Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by the jealous
Speaker 1: rival of steel Wall, which is the lesser appreciated describing
Speaker 1: tool Sheep's Wall. Instead, it's supported by the generous contributions
Speaker 1: of people like you are listeners on Patreon. Visit patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash thinking Sideways to learn more Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I don't stories of things we don't know the answer too. Well.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways podcast. The podcast I am Steve, as always joined
Speaker 1: by Done Joe. You didn't sing that, Joe. Okay, Oh wait,
Speaker 1: that's the wrong episode. Next time, next time handing my guitar. No, So,
Speaker 1: today's story, Um, well, actually, before we get in today's story.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is part of our summer series where we're
Speaker 1: taking some of the smaller mysteries and and going over
Speaker 1: those so that gives us some time off during the
Speaker 1: summer and it allows some time to research the bigger mysteries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Dizzy Cooper and Stan Cooper and things. Just Dan Cooper. Okay,
Speaker 1: just the entire summer full of Dan Cooper, the summer
Speaker 1: of Dan Dans of summer. I'm sorry you were so
Speaker 1: proud of yourself I woke up at four o'clock this morning.
Speaker 1: I've been awake for a very long time. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk about van eater. Sorry, today's story is the Savo
Speaker 1: man Eaters. Uh. And this is a listener suggestion. This
Speaker 1: was suggested by David. Thanks David. Yeah no, this is
Speaker 1: a fun one. I had forgotten about this until I
Speaker 1: came across down. The Law's fun except for the people
Speaker 1: who got eaten. Shush, jeezils we do um So. The
Speaker 1: Savo man Eaters are two African lions who in eight
Speaker 1: who were named locally the Ghost and the Darkness, killed
Speaker 1: workers on the East Africa Railroad at the Savo River
Speaker 1: which is today modern day Savo National Park in Kenya.
Speaker 1: If you go to do a google on Savo, it's
Speaker 1: spelled t s A v O. Yes it is um Now,
Speaker 1: those lions, because of what they were doing to the
Speaker 1: people who were there, they actually stopped the railroad project
Speaker 1: that was going on. And it wasn't until they were
Speaker 1: eventually killed by British Army Colonel John Patterson that the
Speaker 1: project could move forward and complete at least the part
Speaker 1: that he was responsible for. But our mystery here, we're
Speaker 1: gonna to tell the story. But our mystery here is
Speaker 1: why did they do it? Why? Like, why did the
Speaker 1: lions kill the humans? Yes? Not not Why did the
Speaker 1: British build a railroad? It's because because they were hungry?
Speaker 1: Well what motivated him? Since lions are typically known to
Speaker 1: hunt humans and they were they were taking out according
Speaker 1: to the story great swabs of people. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: they are cats and cats are jerks. Maybe that you
Speaker 1: just alienated all of our feline listeners. Steva doesn't have
Speaker 1: a comeback for that. We'll go ahead and just start
Speaker 1: the story. Uh. In eight the British had decided to
Speaker 1: build a railroad in their East Africa and colony UH.
Speaker 1: And that was gonna run from the port city of Mombasa,
Speaker 1: which is in modern day Kenya, and then that rail
Speaker 1: line was going to run all the way to Lake
Speaker 1: Victoria and then go on to Uganda. And officially it
Speaker 1: was named the Uganda Railroad, but unofficially it was called
Speaker 1: the Lunatic Line. And that's because there was a lot
Speaker 1: of people in Parliament who didn't think that it was
Speaker 1: worth it and they should be doing it. They described
Speaker 1: it as the railroad that ran from nowhere to nowhere.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that high speed rail project in
Speaker 1: California something like that. Um Officially, what the British were
Speaker 1: hoping was that it would encourage people to move into
Speaker 1: the interior of Africa and provide a method for transporting
Speaker 1: trade products between Africa and Europe. And by people, I
Speaker 1: mean British citizens because it was a colony and they
Speaker 1: wanted to get citizens in there, because that's how they
Speaker 1: were going to tame the What did they call it,
Speaker 1: It was the darkest Africa, Darkest Africa, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that was what they called that. They considered it a
Speaker 1: land of savages at the time. Is the way that
Speaker 1: you see it describe it. I mean again it was
Speaker 1: like the yes, yeah, so this is this is based
Speaker 1: on writings at that time that that was there. That
Speaker 1: was their description. Yeah, I don't know that. The term
Speaker 1: was actually based on the complexions of the people who
Speaker 1: lived there, like sort of the you like her kind
Speaker 1: of heart of darkness kind of yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was a hard place to get to. Um. Now, unofficially,
Speaker 1: this railroad was also it was also intended to provide
Speaker 1: an alternative method to what the standard method of getting
Speaker 1: things from the interior of Africa to the coast was
Speaker 1: which was on foot, which is a long, long walk.
Speaker 1: It's a long hike, and I have a lot of
Speaker 1: people to carry all that stuff you do. Importers aren't cheap,
Speaker 1: and because cheap labor is kind of important when you're
Speaker 1: you're trading, there was a blossoming slave trade. So there
Speaker 1: was tons of slaves that were being picked up in
Speaker 1: that entire region and then they would be walking in
Speaker 1: and out until eventually they die. So we're talking cheap
Speaker 1: as free, not like underpaid. You got to buy a slave,
Speaker 1: so it's not technically free. You're not paying wages, correct,
Speaker 1: So therefore you're not gonna you're not gonna spend a
Speaker 1: bunch of money on people. You just kitch product. You
Speaker 1: hoofed into town. If somebody dies on the ways, whoops,
Speaker 1: you're out whatever you paid for them. Then it's on
Speaker 1: back down the road. Now, wonder how many slaves it
Speaker 1: took to carry a car. That's the weirdest question you've
Speaker 1: asked me in a while. Um, now, it did. It
Speaker 1: did eventually help bring the slave trade down, It wasn't
Speaker 1: the reason that the slave trade would eventually trade line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you can throw things on a train. It's
Speaker 1: way cheaper and easier unless morally wrong. Yeah, for the
Speaker 1: people who have who cared, I mean people who are
Speaker 1: buying and selling slaves typically probably don't have a compunction
Speaker 1: to worry about that. Yeah. A lot of people still
Speaker 1: back in those days thought it was okay. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was standard fair. Um. So they're gonna build this railroad
Speaker 1: and thousands of labors are brought in and they are
Speaker 1: Indie in and Chinese. So yeah, there was it was
Speaker 1: Indians and there was Chinese brought in. Um they were
Speaker 1: they were all as a group. The British referred to
Speaker 1: him as coolies. They were their labors. Um did the
Speaker 1: Alliance have a preference for one group of the other,
Speaker 1: Not that I know of. Um. So the railroad itself
Speaker 1: was gonna be a total of five eighty miles long,
Speaker 1: and when it was done it we had crossed valleys
Speaker 1: and rivers. Crazy though it took thirty years to complete.
Speaker 1: It started in eight It reached Nairobi in like Victoria
Speaker 1: in nineteen o one, and then it took almost thirty
Speaker 1: or twenty seven more years for it to eventually get
Speaker 1: to Kampala, Uganda. That's a long time. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that there was some political tensions going on. I think
Speaker 1: that mostly it was and I don't mean political tensions
Speaker 1: in the area, I mean political tensions in Britain in
Speaker 1: the Parliament of why are we dumping more money into this?
