In March of 1889, the British East Africa Company led by engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson began building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Uganda. During the construction period, many railway workers were killed by two male lions. These however, were no ordinary lions. They did not have a mane and both were vicious, intelligent creatures. The lions would attack the worker's camp at night and drag men from their tents.
The workers eventually built a bomas (thorn fences) around the camp to keep the lions out. The lions however, just crawled through. The lions killed almost 140 workers before Patterson intervened. He set traps for the lions that did not work, and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. He finally killed the first lion on December 9, 1889. Patterson shot and killed the second three weeks later.
After 26 years of being Patterson's floor rugs, the lions' skins were given to the Chicago Field Museum for a sum of $5000 US.
Pattersons accounts were published in his book, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and later dramatized in the movies Bwana Devil and The Ghost and the Darkness.
Tsavolions are the only lions known to live in large groups of females ruled by a single male.
Most of what we know about lions comes from studies conducted in the thriving grasslands of the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania where lions are surrounded by teeming herds of game, and lone males are quickly deposed by coalitions of males that rule prides in unison.
Tsavolions are thought to be especially aggressive, and high levels of male hormones may simultaneously underlie this aggression, their unique social system, and manelessness, Patterson says.
Following a dramatic decline in his physical condition and quality of life, the Zoo's male African lion, Tsavo, was euthanized on March 17.
In the wild, lions are social animals living in groups called prides which vary in size from 3 to 30 lions, with an average of 15 lions.
However, a pride is seldom together; members are usually scattered across their territory in subgroups of two to three lions, with a male to female ratio of at least 1 to 2.
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