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In the 21st Century, African lions may be consuming more humans now than ever before. Why?Life, Death and Survival in Kruger National ParkMore than 2,000 lions roam Kruger and during the day time, they are a major draw for more than one million tourists a year.The ProblemAt night, however, the lions are hunters, and it is at night that the refugees attempt to cross the park, fleeing from famine to the "America of Africa:" -- South AfricaAuthor Robert R. FrumpBob Frump set out in 2002 on an investigative safari with two game rangers to find out what propelled the refugees through the park and how the lions inadvertently and unintentionally became man-eaters.The Spirit Lions of TanzaniaIn Tanzania... In August of 2006, I set out with a Tanzanian scientist, a German documentary crew, the greatest humane trapper in the world, and a bodyguard who carried a single shot shotgun with no ammo. We were attempting to trap the worst man-eaters in the world What could go wrong? See, "The Spirit Lions" at left. Excerpt follows:The Spirit Lions Tracking the Magical Man-eaters of Tanzania Copyright 2007 By Robert R. Frump On the evening we lured in the man-eater, we were in the rough bush in the south of Tanzania, in the mud-hut regions, far away from tourist Africa, on the fringe of the Great Selous Game Reserve, tired and frustrated, ready to pack it in. The last recordings of the dying wildebeest screams were chased across the savannah by the last recordings of the snarls of a feeding pride of lions. The sound effects had blasted out via four-foot high speakers and were designed to lure the big cats in. Nothing roared back. Again. Just another no-show night after an exhausting day of hustling up small bloody bits of bait, cutting brush and camouflaging humane lion traps with elephant dung. Building the Snares – Simpson sets his trap as Ikanda looks on. We could do stupid things when we were this bone tired and I was about to pop the back door of the Land Cruiser and walk over to the nearby Land Rover when Ellen, the sound expert on the German documentary crew, unconsciously grasped my upper harm hard, whispered something in German, then said to me, “Behind us. Always from behind us, I think, we must always look behind us… look there, you see it?” I did. Like a pouting line backer on a models’ catwalk, all testosterone, all insouciant confidence, he came, not thirty feet from our vehicle, thudding toward us. There he was: a very large, near-maneless young lion, and the rose gold light of the setting sun touched off the tiffs of hair, like back-lit peach fuzz on a boy’s smooth face. Then the land sank two-thirds of the sun and he strode toward us still in the twilight as we peered out from our battened-down Land Cruiser. He was ignoring the scent of the bait and the food it promised, and heading straight toward the Land Rover Defender, where our two Tanzanian colleagues watched spellbound, their windows wide open. Dennis Ikanda in his Defender 110 Land Rover Only later did Dennis Ikanda, the Tanzanian research scientist in the Defender say he believed a cat of this age in this area had in all probability eaten a human. Was one of the “Spirit Lions” in other words, or one of the “Ossamas,” as some of the locals called the man-eaters. One could intelligently and scientifically guess at his human diet, just as one could impala consumption. “Even though he seemed young, he may already have killed and eaten two or three people,” Ikanda remarked off-hand to us later. “Almost certainly, he has eaten some human flesh by this time in his life.” |
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