Speaker 1: So that's why I didn't it and get very well
Speaker 1: funded at that point, So we're gonna go to This
Speaker 1: is two years after the construction has begun. The rail
Speaker 1: line has reached the Tsavo River in Kenya, which is
Speaker 1: about a hundred and thirty miles away from Ambassa. Actually
Speaker 1: pretty good progress. It actually is pretty good progress for
Speaker 1: our rail line is being built by hand um And
Speaker 1: what they have to do is they have to cross
Speaker 1: a river, so they build a temporary bridge so that
Speaker 1: they can keep working on the rail line, and then
Speaker 1: in place of that temporary bridge, they pull it down
Speaker 1: and they're going to start putting in the actual bridge
Speaker 1: because right so, because why do you want to wait
Speaker 1: all this time for the bridge to be done when
Speaker 1: you can keep making forward? Progress makes total sense. So
Speaker 1: what they do is in March of that year they
Speaker 1: bring in British Army Colonel John Patterson UM and he's
Speaker 1: brought in from India because he was evidently he was
Speaker 1: great with bridges and that was his thing at during
Speaker 1: during the construction of the bridge, Like I said, the
Speaker 1: they're gonna be building the bridge, and the rail line
Speaker 1: itself is gonna keep moving forward the leading edge of
Speaker 1: the line as they're constructing it. And this what happened
Speaker 1: is that the camps, because the men who are working
Speaker 1: on the line have to sleep at night, so they
Speaker 1: set up temporary camps and their camps from the bridge forward,
Speaker 1: over time starts spread out about over a twenty mile area,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty big swath area. Well it's not, but
Speaker 1: I think it's within a couple of days to a
Speaker 1: week of Patterson arriving that men start disappearing. And I
Speaker 1: was gonna say no. One immediately was like a crap, no, no,
Speaker 1: because all of the workers come to him and say
Speaker 1: they're being dragged out of their tents at night by
Speaker 1: a lion, and he's like, no, that's not really happening.
Speaker 1: I don't really believe you. Uh. And eventually he does
Speaker 1: go with them. They find a bot. And I've read
Speaker 1: the accounting of it, and if you from the description
Speaker 1: of it, it was pretty obvious that it was a
Speaker 1: big cat that must have been doing it. So at
Speaker 1: that point he's on board, and eventually the workers would
Speaker 1: figure out that there wasn't just one, but there was
Speaker 1: actually two lions. Not to be racist, but how could
Speaker 1: they tell with two different lions? Wait, okay, so you're
Speaker 1: you're actually and you actually you actually praised it like
Speaker 1: a joke, but it's an actual question. When you see
Speaker 1: two lions at the same time, you know that there's
Speaker 1: more than one. Okay, I mean, I guess I just
Speaker 1: thought that male lions hunted alone. Apparently these these two
Speaker 1: sort of had a had alliance their brothers. It was
Speaker 1: later determined that they were brothers. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: these kind of lions in just a moment, but males
Speaker 1: will be with a pride of females, and if male
Speaker 1: doesn't have a pride, then he's just gonna row. Sometimes
Speaker 1: males will work together to hunt because it's mutually beneficial,
Speaker 1: at least for a certain amount of time. So it's
Speaker 1: not completely unheard of to have a couple of males
Speaker 1: just kicking around at the same time together. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: actually I would be really handy for having because I
Speaker 1: mean just you know, like go spook some gazelles and
Speaker 1: driving towards your bro you know. Well, I mean that's
Speaker 1: why you know, wolves hunting packs, a lot of animals
Speaker 1: hunting packs, because the big cats do it all the time,
Speaker 1: except for usually not two males. No, no, but and
Speaker 1: so let's let's go ahead and talk about this. Because
Speaker 1: the lions that are in question here are Savo lions,
Speaker 1: and they're different than the lions that I think most
Speaker 1: people think of are familiar with, which is the lions
Speaker 1: of the Serengetti. So there's there's some physical differences and
Speaker 1: there's some behavioral differences. The bigger, for one thing, they are,
Speaker 1: They are much bigger, and they also don't have mains.
Speaker 1: So a normal you know, the Sengetti lion has that
Speaker 1: big giant mane that's so iconic, but these lions don't.
Speaker 1: And it's not understood why. There's some ideas that maybe
Speaker 1: it's because of the fact that that region is hotter
Speaker 1: than the Serengetti. Yeah, I think that is a reasonable Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good reason. Um Or there's also the idea
Speaker 1: that because the landscape in that area is very scrubby,
Speaker 1: it's scrub brush, and it's very thorny scrub. So if
Speaker 1: an animal is squeezing through brush, either the main is
Speaker 1: gonna get caught or you're gonna get all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff caught. In the main, they have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a main, so they have they do have scruff
Speaker 1: occasionally if they have a main. I love that. I
Speaker 1: was looking at a drawing and they show just in
Speaker 1: front of the ears they then they literally call it
Speaker 1: the side burn and the beard because it's it's almost
Speaker 1: never fully encompassing or going all the way around the
Speaker 1: neck like you see traditionally. But I guess these two
Speaker 1: I was just looking at pictures. Did they had a
Speaker 1: little little, tiny, very little bit of main. Well. And
Speaker 1: that's the hard part though, is that if you look
Speaker 1: at the pictures of these particular lions in the I
Speaker 1: can't remember what museum they're in right now, that those
Speaker 1: are the skins of those lions after they were rugs
Speaker 1: for about twenty years, so they weren't in great condition
Speaker 1: when they were brought in. If you look at the
Speaker 1: photos from after they were shot, it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot there then, but it's also not
Speaker 1: they're old images. It's really hard to tell. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: apparently they were skillfully restored and now they're they're stuff
Speaker 1: that looked like the real thing they do, except they're smaller.
Speaker 1: They're much smaller than they would be normally because of
Speaker 1: the fact that they were skinned to make into rugs
Speaker 1: and not to make into replicas exactly mannequins or whatever
Speaker 1: you wanna call it. I can't think, Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: trimmed away parts of the skins, but there's aren't they
Speaker 1: in Chicago The Field Museum in um Chicago, Illinois. Thanks
Speaker 1: looking up. I knew it was feel something I can
Speaker 1: remember what it was. Um. Well, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about Savo lions, though it's a cup of
Speaker 1: things more to talk about here. We talked about the
Speaker 1: fact that they're larger than the Serengetti lions, and it's
Speaker 1: believed that that might be that they're actually a more
Speaker 1: primitive version of the lion, because if you see apparently
Speaker 1: if you look at the drawings from like the Egyptians,
Speaker 1: because there was lions running around at two thousand years
Speaker 1: ago in that region, they look the same. They don't
Speaker 1: have a main and they're very large and the illustrations,
Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that these lions are not The males especially are notably
Speaker 1: super aggressive because they have really high levels of testosterone,
Speaker 1: so they are prone to their automatic reaction is to attack,
Speaker 1: just because they're always kind of their dudes, they're totally
Speaker 1: worked up all the time. I know that. Yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: we'll go back to the story though. As I said,
Speaker 1: the workers were spread over a large area again about
Speaker 1: ten twenty miles, and the lions started to attack, and
Speaker 1: they were attack primarily at night. They didn't show up
Speaker 1: every night, so it wasn't as if it was every
Speaker 1: single night they were there. Half a human is a
Speaker 1: lot of meal. I would say human would make a
Speaker 1: couple of days. The other thing, though, is that when
Speaker 1: they showed up, they were much more likely to attack
Speaker 1: the livestock as they were the people, because you gotta remember,
Speaker 1: it's a camp of workers who have to have work
Speaker 1: animals or draft animals, and they've also got to feed themselves,
Speaker 1: so there's tons of livestock around, so it's whatever seemed
Speaker 1: most convenient pickens whenever it was easy pickings. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think if I was putting up my tent. If I
Speaker 1: wasn't one of them workers, I would like stick goats
Speaker 1: and cows all around it. Yeah. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing is is that they did. Everybody was trying to
Speaker 1: keep the lions out. So what the coolies would do
Speaker 1: is they would they would build fences. They were called
Speaker 1: boma fences, and they would use the local acacia, which
Speaker 1: is a super thorny tree and bush, and they build
Speaker 1: fences out of that, so it's, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a barbed wire fence of nature at this point.
