shot the first of the pair, later termed FMNH 23970. He first shot it into the rear but it escaped. Patterson tracked it and shot is several more times while lion and hunter were stalking each other. Eventually, Patterson found it’s corpse. It measured 3m from nose to tail and it took eight workers to carry it. On the twenty-ninth of December the second lion was shot, later termed FMNH 23969. He shot at it several times and the  lion, wounded and desperate, tried to attack Patterson but he shot it again, this time in chest and head which proved fatal. This lion too was nearly 3m long.

The lions of Tsavo, FMNH 23970 left and FMNH 23969 right

Patterson was flooded in congratulations. The workers presented him with a silver bowl, engraved with words of their gratitude. It would remain on of Patterson’s most cherished trophies. Patterson also, upon surveying the area found the “lion’s den” with human remains. Just that lions, being an apex predator don’t live in den’s. What Patterson found was probably one of the previously mentioned shrines of the Taita. Nevertheless, the effect must have been gruesome.

Patterson had the lions skinned, unfortunately in a rather unprofessional manner. Their skins where turned into rugs and their skulls also prepared. Years later, in 1924, Patterson sold the remains to the Field Museum of Natural History for $5 000, a large amount of money at the time. The skins where mounted in the manner seen in the first picture and are now one of the most famous exhibits of the Field Museum.

That is how Patterson’s part of this story ends. The lion’s story however, is far from over.

Close ups of the skulls of FMNH 23970 (left) and FMNH 23969 (right). Teeth deformities are visible.

One of the many contested issues regarding the lions of Tsavo are how many humans they actually killed and why they started eating humans in the first place. The latter of these is perhaps easier to find an answer too though it will never be a completely clear and certain answer. As mentioned previously, drought and illness had reduced prey numbers in general. In a drought lions never stray from water which enforced close vicinity between humans and lions. The lions might even have been accustomed to human meat due to for example the burial rites of the Indian workers, as described previously. However this last point is pure speculation. Anther point worth noting though, in regards to victim number too, is that if lions scavenged on corpses is that these might have been interpreted as humans killed instead of just scavenged upon.

The most obvious reason that the lions turned onto humans though are their teeth deformities. These are most pronounced in FMNH 23970 to whom, as will be explained later, a larger number of the human kills are attributed. FMNH 23970 has deformities mainly in the canines and other teeth at the front of the jaw (fractured lower right canine with root-tip abscess, missing lower incisors, rotation and malocclusion of upper right canine, cranial asymmetry due to an injury before death). FMNH 23969 has a fractured left carnassial with double pulp exposure. Especially for FMNH 23670 this would have made bringing down many prey animals more difficult. Humans on the other hand offer less resistance when attacked (without weapons obviously) and have much softer skin.

To investigate the number of humans actually killed, Yeakel et al investigated the isotope ratios of the lion’s remains, human remains from the time and samples from browsers and grazers in the area. Enter an unlikely player in this story, Louis Leakey. The Leakey family is famous for their contributions to the humanoid fossil record from Africa. These skulls of the Taita people where collected in 1929 during an expedition in the area.

Skulls from a Taita shrine as photographed by Louis Leakey in 1929

The values obtained by Yeakel et al can be seen in the figure below. The delta notation (δ) reflects the stable carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N) ratios respectively. The δ13C values are due to different plants (differences between browsers and grazers)  and the δ15N values increase with trophic level. TENP stands for Tsavo East National Park and TWNP for Tsavo West National Park.

From the lions, a sample of bone collagen and a sample of hair from the tail was taken. Bone collagen is a good estimate of lifelong dietary input while hair reflects approximately the last three months. In the figure below, especially for FMNH 23870 the specialisation towards humans (Taita people, green circle) is visible. The white circle is the bone collagen value and the black circle the hair value. This shows that especially towards the end of it’s life, FMNH 23970 ate more and more humans. Throughout it’s life, FMNH had a diet more similar to modern Tsavo lions (white square) and was mostly reliant grazers. The paper states:

This latter result […] verifies historical accounts that assigned the lion’s share of human deaths to FMNH 23970.

