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The Leopard of the Central Provinces, also known as the Devilish Cunning Panther, was a man-eating male Indian leopard which over the course of a couple of years, killed over 150 people, all women and children, in the Central Provinces of British India in the early 20th century. The leopard reportedly claimed a victim once every 2–3 days, each time in a different area to the last, with the killings sometimes taking place 20–30 miles apart. The leopard caused such panic that the native communities in its range rarely left their homes alone or unarmed.
An unnamed British hunter set up headquarters in a large village, where he compiled information on the leopard's depredations with the local thana . Ten days later, a man entered the hunter's camp one morning, and claimed that the leopard had entered a hut in a village a mile from the camp, and had unsuccessfully attempted to carry off a small girl the previous night. The hunter dressed the girl's wounds and she recovered. The leopard struck again two days later in another village. The hunter searched for the leopard from his camp for three weeks without success.
With the body count rising, the hunter considered moving camp, until a boy from a village four miles away came to him, and stated that the leopard had dragged off his brother when they were driving cattle. At 14:00, the hunter set himself on a tree overlooking the boy's corpse, in the hope that the leopard would return for it. The leopard came at night, though the hunter was unable to get a clear shot due to the darkness, and the canopy of dense creeper vine. The hunter attempted to startle the leopard into coming out for a clear shot, but all attempts failed to intimidate the leopard, even firing in the air had no effect. The shots got the attention of the villagers, but the hunter called at them to clear the area. After a few hours, the hunter fell asleep at 1:00, and upon waking, found the leopard clawing at the foot of the tree. The leopard left after a few moments, but returned three hours later to finish its meal. By sunrise, all that remained of the boy's body were hands, feet and a few bones. The hunter attempted to track down the leopard in case it was still in the area, but after a search spanning one mile, he gave up. A few days later, the hunter moved camp ten miles away, hoping for more success. On the second night of his arrival, the hunter was awoken from his sleep by the leopard scratching outside his tent, though it was driven off by the shouting of the villagers.
Three days later, the leopard attacked the goats of a Gond farmer, but was driven off. Upon shortly returning however, it was fatally shot with a projectile propelled from a gas pipe five yards away from it. The Gond presented the hunter with the leopard's skin and stomach contents, among which was a ball of human hair, thus confirming it as the man-eater. The hunter purchased the hide for 10 rupees, later noting that the fur and claws were in fine condition, not what was to be expected from an old, infirm animal. There were no signs of past injuries which could have prevented it from hunting, thus leaving the hunter to conclude that the leopard had probably been fed human flesh as a cub by its mother, a likely man-eater herself.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a 1927 adventure novel by German author B. Traven, whose identity remains unknown. In the book, two destitute American men in Mexico of the 1920s join an older American prospector in a search for gold. John Huston adapted the book as a 1948 film of the same name.
Kenneth Douglas Stewart Anderson was an Indian writer and hunter who wrote books about his adventures in the jungles of South India.
The Man-eaters of Tsavo is a semi-autobiographical book written by Anglo-Irish military officer and hunter John Henry Patterson. Published in 1907, it recounts his experiences in East Africa while supervising the construction of a railroad bridge over the Tsavo river in Kenya, in 1898. It is titled after a pair of man-eating lions that terrorized the undertaking for nine months until they were shot by Patterson. His recounting of this incident projected him to fame, and it remains the subject of debate to this day. It has also been the basis of numerous films, the best known being The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas.
The Ghost and the Darkness is a 1996 American historical adventure film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. The screenplay, written by William Goldman, is a fictionalized account of the Tsavo man-eaters, a pair of male lions that terrorized workers in and around Tsavo, Kenya during the building of the Uganda-Mombasa Railway in East Africa in 1898.
Edward James Corbett was an Anglo-Indian hunter, tracker, naturalist and author. He was frequently called upon by the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh to kill man-eating tigers and leopards that were attacking people in the nearby villages of the Kumaon and Garhwal Divisions. He recounted his hunts and experiences in books like Man-Eaters of Kumaon, which enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success. He was also an avid photographer and spoke out for the need to protect India's wildlife from extermination. In his honour, the Indochinese tiger subspecies has the scientific name Panthera tigris corbetti.
Eden's Bowy is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kitsune Tennouji. It was originally published in the magazine Comptiq in 1994, but it moved to Shōnen Ace in 1996. It was adapted into a 26-episode animated series by Studio Deen in 1999.