Speaker 1: And they would also like big camp fires and keep
Speaker 1: those fires going all night long in the hopes that
Speaker 1: the sound and the light would keep the lions from
Speaker 1: coming in. It didn't didn't work so well because the
Speaker 1: lions kept getting through the fences and kept yeah, they
Speaker 1: were there. Well, there's a there's a really interesting account
Speaker 1: where a lion actually got into a tent where a
Speaker 1: guy was sleeping, and in the scuffle and panic ended
Speaker 1: up grabbing the mattress, the sleeping mattress the guy had
Speaker 1: and running away with that. And so the guy got
Speaker 1: away into lion got a couple of I'm guessing a
Speaker 1: couple of yards, realized it didn't have its prey and
Speaker 1: dropped it and continued. I feel like that might say
Speaker 1: something bad about the state of the worker, that they
Speaker 1: were easily mistaken for a mattress. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: in the dark, in a tent, in the scuffle with
Speaker 1: the smells are your primary it's a sleeping pad that
Speaker 1: you sleep on or a mattress. Things, Well, maybe it is.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're right, Okay, you're right. A mattress
Speaker 1: and a human are interchangeable. They are. That's why I
Speaker 1: have one sitting in my cube right now at the office.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks I'm working diligently, wait till they realize it's
Speaker 1: sorta all right. So April of that year, um. At
Speaker 1: this point, Paterson has been there for about a month
Speaker 1: or so, and now the rail line is extended forty
Speaker 1: miles away from the Tsavo, and there's only a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred workers left at the camp who are building
Speaker 1: the bridge. And because this is where, you know, the
Speaker 1: bulk of the humans have moved on, and the camp
Speaker 1: is around the bridge, that's where the lions start to
Speaker 1: focus their attacks exactly. And so Patterson he he um.
Speaker 1: So he was brought in from India, where he had
Speaker 1: done a whole bunch of lion or not lion but
Speaker 1: tiger hunting, and so he considered himself a hunter of
Speaker 1: big cats. What he would do is he would climb
Speaker 1: a tree at night and he would sit in the
Speaker 1: tree all night long hoping that he could spot and
Speaker 1: then shoot one of the lions. Obviously, he didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of luck with it. The you know,
Speaker 1: he's in a tree. One night, the lions show up,
Speaker 1: They get into the hospital tent and they take somebody away.
Speaker 1: So he says, move the move the hospital tent. So
Speaker 1: they do. The lion goes to the new location of
Speaker 1: the hospital tent and take somebody else away. I think
Speaker 1: it was the water boy. Um takes him away. So
Speaker 1: then they do it a third time. They moved the
Speaker 1: tent a third time, and I'm like, why is he doing?
Speaker 1: Does he not realize that lions can smell? Like, why
Speaker 1: are you moving it? Yea, they're not stupid, but these
Speaker 1: ones particularly, And what he did this time when he
Speaker 1: moved to hospital to the third time, as he put
Speaker 1: up this rail car contraction that he had designed and
Speaker 1: had cattle in it, and the idea I think was
Speaker 1: that to get the lion in, shut the door so
Speaker 1: the lion couldn't get out, and then you could, you know,
Speaker 1: shooting fish in a barrel, lions in a car kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing for him, except it didn't work out.
Speaker 1: The lion got a cow, got in, got the cow,
Speaker 1: got it out of the car, but then couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out how to get it through the fence, and eventually
Speaker 1: took off through the fence. So when the thing I
Speaker 1: guess what happened though, is that Patterson and the camp doctor,
Speaker 1: because it was near where the hospital site was, were
Speaker 1: out there at night, and the lion at that point,
Speaker 1: instead of trying to continue to drag the cow out
Speaker 1: of the fence, turned around and started stalking these two guys. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So obviously it's very aggressive. When I have just killed something,
Speaker 1: I can't get it, I'm gonna kill something else. I'm
Speaker 1: still hungry. I'm I'm totally still hungry. Um. So it
Speaker 1: did eventually attempt to attack them, and this is where
Speaker 1: Patterson shot at it, and he said he managed to
Speaker 1: wound it by shooting one of its teeth, and that
Speaker 1: scared it away enough and the whole tooth thing is
Speaker 1: supported with the actual jaw of one of the lions.
Speaker 1: There is a broken tooth. Now, whether that tooth was
Speaker 1: shot by him or broken in some other manner, that's
Speaker 1: that's in dispute. But it seems weird. It seems like
Speaker 1: a hell of a lucky shot. Well, it seems it
Speaker 1: would kill the lion shoot him in the head basically,
Speaker 1: Well not if you shoot it from the side or
Speaker 1: from it or you know, or if it goes out.
Speaker 1: Think of if it went through the cheek. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: suppose it could have been deflected. Yeah, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ways that this could happen either way.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I don't I think that mostly it
Speaker 1: was right there and he shot it, scared the holy
Speaker 1: crap at him, and it took off. But that's that's
Speaker 1: just my opinion. So of core. Okay, so we've got
Speaker 1: the whole He shot at the mouth. The lions then
Speaker 1: take off for a while, and they leave the camp
Speaker 1: for several weeks, and I'm sure Patterson is just relieved
Speaker 1: and thinking, well, yeah, I got rid of them. Scared
Speaker 1: him off, I did it. Yeah, unbeknownst that's what British
Speaker 1: accents sound like. Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to him, what the lions had been doing during
Speaker 1: that couple of weeks was actually stalking um some of
Speaker 1: the other construction camps that were farther away. And they
Speaker 1: do eventually return to the bridge site. This is several
Speaker 1: weeks later. One of the cats enters and drags a
Speaker 1: worker away, and these and and both of them show
Speaker 1: up to the body of this worker. And this is
Speaker 1: how brazen they get. After a while, they only dragged
Speaker 1: the body thirty feet away from the thirty yards away
Speaker 1: from the camp and then begin to have their meal.
Speaker 1: So they're obviously not intimidated by people, which at this
Speaker 1: point I'd be thinking of a career change. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't be there, No, not at all.
Speaker 1: And and so this this continues for months. These lions
Speaker 1: can keep coming back and they keep making a kill
Speaker 1: and taking something, whether it be human or a four
Speaker 1: legged critter away as a meal. We get to the
Speaker 1: first of December and at this point most of the
Speaker 1: workers board the train and they leave. They've they've kind
Speaker 1: of had enough that there's just this is not worth it,
Speaker 1: and they're gone. There's some people yeah, yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: There's some people left, there's some workers who are going
Speaker 1: to try and stay on. On the ninth of December,
Speaker 1: one of the lions manages to kill a donkey that's
Speaker 1: in camp, and Patterson sees this is his opportunity. And
Speaker 1: what he does is he has a bunch of guys
Speaker 1: go around behind it and then come at it, making
Speaker 1: as much noise as they can to startle it, to
Speaker 1: scare it out into the open so that he can,
Speaker 1: you know, shoot it. Well, he does manage to hit it.
Speaker 1: He does manage to wound the lion, but it gets away,
Speaker 1: but he's pretty sure that it's going to come back
Speaker 1: because it wants to get the meal the donkey. So
Speaker 1: what does he do. He builds a platform that he
Speaker 1: can sit on and be in a perch. He waits,
Speaker 1: uh lo and behold, the lion comes back, but this
Speaker 1: time it doesn't come back for the donkey. It instead
Speaker 1: is uh it's it approaches Patterson on his perch instead
Speaker 1: of going to the donkey. Yeah. Are we doing that
Speaker 1: thing that we do when we listen to Steve stories
Speaker 1: where we do like the Grandios storytelling of the night
Speaker 1: and then go back and like talk about stuff. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing is that, from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: the majority of the story comes from Patterson himself. So
Speaker 1: the details, the accounts of how it happened, he was
Speaker 1: this was something that happened. A lot of guys would do.
