Most Feared Human-Eaters

10
The lions of Njombe
We start this list with the worst case of man-eating lions in History. It was not a single man-eater, but an entire pride that preferred human flesh over any other kind of food. It happened in 1932, in Tanzania near the town of Njombe. A large pride of lions went on a particularly brutal killing spree. Legend has it that the lions were being controlled by the witch doctor of a local tribe, named Matamula Mangera, who sent them on a rampage as revenge against his own people after being deposed from his post. The tribesmen were so terrified of the man-eating lions that they wouldn’t even dare speak of them, believing that a simple mention would cause them to appear.

9
A Crocodile called Two Toed Tom 
Two-Toed Tom is a rather obscure man-eater, and today, it is hard to know which parts of its story are real, and which ones are myths. This huge male American alligator was said to roam the swamps on the border of Alabama and Florida during the 1920s. It lost all but two of the toes in its left “hand” and left very recognizable tracks on the mud, so it was nicknamed “Two-Toed Tom” by the local people. It was said to have lost its toes in an iron trap.

It measured four and a half meters long, and people claimed it was no normal alligator, but a demon sent from Hell to terrorize them. Tom made itself infamous by devouring scores of cows, mules, and of course humans, particularly women (snatched as they washed clothes in the water). Due to its frequent attacks, many farmers tried to kill Tom, but bullets were said to have little effect on it and all attempts on its life failed. One farmer even tried to kill it using dynamite; the farmer had been chasing Tom for twenty years, unsuccessfully, so he decided to throw fifteen dynamite-filled buckets into the pond where Tom was supposed to live, and finally get rid of the problem once and for all.

The explosion killed everything in the pond, but not Tom. Moments after the explosion, the farmer and his son heard a horrible scream and splashing sounds coming from a nearby pond. They rushed to the place and saw Tom’s bright eyes for a moment before it disappeared under the surface. The screams were later explained when the half-eaten remains of the farmer’s young daughter appeared on the shore. It is impossible to know whether this particular story was true or simply a folk tale, but everything seems to indicate that Two Toed Tom was real and that it continued to roam the swamps of Florida for many years.

8
Kesagake
The most dangerous wild animal in Japan is usually considered to be the Japanese Giant Hornet, which kills 40 people a year on average. However, the largest, most powerful land predator in Japan is the Brown Bear, and perhaps the most brutal bear attack in history took place in the village of Sankebetsu, Hokkaido, in 1915. At the time, Sankebetsu was a pioneer village, with very few people living in a largely wild area. The area was inhabited by brown bears, including a gigantic male known as Kesagake. Kesagake used to visit Sankebetsu to feed on harvested corn; having become a nuisance, it was shot by two villagers and fled to the mountains, injured. The villagers believed that, after being shot, the bear would learn to fear humans and stay away from the crops. They were wrong.

On December 9 of 1915, Kesagake showed up again. It entered the house of the Ota family, where the farmer’s wife was alone with a baby she was caring for. The bear attacked the baby, killing him, then went for the woman. She tried to defend herself by throwing firewood at the beast but was eventually dragged to the forest by the bear. When people arrived at the now-empty house, they found the floor and walls covered with blood. Thirty men went to the forest, determined to kill the bear and recover the unfortunate woman’s remains. They found Kesagake and shot him again, but failed to kill him. The animal fled and they found the woman’s partially eaten body buried under the snow, where the bear had stored it for later consumption.

The bear later returned to the Ota family’s farm, and armed guards were sent after him. But this left another village house unprotected, and Kesagake took advantage of this, attacking the Miyoke family’s home and mauling everyone inside. Although some of the people managed to escape, two children were killed and so was a pregnant woman, who, according to surviving witnesses, begged for her unborn baby’s life as the huge bear advanced. Of course, it was all in vain. Even today, the Sankebetsu incident remains the worst animal attack in the history of Japan, and one of the most brutal in recorded history.

