If one day they pass byChicagoYou cannot stop strolling through the streets of the center, enjoying its beautiful architecture, the result of the reconstruction after the fire that devastated the city in 1871. Nor can you miss the Field Museum of Natural History: if you are in love with thenatural Sciencesit is impossible for me to ignore it; And if it is horror movies … The relic was filmed there. Be that as it may, once inside the best thing is to direct your steps to its great attraction: a diorama oftwo lions without mane. It is the skin (and under it, the skull) of the felines that terrorized the workers who built the railway line ofKenya and Ugandaat the end of the 19th century. If you like movies you will know that the story – with some made in Hollywood flourishes – was recreated in the movie The Demons of the Night, starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer.
The story was the following. In March 1898, while the bridge was being built over the Tsavo River (Kenya),a pair of male lions without a pride began to attack the tents where the workers slept at night.It was a surprising coordinated action of the two lions: they watched the camp and waited for the best moment, just late at night and while the men slept, when they entered, they tore the cloth of the chosen tents and attacked and devoured their victims. The palisades, fences, hawthorn fences or the bonfires that burned at night were of no use to prevent their stalking. Fear permeated the workers and many fled, paralyzing the bridge works led by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. The British military engineer set traps in the surroundings and spent his nights in the treetops trying, in vain,hunt them down.On December 9, he killed the first and twenty days later, the second. According to Patterson himselfthe lions would have killed 135 people, although recent estimates based on isotopic markers from the skull of lions seem to reduce their number to 35.
What led two male lions to hunt together and alone , outside of a pride? Why did they systematically stalk and kill humans? Biologists have proposed different hypotheses to answer the latter: from the rinderpest of 1898 that left the lions without their usual prey, to finding dead men in the Tsavo River – the caravans of slaves passed through there to Zanzibar-, passing for the hasty ritual cremations of the deceased Hindu workers, which attracted the two lions.
Unfortunately, none of these explanations account for what happened on the Tsavo River , which reveals totally inexplicable animal behavior: for ten months two lone lions terrorized hundreds of workers, whom they hunted at night inside their tents. Neither traps, nor fires, nor thorns could stop them: only two cartridges of caliber 303 fired by a Lee-Enfield rifle.