Man-Eaters of Kumaon is a 1944 book written by hunter-naturalist Jim Corbett. It details the experiences that Corbett had in the Kumaon region of India from the 1900s to the 1930s, while hunting man-eating Bengal tigers and Indian leopards. One tiger, for example, was responsible for over 400 human deaths. Man-Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, and contains 10 stories of tracking and shooting man-eaters in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of the twentieth century. The text also contains incidental information on flora, fauna and village life. Seven of the stories were first published privately as Jungle Stories.
Tiger-Man is a tiger-themed superhero who appeared in a self-titled series published by Atlas/Seaboard Comics in 1975.
The Leopard of Rudraprayag was a male man-eating leopard that measured to about 7'6" long, reputed to have killed over 125 people. It was eventually killed by hunter and author Jim Corbett.
The Indian leopard is a subspecies of the leopard widely distributed on the Indian subcontinent. It is threatened by illegal trade of skins and body parts, and persecution due to human-leopard conflict and retaliation for livestock depredation.
The Sankebetsu brown bear incident, also known as the Rokusensawa bear attack or the Tomamae brown bear incident, was a series of bear attacks which took place 9-15 December 1915, at the beginning of the Taishō era, in a remote area of Hokkaido, Japan. Over the course of six snowy days, a male Ezo brown bear attacked a number of households, killing seven people and injuring a further three. The incident has been referred to as "the worst animal attack in Japanese history". The attacks ended when the hungry bear, so smart that it started to trick people, was shot dead.
A man-eating animal or man-eater is an individual animal or being that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior. This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has killed in self-defense. However, all three cases may habituate an animal to eating human flesh or to attacking humans, and may foster the development of man-eating behavior.
Tiger attacks are a form of human–wildlife conflict which have killed more humans than attacks by any of the other big cats, with the majority of these attacks occurring in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Southeast Asia.
The Sloth bear of Mysore was an unusually aggressive Indian sloth bear responsible for the deaths of at least 12 people and the mauling of two dozen others in 1957. It was killed by Kenneth Anderson, who described it in his memoirs Man-Eaters and Jungle Killers:
[Sloth] Bears, as a rule, are excitable but generally harmless creatures. This particular bear carried the mark of Cain, in that he had become the wanton and deliberate murderer of several men, whom he had done to death in most terrible fashion, without provocation.
The Wolves of Ashta were a pack of 6 man-eating Indian wolves which between the last quarter of 1985 to January 1986, killed 17 children in Ashta, Madhya Pradesh, a town in the Sehore district. The pack consisted of two adult males, one adult female, one subadult female and two pups. Initially thought to be a lone animal, the fear caused by the wolves had serious repercussions on the life of the villagers within their hunting range. Farmers became too frightened to leave their huts, leaving crops out of cultivation, and several parents prohibited their children from attending school, for fear that the man-eaters would catch them on the way. So great was their fear, that some village elders doubted the man-eaters were truly wolves at all, but Shaitans. With the exception of the pups, which were adopted by Pardhi tribesmen, all wolves were killed by hunters and forest officials.
The Beast of Bladenboro refers to a creature responsible for a string of deaths amongst Bladenboro, North Carolina animals in the winter of 1953–54. According to witnesses and trackers, it was likely a wildcat species, but its identity was ultimately not definitively confirmed. According to reports, the animal commonly crushed or decapitated its victims, which were mostly dogs.
The Chuka man-eating tiger was a male Bengal tiger responsible for the death of three boys from Thak village in the Ladhya Valley in 1937. It was shot by Jim Corbett in April 1937 who noted that the animal had a broken canine tooth and several gunshot wounds in various parts of his body.
Leopard attacks are attacks inflicted upon humans, other leopards and other animals by the leopard. The frequency of leopard attacks on humans varies by geographical region and historical period. Despite the leopard's extensive range from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, attacks are regularly reported only in India and Nepal. Among the five "big cats", leopards are less likely to become man-eaters—only jaguars and snow leopards have a less fearsome reputation. However, leopards are established predators of non-human primates, sometimes preying on species as large as the western lowland gorilla. Other primates may make up 80% of the leopard's diet. While leopards generally avoid humans, they tolerate proximity to humans better than lions and tigers, and often come into conflict with humans when raiding livestock.
Waghoba is an ancient tiger/leopard deity worshipped by a number of tribes in India for centuries. Depending on the region of India, the deity is either described exclusively as a tiger or a leopard as a deity that can take both forms. There are several temples for the deity throughout India.
The Man-eater of Mfuwe was a sizeable male Southern African lion (Panthera leo melanochaita) responsible for the deaths of six people. Measuring 3.2 metres long and standing at 1.2 metres tall at the shoulders, with a weight of 249 kilograms, it is the largest man-eating lion on record.