Although people think they are at the top of the food chain, this is just deluded thinking.
Creatures large and small need to eat and they exploit opportunity wherever it exists.
In previous episodes we have explored, in exhausting detail, how and why people sometimes
convert their fellow humans into reportedly delicious food. But sometimes other predatory
animals develop a taste for human flesh as well. They can be surprisingly proficient
and terrifyingly fast when it is time to turn a person into a collection of meaty morsels.
Throughout history people have called these animals Man-Eaters. And all of them had one
thing in common. They abandoned other prey in favor of hunting and killing humans.
Today we are going to tell you several stories
about Man-Eaters from the past and the people they killed.
Champawat Tiger
The Bengal Tiger is a specific type of tiger native to the Indian subcontinent.
Members of the species are big, like scary big. From nose to tail,
they can be almost ten feet long. And finding one that weighs 575 pounds or more is not uncommon.
Well, it s not uncommon if you can find one. Today there are only a little over three thousand Bengal
Tigers remaining. But not that long ago they terrorized and sometimes ate the local population.
In the last years of the 19th century a female Bengal tiger began hunting and killing people
in Nepal. She first started stalking and killing residents of a village in the foothills of the
Himalayas. Hunters tried to find and kill the tiger, but she was too smart for them.
She evaded her pursuers and continued to eat villagers.
Finally, the Nepalese Army was called in to help. They also couldn t find and kill the large cat.
But they organized themselves into a long line and pushed through the surrounding wilderness.
It forced the animal to move into new territory.
The tiger moved south into India. Her new hunting grounds were near the village of Champawat.
She mostly attacked women and children. They were the most vulnerable and were usually
out gathering wood or other supplies. And she always hunted and killed during daylight hours.
More attempts were made to capture and kill the beast over the next few years,
but she stayed one step ahead of her human pursuers.
After a kill the tiger would travel twenty miles or more to a new location and kill again.
Her body count grew into the hundreds and people all over the region became paralyzed with fear.
Several families would not leave their huts at all unless absolutely necessary.
Finally in 1907 professional British hunter Jim
Corbett was hired to find and kill the ravenous tiger.
He couldn t find the tiger either, at first. But one day it attacked a sixteen-year-old girl
and dragged her away. In the process the girl s blood dripped all over the ground.
Jim Corbett followed the trail of blood and hoped to kill the tiger.
The tiger had other plans and was waiting to ambush Jim.
He saw the trap before the tiger could kill him. Jim
shot two rounds and scared the tiger away. But he had to abandon the hunt.
The next day he gathered three hundred villagers. They fanned out through the nearby forest and
eventually the murderous tiger was found. Jim Corbett began firing and hit her twice.
But she was smart enough to know that he was out of bullets and tried to charge him.
He grabbed a rifle from a nearby companion and finished the job.
During her reign of terror, it is estimated the Champawat Tiger killed and ate 436 people.
Tsavo Man-Eaters
In 1898 the British were determined to finish building a railroad which connected Kenya and
Uganda. As part of this effort, they had to build a bridge over the Tsavo River.
The leader of the project was Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson. He depended on several
thousand workers who were mostly from India. Their camp was spread over eight miles.
Patterson expected to fight against disease, the terrain, and labor issues.
He never imagined that lions would begin eating his construction crew.
Starting in March 1898 a pair of maneless male lions began stalking and attacking workers in
the campsite. They would wait until night fell and would enter the campsite under cover of darkness.
Once the pair identified a victim they would go into the tent,
drag the person into the wilderness, and would then devour their meal.
For a few months the lions moved on to other areas killing unfortunate victims in nearby villages.
But eventually they returned to the railroad workers campsite.
And when they came back the violence increased. They dragged at least one person away every night.
The workers tried everything they could to protect themselves. They built huge fires.
They constructed fences from thorns.
Nightly watches were organized so somebody was always looking out for lions while others slept.
It was all for nothing. The lions simply walked into the camp and took what they wanted.
Patterson made several attempts to kill the lions. He set traps but the animals didn t fall for it.
He slept in trees hoping to ambush them, but the wild cats remained out of sight.
John Henry Patterson was persistent in his efforts and finally succeeded on December 9th.
He shot and killed one of the lions.
The dead lion was almost ten feet long. It took eight grown men to carry the body back to camp.
The second lion was killed twenty days later.
Patterson had to empty three rifles to kill the animal. It took nine direct hits to end its life.
Nobody is sure how many people the lions killed. Patterson said he thought the number was 135.
A modern review of the evidence puts the number at closer to thirty-four.
Since the lions ate people, this meant researchers could look at isotopes from
humans in the region and compare that to similar isotopes found in the lions
bones and hair. This would reveal how many people the pair consumed.
The scientists think the lions ate a total of 34.7 people.