Speaker 1: Is you would be off somewhere and you'd write at
Speaker 1: a you know, a bit of an adventure that it happened.
Speaker 1: You'd sell it to newspapers. And it seems that that's
Speaker 1: what Patterson is doing. And then eventually he collected those
Speaker 1: and he put those into a book that he wrote,
Speaker 1: and that's where almost all of this story is sourced from. Now,
Speaker 1: the lions are real, and it is the fact that
Speaker 1: they were killing people is real. Now his they were
Speaker 1: talking me and they came after me and I shot.
Speaker 1: It's Canaine tooth off. That's that's all Patterson. That's all Patterson.
Speaker 1: And there's no reason not to believe them. There there is. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this briefly. Let me finish what
Speaker 1: happens to this line, and then I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something to follow up on that. What happens with
Speaker 1: this line is that it's circling underneath him while he's
Speaker 1: in his perch, and he goes ahead and takes more
Speaker 1: shots at it. He does manage to hit it. Um,
Speaker 1: he hits it two more times and manages to kill it.
Speaker 1: So he took a total of three bullets to put
Speaker 1: this creature down. Um. Now, I want to talk real
Speaker 1: briefly about his writings and his book. Did either of
Speaker 1: you get a chance? It's all available online to skim
Speaker 1: through any of that not. Okay, so it's not the
Speaker 1: greatest read in the world. But what's very funny is
Speaker 1: that about the first third to half of the book
Speaker 1: is dedicated to this story, and then after that it's
Speaker 1: all his accounts of hunting big cats. So he becomes
Speaker 1: the man eater killer. So he goes hunting after lions.
Speaker 1: He starts hunting tigers again. Um. So he's like a
Speaker 1: dentist's son something like that, excepted like when you when
Speaker 1: you get into his stories, it's I shot the beast
Speaker 1: and it left back up and charged back at me.
Speaker 1: Like he always describes these things as if they are
Speaker 1: they're just amazingly resilient and impervious to bullets. You know,
Speaker 1: the bullet went right through it, but it didn't phaze it.
Speaker 1: It kept running at me, does happen. That does happen.
Speaker 1: But when you read one after the next after the
Speaker 1: next that has the same kind of discus options of
Speaker 1: the events, that's when I worry a little bit about it.
Speaker 1: So some of this may have you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much he I don't want to say inflated
Speaker 1: bedazzle the dazzle fact. So you actually tigerheading especially is dangerous.
Speaker 1: I saw this incredible video this It was like a
Speaker 1: first person's shotgun of thing. Someone just holding a camera
Speaker 1: riding on the back of an elephant, I assume in India,
Speaker 1: and it runs up on the elephant suddenly suddenly it
Speaker 1: just comes charging out of the grass and then I
Speaker 1: just like babies on the elephant come upside of the
Speaker 1: elephant and that's the end of it. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: I assume whoever was holding the camera died. I think
Speaker 1: I remember that one. And I don't think that person died.
Speaker 1: I think that's just where the video broke. We should
Speaker 1: just make clear, if it's not abundantly clear already, we
Speaker 1: are not advocating hunting of game like it's horrible. Well
Speaker 1: unless they're but and if they're actually killing people, that
Speaker 1: I can sort of sure. If it's like I have
Speaker 1: to put this animal down for safety, fine, that's a
Speaker 1: totally different thing. We're talking about a late nineteenth century event.
Speaker 1: This was commonplace at the time. It was believed. Everybody
Speaker 1: believed that this was. Okay, there's tons of these animals.
Speaker 1: We can't it doesn't matter. Yeah, I just mean that,
Speaker 1: as we're starting to talk about, you know, it's really dangerous, dangerous.
Speaker 1: So don't well that's that story Joe's talking about. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's an actual tiger hunt. That is just
Speaker 1: somebody on the back of an elephant. I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure that everyone knows that we are not appreciate.
Speaker 1: And I agree with you there. Okay, So what happened
Speaker 1: to the second lion? Okay, so at this point we've
Speaker 1: only got one lion um and a couple of nights later,
Speaker 1: it comes back to camp and it attacks two goats,
Speaker 1: and so Patterson decides, well, you know what, I evidently
Speaker 1: it's got a taste for goats. I'm gonna put a
Speaker 1: couple of more goats out, and he ties three goats
Speaker 1: out to a railroad tie. Early, so partial railroad tie,
Speaker 1: and if anybody's picked up a railroad tie. They're freaking heavy. Well,
Speaker 1: this lion shows up, kills one of the goats and
Speaker 1: then drags it and the railroad tie away, well presumably
Speaker 1: also the other two goats. You know, as I reread this,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if maybe it was three goats tied to
Speaker 1: three individual railroad ties would make more sense. Probably. Um.
Speaker 1: So they, of course they go ahead and they you
Speaker 1: know that he takes shots at it because he's such
Speaker 1: a good shot. He puts like three or four or
Speaker 1: five shots at it, but he had never managed to
Speaker 1: hit it. Um, it was it was dark. It was dark.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm being a little bit of a jerk to Patterson.
Speaker 1: It was it was dark at night. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of light. But the next day they he
Speaker 1: and several workers follow the trail and they find um,
Speaker 1: they find the lion. Uh it ran off. So at
Speaker 1: this point he goes ahead and he builds himself another platform.
Speaker 1: One was bad. Well, they were both hunting people in
Speaker 1: the camps. It wasn't like one st oh Billy lion
Speaker 1: always stays at camp and Timmy Lyon always goes and
Speaker 1: hunts the people. They were both doing it. So he
Speaker 1: builds himself another perch. He's sitting on the perch um
Speaker 1: that night and the lion returns and he does manage
Speaker 1: to shoot it twice. Evidently he had a double barrel
Speaker 1: gun and the lion walked directly underneath his perch, and
Speaker 1: he simply enough pointed down and pulled both triggers and
Speaker 1: shot its. Quite a kick. It had to be those
Speaker 1: big game guns in Africa. There's those double barreled ones
Speaker 1: for enormous rounds. Yeah. Yeah, So he shoots it, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually kill it, and it takes off, and
Speaker 1: they are and and this lion stays away for another
Speaker 1: ten days. At this point they're thinking, well, it must
Speaker 1: have died from its wounds. Except then on the twenty
Speaker 1: nine December, it returns and it tries to pull a
Speaker 1: worker who's sleeping in a tree out of the tree.
Speaker 1: Uh it. The guy manages to not be taken, so
Speaker 1: Patterson says, okay, well it likes this tree, you go
Speaker 1: sleep somewhere else. I'm going to climb up into the tree.
Speaker 1: And uh, it does come back, comes back to that tree,
Speaker 1: and he manages to get another another two shots into it,
Speaker 1: at which point it runs away again. In the morning,
Speaker 1: they follow the trail of blood and they do find
Speaker 1: the lion and apparently when they got to it, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing they must have found it kind of cornered because
Speaker 1: it charged him and he dumps so many bullets into it.
Speaker 1: He said he shot it five or six times, so
Speaker 1: he put in like beat multiple guns. He had guys
Speaker 1: carrying loaded weapon. Yeah, yeah, and so he managed to
Speaker 1: put five or six shots into it, so totally like
Speaker 1: now bullets. I just like the idea of a guy
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, yeah, you you seven people carry my guns. No, no,
Speaker 1: don't shoot them, don't help me, just hand them to me.
