Field Museum marks 100 years since acquiring man-eating Lions of Tsavo

CBS News

06-02-2025

CHICAGO (CBS) -- When the Lions of Tsavo first arrived at the Field Museum of Natural History 100 years ago, they had been made into rugs.
But taxidermists transformed them into the lifelike display that has been found at the museum all this time. The story of the man-eating lions is fairly well-known, but one Field Museum expert went the extra mile to confirm a specific part of the story.
"Well, I mean, to me, I think they're among the most important specimens in the museum," said Tom Gnoske, an assistant collections manager at the Field Museum.
These days, the Lions of Tsavo — found in a diorama behind glass among other taxidermied mammals of Africa in the Field Museum's Rice Gallery — are selfie-worthy. But had there been such thing as selfies in 1898, taking one with the Lions of Tsavo would have been an incredibly bad idea.
Gnoske knows the big cats by catalogue number. The crouching lion on the right is 23970, while the standing lion is 23969.
He has studied the lions for decades, and has paged through diary of the man who shot and killed the lions — after nine months of terror.
In March 1898, the British began building a bridge over the Tsavo River in modern-day Kenya. The pair of maneless male lions suddenly acquired a taste for humans, and preyed upon the railroad workers.
"They were tall, and they were long — longer than average," Gnoske said of the lions.
As the Field Museum tells the story, crews tried to scare the lions away — but it didn't work, and the construction of the bridge had to be halted. Finally, Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson — the civil engineer in charge of the railway project — shot and killed the ferocious animals.
Patterson later wrote a book, "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures," in which he said the lions were to blame for the deaths of 135 people. According to a 2018 article, Field Museum scientists believe the number is more like 35 — which of course is bad enough.
This story is well-known in Chicago through the Field Museum itself, and from Hollywood, by way of the 1996 movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" starring Val Kilmer.
"I love that movie. Part of it makes me laugh when I watch it," Gnoski said. "And he says, 'They're doing it for the pleasure,' and there's like thousands of bones and hundreds of skulls."
But Gnoske and his team discovered the real lions' cave, also in 1996.
"It didn't look anything like it did in the movie," he said.
The story of these lions and their diet has been told for more than 125 years. But Field Museum scientists found DNA proof in a tooth that the lions really were maneaters.
Gnoske explained using a cast of the lion's skull. The whole socket was broken, so a tooth was loose.
"As soon as that tooth died, it started to accumulate hair of things it was eating," he said.
Researchers analyzed clumps of hair—of which they were thousands. They found the DNA of many species of animals — and of humans.
"The lion was eating people from the time it was around 2 years old," said Gnoske.
The DNA analysis also revealed the two lions were brothers.
Lt. Col. Patterson sold the Tsavo Lions to the Field Museum during a trip through Chicago in 1925 —only four years after the Field Museum opened in its current building at 1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.
The story continues to terrify and fascinate.