7
The New Jersey Shark
These shark attacks took place in 1916, at a time when little was known about sharks of any kind, and some scientists even claimed that sharks were not dangerous at all. This is one of the very few cases of real “man-eating sharks” known, with most shark attacks being isolated incidents. It all happened along the coast of New Jersey; the first victim was a young man named Charles Vansant who was attacked in very shallow water while swimming with a dog; several people, including his family, witnessed the attack, and a lifeguard rushed to rescue the young man. The shark was extremely tenacious and seemingly followed the lifeguard to the shore, disappearing shortly after. The shark’s teeth had severed Vansant’s femoral arteries and one of his legs had been stripped of its flesh; he bled to death before he could be taken to a hospital. Five days later, another man, Charles Bruder, was attacked by the same shark while swimming away from the shore. At first, it was reported by a witness that a red canoe had capsized; in reality, the “red canoe” was a giant stain of Bruder’s blood. The shark had bitten off his legs. He was dragged back to the shore, where the sight of his mangled body seemingly “caused women to faint”, but it was too late; he was dead by the time he got to the beach.

6
The Bear of Mysore
Although these animals maul many humans in India every year (one per week according to some), they rarely eat their victims. In fact, they rarely eat meat at all and prefer to feed on termites and fruits, and are particularly fond of honey. However, there was a Sloth Bear that became infamous for being a man-killer.
There are some very strange legends about the origins of the Mysore Killer Bear; some say that the bear was a male and that it had originally abducted a girl for a mate. The girl was rescued by villagers and the bear went on a killing spree as revenge.

Another, more believable version says the bear was a female whose cubs had been killed by humans, and that she became a man-killer to avenge them. However, most experts today believe that the bear was probably injured by humans, and became abnormally aggressive as a result. The bear attacked three dozen people in the Indian state of Mysore. In typical Sloth Bear fashion, it would rip the victim’s face off with its claws and teeth, and those who survived were often left completely disfigured. 12 of the victims died, and three of them were devoured, something extremely unusual. The bear was eventually killed by Kenneth Anderson, a famed big game hunter, although the beast was very evasive and three hunts had to be arranged before the animal was finally brought down.

5
The Beast of Gevauden
One of the most infamous man-eaters, as well as the most mysterious of all. This beast (some claim there were actually two of them) terrorized the French province of Gevauden from 1764 to 1767. Although often claimed to have been an unusually large wolf, the truth is the Beast was never really identified. It was said to be larger than a wolf, with a reddish coloration and an unbearable smell, as well as teeth bigger than those of a normal wolf. The creature killed its first victim (a young girl) in June of 1764. This was the first of a series of very unusual attacks, where the beast would target humans specifically, ignoring cattle and domestic animals. 210 humans were attacked; 113 victims died, and 98 were devoured. The attacks were so frequent and brutal that many believed the creature to be a demonic being sent by God as punishment; others thought it was a loup-garou, a werewolf.

4
The Ghost and the Darkness
In 1898, the British started the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in Kenya. Over the next nine months, the unfortunate railway workers became the target of two man-eating lions (now known to have been brothers). These lions were huge, measuring over three meters long, and, as is usual among lions from the Tsavo region, they were maneless. At first, the two lions snatched the men from their tents, dragging them to the bush and devouring them at night. But soon they became so fearless, that they wouldn’t even drag their victims away and would start feeding on their flesh just a few yards from the tents. Their size, ferocity, and cunning nature were so extraordinary that many natives thought that they were not actually lions, but rather demons, or perhaps the reincarnation of ancient local kings trying to repel the British invaders (the belief on dead kings being reborn as lions were once very common in Eastern Africa). The two man-eaters were nicknamed The Ghost and The Darkness and workers were so afraid of them that they fled by the hundreds out of Tsavo. The railway construction was halted; no one wanted to be the next victim of the “devil lions”.

