Moreover, after the first lion was shot and killed in 1898 - more than two weeks before the second lion was gunned down - the attacks on people ceased, Patterson noted. In fact, chemical analysis conducted in another, earlier study, published in 2009 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the lion with the abscess consumed more human prey than its partner. įor the first lion in particular, pressure on the abscess would have caused unbearable pain, providing more than enough motivation for the animal to skip large, powerful prey and go after punier people, Patterson said. The second lion also had damage in its mouth, with a fractured upper tooth showing exposed pulp. Previous findings, first presented to the American Society of Mammalogists in 2000, according to New Scientist (opens in new tab), documented that one of the Tsavo lions was missing three lower incisors, and had a broken canine and a sizable abscess in the tissues surrounding another tooth's root. And wear patterns on the teeth showed that they left the bones alone, so the Tsavo lions probably weren't motivated by a lack of more suitable prey, he added.Ī more likely explanation is that the ominously named The Ghost and The Darkness began hunting humans because infirmities in their mouths hindered their ability to catch bigger and stronger animals, the study authors wrote.
LIONS EATING PREY CRACKED
But if the lions were hunting humans out of desperation, the starving cats would have certainly cracked human bones to get the last bit of nutrition from their grisly meals, Patterson said. Hypotheses proposed in the past suggested that the lions developed a taste for people through scavenging, perhaps because their usual prey had died off from drought or disease. (Image credit: Bruce Patterson and JP Brown, The Field Museum) The skull of one of the Tsavo man-eaters shows evidence of dental disease.
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