Speaker 1: You are the worker, I am, I'm the hero. I'm
Speaker 1: the hero. I'm the protagonist of this story, damn it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that those people none of them had any experience
Speaker 1: shooting those I mean absolutely, and yes, that's it is
Speaker 1: like taking that story a little far. But I just
Speaker 1: like the image of him saying like, no, no, don't
Speaker 1: help me. And can you see him taking two shots
Speaker 1: as the lion is running at him. He's like bang bang,
Speaker 1: holds the gun back and is waiting for somebody to
Speaker 1: take it. And that's why I yeah, why, like you know,
Speaker 1: a lion is charging you. I don't know why your
Speaker 1: initial reaction wouldn't be I have a gun that's loaded,
Speaker 1: I will aim and pull. Yeah, there's a lot of kicks,
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah. But if you know seven
Speaker 1: guns are going off with double barrels at once, the
Speaker 1: chances of hitting that animal are pretty dang good. Instead,
Speaker 1: what a lot of the accounts were, You know what?
Speaker 1: The primary method of getting away from an attacking lion
Speaker 1: was climb a tree. It was so funny. This is
Speaker 1: another thing I picked up from his book. Is And
Speaker 1: then I turned around and so and so who had
Speaker 1: my gun had lost his nerve, And I saw him
Speaker 1: ten feet up the nearest tree, like they would do that.
Speaker 1: So to be able to stand there and hand this
Speaker 1: guy gun after gun that actually takes a lot of
Speaker 1: willpower to to expect not to be just obliterated by
Speaker 1: this angry cat that's running it. It might be that
Speaker 1: there wasn't a tree near by to climb up either,
Speaker 1: so I think I had had no choice. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: also funny to me because I'm pretty sure lions do climb.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the cats, they can totally sure why they
Speaker 1: would say no, they can't get me up here, definitely not. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if if there's more than one of you, if
Speaker 1: you're the first up the tree, then and there's the
Speaker 1: fact that when you're smaller and lighter, you can go
Speaker 1: up farther than the lion camp before it gets that's
Speaker 1: my advantage in this world. I can escape lions faster
Speaker 1: or at least higher than anyone else. As long as
Speaker 1: you can jump up and get the branch. That's a problem.
Speaker 1: Um Okay. So at this point Patterson is killed both
Speaker 1: of the lions. He is triumphant. He finishes his bridge,
Speaker 1: and he goes on. Like I said, he writes a
Speaker 1: book and he does all this stuff to kind of
Speaker 1: make a living in in a sense. On his deeds,
Speaker 1: he says that these lions killed at least, if not
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and thirty five men in the
Speaker 1: nine months that they were stalking everybody at the camp.
Speaker 1: That seems like a lot, it really does. That would
Speaker 1: be if you do the math, that is one person
Speaker 1: every other day during the time frame for nine months,
Speaker 1: for nine months. I persely feel that more likely what's
Speaker 1: happening is that people are getting they're scared out of
Speaker 1: their minds and they're bailing. They're they're leaving, and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: well where is he? Uh? I don't know, Well, the
Speaker 1: lion must have got him like that. It also would
Speaker 1: be if if there was some kind of shady you know,
Speaker 1: if the workers were kind of like indentured workers or
Speaker 1: something like that, it would be a good way to
Speaker 1: escape without people going after your family. Maybe. But it
Speaker 1: was but it was imperial written, so it's not like
Speaker 1: they would turn around and say you your your your
Speaker 1: son escaped that ran away from the work. It was.
Speaker 1: They didn't seem to be practicing slavery. I mean they
Speaker 1: were trying to get rid of slavery in the area. No,
Speaker 1: I don't mean slavery, but I just mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if there was some sort of deal that was set up,
Speaker 1: like I'm working off my debt or something, would be
Speaker 1: a really easy way to be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: A lion probably took me. Maybe I don't know that's
Speaker 1: what the arrangement was. I don't either. I just um,
Speaker 1: I do want to point out though, with this hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five number, that it's probably wrong. Um. As
Speaker 1: we've already been talking about, there is some tests that
Speaker 1: were done with science that I totally don't understand. But
Speaker 1: they did tests on the skin and the hair of
Speaker 1: the lions, and they were looking for delta thirteen C
Speaker 1: and nitrogen fifteen and somehow use that to determine how
Speaker 1: many people each of the lions had eaten, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they figured out that one of them must have
Speaker 1: eaten ten people and the other one must have eaten
Speaker 1: twenty five. So one of them was more likely to
Speaker 1: eat kill and eat a person than the other one.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the other one was more interested in the
Speaker 1: goats and the horses and the cattle and donkeys and
Speaker 1: everything else that was there. You know, goats a lot
Speaker 1: easier to carry away, true, but it pre Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you gotta eat three goats in a night. You're not
Speaker 1: that big. I don't know. Do you think one goat
Speaker 1: would not be enough? I don't think a goat would
Speaker 1: be enough, But that's just I think a goat is
Speaker 1: the same as half a person or third at least.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, more, I think you're nothing, but send you
Speaker 1: in guts and bone. Sorry, I don't need to goat
Speaker 1: a whole lot. Well I have there. There's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot to them you just buy a six pack.
Speaker 1: That's what the lion was doing. Why is the six
Speaker 1: pack tied to this heavy, heavy thing? Headlon must have
Speaker 1: been so peeved. Yeah, okay, ok, well that is the
Speaker 1: end of the story. So at this point now we
Speaker 1: need to get into the theories because our original question
Speaker 1: is what was it that was driving these two lions
Speaker 1: to be attacking humans sactly. There's a number of theories.
Speaker 1: The first theory that we're going to talk about is
Speaker 1: the slave trade, because, as we said in the beginning,
Speaker 1: slave trade was pretty active in area, and one of
Speaker 1: the very well known behaviors slave traders is that if
Speaker 1: a slave dies, you just drop them where they fall.
Speaker 1: You leave them there and you keep on going. You
Speaker 1: don't bother to give them a burial or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and you might dump them off the trail. A little
Speaker 1: bits aren't demoralized. But lions are scavengers. They have no
Speaker 1: problem with scavenging. They can be scavengers. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: you know, if they are wanding along and oh hey, um,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a thing there, and you know
Speaker 1: the hyenas have already started ripping into it. And I
Speaker 1: bet you I could get some food out of it,
Speaker 1: just like the NF. I'm walking on the street and
Speaker 1: I see I see a twinkie on the sidewalk, you know,
Speaker 1: go for it. That's so gross, dude, so gross that
Speaker 1: you're eating twinkies and be off the sidewalk. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: let's keep going. Um. Oh. The other thing about the
Speaker 1: Tsavo River is apparently, according to they're reading it was
Speaker 1: the river itself was a bit of a dumping ground
Speaker 1: for bodies. Because the I'm guessing I've got to presume
Speaker 1: that it's because the route that they took followed the river,
Speaker 1: so if somebody dies, you just chucked the body in.
Speaker 1: Some bodies were floating down the river all the time.
Speaker 1: That's my presumption on that. So the theory here goes
Speaker 1: that these lions um, at this point they're used to
Speaker 1: having human remains around to scavengehn, so they come to
Speaker 1: consider humans as a normal food source. And if you
Speaker 1: think about it, if there's you know, let's say there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of slaves tied up at night in a
Speaker 1: camp and you just come running in and they don't
Speaker 1: fight back and they can't run away, well that's the
Speaker 1: best cafeteria ever. Yeah, so they would at that point consider, um,
Speaker 1: you know, people's food source. And now the camps are
Speaker 1: setting up, so you've got this abundance of humans. That's great.
Speaker 1: And then add to this, Oh and look, they've also
Speaker 1: brought along all these other animals, you know, like we
Speaker 1: talked about before, the goats, the donkeys, the horses, the cows,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff that that it's just it's too tempting. Well,
Speaker 1: all these things that I know how to eat are here.
