Hi everyone,
It's been a busy week with Eid celebration so I didn't have much time to spend on writing new articles. Today, I'm going to continue writing about man-eating animals, specifically two of the ruthless, most vicious man-eating animals ever documented in the history of mankind. If you haven't read the first episode of this particular series which I have written a few months back, you can click the link below:
Even though the words "man-eating animals" sound scary, I've been fascinated by them since I was a child. I remember the first time, I saw the movie entitled "Piranha", it was scary as hell but after a few research regarding the subject (when I'm old enough of course), I've found that contrary to what people believe about piranha which has been considered as a man-eating fish living in the heart of the Amazon river, they wouldn't eat humans while they (humans) were alive. Most of the documentation (post-mortem notes) of the victims which involved piranha as the potential predators show substantial evidence that they died of drowning before being eaten by piranha.
On the other hand, when I wrote about the tales of Bujang Senang, which has been considered as one of the most prolific man-eating monsters in Malaysia, it sounds like an old folklore which has been edited to make the story much more compelling and interesting to be told as bedtime stories, although we know that there were a lot of people who have been killed by crocodile especially in Sarawak. Numerous factors have been proposed as the probable reasons to explain why this creature behave the way they are but the real reason is still unknown.
The Tale Of Kesagake; A Man-Eating Brown Bear
Even though a brown bear is often thought as an animal which prefer to live in solitary and avoid the area with an extensive urbanisation and humans' activities, in 1915, one of the brown bears broke their supposed natural instinct and went ahead, terrorising a few housing areas in Japan within 6 days before it was shot dead by a hunter named Yamamoto. It's pretty unusual for a brown bear to lurk around humans' settlements unless they were attracted to something valuable for them especially things which are crucial for their survival such as food sources. There were a few encounters between humans and brown bears in the past but most of them result in either the brown bear fled away from the scene or died from being shot by humans who felt insecure for their safety. I mean who wouldn't? (unless it is a panda of course).
What has happened on the 9th of December 1915 was truly an unexpected behaviour of a brown bear. The first house it terrorised belongs to the Ota family in which after the incident looks pretty much like a slaughterhouse with bloodstained everywhere on the walls as a result of struggles. The victims were a farmer's wife (Abe Mayu) along with her baby boy named Hasumi Mikio. To summarise the incident, the brown bear bit the baby's face which instantly killed him and afterwards it went for Mayu to complete its killing spree. There was some evidence which suggested that Mayu was trying to escape after her son was killed by throwing a few firewoods to distract the animal but it seems, the bear's intention was fixed on killing Mayu. It's unclear what actually happened during the attack but eventually, Mayu was dragged into the forest (presumably after she was dead) by the brown bear, probably it wants to savour the moment of eating human's flesh inside the cave where it hibernates.
After the incident in the Ota family's house, a team which consists of 30 people was created to search for Mayu's remains. Approximately 200 metres from the house of the Ota family, they discovered a brown bear, lurking around the area, possibly trying to hide whatever left of Mayu within the snow which could act as the natural refrigerator to preserve the integrity of the flesh. It was later, shot by 5 people from the search party but it managed to escape as most of the shot were claimed to be missed. Anyway, following that day, there were a couple more incidents involving the man-eating brown bear which result in either the victims end up severely injured or dead. The brown bear involved seems to have an unusual level of intelligence, going to and fro between the "crime scenes", avoiding hunters, ransacking everything probably it was searching for viable food sources.
In whatever situation or anything odd that happens, I'm one of the people who believe that there must be some kind of explanation to explain the situation. Apparently, it was suspected that the brown man-eating bear which has been terrorising the village is the same brown bear which has been shot a few weeks before the first attack took place. The brown bear was caught stealing corns from a farmer's farm which end up of it being shot but it managed to escape while leaving trails of blood behind. Some of the villagers tried to follow it but they lost it somehow (I think due to the fact it was winter) and a few weeks later, it was speculated that the brown bear returned to the housing area, seeking revenge. Unfortunately for it, like the tale of Tsavo's lions, once it had human's blood and meat, it got hooked and want some more which could have been its motive of wandering around 8 housing areas, searching for victims.
