African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

Depredations of lions in Mashunaland—Sad death of Mr. Teale—Great slaughter of pigs by a lioness—Mode of entering a cattle kraal—Method of killing prey—Sharpness of lion's claws—Mode of seizing a horse in motion—Lion chasing koodoos—Lions lying in wait for oxen—How a lion charges—Black Jantje's story—Numbing effect of lion's bite—Cruelty in nature—Appearance of wild lions—Colour of eyes—Lions at bay—A crouching lion—A lucky shot—The cat a lion in miniature—A danger signal—Social habits of lions—Troops of lions—Lions on the Mababi plain—Difference between cubs of one litter—Individual differences in lions—Great variation in the development of the mane—Lion probably first evolved in a cold climate—Still found in Europe in the time of Herodotus—Effect of cold on growth of lion's mane.

When a previously uninhabited piece of country is invaded and settled up by a tribe of natives or by Europeans, lions are always very troublesome, as they look upon all the newly introduced domestic animals as some new species of game specially brought into the country for their benefit.

For the first few months after Mr. Rhodes's pioneers entered Mashunaland in 1890, I kept as accurate an account as I could of the number of horses, donkeys, oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs that were killed by lions, and it soon amounted to more than two hundred. During the same time two white men were killed and several others severely injured by lions. The saddest case was that of a young man named Teale, who had come to Mashunaland in the hope of making his fortune by market-gardening. He was outspanned one night near a native village not far from Umtali, where he had gone to buy grain. His four oxen were tied to the yokes, and he with his native driver was sleeping on the ground beneath his two-wheeled cart, when he was seized and carried off by a lion. What the lion did not eat of him, the hyænas probably got, as nothing was ever found but his head and one foot with the boot still on it.

A rather curious incident happened the following year at a farm on the Hanyani river about forty miles from Salisbury. The owner of the farm—from whom I heard this story (which was fully corroborated by his native servants)—was breeding pigs, and had a large number of these animals in a series of pens, separated from one another by low partitions, but all under one thatched roof. One night a lioness managed to force her way into the piggery between two poles, and after having satisfied her hunger, was apparently unable to find her way out again, and either became angry or frightened, or else must have been overcome with an almost insatiable lust for killing. At any rate, she wandered backwards and forwards through the pens and killed almost all the pigs, over a hundred altogether, each one with a bite in the head or the back of the neck. She had only eaten portions of two young pigs. She managed to effect her escape before daylight, but returned the following night, and was shot by a set gun. I saw her skull, which was that of a full-grown lioness with good teeth.

There appears to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the means usually adopted by lions to effect an entrance by night into a cattle kraal or a camp surrounded by a fence. They are often said to leap boldly over high fences and stockades. In my own experience I have not known them do this. They will walk through any opening in an enclosure, but in the absence of such a means of ingress, I have always found that they got inside by creeping through the fence, even when it was low and very thick and thorny. I have known a lion to walk round and round a stockaded cattle kraal, and at last force its way in by pressing two poles apart and squeezing through the opening thus made. Should lions, however, be disturbed and suddenly fired at whilst feeding on a bullock which they have killed inside an enclosure, they will almost always jump over the fence in their hurry to escape.

I have never seen any evidence of a lion's killing its prey by striking it a heavy blow with one of its paws, and I believe that it always endeavours to kill by biting, and only uses its claws for holding or pulling an animal to its mouth. I have seen both a lion and a lioness bayed by dogs repeatedly throw out their fore-paws like lightning when one of these latter came near them; but the movement was not in the nature of a blow, but rather an attempt to hook one of the dogs in their claws and draw it to them. Lions, I think, must often lose their prey through the very sharpness of their claws, which cut like knives through the skin and flesh of a heavy animal in motion. I have known several instances of a lion overtaking a horse that had only had a short start. In such a case a lion will not land with a flying leap right on to a horse's back. It gallops close along the ground until it is almost under the horse's tail, and then, rearing itself up on its hind-legs, seizes it on either flank, endeavouring to hold it with the protruded claws of its great fore-paws. But almost invariably in such a case it fails to stop a galloping horse, its claws simply cutting great gashes through skin and flesh. I once saw a lion chasing four koodoos in broad daylight, though on a cold cloudy morning. It was galloping after them flat along the ground as hard as it could go, and looked like an enormous mastiff, especially as, though a male, it had but little mane. On another occasion, late one evening, I saw a lion and two lionesses lying in wait for some cattle of mine which were feeding towards them. Every now and then one or other of the lions would raise its head for a moment above the grass to see that the oxen were still coming on, lowering it again after one quick look. But for my intervention, these lions would probably have lain quite still until one or other of the oxen had fed close up to them, when they would have seized it by the head before it had time to turn. As lions nearly always hunt by scent and by night, they no doubt come up wind and approach as near as possible to a herd of game before making an attack, and probably often lie quite still until some animal feeds right on to them. In a country where game is plentiful, one would imagine that on a dark night lions must have but little trouble in securing food, and this is no doubt the case, as these carnivora become excessively fat wherever game is really plentiful.

