Gabe Menezes wrote; > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8650299/Lions-more-likely-to-eat-people-after-a-full-moon.html
Gabe Menezes, You can use stats to correlate anything. For example, I have charts that show the New York Stock Exchange will perform well after the Chicago Bulls make it to the basketball finals. These are two totally separate events but if you want to believe it, there can be clear correlations.... To make this short, the only cats that will attack men are the dying ones that are delirious with hunger. Man is not part of a lions food choice. In fact, both man and lion recognize each other as enemies and will give each other wide berth. Regarding the statistics from Tanzania, let me assure you that there are more cat attacks that go unreported than those that do. If a person is killed in the village, he is buried within 24 hours and no one will retain a written record of the event. The only time the authorities will know of a cat attack is when the victim is found alive and is carried to a clinic for help. More often than not, he is carried the 30 miles to a clinic only after the local herbs are not/stop working. The day of the actual attack then becomes estimated. Thus the crucial data for the phase of the moon, the crux for this study, becomes hazy. Lions are kings of the savanna because evolution (or God) has given them exceptional eye sight. They have the ability to see their prey on the savanna regardless of what stage the moon is at or what any researcher tries to suggest. As you know, a lion needs only one sixth of the light that a human needs to see the same object on the savanna. Now on the other hand, if the suggestion is that a little moonshine will make a lion change change its diet and try a human meal, I will not object to that thought ;-) I have seen elephants and baboons eat rotting fruit and then behave like inebriated rogues. On a different note, I had two uncles who lived in Nairobi near the Drive-In cinema. You may remember that the back wall of the Drive-in was also the boundary of Nairobi National Park. Well, in the 1960's while they were screening the movie "Born free" at the drive-in, every time the lion roared on screen, a bunch of wild lions replied from the park. They had to stop showing that movie there after a few nights. Another tidbit, this time from Toronto, is that on a pleasant afternoon a few summers ago, as I was doing what I do best on my back patio, I started to hear the sounds of African drums. Since I never need a second invitation, I grabed a few beers and headed over. A few houses away, I found a group of gentlemen from the Caribbean having fun with their bongo's. An hour or so later, another, but clearly irritated neighbour stoped at the bongo party and asked why we were playing our drums in the open. The owner of the home answered, "To keep the lions away." To which the irritated neighbour said, "There are no lions in this area." The owner of the house replied, "Thank you." The irritated neighbour turned around left i.e. without catching the joke. Mervyn1650Lobo