Speaker 1: He totally can't blame them. I mean, I would take
Speaker 1: advantage of a great opportunity like that. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: well then that's the theory though. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know what your thoughts are on this in terms of
Speaker 1: the scavenging, but this is this theory says it basically
Speaker 1: they got used to eating people, so people are on
Speaker 1: the menu. I guess for me, it just seems like
Speaker 1: it's a leap to go from this is a super
Speaker 1: easy thing that doesn't fight back at all. It's just
Speaker 1: easy meat that's laying there to go to this is
Speaker 1: a thing that fights back, and I have to like
Speaker 1: break into a camp and be really smart just because
Speaker 1: it's meat that's similar to what they're used to instead
Speaker 1: of targeting their normal I guess natural prey, because I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not as though there was a short age of
Speaker 1: normal prey for them around the area, right, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that there there is something. If that's the case,
Speaker 1: then yes, I agree, you know, but if you also
Speaker 1: think about it, if they're used to walking up and
Speaker 1: seeing a body and then snacking on that body, and
Speaker 1: now they walk up and that body is still laying
Speaker 1: on the ground, it just happens to be in this
Speaker 1: weird contraption that humans call a tent. Well, then you
Speaker 1: just walk in and then you grab the body as
Speaker 1: you normally do, and oh, it's struggling. Will I better
Speaker 1: run away with it? The real hard because that's the
Speaker 1: thing is that you know, I I guess I never
Speaker 1: really thought about it, though I knew it is the
Speaker 1: way that lions kill. They their natural method of killing
Speaker 1: is to grab the throat and clamp down and suffocate
Speaker 1: while at the same time thrashing about to break the neck.
Speaker 1: And so it's either breaking the neck or suffocating their prey.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense when you think about it, but
Speaker 1: I had never thought it. So that would explain why
Speaker 1: you know they're coming they're like, do the quick clamp
Speaker 1: and run the thing is gonna die. Yeah, let's go
Speaker 1: to a sort of similar theory. So our second theory
Speaker 1: is similar. Um it's it's described as partial cremations. And
Speaker 1: I will be honest that I only saw that in
Speaker 1: one or two places. I saw the term partial cremations.
Speaker 1: In one place, I saw some other stuff that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this in Patterson's book. But I have to
Speaker 1: I have to admit that I tried to get a
Speaker 1: better sense of what partial cremations meant. I'm doing research
Speaker 1: on it. All I can figure is that somebody tried
Speaker 1: to cremate the body to light a fire, but they
Speaker 1: didn't do a good job of it, so the body
Speaker 1: didn't burn. I would guess it's the lack of like
Speaker 1: a pire. It takes a lot of wood, actually totally consuming,
Speaker 1: and there's not a whole lot of wood in that area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I would assume that somebody set up a kind
Speaker 1: of abbreviated, if you will, little pile and set them
Speaker 1: on fire and watch for a little while, and then
Speaker 1: you walk away, assuming it will continue to burn, and
Speaker 1: it goes out and it's just a half burned corpse.
Speaker 1: And related to that, um the other place that I
Speaker 1: saw some descriptions of not exactly the same thing. But
Speaker 1: in Patterson's reading or in his book, I came across
Speaker 1: some stuff about the fact that there were poorly dug graves.
Speaker 1: So people would try to bury somebody, but they would
Speaker 1: only you know, dig down a little bit and then
Speaker 1: cover the body up, and then other scavengers would come
Speaker 1: along and dig it up. Now, Patterson, he says these things,
Speaker 1: he blaming the people who were burying the body in
Speaker 1: kind of a derogatory way. But really I think it's
Speaker 1: just that they buried a body not expecting critters to
Speaker 1: come dig it back up, and critters dig it back up.
Speaker 1: And so this again is following the line the same
Speaker 1: lines as the last one of well, now they're used
Speaker 1: to eating people because they've been scavenging on them. It's
Speaker 1: possible they were slaves too. I mean, it's possible that
Speaker 1: slaves weren't actually just unceremoniously dumped but kind of haphazardly
Speaker 1: given some kind of something. Right, Yeah, that's absolutely possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not unlikely that a lot of workers
Speaker 1: were dying while they were working on it. If they
Speaker 1: send you out to digging grave for somebody and bury
Speaker 1: the body, and the people tend to cut corners a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, you might be tempted to bury the two
Speaker 1: or three feet down and just take that, take the
Speaker 1: rest of the day off, and just say he spent
Speaker 1: all day digging the grave really well, and building railroads
Speaker 1: was not a safe occupation. People died almost freaking time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually kind of wonder if that's part of the
Speaker 1: number that he had in terms of where that dy
Speaker 1: five number came. Is that somebody somebody died and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to say, oh, well, we accidentally had this
Speaker 1: pile of stuff fall on him. They just said, oh,
Speaker 1: well the lion took him. Yeah, that's entirely possible as well.
Speaker 1: The next theory that we have, which we alluded to
Speaker 1: a little bit, this is the one that we were
Speaker 1: kind of talking about, which is the food source. The
Speaker 1: theory is cattle plaques. The Savo lions are one of
Speaker 1: the only animals that are able to take down kate buffalo.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what a kate buffalo is,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a water buffalo. They're not actually related,
Speaker 1: but it looks like a water buffalo only bigger. They're
Speaker 1: huge creatures and there's tons of meat on them. The
Speaker 1: problem is is a food source for lions. They kind
Speaker 1: of suck because they're just as likely to injure or
Speaker 1: kill the lion as not, so they're very tough to
Speaker 1: take down. I would definitely be looking for easier sources
Speaker 1: of food well, and lucky for the lions, we as
Speaker 1: humans love cows, and we brought a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: cows to the area, so the lions would have been
Speaker 1: well calos cow was much easier to eat. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. But the thing is that cows are not
Speaker 1: very good at fighting back, so chances are good that
Speaker 1: they're easier to take down, except that they're was in
Speaker 1: the nineties a rash of cattle plagues. Um there is.
Speaker 1: It is render pest disease, which is basically a fatal
Speaker 1: disease for cattle. They get lesions and they have problems
Speaker 1: in their sinuses and it's really kind of grows. So
Speaker 1: only if you've got a strong stomach do you look
Speaker 1: at some of this, because it's not pretty and it
Speaker 1: takes him down pretty quickly, and it was taking out
Speaker 1: entire herds at this time. In the mid to late
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. So if these lions have now learned to
Speaker 1: hunt cows and hey, the cows are no longer available
Speaker 1: and I'm starving, show up and I have all these
Speaker 1: people show up that are making all this noise and
Speaker 1: they smell and there's blood and they're cooking. Well, then
Speaker 1: that would explain why they would go there with the
Speaker 1: game all that. Yeah, but I think that it render pest.
Speaker 1: I said render pest, but it could be render pest.
Speaker 1: I'm not positive. Somebody out there looking. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think it killed either game. Then just kill off the cows, right,
Speaker 1: I didn't kill other game besides even toad ungulates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that means printers that have cloven hoofs so to
Speaker 1: to toes, so it would get killed giraffes. It killed
Speaker 1: the antelope. It actually killed some of the cape buffalo
Speaker 1: and what was the other one? No, not the devil.
Speaker 1: It did not kill the robot devil um, but it
Speaker 1: you know, it killed off all of these other animals
Speaker 1: that oh it was dear was the other one, because
Speaker 1: there are deer in the area, so it's killing off
Speaker 1: all these these prey animals. So it's not just the
Speaker 1: cows that are gone. At this point, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of animals that are disappearing because it's spreading through the
Speaker 1: entire areas. Here's my problem with this idea, So this
Speaker 1: is the first one that I'm gonna say I kind
Speaker 1: of call bunk on, is that if that were the case,
Speaker 1: because this was all over the region, why is it
Speaker 1: only these two lions that we know about who were
Speaker 1: just going on these giant human killing sprees. Um, I
Speaker 1: guess my question would be how close to human populations
Speaker 1: were other lions, you know, because this it seems like
Speaker 1: the sort of thing where lions at this point, if
Speaker 1: they have you know, a few prey options, are going
Speaker 1: to go for whatever is easiest and closest. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna make fifty sixty seventy mile tracks to find a
Speaker 1: population of humans. To get a human in a hut,
Speaker 1: that's like you have to break in, and there's like
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuffed law versus like these two.
