#16: The Tsavo Lions Killings
It is no secret that many people are scared of lions, and for good reason… There aren’t many situations where one finds themselves surrounded by lions in an unsafe manner, however, they have been known to happen. In 1898 over a nine-month period, two Tsavo lions in Kenya named “The Ghost” and “The Darkness” were responsible for killing and eating 135 road workers in Kenya.
As you can imagine, this story gained a lot of worldwide attention and even got its own Hollywood film in the 1990s… Sure, lions are vicious animals, but these killings were unusual even for them. Researchers were confused as to why these lions suddenly had such a taste for human flesh as opposed to their own prey… They found that this new activity was driven by jaw pain, not hunger. This pain would have made it much harder for them to hunt their usual prey with such pain, and that’s where the humans come in…