Finding the den of the Tsavo man-eaters

In 1997, scientists travelled to Tsavo, Kenya, in search of a cave believed to have been the den of the man-eating lions that terrorised railway workers in 1898.

The two lions stalked Indian and African men building the Uganda Railway, dragging victims from their tents at night. It was nine months before the officer in charge of the railway project, British Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, could kill them.

Nearly a century later, a team including scientists from Chicago's Field Museum, where the now taxidermied lions are kept, returned to Tsavo to search for the cave Patterson believed had been the lions' den.

Thomas Gnoske, one of the scientists on the expedition, and Alan Patterson, John Henry Patterson's grandson, speaks to Stefania Gozzer about the hunt for the cave and the enduring legend of the Tsavo lions.

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(Photo: Tsavo lions in Chicago. Credit: Field Museum of Natural History)

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