Eventually, the Chief Engineer in charge of the railway project, John Henry Patterson, decided that the only solution was to kill the man-eaters. He was very close to being killed by the lions but eventually, he managed to shoot the first one in December of 1989, and two weeks later, he managed to shoot the second one. By this time, the lions had killed 140 people.

3
The Panar Leopard
The leopard is the smallest of the true “big cats”, but that doesn’t make it any less deadly than its bigger relatives. As a matter of fact, the leopard is perhaps the oldest predator; leopard bite marks have been found in the fossil bones of hominid relatives, suggesting that the spotted cat was already dining on our ancestors over three million years ago. But although any adult leopard may see humans as suitable prey under the right circumstances, only a few of them become actual man-eaters, preferring human flesh over any other food. The deadliest man-eating leopard of all time was the Panar which killed over 400 people, being the second most prolific man-eater in recorded history.

It seems that the leopard had been injured by a hunter and rendered unable to hunt wild animals, so it turned to man-eating to survive. It was finally killed by a famous hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett in 1910. Although the Panar leopard is the most infamous of all, there were others that were just as feared. The Kahani man-eater, for example, killed over 200 people, and the Rudraprayag man-eater, which stalked and killed pilgrims en route to a Hindu shrine, killed 125 people before it was shot by Jim Corbett.

2
The Champawat Tigress
During the late XIX century, a Nepalese region close to the Himalayas was terrorized by the most notorious and prolific man-eater of all times. Men, women, and children were ambushed in the jungle by the dozens. The attacks were so frequent and so bloody that people started talking about demons, and even punishment from the gods. The response was a Bengal tigress that had been shot by a hunter. She had escaped, but the bullet had broken two of her fangs. In constant pain, and rendered unable to hunt her usual prey, the tigress had become a man-eater.

Soon, the victim count of the tigress reached 200. Hunters were sent to kill the beast, but she was too cunning and was seldom even seen by them. Eventually, the Nepalese government decided that the problem was big enough to send the National Army after the killer cat. Other than the case of the Gevauden beast, this was probably the only time in history when the army was deemed necessary to deal with a man-eater. But they failed to capture the tigress. She was, however, forced to abandon her territory and she crossed the border to India, to the Champawat region where she continued her depredations. It is said that with every human she killed, she became bolder and more fearless, and eventually, she started attacking in broad daylight and prowling around villages. Men wouldn’t even dare leave their huts to work, for they could hear the roaring of the killer tigress in the forest, waiting for them. But most man-eaters share the same fate, and eventually, one man decided to put the reign of the tigress to an end. This man was Jim Corbett, who would (ironically) become one of the first great advocates of tiger conservation.

1
Gustave
All the man-eaters in this list are gone; their killing sprees are just frightening memories by now. All of them… except for one. In the African, often conflict-ridden country of Burundi lives the greatest man-eater of our times, a male Nile crocodile measuring six meters long and weighing around one ton. It is the largest Nile crocodile alive, as well as the largest individual predator in the entire African continent, and according to the natives and to Patrice Faye (a French naturalist who spent years trying to capture the man-eater), the crocodile had killed over 300 people by the time the investigations began! Although still alive and active, the crocodile (nicknamed “Gustave” by Faye) has already become a legend.

Natives say it kills for fun, not just for food; that it kills several people in every attack, and then disappears for months or even years, only to reappear later in another, different location to kill again. No one can predict when or where it will appear next. It is also said to have a monstrous appetite, and rumor has it that it killed and devoured an adult male hippopotamus (an extremely dangerous and powerful animal that most crocodiles avoid). Gustave’s body armor carries countless scars made by knives, spears, and even firearms. A dark spot on the top of its head is the only remaining trace of a bullet wound that was supposed to put an end to its reign. But all hunters (and even, once, a group of armed soldiers) have failed to kill it.

Faye himself tried to capture Gustave by building a huge underwater trap, but although the crocodile did show up, he never approached the cage. He just swam around it, “as if mocking his would-be captors”.  The greatest man-eater of our times.