Speaker 1: It just so happened that a huge group of humans
Speaker 1: we're just walking through their territory, camping in easy access tense. So,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, it doesn't bother me that much,
Speaker 1: I guess because they You know, I presume most people
Speaker 1: in that area where you know, had huts and things
Speaker 1: like that, more permanent structures that would be harder for
Speaker 1: a lion to get into versus these workers permanent structure. Right,
Speaker 1: they're they're living in a tent and they're they're like
Speaker 1: easy access because they've just wandered right into the middle
Speaker 1: of these two lions territory, you know that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: I guess. And were there a lot of people living
Speaker 1: in that area, so it wasn't heavily populated, It was
Speaker 1: nowhere to nowhere, remember, yeah, I mean the area was
Speaker 1: very rural. There were cattle everywhere. But if you think
Speaker 1: about it, a huge herd can be overseen by a
Speaker 1: very small group of people, So I mean, in villages
Speaker 1: aren't typically all that huge. And as you said, these lions,
Speaker 1: even in their most aggressive state, were just as likely
Speaker 1: to go after livestock as they were humans. So if
Speaker 1: there's humans living in huts and livestock out, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be that weird that we wouldn't have reports from this
Speaker 1: time that if there were livestock that were healthy in
Speaker 1: in villages that lions were taking those that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: Plus the eligenous people who were living in that area
Speaker 1: probably weren't writing the accounts of the lions stealing their
Speaker 1: goat and sending it to the bridge, and they were like, oh, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: a lion stole another goat. Weird now that that makes
Speaker 1: a ton of sense, But they aren't retract my distaste
Speaker 1: for this theory. So I like this theory, Well, let's
Speaker 1: go to a theory that I'm going to see if
Speaker 1: you really like our next theory is bad teeth. So
Speaker 1: these lions had to go see a dentist. There are
Speaker 1: some researchers, and I apologize I failed to write down
Speaker 1: the name of these two gentlemen, but there are two
Speaker 1: researchers who have done a lot of studies on lions
Speaker 1: in general, and part of their studies were on the
Speaker 1: Tsavo lions. And they say that they exam then the
Speaker 1: skulls of these two and one of them had missing canines.
Speaker 1: It was the upper left. I want to say that
Speaker 1: the canines were missing and that those were there, And
Speaker 1: then they did some X rays on the skull and
Speaker 1: found what were signs of lesions in the jawbone. So
Speaker 1: that led them to believe that it was probably a
Speaker 1: very painful injury, and that it had probably happened at
Speaker 1: least two years before the animal's death, and so that
Speaker 1: would impede its ability to hunt prey as normal. Because
Speaker 1: we talked about this before. A lion has to be
Speaker 1: able to clamp down with its jaw on the throat
Speaker 1: and hang on. Well, if there's a set of canines
Speaker 1: and one side missing, you aren't going to have as
Speaker 1: good of a bite. People are slower and weaker than you. Know. Yes,
Speaker 1: we don't fight nearly as hard and softer, yes we
Speaker 1: Our skin is much thinner, puts the lotion on. I
Speaker 1: was going to make that joke, Sorr that um, so
Speaker 1: then we go to so it wasn't Actually uh, I
Speaker 1: think I was wrong with the upper left in turns
Speaker 1: of the missing canines, But it doesn't matter because I'm
Speaker 1: now looking here because they did examine the skull of
Speaker 1: the second lion and that lion had fractures in its
Speaker 1: jaw which were around the teeth in the upper left.
Speaker 1: So that's where I was getting the upper left from. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the idea here though, is that again it's
Speaker 1: hurts and it's not able to hunt effectively. It would
Speaker 1: explain if they were brothers. If they were related, right,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be so crazy that they both had this thing.
Speaker 1: But it would also explain why as they matured they
Speaker 1: continue to rely on each other because they weren't effective hunters,
Speaker 1: so they had to work as a team to be effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't hate it. I don't love it, but I
Speaker 1: don't hate it. It's not usual. Typically when an animal
Speaker 1: does start at the human populations, like say a mountain
Speaker 1: lion here in the state, it's usually because he's old
Speaker 1: and sick and you just can't do can't go after
Speaker 1: the normal stuff anymore. But that's the thing is that
Speaker 1: these lions, they weren't old. So that's one thing, is
Speaker 1: they weren't old. But the injury, the idea that there's
Speaker 1: an injury makes sense. I gotta say, though, is that
Speaker 1: if if a lion's jaws are so injured that for
Speaker 1: from two years prior or a year prior to all
Speaker 1: to being killed, that's a long time before these camps
Speaker 1: of people showed up. Now, maybe it's scavenging on other
Speaker 1: stuff and that's how they're getting along, But I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm curious about how they got to the time frame
Speaker 1: that they assigned for the age. The researcher talked about
Speaker 1: the fact that they saw there was erosion on the
Speaker 1: teeth around it, and the bone in the socket had
Speaker 1: begun to grow back where the tooth was at. That's
Speaker 1: how they determined it. But I mean, does that mean
Speaker 1: that it was painful and incapable of using its jaw?
Speaker 1: I That's what I'm questioning. Well, I mean, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a combination of things. I'm just advocating for all of
Speaker 1: these tonight. Maybe it's a combination of you know, the
Speaker 1: so the railroad construction, you know, it made the slave
Speaker 1: trade take a step back. So maybe what was happening is,
Speaker 1: you know, the slave trade was getting slaves picked off
Speaker 1: by these lions before when they were going through their territory,
Speaker 1: or their dead bodies, or maybe a combination of both.
Speaker 1: And if you're partaking in an illegal slave trade, you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to be like, yeah, it's weird the
Speaker 1: lions keep stealing these people that I totally own. You're
Speaker 1: just gonna say it's the cost of business. Oh, No,
Speaker 1: Apparently it was the traders were Arabs, the slave traders
Speaker 1: that were coming through that area, and that's so that's
Speaker 1: that's so, I guess that would help us get to
Speaker 1: this timeline of they had been living on humans or
Speaker 1: but didn't didn't start getting knocked back as much until
Speaker 1: the rail line was finished finished. Okay, well, I mean
Speaker 1: that that still doesn't necessarily present a problem, but it
Speaker 1: also I guess on top of that you can say, uh,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, yeah, they if he if
Speaker 1: one of them drug a goat that was attached to
Speaker 1: a railroad tie, you wouldn't think that if their mouth
Speaker 1: was an intense pain, they'd be able to drag that
Speaker 1: kind of weight. I think that probably that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it got a little better over time, or maybe
Speaker 1: they were just used to it, or they're just really
Speaker 1: they're just really badass and tough, or Patterson was a
Speaker 1: liar and where it out there. Because that's the other
Speaker 1: thing is that I have to imagine that he wrote
Speaker 1: these accounts, at least the original versions that went into
Speaker 1: the papers. He probably sat down and wrote those from
Speaker 1: his journal or memory, and then of course had to
Speaker 1: spice him up to get them bought. Yeah, well, it's
Speaker 1: not as interesting a story if you say these two
Speaker 1: lions were taking out humans because they were too sickly
Speaker 1: to take on any other prey, and I totally killed them.
