In 1924, after serving for years as floor
rugs in Patterson's home, the Tsavo lions' skins, which were by then in poor
condition, were sold to Chicago’s Field Museum for $5,000. The museum reconstructed them, and they can
be seen there to this day along with their skulls. (Because of the deterioration
of the hides, these mounted lions are somewhat smaller than they were in real
life.)
The exact number of people killed by the two Tsavo lions is uncertain. In his best-selling 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo Patterson claimed that there were 135 victims. Recent chemical tests of hair samples from the skins confirmed that these lions had indeed eaten human flesh in the months before they were killed. Based on these tests, it was estimated that one lion ate 10 people, and the other about 24. This doesn’t include the people they killed for sport and didn’t eat! |
Saturday, September 06, 2014
Tsavo Lions #13
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5 comments:
Hair samples would not be used to determine if human flesh was eaten by the animal.
Carnivores do not kill for sport.
Lions kill hyenas but do not eat them. Not for sport but pure hatred.
Here's a link to a Smithsonian article about the Tsavo lions:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/man-eaters-of-tsavo-11614317/?no-ist
My opinion, "sport/hatred" are emotions assigned to an animal's actions based on human emotion. If we are going to do that, then we have to also accept the emotions assigned to an animal's action's, crying, grieving, hating performing, etc. etc. by animal activists. Why does an animal not just react, with no thought of life, death, or repercussions, instinctively? When we assign instinctive action/reaction a human word/emotion, we are actually only guessing based on what we personally want it to be, based on how we individually idealize it.
Wade Burck
Yes of course, we assign these words to animal actions and we might be right or wrong. But a lion attacking and killing a hyena with great determination and then not eating the flesh is unlikely something other than hatred-which I believe is not exclusively a human emotion.
Hatred because hyenas,given half a chance, will steal lion kills.
Hatred is a human emotion that has assigned a word, hatred. As humans are the only "animals" with a spoken vocabulary, which describes the emotion. Like the spoken word love how can you understand the emotion if you don't know the word assigned to it. In order to know hate, you have to know love, and they are words that we have been taught to describe the emotion we are feeling. Why is the hyena "stealing" the lions kill. Why isn't he just "taking" it. In order to "steal" it, wouldn't he have to know and understand that it is wrong to take something that is not yours and comprehend what the spoken meaning of steal is?
Wade Burck
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