A Taste for Everything

In the late 19th century, two male lions terrorized workers building a railroad near the Tsavo River in what is now modern-day Kenya.

Within nine months, the ferocious predators claimed the lives of around 35 workers before a British Army officer killed them.

Their reputation lived on and they became known as the “Tsavo man-eaters” because of their taste for human flesh.

But a new study found they were not very picky eaters.

Researcher Thomas P. Gnoske of the Fields Museum – which houses the lion’s skulls – and others recently conducted an analysis of the animals’ teeth to confirm if the infamous big cats preferred humans to other animals.

Gnoske previously contributed to a 2001 paper that suggested the lions targeted soft human flesh because they had damaged teeth, according to the New York Times.

However, the team extracted DNA from hair fragments found in their dentures and discovered that the creatures consumed a wide variety of prey.

“Our analysis showed that the historic Tsavo lions preyed on giraffe, human, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest and zebra, and we also identified hairs that originated from lions,” explained lead author Alida de Flamingh in a statement.

While some of the species found were native to the Tsavo region, it was the DNA from wildebeest that surprised researchers because the species were not that common in the area at the time.

“It suggests that the Tsavo lions may have either traveled farther than previously believed, or that wildebeest were present in the Tsavo region during that time,” added de Flamingh.

The authors are eager to delve deeper into the findings, as the layered hair samples may allow them to trace the lions’ diet over time and shed light on human-lion conflicts that persist in African communities where lions prey on both wildlife and domestic animals.

“What strikes me about the Tsavo story is that it is almost incomprehensible to a 21st-century Western mindset,” paleogeneticist Ross Barnett, who was not involved in the study, told the Times. “The terror that the night must have brought is unimaginable.”