Tip for Reading List: The Making of a Man-eater

No Beast So Fierce explores the circumstances that created a prolific killer like the Man-eater of Champawat

Between 1900 and 1907, a man-eating tigress killed an estimated 436 people in Nepal and northern India. By the time she was shot down by legendary hunter Jim Corbett, the Man-eater of Champawat had become the single deadliest animal in recorded history, and remains so. While Corbett details the hunt in his 1944 compilation Man-Eaters of Kumaon, a new book explores the circumstances that created such a prolific killer. US-born author Dane Huckelbridge, who retraced Corbett’s footsteps on the ground, places the tigress’s history in the context of colonial politics in No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History.

The tigress is believed to have been shot in the mouth by a poacher, leading to the loss of two canine teeth. This coincided with British colonisation causing destruction of prime tiger territory to make way for people and agriculture. Because of the loss of habitat, combined with her injuries, the Champawat tigress turned to easier pray — humans. “What becomes clear upon closer historical examination is that the Champawat was not an incident of nature gone awry, it was in fact a man-made disaster,” Huckelbridge writes.

Corbett was then little known, a railroad employee who had grown up hunting game in Kumaon. The British enlisted his help, setting him on the path to his evolution as a legendary hunter, and then to a conservationist dedicated to saving the tiger and its habitat. In its review, Science News magazine says: “Corbett’s hunt is given sufficient room in the tale to satisfy readers who want details of the bloody kill. But it is somewhat anticlimactic, a sad end for a sad creature that had to be killed not because it was evil but because it was hungry.”