The Tsavo Lions

Everyone knows that most movies "based on a true story" are embellished or even fabricated in some way, and that holds true for The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) .  But the actual story of Tsavo is no less dynamic.  


First of all the movie was really based on John Henry Patterson's book of 1907 entitled The Man-Easter of Tsavo, (as was the 1952 movie Bwana Devil, starring Robert Stack) not really any other source, so his account is bound to be a bit on "the Patterson" side of things.

The remains of the Tsavo Lions are displayed in Chicago's famous Field Museum, are much smaller in measurement than the massive lions that Patterson described in his book (some of speculated that may be because he turned them into trophy rugs for his home).  Also, modern tests on the lions (and I guess they can do this now through something called isotopic signature analysis) suggest that between the two they ingested no more than 36 people--still that is a lot!  However, they may not have had a chance to actually feed on all of their railway worker kills, so their kill number may have actually been much higher at the bridge site.  The numbers Patterson gives is still suspicious:  135 to 140.  The sad fact was that their was a slave route right through the area, and bodies of slaves who died on the route were discarded in the area; and Patterson would have known that these people were not his workers, but he probably included them in his tally anyway.  Lions are known to be scavengers, so they may have ingested some these dead bodies.  Also Tsavo was a little community or village apart from the rail workers camp, and it is known that the lions killed a significant number of locals (totally absent from film, possibly because it is impossible to calculate how many, and it would have significantly detracted from the plot.)

Photo of John Henry Patterson

The lions themselves were maneless.  This type of male lion is common is this area of Kenya.  Their lack of any sort of mane would be the reason that they were able to so easily slip through the thorned thicket "fences" constructed around the railway encampment.  Also, although the locals did believe they were evil spirits, they were in fact, suffering from starvation due to an outbreak of  rinderpest disease, which decimated their usual prey.  Additionally, they had apparently been habituated to consuming dead bodies from the Zanzibar River; the Hindu workers of the camp who ritually cremated their dead is are also inadvertently thought to have attracted them to the camp.  So they weren't "doing it for the pleasure," more like convenience. 

Patterson with one of his kills

What is absolutely fabricated in the film is the presence of any famed hunter other than Patterson himself.  He was the sole killer of both of the lions.

Val Kilmer as Patterson in film

In 1924, Patterson sold the lion skin rugs and skulls to the Field Museum for the then handy sum of $5000.  They were reconstructed (as seen above) and remain one of the museum's post popular exhibits as Man Eaters at the Field Museum. I used to live in South Bend, IN, and I am still kicking myself for never taking the time to visit them while I lived so close by!

The Tsavo Bridge shortly after completion 

In more modern times (1978) sill in use