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Man-eaters
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Youth killed in Leopard attack.
"A 23-year-old youth, identified as Shankar Naik, was killed by a leopard in Sushil Nagar in Sandur taluk on Wednesday."
That’s sad but not uncommon. I grew up about 10 kilometres from where this attack took place. There was a big man-leopard conflict in the late 90s and early 2000s in which a few children were preyed upon by leopards. This sort of led to a targetting of leopards. Leopards then retreated from rocky outposts to dense jungles. But, lately there have been more cases of leopards venturing out of those jungles and coming in contact with humans.
  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Text Version of Above Images by Pckts
First Image ---------------- The "sport" of pursuing so-called man-caters has an added thrill, and no one pursued them more relentlessly than the late Jim Corbett, who described his experiences so vividly in The Man-Eaters of Kumnon. Corbett was a celebrated hunter of tigers in the heyday of the British Raj, and this book was a textbook in high schools, catching that particular generation at the most impressionable age. He enjoyed the Viceroy's patronage and therefore what he said was the last word. If he called a tiger a man-eater who was there to dispute it ? Every person missing for reasons unknown, including those killed by leopards or humans, could conveniently be accounted for as tiger-kills and were entered in the district records as such. I read and re-read his book and visited some of the tigerlands he described, and I found it difficult to agree with many of his observations. For one thing, it is certainly not old age that turns a tiger into a man-eater; all tigers become old (barring accidents) but all do not turn into man-eaters. A bullet or a porcupine quill in the mouth or forepaw is regarded as another cause of a tiger becoming a man-eater. This is also doubtful, because the wound that prevents the tiger from stalking and killing game can be an equally strong impediment to killing a man. In fact a tiger has to cover even longer distances if it turns man-eater because when someone is killed in a village everyone for miles around becomes alarmed and vigilant. What is a man-eater supposed to eat between one man-killing opportunity and the next ? Does he go hungry for months or does he struggle to obtain normal rations ? And if he can kill game in the ordinary way between incidents of man-eating then what is one to make of the excuse of broken teeth or disabling wounds? Corbett's blood-curdling tales were of course by no means the only ones. Colonel Keshari Singh, known as the "Tiger of Rajasthan", also tells many stories about man-eaters. One such was the case of a tiger carrying off a newly-wed village girl while she was sleeping beside her husband in a locked but at Ganwari, 96 km from Jaipur. I cannot myself believe any tiger would enter a but to stalk a prey. Such accounts naturally tended to remove the last trace of sym-pathy for the tiger from the heart of civilized man. But were all these stories true? I determined to investigate cases of man-eating. During the last thirty years in the States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Assam and Bihar, all excellent tiger habitats, there have been no reports of man-eating tigers. There has been only one report from Andhra Pradesh; this happened some sixteen years ago and no details of the incident are available. In Karnataka the last record of a man-eating tiger was in December 1959, when an old woman was dragged away by a tiger while she was collecting myrobalan fruits. In April 1970 while I was travelling in Taroba National Park in Mahar-ashtra I was told about a recent case of man-eating and I went to the Chandrapur Hospital to talk to the victim. It seems that the woodcutter must have approached too close to a tigress with two cubs and she jumped on the man, catching him by 2nd page ------------- cubs — declared to be "potential man-eaters". N. N. Scn, who was my immediate boss in the Forest Service and virtually brought me up in the profession, had shot 17 tigers during the heyday of shikar in United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) while Corbett was hunting in the same area. He also claimed to have killed a man-cater in 1944 in the Haldwani forests, but the only evidence he could put forward that this particular tiger was a man-cater was shaky. Some tiger had killed a man who was cutting grass and only one leg was recovered, but just who ate the body was not known. Since that event six tigers of different sex, age and size were shot within an area 0112 sq km in ten days. Which, if any, of them was the man-eater is anybody's guess. Each of the hunters claimed that it was his, thus getting a free permit not only for the tiger he shot but for free hunting for another year. In recent years cases of man-eaters have also been reported from Uttar Pradesh. The last record of a tigress killing a man in Corbett National Park was in February 1967. The man was a member of a team of fourteen who were marking trees, and he was seized and dragged into a bush. Shikaris who found the body removed it to open ground and set up a machan, and when the tigress returned to it in the evening she was shot. A post-mortem revealed that two of her canine teeth were broken off to one-third of the normal size, an upper molar was loose, and four incisors were missing. This would seem to have been an old tigress, although age should not necessarily have caused her to kill a man for food, and this was her first victim. Until recently almost every tiger living in the Sundarbans of Bengal was known as a man-eater ! No one had the patience, or even cared to investigate the circumstances to verify whether a person's death was by accident or deliber-ate murder, but everyone added to the horrifying tales of man-eaters. One told of how a man dreamed of a tiger and at the same moment a tiger jumped into the channel and picked up the man from beneath the wooden cover of his boat. just how anyone would know about the dream if the man was killed is not told, but the story caught the fancy of an artist who portrayed the horrifying scene. A. B. Choudhari reports that at the beginning of the present century moo to iso people used to be killed by tigers every year as against approximately 38 annually in more recent years in the Sundarbans, most of the victims being honey-collectors. I went to the Sundarbans to study the habitat and behaviour of the man-eaters and I found that honey-collectors disturb the entire forest. In their search for bees they often almost bump into sleeping tigers in the dense cover — the men are either looking up into the trees or down at their feet to avoid stumbling — and the surprised animals attack the intruders out of fear and in self-defence. Also, the honey-collecting season coincides with the breeding season, and a tigress will naturally attack a man who comes too close to her cubs. My investigations showed that many tigers seen by woodcutters, fishermen, boat-
The 2 notorious maneless man-eaters of Tsavo from the late 19th century:
Lieutenant-Colonel Patterson with the first lion, FMNH 23970, notice the leopard's skin in the background, photo at The Field Museum of Chicago: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/...eth-kenya/  *This image is copyright of its original author The second lion, FMNH 23969: http://carbontocarnivore.wordpress.com/2...man-eater/  *This image is copyright of its original author
In my personal opinion, I think man-killers must be shot dead on spot. Some of you may think I'm being harsh but a man-killer can do massive amounts of damage to human life and property. After all human life is >>> to wildlife. I know some Indian villages beat them to death but thats too cruel and I also believe there is no use in keeping man-killers in captivity. So a clean bullet to the brain is the way to settle man-killers.
