Tsavo Lions - Decades TV Network

back in the late 1800s when the British controlled East Africa they decided to build a railway system there in March of 1898 they commissioned a former British Army officer John Henry Patterson to come from India to East Africa to lay the permanent stone foundations for this bridge and in March of 1898 he rode the train up from the coast and Mombasa to the Sava river where a camp of 3,000 railway workers was established to build these stone foundations the workers had no idea about the danger they were facing the railway crews on the other hand were virtually all brought into East Africa from India and in in East and western India and southern Pakistan where most of these workers originated there were no large dangerous carnivores that people had to protect themselves against and so these naive workers basically set up camp in a very dangerous area without the safeguards that native Africans routinely employ to protect themselves it was at that time that two big man-eating lions began falling on railway crews attacking the camps at night pulling men screaming and kicking out of their tents and consuming them on the edges of camp and sending terror and chaos into the heart of this carefully orchestrated engineering operation these man-eating main 'less Lions that Hollywood would later name the ghost and the darkness would wreak havoc for months killing many workers men became terrified the railway crews eventually mutiny there were threats against Patterson's life their crews left they abandoned their work and took the train back to the coast and said we're not going back to where until these liens are gone these liens outwitted Patterson and everyone else who was trying to kill them for almost nine months before he was eventually successful and eliminating them and it wasn't until December 9th 1898 that he was eventually able to killed the first maneater and three weeks later he was able to take out the second the liens themselves have been at Chicago's Field Museum since Colonel Patterson sold them for $5,000 in 1924 the colonel who wrote about his exploits estimated that 135 workers were mauled to death but modern scientific tests done on the liens put that number closer to 35 as for why the Tsavo Lions came to develop a taste for humans as opposed to something like a zebra or buffalo Patterson says there's a simple reason lions kill their prey by seizing them around the neck or muzzle and suffocating them they stab with their canine teeth and hold their large struggling prey until it expires but by inspecting the jaw one lion it was found he had a terrible tooth infection now if a lion is unable to apply pressure to that tooth and unable the suffocated prey it would be a very dangerous thing to grab a buffalo because if you can't kill the Buffalo the Buffalo can certainly kill you and so we believe that these lions would have viewed the arrival of 3,000 railway workers in their territory as with considerable enthusiasm as this disease said and they arrived at exactly the wrong time in the life history of this particular lion you [Music]

Channel: Decades TV Network

Views: 70,101

Keywords: Decades, Decades TV Network

Id: uX4FYvuW9mE

Length: 4min 18sec (258 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2016