MAN-EATERS

Deadly cats of India and Nepal

The Bengal tiger is the greatest of the cats of the world, super-fast when attacking-reaching its top speed of 45 mph in a single bound-and incredibly powerful. But the tiger is actually a peaceable creature and, left alone and unprovoked, is not really dangerous to man. From time to time, however, one steps out of character to become a man-killer. The reason is usually an injury of some kind that disables the cat to where it cannot catch and kill its natural prey: deer, wild boar, or domestic animals like cattle and horses. Then, driven by hunger, it may turn to killing the most vulnerable creature in the forest, which is the human. When this happens, the big cat becomes a scourge and until it is put down, it may terrorize whole districts and disrupt the lives of thousands of people.

Records of man-eaters in northern India and western Nepal show that the most ferocious man-eater of all time was a tigress known as the man-eater of Champawat. It started its reign of terror in western Nepal in 1900, where it killed and ate 200 villagers. When it was driven out of Nepal and into the district of Kumaon, in northern India-in a massive beat by a thousand villagers-it killed and ate another 236 people before it was shot by Jim Corbett. Other documented man-eaters in this same area over the course of the last hundred years have taken another thousand people. This includes a tigress in central Nepal known as the Chitwan man-eater, which, over the course of two months, through April of this year, killed fourteen people.

Leopards can also become maneaters and, surprisingly, when they do, they are much more lethal than a man-eating tiger. The reason for this lies in the different psychology of the two cats. A tiger will never leave cover to come into a village, day or night, or even into a tented jungle safari camp. But a leopard will do so and will even tear down the door of a house to get at a victim. Deadliest of the killer leopards of northern India was the Panar man-eater of central Kumaon, a big male leopard that killed 400 people.-Peter Byrne

Copyright Sports Afield, Inc. Oct 2004
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