I’m glad that apparently scientists also have a sense of humour although I think they should have added “excuse the pun.” For my amusement.

Figure showing the isotope rations that where measured.

These results also interestingly show that while the two lions lived together and must have gotten some advantages from this cooperation, they retained individuality throughout their life. Some of this may be due to a concept called “prey ownership”, meaning that when prey is small, the lion who actually brought down the prey is the one consuming most of it. The dietary differences during their life might be due to their life history but it has also been speculated that they where litter mates and spend their entire lives together. Dietary specialisation might also have been due to the general prey rarity in the area with FMNH 23970 being more reliant on humans due to its more severe dental malformations.

The other main piece of information gleaned from this research is the number of humans consumed. The isotope composition reveals that approximately 35 humans where consumed (range 4-72). This lies between the reported numbers of either 29 (by the railway company) or 135 (by Patterson). Of course, this only reflects humans consumed, not humans killed. For one, more humans might have been killed but not consumed due to interruptions (most probably by humans) or less humans could have been killed but a significant number of corpses scavenged upon.

Nevertheless, it is a terrifying number. And the Tsavo lions are not the largest man-eating lions. The lion of Mfuwe terrorised a village, killing six people and dragging a woman’s hand bag around as a toy making the villagers believe that it was a demon. Because they where not allowed to kill themselves, they appealed to Wayne Hosek, an American who was there on safari to shoot it for them. He did. The animal was 3.2m long, longer even than the man-eaters of Tsavo.

However, the Tsavo lion’s victim count wasn’t really all that high when you compare it to the 563 dead Tanzanians and 306 injured between 1990 and 2005. Granted, this cannot be the work of a single individual or even a dyad, but it is a problem. In agricultural areas the lion’s only prey is the bush pig. Bushpigs are a bit like warthogs but are easily distinguished because they do not run with their tails in the air like warthogs but instead keep their tail down. It is a threat to the crops and during harvest season, farmers often sleep in makeshift huts as depicted below. There they are also easy prey for the lion. However, lions also attack women and children in villages.

Makeshift hut (left) and bushpig (right)

Of course, relocation of people is not feasible in a growing population and introduction of more prey animals isn’t possible either. As possible solution proposed is the control of bushpigs making the areas less attractive for lions and eliminating the need for farmers to sleep in their huts. As pressure’s on lion populations increase it is important to create large protected areas and corridors but that is a discussion for another day.

And what about the railway bridge of Tsavo? It was finished in 1899. Today though, only the  stone foundations still stand, the rails where destroyed by German soldiers.

Main Scientific Sources discussed in text:

Yeakel, J., Patterson, B., Fox-Dobbs, K., Okumura, M., Cerling, T., Moore, J., Koch, P., & Dominy, N. (2009). From the Cover: Cooperation and individuality among man-eating lions Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (45), 19040-19043 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905309106

Packer, C., Ikanda, D., Kissui, B., & Kushnir, H. (2005). Conservation biology: Lion attacks on humans in Tanzania Nature, 436 (7053), 927-928 DOI: 10.1038/436927a

Other Sources:

West, P. (2002). Sexual Selection, Temperature, and the Lion’s Mane Science, 297 (5585), 1339-1343 DOI: 10.1126/science.1073257

Kays, R. & Patterson, B. (2002). Mane variation in African lions and its social correlates Canadian Journal of Zoology, 80 (3), 471-478 DOI: 10.1139/z02-024

Sweet, M. (2002) Slaughter in the dark. The Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/slaughter-in-the-dark-672284.html [accessed 25/6/2010]

Caputo, P. (2002) Maneless Lions. National Geographic.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0204/feature2/fulltext.html [accessed 25/6/2010]

Man-Eaters at The Field Museum. (© 2007)http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/exhibit_sites/tsavo/default.htm
[accessed 27/6/2010]

and of course, my eternal friend, wikipedia.