 *This image is copyright of its original author 
Champawat tiger
panar leopard Rudraprayg Leopard The Tsavo lions are some man-eaters  
Short note: On the size of lions at the Field Museum.
Some time ago, using the graphic of skulls in the book of Dr Bruce Patterson "The Lions of Tsavo" of 2004, I tried to reconstruct the skull size of the Tsavo lions and the Mfuwe lions, argubly the biggest lions on record based in the figures reported. And the reported sizes are: Tsavo lion (first): 295 cm in total length and 114 cm in shoulder height. Tsavo lion (second): 290 cm in total length and 121 cm in shoulder height. Mfuwe lion: 320 cm total length and 122 cm in shoulder height. Yes, these are huge specimens by any standard, but what it says its skulls:  *This image is copyright of its original author Based in this graphic, the reported size are IMPOSIBLE, and certainly an exageration. However, I was using only the graphic and just trying to do my best guess on the figures. However, I was checking a new document named "Dietary behaviour of man-eating lions as revealed by dental microwear textures" (DeSantis & Patterson, 2016). In this document we finally see the true size of the skulls of the three man-eaters, and guess what, my calculations were correct. Let's check it:  *This image is copyright of its original author We can see other skulls there, and we can confirm that the size of the skulls of the "big" lions, including the "giant" of Mfuwe are nothing exceptional, even below the average for the area. Let's compare them with the huge list provided by Roberts (1951):  *This image is copyright of its original author Certainly, we can see that the body size of the Tsavo lions and the Mfuwe lion is just a myth (remember that also the number of people killed by the Tsavo lions has been put in doubt). Body measurements and skin mounts, specially taken "along the curves" by people with sensacional stories, can (and often do) err, but not the skulls, they are unaffected by shrinkage, trimming and exagerations (Patterson, 2004). These skulls are just average for the East African region, and smaller than those from Souther Africa. Based in the data of Roberts (1951) and that of DeSantis & Patterson (2016), the biggest skulls from East Africa, correctly measured, are of 380 - 384 mm, and according with the email of Dr Yamaguchi, the giant specimen NMK OM 7935 from Kenya (the 272 kg cattle eater) measured 387 mm. All there were giants, but if we trust in the old records from Rowland Ward's Records of Big Game (1914) the biggest skull in the area is of 394 cm (measured "between uprights", so the skull probably was shorter if measured with callipers). I made a short study to get the body length of the giant lion using skulls, this is the result: Based in skull length (387 mm) the head-body length "straight" was of 192 - 199 cm (depending if we use the Rowland Ward record) and a total length between 297 - 300 cm, certainly a true record! The most reliable figures (using the highest r2 value) are: Head-body 197 cm and 297 cm total length, for NMK OM 7935. Here are the calculations, data base and equations:  *This image is copyright of its original author So, what happen when we do the same thing with the Tsavo lions and the Mfuwe lion? Here are the results:  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author So, based in the skulls, although with an small sample, these are the most realistic body measurements in "straight line" of these three famous man eaters: Tsavo lion (first): 272 cm in total length and 177 cm in head-body length. Tsavo lion (second): 275 cm in total length and 179 cm in head-body length. Mfuwe lion: 279 cm total length and 183 cm in head-body length. * Shoulder height is normally 1/2 of head-body. They are not small at all, but far from been the giants described. Even then, this should not affect the appreciation of the story and how terrible where the attacks. By the way, the Museum itself estimate a weight of 400 lb (181 kg) for the Tsavo lions, here is the image:  *This image is copyright of its original author Based in the calculated sizes, the estimated weight seems reliable. Now, the weight of 550 lb (249.5 kg) estimated for the Mfuwe lion, which is based only in the stuffed specimen, is completelly unreliable. Greetings and cheers.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Quote:In July 1968, in the Quitexe area of Uíge province in northern Angola, during a night mission during the Colonial War, a Portuguese soldier named Domingos disappeared after going to do his business. The next morning they went looking for it and came across a huge specimen of African rock python between 5 and 6 meters long with a huge belly and with soldier Domingos' gun next to them, after shooting the snake when they opened the snake's belly. snake, they found the soldier's body.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author The last victim the giant crocodile Bujang Senang in 20 May 1992, Sarawak, Malaysia
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Reticulated Python, 5.75 m, Tuwa, Sulawesi, Indonesia, 1998  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Reticulated Python, 17 feet, Sangatta, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, 1999 or 2000  *This image is copyright of its original author Quote:Reticulated Python, 21 feet, Tenang, Johor, Malaysia, 1995 |
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