Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
when a lion roared next to us, our chests vibrated from the tremendous force of the sound. The
sound is 25 times more than that of a gas lawn mower and may be repeated up to 50 times in
90 seconds. A man's voice is typically in the 100-120 Hz range, women 200 to 250 Hz. Elk
also have folds of a similar size but with different mechanical stiffness and thus higher
frequencies. Lions are of course social and kill as a pride. The worst man eating ever
documented was by the Njombe tribe where some 1800 to 2000 people were killed in
Tanzania, many who had fled Shaka from Zululand. A local headman claimed to be an evil
shaman inyanga who controlled the lions using the killings to his advantage, and for a number
of years prevented George Rushby, the local game warden, from killing the pride. Rushby
reported that leopards in the area also ate some 15 people a year, which is unusual for African
leopards versus Indian leopards, perhaps because of the greater variety of prey. However one
killed people, it would appear, just for sport or spite and others have concentrated on children.
There are stories told about dangerous encounters in the Kruger Park. There certainly have
been park rangers who have been killed but mostly by leopards. There is the case of a game
ranger at Skukuza (the main tourist camp, named after Stevenson - Hamilton. The name comes
from the somewhat derogatory name given to him by the local blacks because he cleared them
out of the game reserve. Skukuza means “he who sweeps clean”) who noticed a leopard
stalking a young girl coming back from school and when he gave chase of the leopard it turned
on him and killed him. There was also the case of a gardener at the Mopane Camp who was
working away and suddenly was attacked and killed by a leopard in the middle of the camp,
probably because the leopard had a trail it followed through the camp and the man happened to
be there. Another case was the one of the security night watchmen at the gate at Lower Sabi
who was in his little gatehouse when a leopard reached in and killed him. One of the better
known stories is the case where a new park ranger took people out on a night drive and
climbed out of the vehicle on a small concrete fording bridge between Malelane and Skukuza.
He went to the back of the vehicle to relieve himself when an aging male leopard came out of
the culvert underneath the bridge and killed him. The first somebody realized that something
was wrong was when people sitting at the back of the truck, which was an open vehicle, heard
his rifle fall to the ground. The leopard was later killed and found to have lost most of its
canine teeth and hence could not effectively hunt prey effectively for itself. At the Skukuza
Camp many years ago I was camping with my friend, Grant, in a tent and there was a flurry of
screaming and shouting when a leopard came walking through our tent area. Certainly leopards
do tend to be brave and come through the camp sites at night. Part of the reason is because they
chase and kill impala and warthog that tend to come into the camp sites for protection and
because the irrigated lawns and gardens produces good fodder in winter. I have never heard of
the lions coming into the camping areas but in one of my topics one of the senior Skukuza
rangers, Bruce Bryden (
A Game Ranger Remembers
) does relate how he cornered, or more
accurately, he was cornered by a lioness in his garden in the employee section of Skukuza.
Similarly, Kobie Kruger describes lions coming to one of the back gates at Lower Sabie but
the gates being closed in time to keep the lions out.
My wife was once charged by a leopard when we were in Namibia. It happened at an
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