Research Revelations

Tsavo’s maneless lions were—and are—real, not ghosts. And they aren’t a separate species of man-eating lions, although they do tend to be larger than other lions. Their size helps them bring down Cape buffalo, the main prey of lions in Tsavo East, in Tsavo National Park.

Among the scientists studying the lions today, Craig Packer and Peyton West focus on how and why the eastern Tsavo lions are different from the more familiar maned lions. Their studies reveal that maneless lions probably adapted in several ways to better deal with their environment, which is harsher and hotter than that of western Tsavo and the nearby Serengeti region. The scientists believe that one reason these lions evolved to be maneless was that a collar of hair would simply be too hot.

Meanwhile other researchers continued trying to determine the truth about why the two killer lions went after humans. They recently discovered that both lions’ skulls showed severe tooth injury. Could painful teeth have made it hard for the cats to kill their normal prey? Another piece to the puzzle may be that an outbreak of disease in the early 1890s killed many of Tsavo’s hoofed animals. The two man-eaters may simply have had little choice but to eat humans. No one knows for sure.

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Text by Margaret Zackowitz
Photograph by Robert Caputo (lion)