ABSTRACT
One of the Field Museum researchers, Julian Kerbis Peterhans, estimates scores of people are killed in Africa annually by lions. "Given the right circumstances," he says, "any lion is capable of attacking people." Lions and tigers really can be quite a hazard for some humans in modern times. Tigers, needless to say, rest at the core of man-eating legends. Entire careers of British gentry were based on the removal of man-eating tigers from various Indian states. Man-eating tigers were rather uncommon in southern India during colonial times but always fairly prevalent in the north. Bears are carnivores by ancestry and anatomy. Modern bears, except for the polar species, have nevertheless evolved over time into omnivores in a functional sense, quite happy to eat vegetation and berries, but never passing up the occasional warm-blooded opportunity that wanders into their path. The extinction of cave bears is cloaked in mystery.