Speaker 1: It's way more you know, badass to say. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was capable of dragging a goat attached to a
Speaker 1: railroad tie. It was so strong and virile that I,
Speaker 1: you know, and I took it down with nine shots.
Speaker 1: That's a way better story, a little better story. But
Speaker 1: I as gonna say, if I was going to put
Speaker 1: a goat out there for bait, I would totally tie
Speaker 1: to a road tie. It makes sense because it's going
Speaker 1: to slow the lion way down when you drag away.
Speaker 1: Apparently not slow enough for Patterson to shoes. By the way,
Speaker 1: I do want to point out with the whole it
Speaker 1: took nine shots to take it down. He says that
Speaker 1: with the last two shots he shot I think he
Speaker 1: shot it in the head with the last two shots.
Speaker 1: But it was so aggressive and it wanted him so
Speaker 1: badly that it was leaning against a branch or a
Speaker 1: log and was gnawing at the branch or log. This
Speaker 1: hunkle would as it was trying to get at it.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen like a cat that ladies and
Speaker 1: it's trying to get something and it's it's biting at it.
Speaker 1: If this is the big version of it, that's what
Speaker 1: he's saying. But so so these are things that I
Speaker 1: point out. I bring up these these descriptions in his
Speaker 1: his story because it makes me stop and go, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just that's really colorful writing. To yeah, um, really
Speaker 1: colorful writing is actually what gives us our final theory,
Speaker 1: which because we actually have one more, which is that
Speaker 1: they were bloodthirst the animals who had developed a taste
Speaker 1: for humans and or maybe we're just insane, because that's
Speaker 1: what Patterson said. They acted pretty sane if you ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that they were. If they were, if
Speaker 1: totally insane, they would have just been coming into the
Speaker 1: camp constantly running through everything. And it said they were
Speaker 1: very stealthy and they were really really smart in how
Speaker 1: they went about stealing or getting their food. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say stealing getting their food. Um, so I don't think that.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the Tavo lions were insane. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I said, he made a career out of hunting
Speaker 1: other lions. After that. The the there's all these supposed
Speaker 1: man eaters that had killed a couple of people. I
Speaker 1: think that part of the problem though, is that all
Speaker 1: these supposed man hunters are We're expanding, and we're expanding
Speaker 1: into their natural territory. And what happens when humans and
Speaker 1: other animals collide, Well, usually the people lose it first
Speaker 1: because we're dumb and ignorant, but eventually just through sheer numbers. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so I think that that's why all of these
Speaker 1: these lions that are called man killers and man eaters
Speaker 1: and insane, they're they're actually not. They're just they're pushed
Speaker 1: to a breaking point and they have to survive because
Speaker 1: that's what their natural instinct is. So my personal opinion
Speaker 1: is that I think that these I kind of fall
Speaker 1: in line with the slave trade. I think that that
Speaker 1: gave them an idea of humans, at least for these two,
Speaker 1: particularly in that area, as oh, this is a normal
Speaker 1: food source. Okay, the other ones I'm not so sure about.
Speaker 1: I like the cattle plague. Cattle plague it's good, I mean,
Speaker 1: not like I don't like it. I'm Facebook friends with
Speaker 1: the cattle player and they put up the best post ever.
Speaker 1: We go out to drink sometimes it's great. Cattle plague tails,
Speaker 1: the best jokes. Uh. Maybe some combination of all of them,
Speaker 1: even I hate to sound wishy washing here. The cattle plague,
Speaker 1: I think is a good one because you know, they
Speaker 1: have plenty of that play to snack on. They didn't
Speaker 1: need to actually go eat people. And then boom, all
Speaker 1: that goes and well you gotta go find food somewhere,
Speaker 1: and these guys come waltzing and conveniently driving right through
Speaker 1: the middle of their territory. Yeah, so what do you expect? Alright,
Speaker 1: there we go. So let's go ahead and give the
Speaker 1: important bits that I know people really like to hear
Speaker 1: us repeat every week. We have a website. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have a website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, where,
Speaker 1: of course you can look at links that we will
Speaker 1: put up for some of our research, as well as
Speaker 1: listening to any of the past episodes. We We are
Speaker 1: on iTunes as well as a bunch of the other
Speaker 1: streaming services like Google Play and any other service that
Speaker 1: you might be able to use. If you're on iTunes,
Speaker 1: do you take the time to leave a comment and
Speaker 1: a rating? That's how other people find us if the
Speaker 1: streaming Yeah, yeah, preferbably a good one. If if you've
Speaker 1: got something that you don't agree with, write us an
Speaker 1: email so that we can have a discussion about it,
Speaker 1: because we can't talk through comments. They're they're one way conversation. Well,
Speaker 1: that email is something that I'll tell you in a minute.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, if you're using any of the
Speaker 1: other streaming services and they allow you to comment in rating,
Speaker 1: do the same as we asked to do in in iTunes.
Speaker 1: That way, everybody who's using that service can find out
Speaker 1: about us. Um, if you want to write us an email,
Speaker 1: you can do that. The email address that Joe was
Speaker 1: prompting me to give you is Thinking Sideways Podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. We take story suggestions, we take feedback,
Speaker 1: we take general accolades. We will always respond to every email,
Speaker 1: though it may take us days to get to you,
Speaker 1: and that's not a reflection of you. That's our workload.
Speaker 1: But we respond to everybody. And by the way, if
Speaker 1: you're listening, say five years from now, we've got twenty
Speaker 1: billion listeners, that might not be the case anymore. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but currently as of this recording, yes, um. Now, we
Speaker 1: are on social media, so we have a Facebook page
Speaker 1: and a Facebook group. So like the page, joined the group,
Speaker 1: there's always fun stuff going on there. We're on Twitter
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways, Devon's always sending out weird Snapchat photos of
Speaker 1: herself because it's a thing. Now we have a subreddit,
Speaker 1: so there are conversations. If you're a riditor, that's a
Speaker 1: place for you to go as well. And last, but
Speaker 1: most importantly not least, for support of the show, we
Speaker 1: have a couple of different ways that you can do that. Um,
Speaker 1: you can buy merchandise, so shirts, stickers, anything like that,
Speaker 1: coffee mugs, those are available through Zazzle, which there's a
Speaker 1: link to that on the website and the right hand panel.
Speaker 1: If you want to contribute directly to the show, we
Speaker 1: have PayPal, so you can make a one time donation
Speaker 1: through PayPal of whatever you are able or comfortable with.
Speaker 1: If you want to go ahead and do a recurring donation,
Speaker 1: that's going to happen through Patreon. It's patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Thinking Sideways. Patreon is a system that are a
Speaker 1: service where you pledge how much you want to contribute,
Speaker 1: and every time we put on a new episode, that's
Speaker 1: what you're going to contribute. So I say that so
Speaker 1: that if you say I'm gonna give you ten bucks
Speaker 1: and you put that into Patreon, that's gonna be ten
Speaker 1: bucks an episode, and we put out four episodes a
Speaker 1: month on a normal month, so that's gonna be You
Speaker 1: gotta do the math there. So whatever works for you
Speaker 1: and you're comfortable with, and by no means is any
Speaker 1: of this required. It is totally voluntary and we appreciate
Speaker 1: everybody who has and is currently donating the show. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how much easier that makes that for all of us. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does cost a little bit, it does. Um, So
Speaker 1: that having been said, we're going to get out of
Speaker 1: here and look at Joe's crystal cat collection that he
Speaker 1: has bought with donations from Patreon. No, I'm just kidding. Um.
Speaker 1: We are, though, going to get out of here, and
Speaker 1: so we will talk to you guys all next week.
Speaker 1: Let's go see your menagerie, your glass menagerie. Let's go
Speaker 1: to the catacombs because it's perfect. Oh, I don't have anything,
Speaker 1: wh