10) The Man-Eaters of Njombe ~ The most prolific of the man-eaters, this pride of 15 claimed hundreds of lives—perhaps as many as 1,500—of lives between 1932 and 1947 in southern Tanzania. “The renowned man-eaters of Tsavo were very small fry compared to what these proved to be,” wrote George Rushby, the British game warden charged with stopping them. Prior to the pride’s bloody spree, the colonial government had reduced the numbers of prey animals in the area in an effort to control a rinderpest outbreak that was destroying cattle herds. The hungry lions quickly settled on human flesh as a substitute. Unlike most lions, the Njombe pride did its killing in the afternoon, using the night hours to travel as far as 15 or 20 miles to an unsuspecting village. Rushby believed that the cats actually used a relay system to drag bodies into the safety of the bush. He finally hunted down and shot the lions.
9) Two-Toed Tom is a legendary alligator in the Southern United States who terrorized swamp residents along the Alabama-Florida border. His name came from the fact that all but two toes had been lost in a steel trap. Two-Toed Tom attacked people and animals, and despite the use of guns and dynamite, locals could never kill him. Tracks of a massive alligator with only two toes were seen as recently as the 1980s.
8) Kesagake the Ussuri Brown Bear. The Sankebetsu brown bear incident , also referred to as the Rokusensawa bear attack or the Tomamae brown bear incident was the worst bear attack in Japanese history, killing seven settlers in Rokusensawa, Sankebetsu, Tomamae, Rumoi, Hokkaidō, Japan. The incident took place between December 9 and 14, 1915 after a large brown bear woke up from hibernation and repeatedly attacked several houses in the area.
7) The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were a series of shark attacks along the coast of New Jersey between July 1 and July 12, 1916, in which four people were killed and one injured. Since 1916, scholars have debated which shark species was responsible and the number of animals involved, with the great white shark and the bull shark most frequently being blamed. The attacks occurred during a deadly summer heat wave and polio epidemic in the northeastern United States that drove thousands of people to the seaside resorts of the Jersey Shore. Shark attacks on the Atlantic Coast of the United States outside the semitropical states of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas were rare, but scholars believe that the increased presence of sharks and humans in the water led to the attacks in 1916.
6) 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. It was killed by Kenneth Anderson.
5) The Beast of Gévaudan (French: La Bête du Gévaudan; IPA: [la bɜt dy ʒevɔdɑ̃], Occitan: La Bèstia de Gavaudan) is a name given to man-eating wolf-like animals alleged to have terrorized the former province of Gévaudan (modern day département of Lozère and part of Haute-Loire), in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France from 1764 to 1767 over an area stretching 90 by 80 kilometres (56 by 50 mi). The beasts were consistently described by eyewitnesses as having formidable teeth and immense tails. Their fur had a reddish tinge, and was said to have emitted an unbearable odour. They killed their victims by tearing at their throats with their teeth. The number of victims differs according to source. De Beaufort (1987) estimated 210 attacks, resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries; 98 of the victims killed were partly eaten. An enormous amount of manpower and resources was used in the hunting of the animals, including the army, conscripted civilians, several nobles, and a number of royal huntsmen. All animals operated outside of ordinary wolf packs, though eyewitness accounts indicate that they sometimes were accompanied by a smaller female, which did not take part in the attacks. The story is a popular subject for cryptozoologists.
4) The Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of notorious man-eating lions responsible for the deaths of a number of construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway, from March through December 1898.
3) The Leopard of Panar was a man-eating male leopard alleged to have killed and eaten as many as 400 people over a period of several years in the Kumaon District of Northern India in the early 20th century, after a wounding by a poacher had left it unable to hunt normal prey. The Panar Leopard was hunted down and killed in 1910 by famed big cat hunter and author Jim Corbett.
2) The Champawat Tiger was a female Bengal Tiger shot in 1907 by Jim Corbett. It was allegedly responsible for 436 documented deaths in Nepal and the Kumaon area of India mostly during the 19th century.
1) Gustave is a massive male Nile crocodile living in Burundi. In 2004 he was estimated to be 60 years old, 20 feet (6.1 m) in length and to weigh around 1 ton, making him the largest confirmed crocodile ever seen in Africa. He is a notorious man-eater, who is rumored to have claimed as many as 300 humans from the banks of the Ruzizi River and the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika. While this number is likely exaggerated, Gustave has attained a near-mythical status and is greatly feared by people in the region. Scientists and Herpetologists who have studied Gustave claim that his uncommon size and weight impedes the crocodile's ability to hunt the species' usual, agile prey such as fish, antelope and zebra, forcing him to attack larger animals such as Hippopotamus, large wildebeest and, to some extent, humans. According to a popular local warning, he is said to hunt and leave his victims' corpses uneaten.
via Listverse