The reason it s not a simple whole number is because they can t tell
the difference between a lion eating an entire person or just a few parts.
Kenton Joel Carnegie
Wild cats aren t the only animals that attack people.
Wolves like to hunt and kill human prey too, on rare occasions.
Points North Landing is in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
It is near several productive uranium mines.
In early 2005 a uranium miner went jogging on his day off.
A single male wolf suddenly appeared and began attacking him.
He fought with the wolf until a bus full of people saw what was happening and came to his aid.
The miner had to be airlifted to a hospital, where he received several
stitches and rabies treatments. Eventually the wolf that attacked him was killed.
In 2005, Kenton Joel Carnegie was a geology student working at Points North Landing.
One day he went into the cafeteria and began passing around pictures he had taken of wolf pups.
Kenton explained that they had approached him the previous day.
A trucker supposedly warned Kenton that encounters like that could be very dangerous.
A Bush pilot who worked for the mines also said he
warned Kenton that wolves outside the camp had been acting in a threatening manner.
At 5:30PM on November 8th Kenton decided to go walk along the lake by himself.
He was asked by several people to not go but departed anyway.
He told everyone he would be back by 7:00PM. When he didn t return, a search party was launched.
Two men found Kenton Joel Carnegie s body in the snow.
Wolf tracks were all around the body. Parts of Kenton s corpse had been eaten.
The two men who found Kenton s body decided to turn around and get help.
Upon returning the body had been moved. And more of it had been eaten.
From the tracks it looked like four wolves were responsible. As the body was removed by
the search party, they could see eyes glowing in the dark. Wolves could be heard howling.
When the body was examined, the conclusion was that wild animals killed and ate Kenton.
The only wild animals anybody saw in the area that night were wolves.
Kelly Keen Coyote Attack
Some predators are too small and weak to eat adult humans.
But small children can provide easily accessible and tasty meals.
On August 26, 1981, Cathy Keen was doing chores. She lived in Glendale,
California with her husband, Robert, and their three-year-old daughter Kelly. Cathy
left Kelly in the living room. Kelly was watching television and Cathy was cleaning in another room.
While Cathy was in the other room,
Kelly walked out the front door and into the driveway. There she saw a coyote.
As far as the coyote was concerned,
dinner was served. It grabbed Kelly Keen by the head and began dragging her away. Robert saw
what was happening. He began chasing after the coyote. It finally dropped Kelly and ran away.
It was too late. She lost too much blood and suffered a broken neck.
Kelly Keen died after four hours of surgery.
In response the city decided to hunt and kill the nearby coyote
population. Their efforts destroyed fifty-five of the animals.
Kelly Keen is the only recorded fatality from a coyote attack.
But there have been many more failed attempts. Coyotes have tried to take several children
in Southern California but have usually been stopped before completing the job.
Coyotes haven t succeeded in eating humans yet. But clearly
some of them have certainly adopted the practice of hunting small ones.
Why Eat People?
None of the animals we have discussed today normally eat humans.
Most tigers, lions, wolves, and coyotes eat other prey animals and
prefer to avoid people. So, what drives some of them to look upon humans as a food source?
This is a question researchers have tried to answer because it
has serious implications for conservation efforts.
After all, it is hard to convince people to save a species if its members keep trying to eat them.
The Champawat Tiger was examined very closely after she was finally killed.
She had several broken teeth. Without those teeth she couldn t hunt and kill her normal prey.
Eventually she discovered that humans were easy to kill. And apparently they were
suitably nutritious. Except for the broken teeth the tiger was otherwise very healthy.
The Tsavo Lions seem to have used humans as supplemental food. They were still able
to kill their normal prey. Nobody is sure why these lions decided to attack humans.
Some theories have suggested that disease killed their usual prey.
Also, the Tsavo River was a place where people drowned and washed up on shore
with great frequency. The lions may simply have been used to scavenging human corpses.
In the case of Kenton Joel Carnegie, there was a dump near Points North Landing.
The discarded food attracted bears, wolves, and all manner of scavengers. Some of the
wolves lost their fear of humans. Eventually they thought attacking and eating one was a good idea.
Much like wolves, coyotes are very opportunistic. If a meal is within reach,
they will take it. And small children are the only humans they can capture.
Ultimately the animals who eat humans do it because it s easy,
it s fast, and they can. But it is an extremely rare event.
What do you think about these predatory animals? Can people live alongside them
peacefully? Or will more have to be sacrificed to feed their hunger?
And would you be sad if these creatures disappeared entirely?
Let us know what you think. And if you enjoyed this little exploration of the
carnivore diet then please like the video and consider subscribing to our channel.
None of us know when a hungry ravenous beast might chew and swallow our most valuable
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Thank you for watching Bad Things in History.