If this had happened in America the lions could have only eaten a couple of people. Maybe three at the most.
Depends. On a lot.
The most important factor being the lion (or lioness, or even pride as in the above example). Killing a lion can be far easier than harvesting a buck, or it can be the most frustrating experience on earth. And the really good man-eaters are bloody murder to kill.
Shooting the opportunistic lion is easy ....too easy. They are so confident of their strength that they just leave their spoor everywhere, and then lay out of the veldt or savannah asking for a shot behind the ear! Same thing for the hugnry lion that picks off a native every now and then. Professional hunters have even slain whole prides of lions that kill people (nb: I did not call them man-eaters).
However a man-eater is a professional, and no ....i am not giving these beasts human personas. But you have to realize, all the hunters (both in the past, and in the present) who have hunted man-eaters have never had a nice experience. They often get hunted, and killed, themselves. The thing about a man-eater is that it knows what exactly it is hunting. It knows that man can lash back at it, and it knows about weapons and firearms. It will never attack the same spot twice, and will not fall for poisoned meat. Most do not even bother with traps. Oh, and the myth that man-eaters are old lions, or injured lions is just that ....a myth. While there are many lions that get injured (eg porcupine quills to the paws and jaw, or buffalo attack leaving it crippled) and aged, and thus cannot hunt orthodox prey, these lions are really not 'man-eaters.' Sure, they eat man, but they do so for survival. And these are easy to kill. However ALL of the truly legendary man-eaters (be they lion, leopard or tiger), have ALL been at the prime of their life ....and in fact not just healthy but rather large. For example the Tsavo lions, which were mane-less by the way, were about a third larger than normal lions. And some of the man-eating leopards, for example the Panar Maneater and the Leopard of Rudyaprayag, both in India, were enormous and at their primes.
Anyways, let me put it this way. A true man-eater, is very different from a mangy sot of a beast, ridden with disease, age, broken teeth and grotesque injury. A true man-eater is not going to be easy to kill. It will pick its targets very well, and will have a very good knowledge of the territory. Some of the better man-eaters have travelled almost a hundred miles between kill areas. And while it will eventually go down, it will take its pound of flesh with it.
now, this Ethiopian pride is probably comprised of opportunists who discovered humans can be easy prey. The only 'professional' pride of man-eaters (event he cubs were reared by their mothers as such) was in Central Africa, and there are rumors of similar prides existing in the Kruger national park in south Africa (where they feast on the hundreds of illegal immigrants trying to sneak into South Africa from the neighboring nations, in some ways they have become the most effective deterrent to sneaking across broder lines in that section). Thus this Ethiopian pride is most probably nabbing people because it is easy to do so, and thus it should be relatively easy to have the Ethiopian govt destroy the pride.
However when it comes to 'professional' mean-eaters all bets are off. They have nigh demonic intellect.
"If this had happened in America the lions could have only eaten a couple of people. Maybe three at the most."
GangGreen has teams working in many nations, diligently having laws, cooperative agreements, ad nauseam, passed and paid for with either American government money or American non-governmental organization money.
In short, the people in those places where cats are eating people like India and Africa see American money being spent on cats which eat them!
What a wonderful way to buy affection and respect for America!
The GangGreen, & the animal whacko, crowd has managed to get laws passed such that here in America one shoots bear, wolves, or cougar only at the risk of years of jail time.
And a Seig Heil! to those wonderful volk at the Demokratische Partei for passing so many gun bans, including parks, etc., so that while the 2nd Amendment is still on the books, it practically unavailable to the average citizen.
Here in the Sheeples Republic of FloriDUH, all of Florida below Lake Okeechobee has been socialized except for a narrow coastal srtip where hold out populations such as Miami and Naples are located.
All the rest is now part of the Wild Lands Project and except for hunting season in the Big Cypress Preserve, guns are illegal.
And hunters must drive on "paths" in a habitat so difficult to traverse that a friend of mine made the decision not to return Delta Force's Urban Attack Team because it "was suitable only for training with helicopter or tracked vehicle support."
But GangGreen and a consortium of state and federal agencies and their swarms of 'crats passed regs forcing the average citizen to walk where the people who eat Rambo for breakfast in the real world won't walk.
And most of the time, one attempts such a walk unarmed - like the Ethiopians. And all of the time if one is in the much larger Everglades National PArk instead of the Preserve.
The end result is the remaining handful of property owners have to put up with cougar (with kittens) running deer right past camp fires with people sitting around the fire, cats walking fifteen feet away from retired Americans with Parkinsons, etc.
I went to an interagency public information meeting and listened to the fattest 'crat I have ever seen (could have fed that entire pride for one night, for sure!) saying that one of their big cat program in India resulted in a tiger going into a house and eating a native.
His most telling comment followed the admission of the man eater's attack on the woman - "We have a dilemma."
I couldn't help involuntarily saying to myself "Dilemma, Hell! - Shoot 'em". But I forgot to be a "good Green citizen", thought out loud, and the entire gathering heard it in the silence that descended at Fat 'Crqat's comment sank in and realization hit.
Every head turned, and then turned back to Fat 'Crat and all was silent for a few seconds.
Fat 'crat has had his snout in the government trough so long that he has forgotten that government serves the citizens, it does not serve the citizens to large bodied predators.
And the most disturbing part was that Fat 'Crat turned out to be a basically nice person, just one who was willing to condemn people to being eaten by predators.
Worse yet was that he saw nothing wrong with causing such deaths as part of his job. I couldn't help thinking of the German death camp personnel who left each day and went home to listen to Wagner. Just another day's work.
And the bureaucrats doing this are basically just everyday Americans. Fat'Crat was eager to communicate the "value" of such projects and spent some time after the meeting talking to me about his work.
Somewhere, some how, America has made some very seriously bad decisions regarding the value of predators versus the value of human life. I am not sure either American citizens, or any third world peasent is going to continue to tolerate such behavior by either the cats or the 'crats.