Emily Chan
In 1898, a pair of male lions attacked, killed, and devoured dozens of workers constructing a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. At least 35 people were killed. After that, the large cats became known as the Tsavo man-eating lions.
They had been stalking the workers for nine months before they were shot later that same year. Since then, their bodies have been housed at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. In a new study, scientists analyzed DNA from clumps of hair found in the predators’ teeth, revealing what they ate when they were alive.
“We found mitochondrial genetic material from giraffe, human, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest, and zebra as prey, and also identified hair that came from the lions themselves,” said Alida de Flamingh, a study co-author and a biologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The research team extracted mitochondrial DNA from four individual strands of hair and three hair clumps.
Then, they compared the genetic profiles to a list of prey species compiled from previous research efforts to identify what animals the lions hunted.
According to de Flamingh, the most surprising discovery was the identification of the wildebeest. The lions would have had to travel 56 miles to reach the closest grazing area of the wildebeest, raising questions about the Tsavo lions’ land range in Kenya back then.
“It suggests that the Tsavo lions may have either traveled farther than previously believed or that wildebeest were present in the Tsavo region during that time,” said de Flamingh.
The Tsavo lions were spotted across the workers’ campsite, which stretched over eight miles of Tsavo National Park, located east of Mount Kilimanjaro.
A lion’s territory can range from 20 to 400 square miles, depending on the availability of food and water. In areas with scarce prey, lions will journey farther out to find more food.
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