Even though compared to the other man-eating creatures, Kesagake didn't kill much (some of its victims recovered and were alive), it still considered as one of the ugliest incidents in the history. After the Kesagake was shot dead, there were a few body parts of its victims which were discovered in the inside of its intestine confirming that it was indeed, a man-eating brown bear.
Gustave; The Nile Man-Eating Crocodile
In the past, when I wrote about Bujang Senang, I've mentioned regarding one of the most vicious man-eating crocodiles ever walked on the face of the earth, Gustave. I'm not really sure about the number of people who have succumbed to their death being eaten by this ferocious monster but according to a few articles on the internet, the number should be closed to 300 people. The story of how this creature has been rampaging along the Ruzizi river and a lake called Tanganyika seems like a myth. Along with the other agile prey such as zebra, antelope and any kind of animals who have been drinking along the river whereby Gustave can usually be found, humans are a viable target for Gustave and most of them were killed and left on the riverbank. It's relatively unknown whether Gustave killed just for fun or they just left them on the riverbank to be eaten later since they can last about a month without eating.
As Gustave has never been caught before, its size can't really be determined. There were a lot of speculations regarding its measurement, some people claimed it to be at least 6 metres and some said it can easily reach 8 metres in length. It's not the largest crocodile ever seen but that measurement should have taken at least 80 to 100 years for an average crocodile to achieve. It's not impossible for a crocodile to live beyond a 100 years old but usually, for a 100 years old crocodile, there were a few features that should have been absent when we compared them to a 30-80 years old crocodile which would suggest ageing process in this particular reptile i.e. a complete set of teeth etc. Like any other man-eating creatures, Gustave is highly intelligent.
Numerous catching efforts have been laid out for the past couple of years but none of them succeeds in catching it. It's one of the factors that would allow them to choose humans as their prey; for them to survive they need to be extremely careful and intelligent. Gustave has a random pattern of attack which can be extremely difficult to predict. They can attack humans at one place, disappear for months or even years and eventually reappear when we were certain Gustave was gone at the same place. In between that period, it might have been travelling and killing other victims at different locations. A few witnesses have seen this man-eating crocodile devoured a huge male hippopotamus which has been considered as one of the most dangerous animals in the world after killing it (Gustave is not an opportunistic creature).
There were a lot of efforts which have been carried out in the past to either kill Gustave or catch it. On the Gustave's hide, there were a lot of marks, scar tissues or anything that might indicate it has been shot or stabbed. Some people set up traps to catch Gustave and most of them failed to do so. On some occasions, Gustave even swam around the trap which has been set up, signalling that it knew, there were traps within certain locations. There were a lot of uncertainties due to the fact we didn't have any chance to study it but one of the possible reasons why Gustave has been killing/eating humans can be caused by the practice of the native people who will dump corpses into the river as a part of their rituals.
References and further reading materials
- Top 10 Worst Man Eaters In History. Retrieved June 18th, 2018.
- Brown bear - Wikipedia. Retrieved June 18th, 2018.
- Kesagake the Man Eater. Retrieved June 18th, 2018.
- Gustave - Wikipedia. Retrieved June 18th, 2018.
- Top 10 Largest Crocodiles Ever Recorded. Retrieved June 18th, 2018.
- Meet Gustave, the Legendary Killer Crocodile of Burundi. Retrieved June 18th, 2018.
SteemSTEM is a community project with the goal to promote and support Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics on the Steem blockchain. If you wish to support the steemSTEM project you can:
Contribute STEM content using the #steemstem tag | Support steemstem authors | Join our curation trail | Visit our Discord community | Delegate SP to steemstem