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The Tsavo Man-Eaters terrorized the workers of the Kenya-Uganda railway for nine terrifying months.

How They Killed:

We need to be clear: These bizarrely skin-headed lions weren't protecting themselves, they were actively sneaking into camp at night, climbing into tents and dragging the sleeping workers away to their deaths. Those tents were like pistachio shells to the lions, except the nuts inside kept screaming and had families to support, and oh God that's the saddest thing ever.

Over the long months of the spree, the workers and their British managers tried every conceivable way to stop the lions: they sent out hunting parties (who were evaded or slaughtered); built gigantic fences made of fucking thorns; and set out traps, but none of it worked. The lions were just like, "Oh, thorns, I'm totes out of my element, I've never had to avoid them growing up in the fucking jungle," before murdering more sleeping workers. For months the lions dragged away and ate the railway workers, killing as many as 135 of them.

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How They Died:

After many, many months of murdering and skipping through traps and defenses like horrifying cartoon characters, the Man-Eaters of Tsavo were finally brought down. In true movie monster fashion, they didn't die easily.

The man responsible for killing them, John Henry Patterson shot the first lion five times with a .303 caliber rifle over the course of an entire day as the lion continued to stalk him. Then it took eight shots (one directly in the head) to kill the second.

Just to recap, that's 13 bullets to kill the Man-Eaters as they were hunting him. And these were huge, turn of the century, British bullets too. Either Patterson was a terrible shot or the two lions really, really wanted to kill him.