When a lion charges, it does not come on in great leaps, nor does it strike its adversary a crushing blow with its paw. It comes along close to the ground like a great dog and bites, often so low that its forefeet can hardly be off the ground. Two Boer hunters of my acquaintance were both of them first bitten in the thigh. Shortly after the opening up of Mashunaland, too, an Englishman and a Dane were both seized in the same way by charging lions when hunting near the Pungwe river, in Portuguese East Africa, the latter dying from his wounds. In 1877 an Englishman was charged by an unwounded lion in Mashunaland and severely bitten in the groin; and in the following year, in the same locality, an old Hottentot servant of mine was badly bitten in the small of the back when running away from a charging lion which he had previously wounded. All these wounds were so low down that they must have been inflicted when the lion's forefeet were on the ground. On the other hand, many cases are on record of men standing facing charging lions being seized by the left forearm and sometimes by the shoulder. I do not remember to have heard of a case of a man being bitten in the head in a frontal charge, but one of my old servants, "Black Jantje," described to me very minutely the way in which he saw from a distance of only a few yards a Bushman killed by a wounded lion. When the lion charged every one ran, and just as "Black Jantje" reached a small tree, it dashed past him and the next instant caught up to a Bushman. It appeared, Jantje told me, to rear itself up, and placing a forepaw on each shoulder, gave the unfortunate savage a bite in the head. There were no wounds on the man's shoulders, but his skull was bitten through, and he was dashed to the ground with such violence that the skin was knocked off both his knees. The wounded lion made no further attack, but walking slowly away to the foot of a neighbouring tree, lay down and presently died within a few yards of its dead enemy. Two cases have come within my experience of lions charging home, and after having thrown their adversaries to the ground with one severe bite, leaving them without further molestation. I have known personally a number of men who had been mauled by lions. Every one of them was bitten, not struck by the lion's paw. Indeed, most of them were absolutely untouched by the lion's claws.

I once made the acquaintance of a fine old Boer hunter with whom I subsequently became very intimate, just after he had been very severely mauled by a lion. On asking him if he had felt much pain when the lion was biting him—he had eleven deep tooth wounds in the one thigh, besides others in the left arm and hand, and described the lion as having "chewed" him—he answered, "Ja, ik at byung sair gekrij" ("Yes, I felt much pain"); and some Kafirs have also told me that they have suffered much when being bitten by lions. It is possible that old Petrus Jacobs and my Kafir informants did really feel some pain at the time when they were being bitten, but in the case of Europeans, at any rate, who probably possess very highly-strung nervous systems, all the first-hand evidence I have been able to gather goes to prove that the bite of a lion or a tiger is practically painless. I imagine that the reason of this is, that the tremendous energy exerted by a lion in biting is equivalent to a heavy blow, which produces such a shock to the nervous system that all sensation is for the time being deadened, as it would be by a heavy blow from a sledge-hammer. I do not think that any kind of wounds from either blows or bullets or bites are likely to give any appreciable pain if inflicted swiftly when the blood is up; but they become painful enough very soon afterwards. When animals are killed quickly by lions, they too probably suffer very little, if at all, but no one who has listened, as I have done, to the bellowing of an ox or a buffalo being killed by inches could possibly say that such an animal's sufferings were not very great. I once had a fine stallion donkey killed by a hyæna within a short distance of my bivouac. It had first been seized between the hind-legs by its foul assailant, and its screams were perfectly heart-rending, and haunted me for a long time afterwards. My Kafirs and I ran to the poor brute's assistance at once, but were too late to save it, as a great hole had been torn in its belly, out of which half its entrails were hanging. No; it is useless for the scientist or the divine to tell an old hunter that there is no cruelty in nature, because the man who has spent many years of his life in a wild country knows by actual experience that such an assertion is not true. But let me return to my lions.

In appearance a full-maned, well-proportioned lion lying in peaceful repose in a European menagerie, gazing placidly and thoughtfully out of sleepy, brownish yellow eyes at the human crowd beyond the bars of its cage, is a truly dignified and majestic-looking animal; and if a fine specimen of a wild lion could be viewed at close quarters and at a moment when it was lying or standing with its massive mane-encircled head well raised, content with itself and all the world, after a good meal, and entirely unconscious of danger, it also would doubtless look both dignified and majestic, though I doubt if it could ever look quite so reposeful as the typical lion of the picture-books; for although wild lions are sometimes caught fast asleep, they are usually alert and watchful. I have spoken of the eyes of lions that have grown up in captivity as being brownish in colour and somewhat sleepy in expression, and that is the impression I have received from looking at the lions in the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park. On the other hand, I remember the colour of the eyes of wild lions as being of a flaming yellow, which retains its fierce brilliancy for many hours after death. Should a lion be shot through the loins and injured in such a way that, its hind-quarters being paralysed, it can be closely approached without danger, its fierce eyes seem ablaze with bright yellow flame, and give complete expression to the awful fury by which it is possessed. It is worth mentioning, I think, that when visiting the Zoological Gardens at Clifton, a couple of years ago, I noticed that the eyes of the lions and tigers there were in most cases of a flaming yellow, as they are, according to my experience, in wild lions. In some of them, however, the eyes were brownish and sleepy-looking.

When walking, wild lions hold the head rather low, lower than the line of the back, and although, when suddenly encountered, they will raise it for a moment to take a look at the intruder, they will soon lower it again and either trot away with a low growl or else stand watching. A wild lion looks his best and his worst, intensely savage but not at all majestic, when standing at bay. I have the pictures of four male lions, that I had chased on horseback and brought to bay, very vividly impressed on my memory. One was wounded, though only slightly, the other three as yet untouched. They all stood fairly facing me, their heads held well down below their mane-crowned shoulders, their fierce yellow eyes gleaming, and their ears laid flat, like the ears of an angry cat or leopard. All the time they stood at bay they kept up a constant succession of loud, rumbling growls and flicked their tails continually from side to side, throwing them suddenly into the air before charging with louder, hoarser growls.