The Field Museum curator of mammals, Bruce Patterson, has recently returned from his field work in Tsavo, Kenya, and he has posted some of his excellent photography in a Kodak gallery. The shots are absolutely breathtaking; they almost make me want to sell all my stuff and take off for Kenya.
[Update: You can see more photos from previous trips here.]
As outlined on his biographical webpage, Patterson runs a number of projects, but lions are his focus at Tsavo. Made famous (infamous?) by the thriller The Ghost and the Darkness a few years back, there's actually much more to learn about the lions than why the two on display at the Field Museum killed so many people during 1898. Patterson has written a book specifically about the Tsavo lions and their legendary status, The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa's Notorious Man-Eaters, although research on the present population is ongoing.
- Log in to post comments
Holy smokes those are neat.
Plus, I'm always amused at how the actions of big cats so closely resemble those of small/domesticated felines.
Gorgeous images!
Phil Caputo wrote a book on those cats a few years ago called The Ghosts of Tsavo -- it describes the scientific back and forth about whether or not the differences between these lions and those in the rest of Africa actually constitute a separate species of lion.
The photos here seem to show lions with a narrower and longer head than typical. Evidently the lions of Tsavo are enormous, too- bigger than other lions elsewhere in Africa.